Go Into The Story Interview: Geeta Malik

My conversation with the 2016 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Geeta Malik wrote the original screenplay “Dinner With Friends” which won a 2016 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. I had the opportunity to chat with Geeta about her background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to her.

Go Into The Story Interview with Geeta Malik

Scott Myers: Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up and how did you find your way into film making as an interest?

Geeta Malik: I grew up in Aurora, Colorado. Most of my family are scientists — I have an uncle who’s a wonderful painter, but nobody is involved with filmmaking. That being said, my parents always enjoyed the arts, so we were definitely exposed to it in a big way, especially Hindi music and film. We watched everything, from the biggest Bollywood films to what they called the “parallel cinema” films in the 50s, 60s and 70s — smaller, more realistic films that often explored a different side of India than the mainstream stuff. So, the arts always played a role in my life, but being an artist was never portrayed as a career path. It was always, “Oh, these are hobbies while you actually make money as a scientist, an engineer, or whatever else you want to be in the hard sciences.”

I went to UC Irvine for undergrad, and I started out in electrical engineering. The way I justified this to myself was that I really like astronomy, so I naively figured I could just go work for NASA or something. But I was awful and distracted with the math and science, because I was constantly writing stories and poems in the margins of my papers and not paying attention. I’ve been writing my whole life. It was much more natural and made a lot more sense for me to do an English degree, and so I switched my major halfway through college. And then, in my last year, I took a screenwriting class with a wonderful professor. I realized writing for movies could be a potential career.

I had also written a tiny, short little play that was produced in a festival in New York, and found that I wanted to direct my own work as well — to see what was in my head directly translated to the outside world — and so I went to UCLA’s grad program for film directing.

Scott: UC Irvine has got a pretty well recognized writing program at the MFA level. Is the undergraduate strong, too?

Geeta: I think it was. I had a great time there. I took a lot of creative writing classes, and the professors were amazing. I took a class with Alice Sebold, who wrote “The Lovely Bones,” and she was fantastic. I took a class with Maile Meloy, also an amazing author, and I met Aimee Bender, who had gone through the program and who came back for a book signing. She’s one of my favorite writers.

Scott: You say you got an MFA in directing at UCLA, right?

Geeta: Right.

Scott: You took a screenwriting class. That was the first time you dabbled in screenwriting, when you were at UC Irvine?

Geeta: Yeah. That was the first time. It was the last quarter of my last year that I decided to finally look into this whole filmmaking thing. I’d already started writing plays. I wrote some plays in high school, and I knew I wanted to move to L.A. — I think it was always in the back of my head that I wanted to learn more about film. So, I enrolled in that class and I just loved it.

Scott: Let’s jump back a little bit. As a youth, your family was introducing you to various Bollywood type movies. Were you also watching other foreign films or American movies?

Geeta: Yeah. My mom especially loved foreign films. To this day, she watches more movies than I do! And we watched plenty of American films as well — I remember “Fiddler on the Roof” and “My Fair Lady” being in pretty constant rotation. And my dad, he loved goofy comedies. We grew up on Mel Brooks, “Blazing Saddles,” and “Airplane,” “Naked Gun,” “Police Squad,” all those. He also loved westerns, which is one of my favorite genres.

Scott: Are there some particular filmmakers that, as a director, that have inspired you?

Geeta: Mira Nair is always the first. She was the first to make me aware that a woman, and an Indian woman at that, could direct amazing films that dealt with our culture but that could also go mainstream. She was the first to show me that it was possible to be a film director and look the way we do. I also love Kurosawa, The Coen Brothers, Sergio Leone. Another favorite is Raj Kapoor. He was an auteur back in India, and he made these bold, audacious films, and he did it within the mainstream Bollywood fold. He used singing and dancing as tools to push the story forward, so they were seamlessly integrated into the narrative.

Scott: Where did the comedy come from? Was that just a natural instinct or was that a result of being exposed to Mel Brooks and the like?

Geeta: I think there’s some natural instinct, but being exposed to all that comedy definitely helped! My parents are immigrants — my mom grew up in Kenya, and my dad grew up in India, but both moved to London in their teens, so their formative years were really there. So we also grew up with a lot of British humor, like “Fawlty Towers” and the “Blackadder Series.” One of my uncles was a huge fan of “The Goons,” and he’d listen to the tapes of their shows with us, and tapes of Dr. Demento. My first concert was Weird Al.

Scott: You’ve got children.

Geeta: Yeah, I have two little girls, age 4 and 2.5. My husband and I were really good friends in undergrad. We’ve known each other for a really long time! We started dating right before I went to film school, and we’ve been married almost nine years now.

Scott: You’ve directed some short films. How has that been?

Geeta: I directed a bunch of short films in film school, and then a few more after I graduated. I love writing and directing, and I love being on set, so doing shorts is a great way to keep working between bigger projects. I did a feature in 2010, and right after that was finished, I got pregnant with my first daughter. I had two kids in two years, so that’s been a little crazy. It’s been a challenge to balance everything.

Scott: The kids have got you on your toes, I’m sure.

Geeta: Yeah, definitely!

Scott: I watched your most recent short film, “Shameless.” Is that right?

Geeta: Yeah, that was in 2013, between kids.

Scott: It’s great.

Geeta: Thanks.

Scott: It’s a provocative take on patriarchal culture, but it’s also a comedy. It’s funny. Those are similar dynamics that you’ve got a play in your Nicholl winning script, “Dinner with Friends.” I’m wondering, could you talk about how you, in your mind, maybe embrace both drama and comedy in your filmmaking and how that plays out as far as you being an artist?

Geeta: That’s a good question. A lot of the Indian movies that I grew up watching were known as “masala” movies. “Masala” is a Hindi word for a mixture of spices, and these films were always a mixture of genres — you got drama, comedy, singing and dancing for the price of one ticket. So now, when I sit down to write something, there are always elements of both comedy and drama there. It’s hard for me to write a straight drama without adding moments of levity, and it’s hard to me to write a pure comedy without adding higher stakes. They go hand-in-hand for me. I love satire, and I love dark comedy. I’m a very sarcastic person! Often, the voice of my main character is my own voice. It’s a way for me to comment on what’s going on around me, especially when there’s an actual issue that I’m trying to address without alienating people and sounding like a PSA.

Scott: Alia, your protagonist, she’s probably fairly well echoing your sarcastic tone?

Geeta: Yeah, that’s me at 19! And still now, a little bit.

Scott: Let’s move to your script, “Dinner with Friends”, one of five screenplays selected for the 2016 Nicholl Fellowship and Screenwriting Award. A plot summary drawn from the Nicholl website:

“When a spoiled teenager uncovers her mother’s feminist past, she’s driven to turn her world of privilege upside down.”

Would you describe it as a drama with comedy, a comedy with drama, or it’s just a movie and you don’t even think in terms of genres.

Geeta: No, I do, and I tend to call all my films comedies! I just feel like that’s where I’m most comfortable. If I say I’m writing a drama, it feels like something heavy and scary, whereas if I call it a comedy, I feel like I can be a little bit looser.

I think of Dinner With Friends as a comedy with dramatic elements. A lot of comedy actually comes out of the drama. You’ve read the script — towards the end, there’s this big cathartic scene, and that comes from a very serious place, but then it’s just this crazy free-for-all, and then it returns to being serious again.

Scott: There’s such an authenticity to the characters, the situations, the story world, the dialogue, the whole immigrant Indian in America experience. I’m not sure that I’ve seen quite that angle of the more upper class type of experience.

I have to believe this must be, at least in part, autobiographical or at least you’ve got considerable familiarity with this type of cultural familial experience. How much of the story does arise from your personal background?

Geeta: There are definitely autobiographical elements to it. My family was one of maybe 30 or 40 Indian families at the time in Aurora. Aurora has since become incredibly diverse, but when we were growing up, my sister and I were the only Indians at our high school.

We were in this community where you’d go to dinner parties every couple of weeks, or every week, at someone’s house. The adults loved them and needed them because they were immigrants and wanted a way to hold onto their culture — eat their own food, wear their own clothes, speak their own language. And they wanted to share that culture with us kids and make sure we understood our backgrounds, but what often ended up happening was what happens in the script. It was like living in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, for better or for worse! It’s inevitable in any insular community. There’s wonderful support, and then there’s plenty of shit-talking.

Alia is a rich, privileged character in the script, and I certainly grew up seeing girls like that, but I relate more to Varun’s character — my family was more like his family. They’re involved in the community but they’re not part of that real inner clique, which is how I felt growing up.

I feel like Dinner With Friends is showing a side of the Indian community that’s rarely seen. Indians in mainstream media tend to be the comic relief, or the slum-dwellers, or we’re dancing at big weddings, or we’re the kitchiness of Bollywood. Things are changing, of course, but I never saw anything really reflect my own experience growing up as an Indian-American.

Some people have wondered why I’d write a film with only Indian characters set in America, but my experience was exactly that — you go to school, and you have a diverse group of friends in your life, but then you go to these parties and it’s all Indians. It’s a cultural immersion and many of those dynamics are at odds with the other parts of your life.

Scott: The community in the script is Ruby Hill. Is that fictional?

Geeta: Yeah, that’s fictional. There is a town out here called Diamond Bar. I didn’t grow up in Southern California, but I always thought of Diamond Bar as a sort of Indian enclave — lots of Indian people, Indian stores — so I based it a bit on that geography.

Scott: Alia has got some voiceover narration throughout the story. At one point she describes Ruby Hill as, “An incestuous little Indian enclave.”

Geeta: Yeah. I don’t know if that’s accurate for Diamond Bar, so I had to change the name!

Scott: Alia, 19 years old, you’ve already tried to touch on a little bit that she does share that kind of sensibility you have, where you felt like an outsider. How else would you describe her in terms of her state of life when we first meet her?

Geeta: One of my favorite films is “Clueless,” and I was thinking a lot about that movie when I started writing this film, especially in the earliest drafts. I wanted Alia to be this naive, happy-go-lucky, spoiled, rich girl who didn’t really understand her privilege, and took her position for granted.

After a million drafts, Alia evolved from this Cher-like character to being more of a know-it-all. She’s been through her first year at college, you see, so she clearly knows more than her parents, and is very worldly. She’s smoked pot and read Howard Zinn, and she really feels like she’s way ahead of her parents in terms of being progressive. The reality is, she hasn’t actually opened her eyes yet. She’s still driving her fancy SUV, paid for by her cardiologist father. She’s still participating in the same games as her parents, but over the course of the film, she makes some discoveries that lead her to truly understanding more about herself and her family.

Scott: You mentioned Clueless. Wonderful movie. I found myself thinking, while I was reading, of the script of The Graduate.

Geeta: Yes, and there’s definitely shades of that in there as well, especially the pool scenes!

Scott: I was going to say, there’s all the pool scenes.

Geeta: Yeah, definitely.

Scott: This affected you, who doesn’t share the values of those around her, the backyard gatherings, the neighborhood get-togethers, the swimming pools, adultery. Not, in this case, with her with adult people.

In the end, that question floating around is pretty obvious subtext in The Graduate. I think it worked here What’s the purpose of life? Were you at all thinking of The Graduate, or was there ever an association that resonates with you?

Geeta: Yes, absolutely. That was such a metaphor, being adrift, and that’s how I felt at that age, and that’s how Alia feels as she’s figuring out her identity. And you’re right, this idea of differing values becomes even more stark as the film progresses. Also, when you’re young, you don’t realize that your parents had this entire life before you were even born. It’s just too hard to imagine them not being Mom and Dad. I thought about that a lot with this film, and thinking about my own children and how to reconcile those two identities: pre-kids, and post-kids.

Scott: Let’s talk about these two male…I guess you’d call them suitors, in a way, or at least two male interests in Alia’s life. There’s Rahul. He’s a longtime friend and he’s very smitten with her. Then Varun, who you even mentioned earlier, handsome son of a working class family. How did each of these characters come into being? Do you remember how that triangle evolved for you?

Geeta: I definitely wanted to show that these were the two paths that Alia could potentially choose. Rahul is a parallel to her father. He and Alia are both rich and comfortable in the same world — he’s the easy choice. He’s going to be a doctor! Everyone assumes they’ll end up together, and that’s what everyone wants for them. Then, Varun is the stranger who rides into town. He, and his mother, are part of what makes Alia realize that there are other ways to live and experience the world. And then — I’m not sure which draft you read — by the end of the script, Alia doesn’t choose either of them. She decides to explore her own identity and find her own way.

Scott: The draft I read she doesn’t end up with either, which I thought was great.

Geeta: OK, good that’s in there.

Scott: I think it would have detracted from the main story, which is a motherdaughter story and the awareness and catharsis that she has, where she’d have just fall in with one of the guys.

Geeta: Right. Her mother’s got this entire feminist back story that ends up resonating with her, so Alia ending up with one or the other didn’t really make sense.

Scott: It would have felt inauthentic for her journey. Because Alia, she’s being this little rebellious college freshman. She invites Varun’s family to a social gathering hosted by Alia’s mom and dad.

You’ve already established this very well-heeled community of Indians who are pretty surface level, it seems like, in terms of their interest in materialistic and whatnot. Then she invites this family, which is more working class, even though they’ve got a pretty strong educational background.

The contrast between the wealthy families and Varun’s family, and the way the upper class characters make fun of Varun’s family, it’s almost like a metaphor, a variation of the caste system. I don’t know of how active that is in India now today, but was there any sort of an echo of that at all?

Geeta: There’s an echo of that, for sure. It’s mostly about exploring classism, and how those kinds of economic divisions play out in close quarters within a community.

Scott: Let’s talk about Alia’s parents and we’ll start with her father, Ranjeet, a successful surgeon.

Geeta: Yeah, mmhmm.

Scott: How would you characterize him and what’s his situation in the story as it begins?

Geeta: As the story begins, Ranjeet is complacent, happy. He’s very proud of who he is. He’s proud of where he’s come from. He didn’t come from money in India. He’s really a self-made man in a lot of ways, even though he took a loan from Sheila’s parents when they came over, because they were struggling at the time. Since he’s become a respected doctor, his ego has grown, and he has this common sexist attitude that he can get away with anything because of his status. He’s very much the patriarch.

Scott: You got him running quite a bit. I was wondering, is there any sort of metaphorical theme going on there? Like, he’s running in place or running to try and stay ahead of the truth because he’s hiding, at least, to the daughter? Is there anything there?

Geeta: Sure! [laughs] That’s great. Actually, my dad introduced us to a lot of athletics when we were growing up, so there’s a little bit of him in there. He used to run races and he’d take us to run with him, and that was a way that we bonded with him. That was the way I wanted Alia to bond with her father.

It was something outside of the house, away from the family. It was their thing. When she realizes he’s betrayed the family, she wants to run alone. It’s been tainted.

Scott: So, years from now when the movie gets made and the French critic says, “It’s very interesting that the father is running away from his…” you can just say, “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I was totally thinking that the whole time.”

Geeta: Absolutely! I did that on purpose. [laughs]

Scott: Patriarchy is a pretty significant theme which runs through this story. Was that a conscious choice on your part to have a go at that as a dynamic, or is that just more of a reflection of the fact that it’s a natural dynamic in Indian culture?

Geeta: I definitely wanted to address it directly because it is something I saw all the time growing up. It was infuriating from the perspective of a kid who couldn’t really do anything about it — it just permeated everything we did. At that time, it was very hard to find some liberal Uncle who would go help out in the kitchen and participate in the home in a meaningful way. I just never saw it happen. There are still a lot of traditional Indians who trade in these double standards. For instance, divorce — when it happens, it’s still usually the woman who bears the brunt of the fallout, not the man. And that’s certainly something that’s part of Indian culture, but that isn’t unique to Indian culture — I know many of us can relate to that scenario in the wider world, and in other minority communities as well.

Scott: Then that leads to the mom, Sheila. I’m curious. Which character did you start with? Can you unpack it all the way back to when you had the initial inspiration for this story? Did you start with Alia?

Geeta: I started with Alia. It was Alia’s story for ages. I have early drafts where Sheila’s barely a character, let alone a driving force! I was trying to explore Alia’s character and how she’d go from being this naive kid to a more aware, active adult. I started writing this right after my first feature, and then I took a long break after the birth of my first daughter. Once she was born and I came back to the script, I found that I really sided with Sheila, and I suddenly related to her a lot more than I related to Alia.

Sheila just kept growing and growing in the story, and she became an equal to me, in my mind, with Alia and her importance in the story.

Scott: It’s really quite an interesting structure that you have because it is at the end of the day, if you were to look back on it it’s a mother-daughter story or a daughter-mother story, I guess, from the perspective of the protagonist. Yet, the way you handle it, its very depth, it’s not obvious that that’s the story.

There are movies where it’s right up front you know it’s a mother-daughter thing. But, there’s all this other stuff that’s going on in Alia’s life. It doesn’t become quite apparent that that’s the central focus, in terms of relationships and, actually, the plot until about midway, when she starts I think it’s around 65 or something she starts to discover this past about her mother.

Was that a conscious choice on your part to soft pedal or ease your way into that mother-daughter thing, or was that just an organic thing?

Geeta: I think it was organic. It wasn’t an initial choice to do it that way. I think it just flowed that way because I was telling Alia’s story, initially. There was a lot more emphasis on her with these two guys, and her coming back from college, and trying to deal with her parents’ failing relationship.

With the discovery of Sheila’s back story, I thought a lot about Monsoon Wedding, which is one of my favorite Mira Nair films. Structurally, the big relationship reveal happens well into the second act — maybe even the beginning of the third act. It’s so interesting because you get to know these characters intimately before you realize how deep the conflict goes in their lives.

Then, when the reveal happens, the relationships are strong enough to withstand it, which I thought was very cool and very clever writing (and directing). It was a gutsy way to structure it. It’s tricky because you also don’t want these plot points to feel like they’re coming out of nowhere. In Dinner With Friends, it’s important that Sheila’s back story doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of left field.

Scott: I think it worked. It’s one of those things where I was sitting and reflecting on it after I read the script and going, “You know what? I could look back and stitch together those scenes between Alia and her mom that were taking place during the first act and the first half of the second act,” where you’re really establishing the mom’s character.

At first, she’s seemingly very surface oriented but, slowly but surely, you dimensionalize it. In a way, the way you said it is the way I experienced it. You gave us enough of the relationship so that when the reveal came, this big reveal that she was a feminist, a really ardent feminist way back when in the past, I think it works. It wasn’t a surprise. It didn’t come out of left field.

It felt like it was supported very well. Again, what I’m saying, I guess the larger point, I would say, is just one writer to another is it didn’t come off as this heavy-handed thing. It was very depth. It felt like it was this…I said soft pedal. I don’t know if that’s the right phrase, but it feels like…It worked very, very well on the page.

Geeta: That’s good! Good to know.

Scott: Another movie association, which…Now you got the little girl, so maybe you’re familiar with this. May seem a bit of a stretch to you. I’m a big Pixar freak. I love Pixar movies, so the mother-daughter relationship brings to mind their movie Brave.

Geeta: I love Brave. Yeah.

Scott: The relationship between Alia and her mother, Sheila, versus the relationship of Merida and Lady Elinor. Any resonance there?

Geeta: I haven’t seen Brave for a long time — I think I actually saw it pre-kids! I didn’t reference it consciously, but if that French critic ever asks, I’ll say that I did!

Scott: No, but it might be fun for you to go and watch that movie again, particularly with your girls, because there is that thing where Merida says, “I don’t want to be like my mom,” and she thinks her mom is a certain way. Then, they go on this journey together where she realizes that her mother does have this kind of power inside of her, this inner strength.

Anyhow, it just was an interesting point of comparison. I think you might find an interesting kind of a resonance there.

Geeta: Yeah! I should watch it again.

Scott: There’s a quote that Sheila has when it’s uncovered that she had this activist, feminist background. Of course, Alia thinks it’s awesome. Sheila says, “Yes,” this is to the society that she was a member of. “Yes, the society meant something to me. It meant everything to me, and I lost everything because of it.

“You do these things when you’re stupid, and reckless, and young, and then you get tired, and then, you grow up. Grow up, Alia.” Do you remember writing that?

Geeta: Oh, yeah. [laughs] I do, yeah.

Scott: You could sympathize with her at that point?

Geeta: Yes, definitely. For some of us, after having kids, things do end up seeming less important — things that you once considered to be a permanent part of your identity. It’s exactly as Sheila said: when you’re young, you’re full of idealism. I was, anyway. In college, you think you can change the world. You’re powerful. You have time and energy on your side. And Sheila was actually fighting for something real. Me, I was at UC Irvine, yelling about them closing down our local bar! We just wanted to drink and go clubbing. Sheila was in India in the ’80s, and the political situation was intense, and the rampant violence and sexism were real.

But because she was so militant about what she stood for, she ended up losing her family, her community, her friends. She got tired of fighting. She gave up that part of her identity to live a peaceful, pampered life, and to avoid the conflict that had earlier torn her apart.

Scott: You’ve got a fun little inversion, there, because after that comment from Sheila, Alia says, “You were badass once. And, God as my witness, you’ll be badass again.”

Geeta: [laughs] Yeah. She wants her mom to reclaim that power and to remember who she was and get that integrity of character back.

Scott: Yeah, that’s my theory about movies, is that so many of them, there’s a central question and it’s “Who are you?” and both of these women confront that question. That the mom discovers that it may have been in her past, but it’s still there, right?

Geeta: Absolutely. It’s buried deep inside her, but it’s still a fundamental part of who she is.

Scott: At least there’s a very nice twist in act three, at the ending. It’s just terrific. Was that the ending you always had in mind, particularly where Alia inspires her mom when she does the thing with the hair and all that?

Geeta: Yeah, that ending has been there since the earliest drafts.

Scott: The last side, that was quite interesting. Alia says: “Words are powerful. Sometimes, it’s nice to just be quiet.” She’s been so verbal throughout that I thought that was such an interesting place for her to end up. Almost like, “I’ve said everything I need to say. I can just kind of settle in and be.”

Geeta: Absolutely.

Scott: Is that kind of where you were at?

Geeta: Yes, for sure. The movie begins with Alia’s voiceover, talking about the gossip that permeates her community, and how words have a lot of power. This constant worrying about what other people will say — that keeps people trapped, and that’s what she ends up seeing with Sheila. First, Sheila was punished for speaking her mind as an activist, and then she herself used words to cut other people down to size. At the end, everyone settles down in the security of knowing that it’s okay not to talk — that they can just be who they are and live their own lives.

Scott: I hope that when you make the movie, you can keep that side. I’ve interviewed a lot of screenwriters where I’ve said, “Wow! That was such a great line,” and they go, “Yeah, we had to cut it.” “Oh, no!”

[laughter]

Geeta: Hopefully not.

Scott: So, you start writing the script in 2010. Is that right?

Geeta: Around then, yes.

Scott: Then you had some kids and came back to it in 2012. How many years did you figure, over a period of time you weren’t writing it all the time, obviously but over a three, four year period of time, or something like that?

Geeta: I think, overall, it was a period of about five years, off and on. After we shot the feature, I did a few drafts, and then I had my kid. Then I shot the short film “Shameless.” There were some really big gaps between drafts. Months would go by without me being able to look at the script, which was hard, but it also allowed me to come back to the script with fresher eyes. And with more new experiences behind me. After my second child was born, then I made a concerted effort to write regularly on the script. From there, it took about a year and a half to finish it. I don’t even know how many drafts I’ve been through with the script. It’s changed a lot.

Scott: How were you getting feedback?

Geeta: I was in a couple of writer’s groups. Those people are still some of my closest friends, and many have seen, literally, every draft of this script. We still regularly exchange scripts for notes.

Scott: You submitted it to the Austin Film Festival and won?

Geeta: Yes! That was great.

Scott: The comedy award. Of course, you submitted it to the Nicholl. Was that the first time you submitted it to the Nicholl?

Geeta: No. I had submitted an earlier draft in 2014, and I was really excited because that year I had gotten to the top 10 percent of the Nicholl. I didn’t get any closer than that. I was like, “This is amazing!” I was so excited to get in the top 10 percent!

When you write, and as a filmmaker, a creative person, you just get so many rejections. It was such a relief to even get to that point — it gave me the motivation to keep revising and to keep trying.

Scott: Top 10 percent of the Nicholl was the universe’s way of giving you at least a little validation. But, winning the Nicholl like you did and getting the calls from everybody, that must have felt like a major form of validation.

Geeta: Oh, yeah. It just makes everything feel worthwhile. It made me feel that I was actually working towards something this whole time and not just sitting in front of my laptop with a project that would never see the light of day. It’s amazing validation, and an amazing feeling.

Scott: What were you doing when you got the call?

Geeta: They asked all of the finalists to be near a computer for a possible Skype call between certain hours on a certain day. So I knew that I was either going to get the call or not during that window of time.

I was sitting at my laptop, at home, just chewing my nails, sweating, hoping against hope that I’d get that call. I tried to distract myself, but it was beyond futile. They did a live feed on Facebook as they called the winners, and so I just decided to go all-in and watch that, and deal with the results, good or bad, in real time. I saw the first call go in to the first winner. And then I realized that my own phone was ringing.

Scott: What’s the status of the script? You’ve rewritten it. I’m assuming you want to direct it?

Geeta: Absolutely. It’s lived in my head for so long! I’m planning to direct it, and hopefully, get the production going sooner rather than later. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it’s getting closer every day.

Scott: Did you have representation before the Nicholl?

Geeta: No, not at all.

Scott: Do you have now?

Geeta: Yes! I’m repped by Paradigm and Luber/Roklin.

Scott: Have you done the whole bottled water tour?

Geeta: [laughs] I’ve done some of the meetings, yeah. I’ve also written a TV pilot, so I’m developing that, and I’m hoping to get some meetings off of that as well this year.

Scott: Is that a half-hour comedy?

Geeta: Yeah, it’s a half-hour dark comedy.

Scott: Single camera, I assume?

Geeta: Yep. Single camera.

Scott: Wow. Best of luck on both of those projects.

Geeta: Thank you!

Scott: Let’s jump into a few craft questions, if we could.

Geeta: Sure!

Scott: How do you come up with story ideas?

Geeta: That’s a good question. I read a ton. I try to watch everything possible. I’m often inspired by something I’ve heard in passing, or an issue that I’ve been mulling over. I often do my best writing when I’m emotional about something — especially if I’m angry about something! I used to sit down and pound out a poem it if I was really upset about something. It was just a way of getting my feelings down on paper, and I still occasionally do that. Anger is often the seed of what I write. Even Dinner with Friends comes from this anger at a suppressive society, and this feeling of needing to stand up for our convictions.

If I experience something, or I hear about something that seems unfair or unjust, then that really gets my head spinning. That’s where I start really start generating ideas for my writing.

Scott: If that’s the case, this should be a very rich, creative period of time for you, if you catch my drift.

Geeta: Oh, yes!

Scott: How about your prep writing process? Brainstorming, character development, plotting, research, outlining. Could you generally describe how you approach breaking a story?

Geeta: Well, especially since having the kids, I feel like I write very much by the seat of my pants! Before the kids, I could be a lot more meticulous about it, though I’ve never been a huge outliner. I do a sort of loose outline, with pieces of dialogue for certain scenes, and I use index cards every once in a while when I’m stuck on structure, but that’s often farther along in the process.

At the beginning, I’ll usually just sit down and write the story. I’ll write a treatment like a narrative, or like I’m telling a friend about it, and keep it casual and messy. And I’ll extrapolate individual scenes from there. After I have a first draft, which is always completely a mess because I just sort of vomit my stuff on the page, I’ll go back and revise again and again and again. The deeper parts of the story often come from that part of the process.

Scott: How about developing characters? Do you have any specific things you go to techniques or tips or whatnot that you go to, to get your characters coming alive?

Geeta: I definitely try to think about their arc from beginning to end. I really want to pinpoint how they start and how I want the audience to feel about them, or where I want them to be when the credits roll, so I take that broader view when I first start to write.

Then, every once in a while, if I get stuck, there are all those exercises: “what’s in their refrigerator? Where’d they go to school?” I’ll try to fill out their backstory as much as possible to get the creative juices flowing again. Most of that stuff never makes it into the final script, but it helps me explain who they are and how they behave.

Scott: You’ve got a great ear for dialogue, as witnessed in the script. Do you even think about how that happens, or is it just an innate thing?

Geeta: No. I think that’s just an innate thing. Dialogue has always come very easily to me. Structure, and plot, and the script actually making sense? That’s a lot harder for me. I love sitting down with my characters and just bantering. That’s the stuff I really enjoy.

Scott: This is a subject that I have an interesting time talking with writers about because it’s so…There’s not one kind of definitive meaning on this, but how would you define theme? How important is it to you?

Geeta: Theme is something I often get stuck on, and yet it’s so vital to know what it is you’re trying to say. I think of the theme as the overarching message of the movie. What’s the perspective of the film? What’s the comment you’re making on the story, or on society as a whole? How do you want people to feel at the end of the movie? Sometimes, it’s hard for me to articulate that about my own scripts, because I don’t necessarily sit there and say, “I’m going to write a movie about sexism.” It comes out of an emotion, and the characters and their experiences, but it’s the thing that ties the whole thing together.

I think that’s how I define theme. Dinner with Friends, I feel, has several themes, woven within several stories throughout the script.

Scott: It sounds like you and I would be in alignment on this because I believe that there are multiple themes and stories. When I ask my students, I say, “What do you want people to feel when they walk out of the theater?” just like you were saying. Basically, the central theme, what is the emotional meaning of the story?

Geeta: Right. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.

Scott: When you’re writing a scene, do you have any goals?

Geeta: A piece of wisdom that I’ve heard from a lot of people is that every scene has to do something to move the story forward. Otherwise, it can bring the whole film to a screeching halt and stall the momentum of the narrative.

In early drafts, there’s so many of these dead scenes. That’s the way I think of them. I try to look at them and say, “Is this scene necessary? What am I saying with this scene? Am I saying this somewhere else already? Is there a better way to say it, a more dynamic way to say it?” I’m not necessarily conscious of it while I’m writing initially, but when I go back for revisions and editing, that’s what I try to do.

Scott: I did a screenwriter’s roundtable with six women writers, Hollywood writers, last year and four of them were moms with young kids. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask, and I have lots of readers, obviously, both male and female, who have young children. How do you go about managing to find time to write? How do you manage that, given the fact that you’ve got these young kids at home?

Geeta: Luckily, now they’re both in preschool, which is amazing! But, before that, we also had help. We had a part-time nanny and that’s the only way I could have written anything. Before we had the nanny, I’d try and write while my daughter napped, but then I’d open my laptop and before I knew it, she’d be awake. I would try to write at night and I would fall asleep on my keyboard. I really admire the writers who can manage it while taking care of their kids full-time, but I was just overwhelmed. I knew that if I was serious about my career, we had to get some help, so we committed to having the nanny and cutting other things out in our lives financially.

It’s still hard to juggle everything — taking care of the kids and the house and staying creative — because the fun never really stops. There are always more errands to run, more laundry to do, more books to read to them at bedtime, more drafts to revise. But I also have an incredibly supportive spouse, and that’s the real key to any progress I’ve been able to make.

Scott: Do you enjoy writing?

Geeta: It’s my favorite thing to do.

Scott: When you’re writing, do you have your director’s cap on?

Geeta: Not exactly — I don’t worry about things like budgets or logistics while I’m writing, or how realistic it is to make the film — at least, not initially. But I’ll often get a scene in my head, and know exactly how it will look and sound, and then I’ll write it as I’ve visualized it. With Dinner With Friends, because it’s been such a long process, I feel like I’ve seen every scene inside my head, and I know how I’ll want to direct it. I’ve been subconsciously putting together my shot list as I’ve been revising these later drafts. So I’ll be ready to direct it when the time comes!

Scott: I absolutely hope that happens because it’s a personal script. The tone is pitch perfect, and just talking with you I can see it. I can’t imagine anybody else directing it.

Geeta: Thank you. I don’t know if anyone else would want to direct it! It’s a movie about Indian people, and that’s who I am, so it makes sense for me to be the one.

Scott: Putting my producer’s hat on, that’s a huge market, I would think, right?

Geeta: Yes, especially if it crosses over into India and the diaspora.

Scott: A subculture that exists. All right. I’m going to ask you a question that you’re going to be asked as your career goes forward, and you probably already have, and you’ll be asked it time [laughs] and time again. What advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and breaking into Hollywood?

Geeta: When I was just testing the waters of being a filmmaker, I had a lot of people tell me, “don’t go to film school. It’s a waste of money. Just go out and start shooting your own stuff.” For me, that would never have worked. I didn’t know the first thing about film, and it was intimidating to just jump right in. Some people are able to go it on their own, but I was never one of those kids who grew up with a camera in her hand. Film school was a vital step for me, and I’m very glad that I went to UCLA, because we also had to write whatever we wanted to film.

So, I say, if you want to be a professional screenwriter or a filmmaker, learn properly, and educate yourself. Whether that means film school, or shooting a short film every week with your buddies, or reading a ton of screenplays, or joining classes, writer’s groups — whatever it is, educate yourself.

And feedback is vital. People can be very precious about their work. I’m always looking for fresh eyes and another perspective on my writing, because I’m writing in isolation. I think it’s very important to send it out and ask, “hey, is this working?” and to be humble about the answer, to understand the criticism when it comes in, and sift through what makes sense for you and what doesn’t.

And finally, I’d focus on what you’re passionate about. It’s very hard to do, especially starting out, because we all want to get reps and get paid! But if your craft is solid, then opportunities will come. It’s really important to do something you’re proud of. I can’t imagine anyone telling me to go write a movie about Indian dinner parties, but it was what I was excited to write, and it’s my authentic voice. You have to know who you are as a writer.

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner since 2012, go here.