LAist Interview: Director Sarba Das on Karma Calling

The comedy follows the Raj family, deep in credit card debt and denial, as they get mixed up with the Mafia. Sonal, the eldest daughter falls for the charming phone persona, while brother Shyam aspires to be the next Dr. Dre. The film stars Tony Sirico (of Sopranos fame), Samrat Chakrabarti, Kavi Ladnier, Barnali Das, Sulekha Das and Ansuman Das. Loosely autobiographical, the film was truly a family affair. “It's based on a blend of real life and my own wild imaginings growing up Indian in New Jersey,” she says. "If you've noticed the credits on the film, there's an awful lot of Das family members in the billing." LAist interviewed the director about what it was like making her first feature film.

With the economy in bad shape and everyone struggling financially, this film seems to be very timely right now.

We never intended for the film to be so timely. For us, the fact that the family is struggling in debt did come out of the idea that America is, well, was a country obsessed with credit consumerism. We were setting up the paradigm that while India is a culture of saving, America is a culture of spending. The Raj family, like many American families, has been tempted into spending beyond their means and worrying about paying for it later. If only everyone could find an underworld Don with connections to a call center operator who could wipe out their debt - that part was based on my own wishful thinking!

The film really showcases the diversity within Indian culture. It's also about how identity is not what it seems. You never really know who people are - especially when they are on the other end of the phone.

Director Sarba Das

Yes, that's exactly right. This film is very much about a group of people who pretend to be something they are not. Rohit pretends to be an American from Bridgeport, Sonal pretends to work in high fashion, Shyam poses as a wannabe thug. On another level, we really wanted to play with the effects of globalization. We see the Indianization of the American in the Raj Household -- they live in a house with bright vibrant colors and uphold a lot of Indian tradition while living in New Jersey vis-à-vis the character of Mausi. Then we see the obvious Americanization of the Indian in the call center with its cool colors and more sterile corporate culture. The juxtaposition of these two worlds which are in fact criss-crossed, sets these characters on a journey of identity.

I don't think we ever answer the questions in terms of what is right or wrong (old vs. new school values), but we tried to explore the fact that there seems to be a bit of both the Indian and the American that live in each of these characters. In today's world which is a much smaller and interconnected place, I think we are beginning to see the emergence of what I call the "global" citizen and the notion of "immigrant" takes on a much different meaning because people are exposed to other cultures on a regular basis via tv, internet, social networking sites, etc. People are not as fresh off the boat as they once were when they arrive in foreign country.

You have an amazing, mostly Indian cast that has a mix of natives, immigrants and those that are second generation American. How did you find the actors to play them?

It was a blend of traditional casting and just sort of knowing people who fit the bill. On one hand, some of the actors we got right in our own backyard like my mom and my cousin Ansuman, for example. Ansuman grew up in Jersey too and actually was producing music with his posse called the Om Boys in Jersey City. The song "Hapa means Weed in Japanese," the character of Shyam produces in the film is actually a real song that he recorded with a couple of Japanese rappers.

On the other hand, we cast Tony Sirico who's practically a TV icon because of The Sopranos. Darshan Jariwala is a well-known actor in Hindi cinema who regularly plays leading roles in Bollywood films. We also had a number of up-and-coming talent audition for us between NY and LA. Samrat Chakrabarti who plays Rohit auditioned for us in both NY and LA. I really put him through the ringer because I felt the part was so pivotal in terms of finding an actor who could pull off both an authentic Indian accent and an American one. I had seen Kavi Ladnier in a staged reading in NY many years prior and sought her out to come read for the part of Radha. Parvesh Cheena who plays Peter Patnick is a wildly talented actor I worked with when my cousin Barnali, who plays Sonal, produced a staged reading of Karma Calling through Rasaka, a Chicago-based theater company. So the actors really came from all over the place and had varying degrees of experience and because of the ensemble nature of the film, I think it balanced out very well.

You shot on Super 16. Many people think to shoot a low budget movie, you can't afford to shoot on film. Why was it important for you to do it on film and not video?

It was extremely important for me to shoot on film. There were a number of reasons. Our DP, Peter Chelkowski is a colleague from film school and firstly, both Peter and I worked exclusively in film when we studied together. It's a medium we felt comfortable with. On a low budget film, Peter made the argument that if we were shooting somewhere inaccessible (which we often were) and a Super 16mm camera broke down, he could open it up and fix it himself. It's such an amazingly mechanical piece of hardware the film camera. But if the same thing happened on HD, we could lose hours of shooting while we waited for a technician to come out and resolve the issue. Those would be precious hours we knew we wouldn't be able to spare.

We also knew we'd have to cut a lot of corners and do a lot of creative cheating with our production designer Jeremy Carmone. We had to make New Jersey look like India for several scenes in the film and Jeremy, Peter and I all agreed that film is more forgiving in this regard. HD picks up every little detail on camera and magnifies it ten-fold. If a plug in the wall doesn't look "Indian," you're going to notice that on HD where as film would do a better job "hiding" it. Also at the time of production, the cost of shooting on HD was actually not much cheaper than shooting on film so we felt it was more than worth the effort to shoot on film and achieve the look and feel we were going for.

What would you like audiences to come away with from this film?

As a filmmaker, nothing gives me more satisfaction than making an audience laugh. It is a pure and simple joy to watch people forget themselves for a moment in a good giggle.
Sure, there are a lot of aesthetic and thematic things you want to espouse in a film, and that you want people to take away with them...What is the moral dilemma of call center culture and how it affects identity? Are we a debt crazy culture, etc...But at the core, the main goal was to make a film that could be both intelligent and funny.

This is your first feature. There are so many filmmakers in LA trying to make their first film, what advice can you give them?

The best advice I can give to other filmmakers trying to get their first one off the ground is not to wait for permission to make your film. Especially living in LA which is largely controlled by studios and their way of moviemaking (big name talent, big budgets, etc.), filmmakers are often scared into thinking they can't make a film unless all the "right" elements are in place. That coupled with the fact that most studios and big production companies are looking for a reason to NOT make your movie as opposed to seeing how it might get done. It can all be so discouraging. I know people wait five, even 10 years for a major production company out there to pick up their script and say it's a go, but I think independent film was born out of a sense of empowering yourself that if you've got a camera, cast and crew, you can make a movie. So give yourself the permission. Greenlight yourself. Set a production date and start working toward your goal. I think it's good to try to go after all the things you want, but if you don't get them you shouldn't give up trying to make your film altogether.

What is next for you?

I'm working on a number of projects right now but at the forefront is a project called Bollyhoods. It's an action comedy set in the Bollywood underworld in the 1970s - sort of a Get Shorty goes to India.