“The Big Sick” tells the true story of how comedian Kumail Nanjiani and writer Emily V. Gordon became a couple; The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited a record 744 actors, writers, directors and other movie industry workers; Ginnifer Goodwin and Allen Leech star in “Constellations," a play that combines a love story with physics.
'The Big Sick': Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon's true, cross-cultural love story
UPDATE: "The Big Sick" opened in theaters on June 23.
The biggest sale of the Sundance Film Festival so far this year was for the romantic comedy "The Big Sick."
The film is directed by Michael Showalter. It tells how Pakistani-American comedian Kumail Nanjiani ignored his parents wishes to be in an arranged marriage and instead fell in love with a non-Muslim woman — who happened to be in a medically induced coma.
The film premiered on Friday, and within days Amazon had bought its distribution rights for $12 million.
Fans of the TV series “Silicon Valley” will recognize comedian Nanjiani as the character Dinesh in that show. But he also works with his wife, Emily V. Gordon, a writer who for years has produced the popular comedy show in LA known as "The Meltdown."
They co-wrote "The Big Sick," and Nanjiani stars opposite Zoe Kazan, who plays Emily in the film. On Monday this week, we caught up with the husband and wife team at Sundance to talk about the film.
Interview Highlights:
On how they felt leading up to the first Sundance screening:
KN: I was terrified. Emily was a lot more confident than I was. Not that I wasn't confident in what we made, I'm just a worrier.
EG: I didn't know what the possibilities could be for this. I wanted the movie to play well at Sundance and I wanted audiences to like it here. I wasn't thinking beyond that. If we get that, we'll be a success and I'll be so excited. It didn't even occur to me — bidding. None of that stuff had occurred to me. I would have been more nervous if it had.
KN: I just wanted people to like the movie. I wanted the reviews to be good, you know. They always say, it doesn't matter! You make it for yourself! But you kind of do and you don't. You make it for yourself but then you want other people to like it as well.
On being sensitive to critiques about the film:
EG: It is true that people are very aware of a lot of things about us. It had not occurred to me that strangers would be coming up to me and asking me very specific questions about how we got together and my health and all this stuff. So that's been an interesting turn.
KN: It's Monday morning and we showed the movie Friday night. It feels like it was three weeks ago.
On hearing affectionate reactions from the audience:
EG: The first screening, I was very emotional. It just was really lovely to see it with such a large audience. We've seen it with test audiences before but this was a very different experience and so moving and touching that it was kind of overwhelming. You know when you have the lump and you can't swallow it? That's where I was on Friday night.
KN: I was so nervous during the whole screening that at the end I was a little bit deer in the headlights. The next morning, we had another screening at 9AM and that one I enjoyed watching. Then afterwards I got very emotional at that screening. What was good was, the first one, people reacted the way we wanted them to react so that gave me confidence. It didn't feel like a fluke. So the next day when they started reacting similarly, I was like, this is not a fluke. And then I could just sort of enjoy peoples' reaction to it and at the end — it really hit me when I went on stage after the screening at 11AM and people stood up to clap.
On seeing their story onscreen and and Zoe Kazan playing Emily:
EG: We've seen this movie so many billions of time because we've been involved in the editing process that it gets so far away from you that it's easy to judge. I never wanted anyone to do an impression of me when they were acting. So I wanted someone who would have a similar vibe to me but do their own thing with it. Zoe is an amazing actor so I trusted her choices. So it's lovely to watch. You hear little lines written in that are lines I would say. Other than that, I'm just enjoying her performance as a character named Emily... that is kind of me.
KN: What was great about Zoe was, as we were casting this movie, we were like, we need someone who feels so alive and full of life that when she goes away for a significant chunk of the movie, you still feel her presence and you miss her. That was the challenge in casting and Zoe was perfect for that.
On selling the film to Amazon:
EG: So far this has felt like a family affair because this is such an intimate story. Everyone is treating it with this lovely intimacy which I love. Everyone wants to shepherd and take care of this little baby that we've all created together. And that's really important to me. We've had this discussion of how the movie will be marketed a lot. I think about it constantly because it is so many movies. It's a cross-cultural love story, it's a love letter to parents and how we are like them and not like them. It's a rom-com. It's a medical drama.
KN: For me the main thing was, we weren't going to be in the sales meetings. We knew that, but the people who were like Judd Apatow, Barry Mendel and Michael Showalter, who's the director — they love the movie and they get it. We really are sort of a hive mind. We knew that our concerns about how this movie was going to be presented would be represented by those guys. We talked to them afterwards and they just said, Amazon seemed to be the most passionate about this movie and just understood what it was about the story that was important.
The Motion Picture Academy invites 744 new members as part of diversity campaign
What are the chances of finding love? 'Constellations' explores the infinite possibilities
The play, “Constellations,” tells the story of a quantum physicist named Marianne and a beekeeper named Roland.
They meet and meet again, fall in-and-out and in-and-out of love, and their paths cross over and over again.
Written by Nick Payne, the play is inspired by physics and string theory and it alternates between multiple realities.
The production at the Geffen Playhouse is directed by Giovanna Sardelli and stars Ginnifer Goodwin, from ABC’s "Once Upon a Time," and Allen Leech, probably best known as the Irish chauffeur Branson from the British series "Downton Abbey."
Both actors got their starts working in theater and when they spoke recently with The Frame's John Horn, they explained why they were so eager to jump into this rigorous production:
Interview highlights:
On the pull to get back to theater and to do "Constellations" in particular
Ginnifer Goodwin: Theater's home for a lot of us who are in film and TV these days. I was homesick for it. I wanted a different kind of challenge and a different kind of ass-kicking than I feel that I get on a film or TV set, where I frankly feel I can get very lazy. And as far as "Constellations," the first time I read it, I couldn't even get through it without sort of losing it emotionally because I found it so powerful. And then when I could, I took a step back and I realized one of my favorite things about it is that it's manipulative and it made me believe that I was imagining a linear love story. And I truly had to step out of it to remember that the story is actually told in string theory. And that every scene is a different possibility, every scene backs up and starts again and goes in a new direction. And I love being manipulated.
Allen Leech: I started in theater at the age of 15. It was my first professional job, so getting the opportunity to go back to that at any point I always jump at. And I'd seen this play at the Royal Court in its very first outing and I was absolutely blown away by the kind of innovative way of storytelling, the fact that it wasn't linear, the fact that you got to see this couple fall in love again and again in so many different ways, and the fact that there was a tragic element but it ends in such hope — I absolutely was blown away by it.
On keeping track of the math of the play and all the alternative ways that the scenes play out:
Leech: We all turned to Professor Goodwin within the rehearsal room because she seems to be the physics expert and the woman, in relation to string theory, that had some kind of understanding. Within the scenes and trying to get some kind of linear line for each character within this scenario, we realized there was no real direct path. We had what we call the "A+ run," so within each version of the vignettes that you see, be it at the barbecue where they meet or at the ballroom, we had the "A+ run" where we felt that was the best chance they had to go forward into the next part of their existence together.
Goodwin: I feel like a disclaimer is that ... these scenes can't be different for the sake of being different. The idea of string theory is that everything that can and cannot happen, anything that could or could not be even imagined, exists and that's where choice comes. That being said ... I do wonder if certain possibilities are more likely if there is some kind of gravitational force that pulls together certain possibilities, like the chances of Roland and Marianne ending up together, because in our conscious reality they do. So in our not wanting to make scenes different for the sake of being different, we did have to create our characters, even if they change a bit from path-to-path, there is still something inherent in each of them that is the same in most cases, in most of our vignettes. And so we also didn't have to bog ourselves down with the math of possibility. I think that could be kind of overwhelming.
On what the play says about fate and religion and the larger forces that shape our lives:
Leech: I'm always amazed at the amount of people who come up to us when we come out of the theater who say that the play gives them a lot of hope, especially if they lost anyone. That they love the idea that somewhere out there that person still exists. And there's a lovely line in the play that says, "You'll still have all our time, even once I'm gone." That's a lovely sentiment within the play. So I think the play has a lot of hope. But it does throw up a lot of ideas about our own existence.
We had a lot of in-depth conversations that [director Giovanna Sardelli] always wanted us to move into the rehearsal space ... rather than sit around and talking about it, can we start rehearsals and try out these ideas? And that was our own version of string theory, where we kept trying things and failing and trying until we found one that worked. So I think the rehearsal room for us was our own string theory.
"Constellations" is at the Geffen Playhouse through July 23.