Aasif Mandvi

0:03The best part I love doing research for these kind of things do you find out things about people that you never thought I mean I've seen you on the daily show I've seen you in films, but I did not know about Disney World. Oh, you didn't well. I don't know if many people do What did you do there were you goofy or something no no I was I was part of a Troop called Street Misfier, which was a Street improvisational company. Oh, yeah, and I worked at the Disney MGM Studios The year that loped and we were kind of you know, it was a great cast because we were not in costume We were in costume, but we were dressed like 1930s and 40s People who lived in Hollywood in the 30s and 40s so like, you know, archetypes like, you know Gossip columnist and agents and Really producers and stuff and so we would walk around the street there and doing sketch comedy and doing improv with with the gas

0:52That came to the park and it was great a lot of those guys actually went off and worked for mad TV and other places Did you talk with the big 1930s bad guy accent? Well, I actually played a New York City cab driver From the 30s like a kind of like how you don't know why yeah, you know Accent, you know, so I sort of had that like New York cabby from the 30s kind of wise guys sort of quality about me. Well, it's it's definitely come a long way since then though Yes, yes, thanks, especially with this new film So when are we gonna see the film appear in Canada? Do you know you know? I don't know when it's opening in Canada I think it is Hopefully I think it was playing in Vancouver, but it's gonna be hopefully it's gonna play in Toronto and Montreal and other places

1:38So, you know, look look for it in your in your local whatever listings or whatever it should be coming to Canada soon Awesome. Well either way, I'm sure we'll see it on DVD when it when that happens as well, right? Right, right? And on the internet and the way people get their stuff nowadays and it's exactly yes But but you co-wrote this film today's special and I find that very interesting. Is this the first thing you've written? I guess you write your skits on the Daily Show, too. I don't really write the skits on the Daily Show. Those are written by writers Except, you know, when we do the field pieces sometimes we will do a lot of improv and stuff and we'll write some of those stuff But a lot of the pieces that you see in studio are written by writers And we have we we contribute as like in terms of working with the writers on those pieces But we don't write them ourselves this movie, but this movie I actually co-wrote

2:26with a guy named John Bynes who was a former writer for the Daily Show and And he and I did write this movie together and you know and both of us come from the comedy world And I had done a one-man show off Broadway many years ago called Sakeena's restaurant But I actually did in Toronto well and and that was sort of the inspiration It was for me because it was about an Indian family and owned an Indian restaurant and stuff And so you know there was this sort of sense of this world this immigrant world that I came from that I tapped into and John was a comedy writer, but he's also was a food critic for the New York Press and So he's a big foodie and so the two of us came together So far it'd be great to write a movie about Indian food and Indian food comedy as it were and And so we said about to do that. Is it something you want to do more writing of is it something you want to continue doing?

3:17Yeah, I'm always writing, you know, I've been I mean like I said I wrote the show many years ago I wrote this movie and and you know, I've been I've been writing I'm writing a play and writing another movie and so you know writing is always something that's been part of my my life all You know like my acting and writing have gone ahead and side by side of my whole career You'd mention something about the Daily Show that that kind of interested me about how the pieces come together and and I guess You're kind of just a performer in that way if you're not writing them So is it like SNL where people will pitch ideas and then and then you guys will choose all this one works for me or how does it come together yeah, sometimes we're just performers and sometimes we are actually pitch ideas and Actually have a hand in writing the pieces. So it really depends nothing of it That is written by one person. So, you know

4:04There'll be a group of writers or a couple of writers that will get on a piece And then if it's something that was we feel very close to what we pitched as an idea Then we will get involved in the writing process and sort of write or sometimes we'll get involved in the rewrite process You know with John and the on the writers as well. So the correspondent is a little bit looser and not Sometimes they write it and we just do it and sometimes we're quite integral to the to the piece It depends on the piece. Did you have to take time away from the show to do the film or did it kind of work out with your schedule? No, they actually gave me a month off to go shoot the film So they were really nice and nice about that. They've been really great to me in the sense I got to you know go off last year and spend a couple of months doing the last airbender Mm-hmm and then the year before I did my movie and so So they've been with my schedule and letting me go off and do other stuff the year before so you did this a long time ago

4:56So we shot this movie in 2008. Oh wow. Yeah, and it's coming out just now But it's just you know, it's just it just gives you an idea how hard it is to make a really some independent film You know to get to get a movie done I mean the movie itself to get the financing together and the whole thing and finally get it done what took almost 10 years and And then to finally then it took two years between actual filming, you know wrapped actual principal photography and then finished our edit and stuff because we we knew this is very sort of Grassroots like we did it ourselves and all you know, we didn't have a studio building this or anything What was the heart besides funding? What is what is the hardest part of making an indie film? I think it's just literally that you are so you know at every minute of every day time and

5:46money Versus creativity and inspiration, you know, I mean it's like there's a tension between those things and every day every day I'm so like often, you know, just you just don't have a lot of resources and so you can't You know, you can't you can't do the kind of things that you would like to do on a regular obviously, you know And on a bigger film and with more money and you know, but you want to get it done And so making you have to use your ingenuity often to try to get things I mean we have one scene in the film for example Which is a classic example of something like this where where we we had the scene where myself and Neserton Shah who plays Akbar And he's a terrific Bollywood actor who is terrific in this movie and he and I had to chase live chickens around the kitchen in this restaurant and We have to sort of run around and chasing the chicken and the idea visually the way we wrote it John and I when we wrote the scene

6:34They were gonna be like ten chickens and they were all flopping and running around and you know It's crazy like a mayhem kind of thing and then of course what was in our budget was maybe a couple of chickens We got from the local butcher and these chickens don't know running from anything so they just stand there Oh, no, so we couldn't even get them to run We were like trying to you know, oh to throw them and like, you know Try to like shock them or get them to run. So finally we had to like come up with a way to sort of make Create the absurdity of the scene I don't know if you saw the film but to create the absurdity of the scene and make it comical without having chickens running around So the chickens appear sort of like these bizarre characters in this In this scene That is happening where you've got the scene going on between two actors and these bizarre chickens are walking around everywhere

7:20But they but they wouldn't run so we have to actually just rewrite the entire scene to To fit the chickens that we have, you know, that's crazy and you're busy though You're doing a lot of films. I hear you just you just wrap something with Kevin Spacey as well I did it. I've done a few films recently. I did one called margin call Which has got like the super duper cast like Kevin Spacey and Demi Moore and Jeremy Hires and it's all about the financial crisis and about Lehman Brothers and all that and then I did another movie called Premium Rush that's coming out next year with Joseph Gordon Levitt, which is about it's an action messengers And I did another movie just now with Todd Collins called Dark Horse. Oh, yeah, which is which is a movie with

8:10Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow. So yeah, I've got a few movies coming out next year. Do you do a Christopher Walken? You know, I'm not even gonna try to do that. Fair enough. I just thought I'd ask you bring up his name Everyone's got their own right, but everyone's got a Christopher Walken. I usually they're always bad Fair enough always be like William Shatter. Everyone's got like a captain Kirk and a Christopher Walken It's always bad. It's very true Do you find the roles are coming easier now to you is it are things starting to you know go the way you would always Imagine they would you know, it's always being a brown actor in Hollywood is always There's a certain amount of stuff that you always will get and you'll be like I can't do that You know, but yeah, I mean I feel like people know who I am more than they used to and so now with my persona on the Daily Show and stuff

8:58I definitely feel like people sort of see me as a comic actor or just an actor, you know and then and then try to and I get off of things based on that rather than like oh That's a brown guy, you know I wonder the the lines that are that are pushing that regard like I remember seeing you on sleeper cell years ago But then I heard a story about Hidalgo where you had said, you know, I can't say that right right well Hidalgo was a situation where it was It was actually 2002 or 2000 late 2003 and and there was a line in this movie and Hidalgo I really saw the movie you know about this American guy who goes out the Viggo Mortensen places American guy who runs this Arabian horse race in the Arabian Desert against these better win horses and these better win riders

9:45And and there was a line in the play in the movie that said go kick some Arabian ass cowboy and I In the wake of the Iraq war I couldn't be in a movie that had that line so I actually turned down the audition for that phone And then this is before the Daily Show. This is when you still you know, we're struggling I would think well I was on Broadway, so I wasn't it wasn't too bad. I wasn't I wasn't like I could say my red He right I just felt I just felt like at that point. I just felt so strongly that I didn't want to be in a in a movie that Professed that you know So yeah, so I did I did turn it down, you know, but then I've done the jobs I can't say I can't I can't be like I'm so you know Stand by the principal grab them jobs where I'm like look

10:31I'll do this for the money and then that's about it, you know, and I'll say be I'll swallow these lines And maybe in turn you're doing that because you're you're giving these I saw a couple of readings on YouTube about reading testimonies from detainees over the years Right, right. Yeah, you know, I mean I think that what I did a plan in 2004 called Guantanamo on a bounce defense freedom, which is all about the Guantanamo detainees and and that really opened my eyes to sort of what was going on down there and the lack of due process and the ignoring of the Geneva Convention and all these things that You know America America was doing exactly what it was accusing other countries of doing to its soldiers and its citizens And and I felt like you know, it was really eye-opening for me. And so I did become involved with

11:19You know sort of reading working with the ACLU on a couple of things about, you know, reading testimonials from detainees who had been tortured under American Guantanamo and bagram Air Force base and other places around the world. So yeah, it felt you know I feel like my virtue of being brought up Muslim in America, you know, I My very as an artist and as an actor as a performer, you know, you become politicized once Something like 9-11 happens and then you can't help it, you know It's sort of something you go and wait a minute the people who you're accusing of being the bad guys look like me And so, you know, I have to I have to speak out and do something, you know in that in that cause Do you feel like the Daily Show has become bigger than it ever was in the past few months talking about these political things?

12:05It seems like people are relying on it nowadays more so than before You know, I feel like Yeah, maybe I don't know, you know, I think I think that ultimately we just sort of do comedy and that's really I don't think John has ever changed How the Daily Show is or how it works or how it's run, you know, I just think you know This does not enough satire out there and so we end up becoming the only source of real satire And the only the only people out there who are willing to sort of point out the hypocrisy sometimes or at least just like point to the other the cable networks and be like, you know, calling bullshit and And there's not enough people maybe Bill Marv, you know, I got but there's not a lot of people out there doing that and so I think there's and there's a real cathartic need for that in the society and in the culture

12:56You know, there used to be a time when you would have satirists in newspapers and other places and you just don't have that anymore, you know News Pit what are what are newspapers? What is this word? You? We do something called five actually I wanted to ask you something global warming I saw I was just you know doing some research on YouTube. What is what is global warming with Kristen wig? Oh global warming is a piece that I Rob Kuttner who is one of the former writers for the Daily Show Now writes the Conan he and his wife Charles on they wrote this Peace for strike TV and it was during the writer strike a couple years ago Which was a sort of a two-part series called global warming, which is really about Kristen wig falls in love with a guy who Kristen wig works in a company in America and she falls in love with this

13:45Indian tech guy who is on the other side of the other side of the phone back in Bangalore and It's really sort of like a little romantic love story between these two people who come from different sides of the world and And he he shows up on her doorstep and she's just like I can't believe he just came all the way over here He's like I'm in love with you and they get mad. It's an entire relationship from beginning to end in two episodes Well, did it ever come to fruition because I saw the trailer on YouTube, but I couldn't find anything else I think if you go on strike TV, there is There's two episodes that we shot and there's around there cool Well, we do before I let you go we do something called five questions on the show five quick questions one more answers Oh my god. All right George carlin or Richard prior. Oh man, you know, that's a tough one. I have to say George prior

14:34George all right london or mccartney Man, he's a tough. Oh london or mccartney Um, I'm gonna have to say mccartney. What's more important in comedy timing or the punchline timing bit You've written your most proud of the bit I've written that I'm most proud of yeah, um, I think today's special Oh, hey good movie that I wrote. Yes, of course Call it a bit I think the most proud of an hour and a half bit there you go an hour and an hour and a half bit Yeah, one word as if monby one word one word I said monby yeah, yeah, it could be one word. Yeah. Okay. I finished