Interview: Josh Appignanesi
We speak to the director of David Baddiel's first film script, The Infidel, starring Omid Djalili.
Comedian and writer David Baddiel has, surprisingly, only finally got his first film script on the big screen. The Infidel stars stand up comedian and actor Omid Djalili as Londoner Mahmud, a doting husband and father who happens to be a fairly relaxed muslim. When clearing out his late mother's belongings he discovers he was adopted, and his birthname is Solly Shimshillewitz - very, very Jewish. Mahmud is plunged into an identity crisis at the same time his son gets engaged to the step-daughter of an Islamic fundamentalist. The only person he can confide in is surly American Jew Lenny, played by deadpan West Wing star Richard Schiff.
Song Of Songs director Josh Appignanesi follows his acclaimed drama about Orthodox Jews with this light-hearted but moving screwball comedy. We caught up with Josh to talk about this potentially distastrous, but actually very successful, film, in cinemas now.
Did you already know David Baddiel before you got involved in the project?
Yes, we met at a party, and we discovered we lived a few doors away from each other, so we started to hang out. One of the first things I said was, oh what are you working on, screenplays? Let me have a look at them, because I'm a screenwriter - I write and direct. So I looked at this, among other screenplays, and I thought, this is really good. It's a really good comic idea, and it's brilliantly written. So I started editing it with him, and he really liked my notes, so that's how we got working together. So I was the script editor, then the budget changed and it became possible for me, who'd done one film before, to direct it.
Were you looking to direct another full-length feature at the time?
Oh absolutely - this is what filmmakers do, they sit around trying desperately to get things off the ground. You can spend years on a project and it just falls apart, and you think, oh my god I'm going to kill myself. Two years later the project comes back and gets made. So you have to develop quite a thick skin. I'm learning!
As this was David's first film script, what changes did you have to make?
He has written other films which haven't been made, and he is an experienced writer. I did a lot on the structure, and David - like most comedy writers - is very open to comments, because that's what comedians do, they sit around telling jokes, and if the joke's funny it doesn't really matter who came up with it. So David's very open and generous as a writer. The script did go through various different guises, and film is the right one. It does deal with these very vexed questions, but it's trying to strike this balance so it doesn't alienate people, it doesn't seek to offend or be anachronistic or tired, like taking a strong athiest approach to say religion is crap. Or do what most ethnic comedies do, which is a take a boy or a girl and say they have to be more, or less, ethnic, to assimilate, usually through marriage. This comedy doesn't do that. There's something quite original about it, which is something this multicultural society is maybe ready for. It's really about both Muslims and Jews, two communities that are minorities, and their dialogue with each other, but I hope in a non-misanthropic way that people can access. In a way, that's more subversive. If you can get a warmth and a gentleness to it, to look at a normal Muslim family, they aren't extremist, they're not even that religious. They do have religion, how do they deal with the changes. That's the comic joke - it's not the new role of becoming a husband or a father, it's becoming a Jew! You could take a religious fundementalist who finds out he's a Jew and that could be funnier, but what that fails to do is create a character that is likeable at first, but more importantly, isn't sure what he thinks. He's a second generation British guy who happens to be Pakistani and a muslim, and not a particularly religious one. Then suddenly along comes this whacking great big comic premise - which actually happens in life, by the way, I've met loads of people who turned out to be Jewish, it's bonkers - and he questions all his roles. Not only religiosly, but he finds himself as a husband lying and cheating, letting his children down. Having a spotlight on you very strongly was for me the whole idea of the film, this madcap, screwball Billy Wilder kind of way. That helter skelter sense of when you're in that spotlight, everything goes to seed. That gave me the key visual idea of the film I suppose.
Were you keen to avoid stereotypes? Was there anything too offensive that you left out?
It's partly not going out to offend in the first place, because that kind of comedy might work in a stand-up routine, but to sustain a proper narrative you have to slightly believe in these characters. So although there are mad fundamentalists of both hues, and they are broad - one of them's got a hook - I think there is a gentleness that goes, okay, we're using a stereotype, and then we're subverting it, because in the next scene he turns out to be not quite what you thought. I think in comedy you can't avoid using stereotypes. Anyone whose written anything knows that when you have your protagonist, your antagonist, some key characters, but when you get to your tertiary characters you have to draw on stereotypes. They're part of the community so they have one line, so they have to be recognisably Jewish or Muslim. You can then play with that. It's not necessarily a bad thing - it's what you do with it. I hope it manages to turn it on its head.
Omid was David's choice - did you agree he was natural for the role. Did you give him any freedom?
Omid, you can't not allow him freedom, he's a comic force of nature. A thunderball that bowls through, and one has to just hang on by the straps! In terms of script, everything was scripted, apart from one or two adlibs. We'd worked on the script a lot, and Omid was cast years ago, and he very quickly accepted the part because it's sort of made for him. It is spiritually coming out of Omid, as well as David, and me having Jewish jokes. I mean, my last film was not very funny at all, about a vexed relationship in an Orthodox Jewish world. There's two things about Omid - one is that he's this big accessible, loveable Homer Simpson type. A guy who's flawed and a klutzy idiot, but very familiar for that reason, and he's an obvious ethnic dad figure for a lot of people. A lot of comics can't carry that - they're very funny, but misanthropic. Another thing that is surprising, is that Omid carries the film very compellingly I think. Narrative comedy is very different to sketch comedy. The one thing they both require is comic timing - people either have comic timing or they don't. But you have to make people believe enough in this character's reality, and there are scenes which are more emotional and less comedy. And even in the outright comedy scenes, it's a different approach. It comes with the reality of the situation, and Omid really took to that in a way that people hadn't seen before. There are people who would've liked to have seen a darker, more political film, and some who would've liked a broader, sillier film, and we've tried to strike that middle road. There are some fat bloke falls over moments, which I really love, because all directors love to direct something that's visual.
It's a very British story, but you've cast Richard Schiff as the Jewish advisor to Mahmud, and let him remain American.
It was actually my girlfriend who said, what about Richard Schiff, because we love The West Wing. For me, he's American in quite a surprising way in the narrative, but it's about putting two comic styles together. The Jewish thing we're all familiar with, whether it's Woody Allen or Seinfeld or Marx Brothers - Jewish comedy is American comedy as we understand it in the post-war world. If you're going to have a Jewish comic, let's have him American - it makes sense. And to put that up against British comedy, it's very different. Richard's so deadpan, and so curmudgeonly, almost Larry David with his Jewish self-hating, against Omid, the chalk and cheese. It's the buddy movie at the centre of the film actually. Richard's a magnificent Emmy award-winning actor, people take him very seriously, which he is, and it's great. But to see him in an outright comedy, ah! You see British actors over there, like Russell Brand, but to bring them here is very different. It changes everything, this self-hating American who also hates English people!
Have you had many public screenings?
We were bracing ourselves for fatwahs and bricks through our windows, but of course, we haven't had any of that! We tried not to be... but we thought some people would be really angry or offended, and actually, they really haven't been. The response has been amazing in the preview screenings. Some people want it to be more political, some less, but it's not a film people walk away from with no reaction. People have a discussion about it afterwards, we've noticed. We had a mostly Muslim and Jewish screening, and people really, really laughed - they got all the jokes. They all loved it, so we were like, shit! Then we had some really intense questions! Some of them were really identifying with the characters, and there was this woman who was really religious, and she had the headscarf and stuff, and she was very sincere. She said she had been a radical extremist and had come away from that. Then she said to me and David and producer Uzma Hasan, who is a Muslim, have you got any advice for me in my life now? And we were like, er, I don't know? Uzma was all be who you are, and I was all you do that thing! It was a weird Muslim go girfriend moment. With the broader mass audiences, there's a sense of relief at being able to laugh at these things, and not feel worried or bad about it.
What's next for you?
I've got a big week - it's the premiere on the 8th, and then I'm doing a rehearsed reading of a play, as I also write for theatre. Richard Schiff will be in town, and he's going to read for my new play, which is a slightly more cerebral comedy about two warring therapists, they have a battle and they turn out to be seeing the same client, who's sort of two-timing them. I have a bunch of films I'm working on, some I'm writing myself. I've got a psychological thriller, going back to my darker roots. I've got a crazy, zany Kaufman-esque comedy called Viceland, which is about the Icelandic banking crisis, about a banker who is made the scapegoat for the world's economic problems.
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