Producer eyes better TV, film roles for Muslims
When Labid Aziz of Natick thinks about "Never Mind Nirvana," he sees a missed opportunity. A 2004 pilot for an NBC sitcom, it was centered on the travails of an Indian-American doctor, his pregnant white girlfriend, and his traditional parents, who move in. It was written by Indian-American novelist Ajay Sahgal, directed by "Friends" star David Schwimmer, and starred Kal Penn of "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle." But the show didn't make NBC's final cut, losing out that year to "The Office" and "Joey."
South Asians like Aziz, 32, a Bangladeshi-American Muslim and aspiring producer, saw in "Nirvana" a wellspring of roles that didn't involve playing a terrorist or convenience store clerk while portraying the South Asian community, or a slice of it, in a way that might inspire empathy rather than incite resentment. On this fall's schedule, Aziz has a second opportunity: The CW network is unveiling a new sitcom called "Aliens in America" about a Muslim exchange student from Pakistan.
In Aziz's view, Americans are ready for a prime-time televi sion show featuring dignified South Asian characters. It's just that most television executives are too conservative to try it, he said.
"If they think a show with a certain cast is going to hinder viewers, why would they do it?" said Aziz . "But that's from their perspective. I think it can work."
Aziz is out to prove it. After nearly 10 years in Boston producing commercials and public service announcements for nonprofits, businesses , and other clients, Aziz moved to Los Angeles in December to pursue his dreams of becoming a Hollywood producer. But Aziz, who still splits his time between LA and Boston, wants to do more than just make movies. He wants to challenge what he sees as stereotypes of South Asians, Arabs, Muslims, and other ethnic and religious groups in film and television while showing younger people of the same backgrounds that not only can they make it in film and television but that film and television need them.
"I want to help redefine what it is to be a South Asian Muslim -- not just for the South Asian community but other communities, too," Aziz said.
Growing up, Aziz followed a fairly typical script as the son of well-educated, hard-working immigrant parents. He wanted to be a pediatrician, a notion he took all the way to Brandeis University, where he enrolled in the pre-med program, got excellent grades, and was cruising toward medical school. But half way through his junior year, Aziz woke up one morning feeling that "something was missing."
"I was just living by going through the motions," he said. "I didn't have a reason to be."
After taking a year off, Aziz returned to Brandeis for his final year and enrolled in a documentary filmmaking class. He made a short film about cliques at Brandeis that he screened at a campus event and, a few weeks later, learned that a professor showed the film in one of his classes. "That feeling that I got that day, that a teacher was using something that I created to teach people, to start a discussion, was the best feeling that I ever felt. And I was like, 'I want to feel like this every day of my life.' "
Aziz persuaded Brandeis to let him return for one more year so he could learn filmmaking and fund it by making commercials, recruitment, and other videos for the university. On one project, Aziz met Arnie Reisman, an Emmy-winning filmmaker who became his mentor, gave him his first jobs , and still works with him today.
"This is like walking off a long plank into a big ocean," Reisman said of Aziz's decision to go into film, but he added that he thinks the young Bangladeshi can make it. "He has his head screwed on, he knows what he wants, and he can spot a phony a mile away."
Aziz's PSA and video work for such groups as the United Way and the American Civil Liberties Union hasn't made him rich, but it has let him use his skills toward activism while paying his bills so he can pursue bigger projects.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, Aziz has taken a special interest in how South Asians, Arabs , and Muslims are portrayed -- or not portrayed -- in film and television. The list of films and television shows in which these ethnic and religious groups are depicted as terrorists, buffoons, or sheiks is a long one. On the other hand, while many South Asians, Arabs , and Muslims work in American hospitals, there are no South Asian doctors on any of the many hospital shows on TV, with the exception of Parminder Nagra on "ER."
"Let's stop portraying South Asians, Arabs , and Muslims as terrorists, as
Part of the problem, industry guild officials said, is that these groups -- and women and minorities in general -- are under represented in the jobs that film and television studios give to actors, directors, and writers.
"There's no question that if we had more diversity in terms of directors and producers, and anybody behind the camera, there would be more opportunities, the roles would be more complex and less stereotypical," said Angel Rivera, director of diversity at the Screen Actors Guild in California. He has written to producers of television hospital shows, reproaching them for not casting more South Asians.
Recent reports from the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of America show that minorities and women are underrepresented in their industries. And when they are underrepresented in "behind-the-camera" positions, they'll be underrepresented on the screen as well, Rivera said.
"I go out there, and there are not enough roles for me, and there's not writers writing roles, and there's not enough producers taking risks," said actor Samrat Chakrabarti, who like Aziz is a Bangladeshi Muslim from the Boston area who graduated from Brandeis and recently moved to LA. "I'm going after roles that are named Owen and David."
But change is happening, if one considers the popularity of films like "Monsoon Wedding" and "Bend It Like Beckham," as well as the celebrity status achieved by people like Indian-American director M. Knight Shyamalan ("The Sixth Sense") and Indian-Muslim actor Aasif Mandvi, who has become widely known as a correspondent on "The Daily Show." "Little Mosque on the Prairie," a sitcom that premiered this year on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and regularly netted a million viewers per episode, was screened to American television executives in April.
Many South Asian, Arab, and Muslim actors increasingly feel compelled to challenge the stereotypes they see, said Mandvi, who is producing a film about a Muslim family that has nothing to do with terrorism or fundamentalism or even religion.
"There's a sense of responsibility on some level, as an artist of color and as an artist from that part of the world who is American, to explore this stuff with a certain amount of complexity, and to present the complexity and nuance to what is often lacking nuance and complexity," said Mandvi.
Or, as Chakrabarti put it, "We want to paint the town brown."
Since venturing west, Aziz has joined a team of writers and directors including Luis Guzm an that was given the film and television rights to "Next Stop: Growing Up Wild Style in the Bronx," a memoir by first-time author Ivan Sanchez, recently acquired by Simon & Schuster. Aziz is also developing a sketch comedy show with a mainly South Asian cast that he described as a combination of "The Daily Show," "Saturday Night Live," and "In Living Color." He's tentatively calling it "How Now Brown Cow." He's also developing a documentary about Guantanamo Bay.
Aziz said he understands that such entertainment might not appeal to everyone in America, but that there are enough South Asians, Arabs, Muslims, and other Americans who'd be interested in the material -- possibly on television, or at least as a DVD or Internet download.
"It's not about making a killing," he said. "It's about establishing an audience and giving your audience what they want."
