Arvind Ethan David (producer) – The Infidel

Producer ARVIND ETHAN DAVID started out as a solicitor before moving into the movie business.

Since leaving the law behind he’s founded his own film company, Slingshot, through which he’s about to release his 5th film as a producer, The Infidel.

Written by comedian David Baddiel, The Infidel is an identity crisis comedy in which a Muslim man played by Omid Djalili discovers that he’s actually Jewish.

My Movie Mundo’s film journalist Jan Gilbert spoke with David about ethnic confusion, multicultural Britain, and casting The West Wing’s Richard Schiff.

MMM: How does a qualified solicitor end up producing movies?
David: It’s a shorter journey than you would think. I read law at university but I spent most of my time in theatres and I’ve always made stuff, I’ve always written, directed and produced, be they plays or TV shows or websites and web shows.

The law for me was a kind of… not a mis-turn, but a deal with the devil. I said to myself that I should probably go and learn a bit about the money and the deals behind these things.

But I had a very kind law firm who let me take the summer off to go and direct a play and eventually that took over.

So for the last 10 years I’ve worked in and around the film and entertainment business. And this is my 5th film as a producer since we started [British film company] Slingshot in 2006.

MMM: How did The Infidel come about?
David: About 3 years ago I was having breakfast with [comic actress] Morwenna Banks, who is [comedian] David Baddiel’s partner, and talking about some film ideas of hers. Half-way through, David turned up and pitched me one idea: ‘Omid Djalili: Muslim discovers he’s a Jew.’ I said, ‘Yeah, ok, that’s a movie, we’ll do that.’ And 2 years later we were filming it.

It was such a strong pitch that, in a way, it’s almost a shame we’ve made it as we can’t pitch it anymore! But at least people see it! [Laughs]

I knew and had been a fan of both David and Omid for a long time. In fact when David first came to prominence, I thought he was Indian; and I know I’m not alone in that.

The way David tells it he’s been beaten up twice in his life: once for being Pakistani and once for being Jewish. So he has a slight ethnic confusion about his looks. I knew this area of cultural confusion and the need to use humour to look at issues of fundamentalism and religious conflict were things I cared about and had been keen to do. So the chance to do it with David and Omid was pretty irresistible.

MMM: David’s said that the idea for The Infidel was originally commissioned by the BBC but they eventually passed on it because they felt the topic was too sensitive. Are you worried about it being seen as controversial, or about there being a potential backlash to the film?
David: It’s interesting that Chris Morris’s film [Four Lions] and The Infidel were on a very close track in terms of getting made. We were aware of each other and the difficulties we were both having with people being nervous about it.

I think that clearly the time has come to make comedies about fundamentalist Islam. I think there is a natural evolution to this.

In a way you couldn’t have had this idea 20 years ago, because the idea of fundamentalist Islam was not in the public consciousness. But equally you couldn’t have made it 6 years ago because it would have been far too close to the wounds of the major terrorist acts.

So now is the first time where both the issue is in the public consciousness and, while it’s still controversial, it’s not impossible to touch.

So yes, we think about these things but not to the extent… of course we all have moments when we think ‘oh bugger, what if there’s a fatwa?’ But as we made the movie we were careful not to be deliberately disrespectful or certainly not blasphemous because, while David and I are card-carrying atheists, there are a lot of people in the production who are people of faith.

Omid is a very public and committed Baha’i, my co-producer at Slingshot is a committed Muslim, and another producer is a committed Christian.

So the movie is not disrespectful of faith or God, it’s disrespectful of things that deserve disrespect like the absurdities of people who adhere too mindlessly and who spread bigotry and prejudice through that blind fanaticism.

MMM: What’s been the reaction to the film so far in Muslim and Jewish communities?David: It’s been enormously positive. We were very keen to get those reactions before we got the more general reaction. It seemed to us that if we made a film that appealed to the people in it then that would be an important test to pass.

We’ve had a number of screenings which sold out, like at the Coronet where we had a majority Muslim audience. It was probably the best screening of the film up to that point because they got all the references and the detail of the ethnic and religious humour.

And they saw a fairly realistic multicultural British society, quasi-secular, religious but not overly religious, modern second and third generation sub-continental Pakistani Muslim family on screen. A lot of them were saying they hadn’t seen that before.

Cinematically and in televisual language, Muslims are either corner-shop owners or fundamentalist fanatics. Omid’s character and family in the film are not like that – some are more or less religious than others, they watch football, listen to pop music, they sneak the odd sip of beer, they have love lives and ex-wives, and care about fashion in the way that Muslims of second and third generation families, the kind of houses I grew up in, would understand. So that reaction has been great.

We’ve had a lot of great responses from the Jewish community as well. But, if anything, the Jewish reaction has been slightly more suspicious, which has surprised us. It’s interesting to us that the film hasn’t sold to Israel yet whereas it has sold to the Middle East.

MMM: Tell me about casting The West Wing star Richard Schiff as Jewish cabbie Lenny.
David: The part was originally written British. But then we started to scratch our trying to find an archetypal Jewish British actor in his late 40s, early 50s, who had both dramatic and comedic chops, and the list was pretty short.

I think the reason is to do with how Britain views its Jews, which is to say that most either assimilate quite strongly or are quite Orthodox and stand outside, which tends to be the choice of immigrants in Britain generally.

Americans are much better at being a hyphenate. So there’s a much greater tradition of American Jews, of American Jewish acting and comedy. So we thought about an American for the part, and I’m a huge devotee of the West Wing and have seen every episode about 10 times, so Richard Schiff’s name was high on our list.

It was actually the director Josh Appignanesi’s girlfriend who said ‘what about Toby from The West Wing?’ and we all went ‘yes!’ We weren’t sure he’d do it because he’s a very serious dramatic actor who’s won Emmys and why would he come over to do a little low-budget British comedy film?

But we sent him the script and he loved it. He’s actually said it’s the most fun he’s ever had doing a movie because it has that sense of revolutionary fun to it that we could just do stuff and it wasn’t constrained by the strictures of the studio or major network.

MMM: What sort of challenges did you face making the film?
David: It was tricky to get finance. There was a true nervousness about it, about the politics of it. There’s the BBC worry, which is more of a public perception worry, and there’s the commercial worry of will an audience want to go and see a comedy about these serious themes.

We kept saying, ‘yes, the audience is ready to laugh at this stuff; they’re sick of being bludgeoned with serious worthy drama about this stuff’. But there was a concern the audience wouldn’t want to come to the cinema to laugh at this stuff.

And there was another more generic concern that all our leads are middle-aged fat balding men. [Laughs] And traditionally that’s not what movie stars look like.

But once we got the package together and started building what I call our coalition of the faithful, we sold it to 52 countries, which for a low-budget British ethnic comedy is a pretty unheard of result.

At the film’s premiere we sold out the Hammersmith Apollo. 3500 people of all ages, colours, and creeds came to see it.

It opens in America at the end of April; it opens in the Middle East in June, then Australia in July.

And I’ve just this second been corresponding with a colleague in Washington who’s offered to host a screening for senior Obama foreign policy folks. So it seems that people want to see this film!

MMM: What do you hope audiences will take away from the film?
David: Primarily I just want them to laugh, because if a comedy doesn’t achieve that it hasn’t achieved anything.

But if after or in between the laughter there’s some thinking about how that which divides us is less than that which unites us; some thinking about how identity doesn’t have to be monolithic but you can be a Muslim and not believe Jews are bad or vice versa; and that there is an idea of Britishness that is evolving and new, those things would be good too.  

THE INFIDEL IS OUT ON DVD NOW