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[0:00] Aditya Joshi: I am a filmmaker, writer, director, actor, model. When you meet someone new at a party or something, how do you introduce yourself? What do you say?

[0:05] Jason A. Coombs: I say, Hi, I'm Aditya.

[0:15] Jason A. Coombs: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Where the Light Lands. This is Jason A. Coombs, your host with the mostest. I don't know if that makes sense. Aditya, let me know if that makes sense at all. But we're sitting down here in the welcome to timesquare.com studios in the middle of Manhattan with Aditya Joshi. We're going to be chatting about filmmaking, about playwriting, about modeling, about acting, about Tribeca, and about New York Latino Film Fest, where I believe that's where we met. I was trying to remember if it was Tribeca or...

[0:44] Aditya Joshi: It was New York Latino Film Festival.

[0:45] Jason A. Coombs: It was New York Latino Film Festival.

[0:46] Aditya Joshi: The line for the bathroom.

[0:48] Jason A. Coombs: Right. And you had this aura about you. I feel like I have really good... I'm going to jinx myself, but I think I'm pretty good at just feeling people out and knowing when someone's a good person. And I felt that with you right away. And I was like, oh, I vibe with this guy. And then I got your contact info, and I looked you up, and it was good vibes.

[1:05] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. Yeah, it was great. Yeah, New York Latino Film Festival, which is an interesting one for me, obviously, because I'm not Latino, but I work so heavily in the Latino community because of my partner, Ana.

[1:16] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah.

[1:17] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. I mean, you're not Latino either, are you?

[1:19] Jason A. Coombs: No, but I love that festival.

[1:21] Aditya Joshi: We were the two allies, hashtag allies.

[1:24] Jason A. Coombs: Right, right.

[1:25] Aditya Joshi: Latino Film Festival. No, I love that festival. My friend Maria is a lead programmer there, and she always invites me in to do some moderating. And I love Calypso, and I love just the community there, and they always invite me in. I'm always like, am I taking up space by doing these moderations? They're like, no, we want you to be here.

[1:43] Jason A. Coombs: No, I mean, I'm sure you feel this running a film festival yourself. There's so much about making anything, but especially art, as a person of color, where you're like, I don't want to get siloed into... I'm making art for my community. It's only seen by my community, and it's only appreciated by my community. And it's like, especially if you're... The South Asian community is obviously huge globally. There are like 2 billion South Asian people. But in America, in media, it's quite small and quite insular.

[2:15] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. No, it's so funny, because I have a lot of South Asian friends, actually, and they're filmmakers too. My friend Kabir, my friend Kerry, and my friend Tim. And I remember we were all together, and there were six South Asian guys, and me, and we were like 50 shades of brown. It was great. That was our hashtag. So shout out to them, if they're watching. I miss y'all. But no, back to you. Come on. New York-based filmmaker, writer, director, actor. Your work crosses film, television, and theater. Your short film, A West Side Story, which we had at the New York Film Festival, was executive produced by Luis Guzman, and it was at Tribeca Film Festival. That was a world premiere, if I'm not mistaken, right?

[2:54] Aditya Joshi: Yes, it was.

[2:55] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah. And you're a writer, a story editor on We Were Liars on Amazon? And then, most recently, your feature film won the AT&T Untold Stories contest.

[3:03] Aditya Joshi: Yeah, that was crazy. That was like two weeks ago.

[3:06] Jason A. Coombs: We're going to get all into that, because I was so excited for you. I was like, oh my gosh. How incredible is that?

[3:12] Aditya Joshi: I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

[3:14] Jason A. Coombs: That's huge.

[3:14] Aditya Joshi: I mean, it's a crazy... It's like a one of one program. I've been writing for a long time, and as a reference to your other podcast, I worked at Capital One for my first six, seven years out of college.

[3:29] Jason A. Coombs: Okay. That was your survival job?

[3:29] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. Luckily for me, it wasn't so surviving. It was like a corporate, very cushy, like I worked in an office and had a 401k.

[3:36] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah.

[3:36] Aditya Joshi: But it wasn't quite as hard.

[3:38] Jason A. Coombs: 401k? What is that?

[3:39] Aditya Joshi: It wasn't quite as hard as some other people. I feel very privileged to have had that opportunity. But doing that for so long, and not going to film school, not studying film, there was a lot of how do I get traction? How do I get anyone to pay attention to me? How do I... And a lot of the ways that you think to do that, and this is true of playwriting, this is true of acting, but especially as a writer or director, is you're applying to fellowship after fellowship after fellowship, after contest after contest after contest. And so many of them exist, no tea, no shade, but so many of them exist to act as a self-perpetuating industry. You apply to XYZ screenwriting competition, and then they're like, some guy who used to work at Disney is going to read your script and give you some advice.

And you paid $100 to have this stamp on your resume. And then in your bio, when you submit to actual jobs, it says, Jason Coombs was a semi-finalist in the yada, yada, yada pitch competition. And it's like those things, you feel like they're going to get you somewhere. And then ultimately like 95% of them don't matter really to people in the industry. But something like AT&T Untold Stories is like, not only do they give you a platform to share your film, you also get $1.2 million to make a feature film. $1.2 million to make a feature film. It's insane.

[4:56] Aditya Joshi: Obsession was just made for 750K.

[4:59] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah, right. And then I think what's special about these films, all the other films are so beautiful and they were so different. Ours is the one that I co-wrote with my friend Sid, and he'll be directing it, is an intimate, we call it an intimate family epic. It all takes place at one cabin, but it's over 50 years and nine vignettes. And so that was one. But then my other friend, Jean Lee, who is a fantastic filmmaker, she had a film, just kind of coincidentally, a thousand people applied, five films pitched, and I knew of one of the other filmmakers. But Jean's film was a contained murder mystery that starred like six or seven septuagenarian East Asian grandmothers and grandfathers that was all... It was a murder mystery contained in a Chinese restaurant.

So it's like these are totally different kinds of films, but contained and specific, and in many cases, culturally relevant or personally affecting for the filmmaker. So it's just a really unique opportunity. And I think I'm still like, I wasn't even in town when we won.

[6:04] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah, because you were out of the country, right? I think I saw a video.

[6:07] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. Okay. So with any of these things, you're kind of like... One of the hardest things I've found about transitioning from being in a Capital One to working full-time in the industry is you are so gig-based and your schedule and your life are dictated by the opportunities that you're given. And those opportunities often come last minute.

[6:27] Jason A. Coombs: Right.

[6:28] Aditya Joshi: Like you mentioned modeling, they're like, hey, can you do a shoot next Tuesday for a hundred and whatever dollars? And you're like, do I cancel this other stuff I have just because it could be fun? And then... So for this, it's like my girlfriend, Anna and I, with whom I made A West Side Story, she and I have been dating now almost five years. And so as part of our five-year anniversary thing and also her birthday, I got her tickets to see Bad Bunny in Madrid.

[6:53] Jason A. Coombs: Oh my God.

[6:54] Aditya Joshi: So we flew to Madrid to see Bad Bunny.

[6:55] Jason A. Coombs: What a good boyfriend, partner.

[6:57] Aditya Joshi: I know. And then before we left, I got this thing and I was like, man, do I not go so I can be in town for the pitch, which Sid, the director, and Alifia, the producer were pitching. And Anna was very smartly like, look, the best case scenario is you win this pitch and you get to celebrate in Paris because we were going to be in Paris on the big pitch. The worst case scenario is you lose the pitch, but then you get to drown your sorrows in Paris. And then like...

[7:23] Jason A. Coombs: Either way, you're in Paris.

[7:25] Aditya Joshi: Exactly. The way you're in Paris and another mentor told me like, look, like things will keep coming up, but if you don't make time for life around all of it and you don't let your life be dictated entirely by fear of missing things. And in this case, I wasn't going to not win because I was there because Sid was pitching it ultimately. I wrote the movie and I represented myself through the writing. But yeah, we're shooting in September. It's going to be wild. And premieres next year at Tribeca.

[7:54] Jason A. Coombs: Wow. That's so exciting. Huge congratulations.

[7:57] Aditya Joshi: Thank you.

[7:58] Jason A. Coombs: I have so many questions for you, but we're going to stay on this. What was the most challenging part about pitching and what was something maybe you didn't expect to happen?

[8:09] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is kind of a weird answer, but like, so I think there are two things. One is like this movie, like I said, is told in like nine vignettes. So when Sid and I were coming up with the script for the pitch video and actually any part time, we only wrote this film a few months ago. So this is just kind of the time that we pitched it. But just like trying to articulate a story that is told in reverse chronological order in vignettes and make the story make sense, feel propulsive, like understand the ins and outs and why you would stay engaged in like a six to eight minute pitch video, I think was really challenging. And it's not as like, you know, I pitched heist movies, like I have a heist TV show in development right now, like Anna and I are working on a revenge thriller.

Those things are a lot easier to articulate. Even A West Side Story story, it's like, this is a movie about a Puerto Rican theater director trying to put on a quote unquote authentic version of West Side Story and kind of realizing that maybe you can't. And that's very easily articulated. I think like four generations of an Indian immigrant family try to make a home for themselves over, you know, 50 years in reverse chronological, you're just kind of like, how do you make that all feel exciting?

[9:21] Aditya Joshi: That's a lot of words.

[9:22] Jason A. Coombs: A lot of words, right? And it's a lot of like, it's this vibe, it's this tone, it's this concept.

[9:26] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. And it's like, they're all kind of disconnected, but like intimately thematically connected. So that was challenging. The other thing that I've had to learn, I think like, and I'm sure you relate to this, when you start making things independently after going to college or just moving to New York or whatever, you by necessity are doing every job. You are writing, you are directing, you are producing, you are editing, you are kind of, I mean, we were just talking about how you do kind of everything for this podcast. And this is the first time, Sid and I have been writing together for 12 years, since we were 19. This is the first time that we've written something that just one of us is directing.

[10:08] Jason A. Coombs: Gotcha.

[10:08] Aditya Joshi: Since we were like in college. And it's a feature and it's so intimately connected to Sid's vision. And so leading from behind, if you will, like letting Sid kind of put his vision first and foremost, like having him be the face of the project, like all that stuff is like, that's how it should be. Like this is a director-focused program and it is based on Sid's experience living up north or like having a cabin up north in northern Minnesota. But for someone who has been part of like this intimate partnership for a decade over a change, you know, like it is a change to be like, I'm going to be supportive in every aspect. That's not the writing where we're like equal partners, as opposed to like, we are doing this together in lockstep the whole time.

So that's been interesting. And that's like kind of just a thing that I've been learning as the projects get bigger in scale. And as you just like get to have more money to do things, more people care about what happens to them. When you're making a short film for $500 with your friends, nobody else cares. When someone gives you $1.2 million, there are a lot of people invested.

[11:11] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I can't imagine being in your shoes right now. Do you feel pressure?

[11:18] Aditya Joshi: It's going to sound bad. I don't feel as much pressure because a big part of what won the contest is the script.

[11:24] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah.

[11:24] Aditya Joshi: And my job, my primary responsibility on this film is writing. Yeah. And we've written the script. So I, the pressure I feel now is to make sure that the script lives up to the promise that they saw in it. And so that for me means like being on set every day with Sid, like rewriting lines to fit the actors, making sure that we are dissecting, like why every line of dialogue is there, like getting to do that kind of like fine-tuning work. You often don't do until you're in this position. So it'll be fun to do.

[11:58] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah. Do you get to make a little cameo in this film at all? Mr. Actor model?

[12:05] Aditya Joshi: I don't know that I'm going to be in the film. There is one vignette that takes place on like a South Asian student college retreat. So there are a bunch of South Asian teenagers in that. And I did get told the other day that I look 20 despite being 31.

[12:24] Jason A. Coombs: I mean, you do look 20.

[12:26] Aditya Joshi: So maybe I'll sneak in there and like shotgun a beer and put it in that vignette or something.

[12:31] Jason A. Coombs: I love that for you. But yeah, I'm going to let the real, like, you know, with a movie like this, the only way it gets the buzz that it deserves is if you have like the best of the best kind of like representing the words.

[12:45] Jason A. Coombs: Right. Right. And you said you're shooting in September.

[12:47] Aditya Joshi: Shooting in September, in Minnesota.

[12:48] Jason A. Coombs: In Minnesota. Wow. And how long is this shoot going to be?

[12:51] Aditya Joshi: It's a 21-day schedule. So we'll probably be there four or five weeks.

[12:54] Jason A. Coombs: Wow. Including rehearsal prep and wrap.

[12:56] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. Wow. I'm so excited for you.

[12:58] Jason A. Coombs: You're going to have to come back after like next summer or something.

[13:01] Aditya Joshi: Oh yeah. When the film premieres, maybe I'll come back with Sid.

[13:05] Jason A. Coombs: I love it. I love that. I love that. So let's talk about all the hats you wear. Filmmaker, writer, director, actor, model. When someone, when you meet someone new at a party or something, how do you introduce yourself? Like, what do you say?

[13:17] Aditya Joshi: Um, I say, hi, I'm Aditya.

[13:21] Aditya Joshi: No, I think it depends on the context. Like I, I, um, and I have to credit Ana for this influence, which is I used to introduce myself. I used to feel pressure.

[13:31] Aditya Joshi: In artist spaces, to introduce myself almost with a CV, right? You're like, hi, my name's Aditya. I write for the show We Were Liars. I'm a playwright, whatever. And now I kind of feel like I've started to realize the people who have the most to offer are often the people that say the least about who they are and what they do. I worked on the show We Were Liars, as you mentioned. One of the friends I made on that show, he's a young kid, but he's going to be the next big thing in Hollywood. His name's Joseph Zeta. And he plays Johnny in the show We Were Liars, but then he booked the role of young Haymitch on Hunger Games. He's the star of the next Hunger Games movie. He came to our West Side Story story premiere.

And he was just so humble and nice. And then some people were like, wait, is that the kid from the new Hunger Games? Or even Louise. Louise isn't like, hi, I'm Louise. I'm an actor. I've been in 150 movies. He's just like, hi, I'm Louise. He's like, yeah, yeah, of course, Louise. And then you look him up later. Even if you don't know who he is, you look him up, oh, he was in Boogie Nights. Oh, he's in Magnolia. Oh, he's in Wednesday. And I think I'm trying to be better about leading with that. But the reason you asked that question is because you're asking about what artistic medium takes privacy, I think, in my life. And I think if I were to order it, it's writer, director, actor in that order right now.

[14:53] Jason A. Coombs: And how did this start for you? Let me know about where you grew up and what was a spark that was like, I want to be a creative person. I know you said you were working in finance before.

[15:05] Aditya Joshi: I was, yes. I grew up in Kansas City. Not necessarily a hotbed for writer-directors, but there are more than you'd think that come from that place. Is there like an art scene? I sound so ignorant asking. I'm sure there's an art scene there.

[15:19] Jason A. Coombs: I'm sure there is too. I don't really know because I grew up there and I went to high school there and I grew up in the suburbs. And I always describe my Parkville, where I grew up, as classic Americana high school. It is like whatever the late aughts, early 2010s equivalent of a John Hughes high school is. It was that. But it was also super white. I was the only Indian. There was one Sri Lankan girl in my graduating class of 335 people.

[15:53] Aditya Joshi: So just you two? And then there was one or two Latino guys, one Puerto Rican guy that I grew up down the street from. I had one or two black friends and then everyone else was white. But in that way, I say that just to illustrate, it was a lovely childhood, but there definitely felt like an insularity to it. Everyone I knew, for the most part, their parents had grown up in Iowa or Nebraska or Missouri or Arkansas. And then they had congregated in Kansas City and then most of their siblings went to Missouri and then came back, the University of Missouri. And so my big aspiration at that time was, my parents are from India. I wasn't born in Kansas City, but I've been there from the time I was six.

I knew more of the world, I think, because my parents really valued traveling. My grandfather on my dad's side was a ship captain, so it was like traveling all over the world. And my grandfather on my mom's side was in the Air Force, so they moved all over the place, the Indian Air Force. So my parents took us all over the place. And so I felt like I wanted to just get out of Kansas City and experience a life that was bigger. I had this kind of unplaceable sense of ambition. And I was doing everything that you need to do to get into a, quote-unquote, get into a good college. Like when you google, how do I get into a good college? So I was a swimmer, I was on the football team for a while, for all my childhood.

I didn't play in high school, but then I also did musical theater. I also sang in our audition-only choir. I also was a debate captain. I did kind of every activity. And I felt like the high school was small enough. So it's kind of like, when you're like, how do I get into a place like Duke or Penn or Princeton or whatever, they're like, do every extracurricular and do it well. So that's what I did. And I was the valedictorian. I did all that stuff. And then I got to Duke, and I was like, I think I'll be Secretary of State. That's what I think I'll do. And then I realized that everyone at that school was really good at everything. And so you couldn't just count on trying all the things, being good, and just continuing to do that forever.

At a certain point, people have to specialize. And I think I was lucky because of the circumstances I grew up in being so... It was just like a nice public high school. It's not like I went to Bronx Science, and I had to decide to be a scientist at 12. And so Duke really forced me to think about what is it that I like. And as I was struggling through an economics degree, I took a screenwriting class, and I was like, oh, this is fun. And I like writing. I've always liked writing. I was in an a cappella group. I did some theater. And I was like, okay, I really do love... I've always been really fascinated by the history of movies, and performing, and theater, and I love musicals, and all these things.

But I still didn't think it was a career. And then I started writing screenplays with Sid just for fun. And then we went to South by Southwest as journalists for our school paper. And I interviewed Mike Birbiglia, and Don Cheadle, and Key and Peele, and all these people in 20 years before Get Out even, because it was like 2016. And Sid and I came home, came back to school from that trip, and we were like, are you thinking what I'm thinking? I don't want to be on this side of the rope. I don't want to be adjacent to the people making the things that I love. If I'm going to be that close, I want to be the person doing it. And I think that was the first moment where I was like, man, maybe I should... Should I go to film school?

Should I do whatever? But I was getting an economics degree. So I graduated, got a tech job, and said to myself, if I write with a full-time job, and I write enough that people care about what I'm writing, then that's a sign that I'm meant to do it. But I don't know that I have the talent. I don't know what it takes. And if I don't write with a full-time job, I'm definitely not going to write if I quit my job, and suddenly I have to rely on writing to make money. You know, it was almost like I have to prove it to myself to do it while I have this other quote-unquote high-powered corporate job, you know? And I think that is what gave me the confidence, and also the anxiety in some ways, to be like, I know what my life looks like if I don't write. It's this job forever. And that's a nice life, but it's not the life that I want.

[19:58] Jason A. Coombs: You're not passionate about it.

[19:58] Aditya Joshi: I'm not passionate about it. It's not going to wake you up in the morning. It's not going to get you out of bed. It's not going to give you life. Right. And I wrote a piece, like a monologue piece, about this in college. Like, I don't want to be 45 on the train in from Greenwich, you know, like with a nice house and a kid and a wife, you know, all the things, and be like, where did my life go? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's so powerful. I think it's important. I think it's important for people to hear that, that if you want something, right, if you really, really see something for yourself, it's okay to take a chance. Take a chance on yourself. And you don't want to have regrets. I think that's the biggest thing that people who are older always say, like, oh, I wish I did this. I wish I did that, you know? And we don't want to have that life.

[20:44] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. And I think what you were saying, too, earlier, even before we started recording, of like, you have to try everything and do everything and like being, especially today's world, like being a creator, being an artist is like, you wear every hat. And I kind of think like, I remember feeling like people were trying to tell me when I first started making stuff, like, you have to commit 100% to the thing you're doing. Like, you have to quit your job, and you have to go take writing classes and do improv, and you have to like, just write all day, you can't be thinking about other things. And I think in hindsight, I would, like, I tell people, like, when I went back to Duke and gave a talk in October of last year, like, you don't actually have to choose.

Like, it's actually advantageous to you to pursue as many things as possible. I think the reason people say that is because most folks, like, don't commit 100% to doing all the things, or like, let themselves get distracted. Like, if you're a writer who wants to act, and then you never write and you never act, you know, that's why you need to commit to one. Like, if you're a writer who acts, and you are putting yourself up for readings, and you're also writing a new play every year, like, that's a different thing, right? Then you're committing to all of it, and you're giving yourselves opportunities. And I have actor writer friends who are very successful, who I had a friend, this playwright friend of mine a couple weeks ago tell me, like, every, and she's, like, been in Shakespeare in the Park and stuff, she's like, every acting job I've gotten has become because of a writing opportunity, every writing opportunity I've gotten has become an acting opportunity.

You know, and I've had other people tell me that, too. You work at New York Theatre Workshop in a reading, and they're like, oh, who are you? And they're like, you're like, I'm a playwright. And then they're like, oh my god, and then you're like, I'm a director, and they put you up to direct something. And then suddenly, you're like a usual suspect, and it just happens.

[22:31] Jason A. Coombs: Great, great. Wow, that's really good advice. I hope you have your notebooks out. I always tell people this. Get your notebooks out, pause this, grab a notebook, and take some notes, because this is valuable information, you know? This is someone who's fucking doing it, doing the thing.

[22:42] Aditya Joshi: Please. You are. Thank you. Yeah, it's important, because I feel like a lot of people want to do what you do, what we do, right? But they're scared, or they don't think they have the opportunity, or they don't think they're talented enough. And what separates you from someone else? You fucking kept doing it. Yeah, right. I'm sure you're talented as well.

[23:03] Aditya Joshi: Yeah, I really don't think it's about talent. I think it gets to be about talent at a certain point, but I think like, I'm just going to pull a number, like 90% of people don't get to the place where their talent can actually get seen. And the way that you get to that place is you just keep putting yourself out there. You keep writing things. Like the first six screenplays I wrote are trash. I would never show them to anyone, you know? But at that time, I was like, these are great. I'm showing them to everyone, you know? And it just takes that constant like, ooh, that's not quite right. Ooh, that's not quite right. As opposed to, I'm talking about short films, like I see people who write and tour and pitch the same film idea based on the short that they made for like 10 years.

And at a certain point, I'm like, have you written anything else? Because the first thing that your agent is going to tell you when you sign with someone or a production company is going to tell you if they decide not to buy your script, but like your voice is, what are the other three things that you have that I might be interested in? And you need a body of work.

[23:59] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Get those notebooks out. Speaking about short films, can we talk about West Side Story a little bit more? I know you touched on it before.

[24:10] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Luis Guzman signed on as an EP, right? As a producer. How did that happen?

[24:16] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. So a West Side Story story is a film, like I said, that's about a Puerto Rican theater director trying to put on a production of West Side Story. And the origin of the film is interesting because Ana is a theater director and has worked a lot in Latino theater. She's worked in Repertoire Español. She's directed opera shows there. And I worked with her on that. That's kind of how we fell in love, was like doing those things together. So the theater has a very special place in our hearts. And Ana had been in the process of like, she'd gotten into grad school and decided not to go for directing. But in that process, someone had asked her like, as a Latina director, as a Puerto Rican director, like, how would you do West Side Story?

And she turned to me and she'd gone like, I don't know that I could do it without commenting on the fact that it was like all white people and brown face and like not a single Puerto Rican was involved in writing the film. And so we were like, we gotta make that film. And you know, Ana had been in a feature and she'd done a lot of theater. And I had like worked on We Were Liars at that point. But we didn't know Latino producers of independent film. So I reached out to a couple contacts of mine that was like, do you know anyone that might be involved, invested in like helping us? At that point, we were like looking to help fundraise. And we got connected to Sami Guzman, who's Luis's son. And Sami was in Ireland with Luis.

They were shooting Wednesday season two and he hopped on the phone with us. He was like, I really like this idea. Here's some advice. Like, here's how you should think about it. Like, I'm in Ireland, but if you need me as a sounding board, call me. And you know, and he's like, and my dad, like Luis has like, he knows, you know, I told him about the idea. He thinks it's really exciting. Like, he's like wishing you the best of luck. And for us, that was like, like an encouraging, you know, someone like that knows the idea, likes the ideas, like this could be really good. Even if he's not doing, he's doing Wednesday's producing movie, funding it, which was never the goal. It was more just like, can we find someone to help bring attention to this?

So then I went off and I raised the money for the film. And I partnered with Brooklyn Music School, who we'll talk about a little bit later, and made the movie, shot it in one day, 12 hour day. That's kind of all we could afford. And it turned out really well. And I called Sami and I was like, hey, here's, you know, sounding board, here's the film, like, what do you think? We're thinking about, like, obviously Luis and Sami super well connected. We're like, we're thinking about, like, how to get this in front of people who can help the film. And Sami saw it. And then he called me and he was like, I think this is really great. Check your inbox. And he sent me a video. And the video was of Luis in Wednesday makeup, like on set, being like, yeah, right, as Gomez, sending us like a five minute video of him telling.

[27:02] Aditya Joshi: Ana and I, and especially Ana, like how proud he was of us for having made the movie, for putting ourselves out there as Ana as a director, and as an actor, and a star of the movie, and also just like how proud he felt to be Puerto Rican watching the film. And then we were like, would you want to be involved in the rest of the process? And you know, Luis is super busy, but to his credit, took so much time. He called, he sent the film to Edward James Olmos. He sent the film to Rosario Dawson. Sami got on the phone with us and talked through all of the marketing stuff, all of the festival strategy stuff. Sami became a hands-on producer, even after the film was done, which was shot and edited, but not necessarily colored or scored or anything fully.

And Luis became like the ultimate advocate for the film. He like came to Tribeca. He like went to the Q and A's. He was at Nyliff. And at Nyliff, he's like the king, right? He was like, he shook every hand, kissed every baby. And like, dude, this guy's like 68 years old, like legendary actor. He does not need to be coming to us, like a film festival for a movie that he's not even in, that's a short film and doing like 50 press interviews. Like he doesn't need to do that, but it was such a blessing for him to come and give us that support. And now the film is premiering about a year after it premiered at Tribeca, Tribeca asks to distribute it on their DirecTV Tribeca channel. So this month, I think next week for the 25th anniversary of the festival, which just happened, Tribeca is curating a special five short block of New York shorts that it's dropping on DirecTV on the Tribeca channel.

So if you want to watch the film and you have DirecTV, you can go to DirecTV's Tribeca channel and you can find A West Side Story story. It's like an app to download or? It's on DirecTV. Okay. It's on DirecTV. So if you have DirecTV, you can go and I'm not 100% sure how else you can watch it. If you don't like how else you can access DirecTV, but you can call me and I'll send you the film. And no, and it's great. And it's an incredible opportunity to distribute it widely. Most short films, you just kind of toss on YouTube after they're done. And I think that's a testament to Luis also, who really advocated for us with Tribeca as it was happening.

[29:25] Jason A. Coombs: Well, I love that. I love that as someone who, that he saw the importance of the film as a Puerto Rican man and was like, I'm going to do all I can to get the shine that this film deserves. And there's a quote that I love that talks about how like people who are in positions of power as they're climbing up the ladder need to lift as they climb. And it sounds like he's done that, you know, he's done, he's lifted up people as he's gotten to where he is. And I think that's so important. I think more people need to be like that, especially the Titans in the industry. Like that's, that's what really matters. You're making space for this next generation.

[29:57] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. And you never, I mean, you rarely find actual celebrity star type people who are willing to, to not just do that, but like spend the time when it actually doesn't, it actually doesn't benefit them at all in this case. Like, you know, sometimes you'll see like a famous celebrity will attach their name to a short film that they think is going to let's Oscar qualified and is doing a run. And they're like, I want to bring attention to the film. And I'll just go, if I win an Oscar, I win an Oscar. And this is like, you know, we, we didn't have those aspirations with this film. The film was intended to be a love letter to the Puerto Rican theater community. It was intended to be a vehicle for Ana to show the world what she could do, because to be honest, like as you know, most actors, especially like young Latina actors will know, like the last couple of years have not been great for diversity in casting and going from auditioning for things like the lead in National Treasure and like, you know, these big shows.

So like immigrant rape victim on Law and Order, like 16 year old drug dealer, like, you know, those things, that's not what you want in your career. And the only kind of way to, this is what I'm saying about wearing many hats, like the only way to show people the kinds of roles that you think you deserve to be in is to make them for yourself sometimes. But anyway, so that, that like, without Luis, like, I don't know how much, I don't know if I'd be here. I don't know if the film journey would be like, would be what it was. And again, he like had nothing to gain from it, like, but just everything to, to give in terms of advocacy.

[31:27] Jason A. Coombs: That's amazing. Shout out to Luis Guzmán. That's incredible. That makes me like so happy. I love when you hear that celebrities are such genuine people. You know, I remember like first time working with Whoopi Goldberg, who's like an EGOT winner, you know, and she was like the kindest person I worked with her. I got on a very small film set. I was part of the crew and she greeted every single person where she got there. Hi, I'm Whoopi. And everyone's like, yeah, we know. She also didn't say hi, I'm Whoopi. I'm a, I'm an actor, writer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just so true about the work and the, and the confidence and the ethos speak for itself, you know?

[32:04] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so incredible. And it makes you want to be that way. You know, it makes me like, even in my, the work I'm doing on such a small scale, it makes me like, okay, if, if this EGOT winner can go and say hi to every single person, because she literally did, I said bye to every single person. I can be just as kind and thoughtful and patient and lead, lead a crew or lead a set the same way.

[32:26] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah. I think there's a level of confidence that, that they operate with that comes from years of success and years of disappointment and knowing who they are. And they're like, I don't know. Sometimes I feel like at these, like, I'm like, I only have so much time. I need to figure out like who in this room is going to be helpful and I need to focus on that. And then I need to go and I need to write. I need to, right. Yeah. These people are so much more busy than we are in some way, right? Like the Reese's on set for nine months, shooting a massive, you know, Netflix show. But they know who they are, what they bring and how important it is to people too, that they feel that care from them.

[33:07] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. If you're on set with Whoopi Goldberg and she doesn't say hi to you, you can be like, oh, Whoopi Goldberg was there and I didn't get to talk to her. I feel so bad. And now you look back and you're like, man, Whoopi Goldberg, I'm going to root for her forever.

[33:16] Jason A. Coombs: Right. Right. Literally, literally. She's like, yeah, I can tell you more after, but it's about you today. It's not about Whoopi. You know how much we love her.

[33:24] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. Let's talk about We Were Liars.

[33:28] Jason A. Coombs: Let's do it.

[33:28] Aditya Joshi: Which you went from writing an episode to being a story editor on season two.

[33:33] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. I was a writer on season one, story editor on season two, a very standard promotion track. I didn't do anything special. I just got brought back for season two.

[33:41] Jason A. Coombs: That's incredible though.

[33:42] Aditya Joshi: Yeah. I mean, that is a really, I, like it is, staffing on TV is like, just like getting cast in things. It's like increasingly hard. There are fewer shows every year. So I feel very lucky to have been brought back to a show that did so well in season one that also premiered at Tribeca three days after my short film did like kind of insane week.

[34:01] Jason A. Coombs: Tribeca is like your...

[34:02] Aditya Joshi: Craziest week of my life. Yeah. Now my agent was saying, now it's your home festival. Like last year, the short and the show this year, we won the pitch competition next year, the feature's premiering there. Like, you know, but yeah, we were liars. So, you know, in 2020, Sid and I, who were still exclusively at that point writing together had written a couple of features and one of them had started getting passed around a little bit in the South Asian community. And we signed with the manager who we're still with today, Sam, who's great. And we started developing movies and stuff like that. And in that time we wrote our first television show and that TV show was called Jakar. And we sold it to FX, like totally fluke.

Like, like our manager sent it to FX and was like, you should think about these guys for staff writing. And they were like, yeah, yeah. Well, they pitched this show to the head of FX like in two weeks. And we were like, sure. And none of us, like we were her first real writing clients. Like none of us had any idea. We didn't know any better. So we just had that like delusional confidence of like, yeah, we're going to, we're going to pitch. It's going to be great. We didn't have a production company. We didn't have a star. We didn't have VPs. We didn't have anything, which now like I'm taking out a show and it's like, we have all that stuff, you know, because you need it, most times. So we sold that show.

We developed it for a year and a half. And in that time we were just, it didn't end up getting made. It's in the Disney vault. But in that time we were like, okay, maybe let's write a little bit more TV. So we wrote like one sample of a family drama that we had originally written as a movie. We turned it into a pilot. We finished the pilot, this sample on like, like a, you know, on like August, mid August, right? A week later. So this, this pilot had centered an Indian American family. It had, um, a teen romance angle and it had a huge fire in the pilot. Then a week later we get a call from our agent and he's like, so there's a show they're hiring staff writers. It's one of the very few shows that's hiring like young writers who have not been in a room before.

They're looking for young voices because there's an Indian American love interest. Uh, there's a big fire. And we were like, Oh, our, our movie. We were like, okay, send her the pilot. And so we, we interviewed with our, um, now boss, Karina McKenzie, and we didn't get that job at first because it was a mini room. And then six months later, the show got picked up. She called us, we interviewed with her and Julie Plack and she was like, we got the job. And I was still working with Capital One. And they were like, can you move to LA and write on the show next week? And we were like, uh, next week, next week. So I quit. It was like a Friday. And then they ended up being like, we're going to start a week from Monday.

So I had a week to get out there. So I quit my job on a Friday. I did three more weeks of work while I was still in the writer's room. I was starting the writer's room right before my 26th birthday. I think it was like, I got, I went out to LA for to work on the show and I thought I was gonna be there for six months. And then the strike started three weeks later, like a month into the room. So then I went home, came home for the strike. I was unemployed for the first time in my life. I was like, what do I do? Just like writing stuff. It's when I wrote my first play, um, with Ana and then, um, and then the show resumed after the strike. And it's kind of been like every so often we'll like have like some work on We Were Liars.

[37:12] Jason A. Coombs: Oh, cool. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about Ana and how, how you met and how you decided to, you want to become partners in work environment too? Cause I mean, that may not work for everybody. I mean, it's clearly working for you too.

[37:27] Aditya Joshi: I don't think it does work for everybody, but I think when it really works, it really works. And she's so sweet. I met her that night too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. So Ana and I met through the Kennedy Center. Okay. Along with the Kennedy Center, not the Trump Kennedy Center. Well, I think it's back to regular. I think now it's back to the regular Kennedy Center. We were very, we were very annoyed when it became the Trump Kennedy Center. Um, so I don't, I met through that. She was in a directing intensive and, uh, I told you, I like you said, a podcast, um, she also have a podcast podcast and she was in a directing cohort and then they put her in like a critics lab. So it used to be a theater.

She used to be a theater critic. And while she was in this critics lab, uh, at the Kennedy Center, I got asked, I did like six episodes of a podcast and this guy who was running the lab, who I had known because we, our podcast had the same name. And so he asked me to change it. And I did, he called me and he was like, well, you do like, you're like young and fun. Like, you're doing a podcast where you talk about criticism through podcasting to this cohort at the Kennedy Center. So I did that on Zoom and Ana was in that Zoom. Okay. And then she reached out to me after, and she was like, Oh, you like movies. I like movies. And I was like, yeah, let's do a Zoom. And then, then she moved to New York a few months later and became good friends.

And then like within three months we were dating and, um, and you know, she was, our work was very siloed. Like I was working on, we were liars. Um, I should know, not even yet. I was working on my FX show and she was an actor and she moved out here and lived with her roommate and they were all actors, all the roommates and they were all auditioning for this huge things. Yeah. And then later that year she got this directing fellowship at Repertoria Espanola and uh, then it was the, and her show was like that summer fall of 2022. And I was just like feeling like I wanted to spend more time really focused on film. So I took a sabbatical from Capital One and I was writing a bunch of stuff with Sid, making a documentary that for REI, that brand.

And I had a little extra time and I was like, I would love to do more theater. I used to do improv and stuff in New York and magnet. And I was like, can I help? And I was like, well, I need an assistant director. So I went to work for Ana. I love that. And that was challenging because she was your boss. She was my boss. We didn't know each other as well as you, we know each other now, obviously, to be like eight, nine months into dating and suddenly your girlfriend is your boss is like a little, you know, but we've, we've, we've worked through it. And then that fall we went to Puerto Rico and got stuck in a hurricane and we were like, there's a play here. And I was like, I would love to see, I was like, I would love to see this world on stage.

And I was like, write it. And she was like, I've never written anything. And I was like, well, I write, I've never written a play, but I write. So let's write something together. So we wrote a play together. That play has had a bunch of readings. We just did a big presentation. Was that La Dementa? We just did a presentation at the Puerto Rican traveling theater. Hopefully it'll go up, you know, in the next year or two. And from there, we just started being like, there are stories that we want to tell, especially like about Ana's family, like for her community, because, you know, Sid and I write a lot about like my South Asian experience and I have my own avenues to talk about that stuff. But Ana, like the world, I find the, just like, because it's not my world, I think.

[41:05] Aditya Joshi: I'm doing with Anna, which is like really about shaping stories that we're both passionate about within her community and then there's like the stuff I'm working on on my own. Which is like I think after 12, 13 years of writing almost entirely in partnership between Sid and Anna, it's like who am I? What do I have to say uniquely by myself? I'm like, what is it that makes an Aditya Joshi movie or TV show and play? And that's like kind of the journey I'm on now, but I wouldn't have gotten there without the incredible partnership and support of Sid first and then Anna.

[41:41] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah, I love that you have like these different outlets, right? You're like have this with Sid, right? Which is like highlighting and spotlighting your background, your culture. And then you have this with Anna where you're like opening a door for another culture. And then you have the stuff you're doing on yourself, which is like you. Yeah, that's so cool. That's really so cool. And it's so like inspiring. Thank you. You are so inspiring. I knew when I met you, I knew I had to be your friend. Like something about you.

[42:11] Aditya Joshi: Of course, of course.

[42:13] Jason A. Coombs: Do you want to do more? Like do you wanna—because we are probably—we're on the Broadway Podcast Network yourself doing a Broadway play. I would love to do a Broadway play. I mean, let's get to Off-Broadway first, but I'm right. Yeah, but you know, I would love—I think so. I mean, I always think big. Yeah, right? Probably straight to Broadway. I was joking. So I'm in a playwriting fellowship group right now, Page 73, which is an amazing organization. I'm sure people listening to this probably know it, but it uplifts new playwrights and it's like playwrights who haven't had an Off-Broadway premiere but are like really close, like it's getting them to the next level. And so like Sam Hunter who wrote The Whale and Michael R. Jackson and to see like these are all these heavy hitters.

Yeah, it's huge. They came to that pipe you're doing Claire Baron. They did the first premiere of You Got Older, but that's just, you know, how to remounting at Cherry Lane. Anyway, so I was in—I was with them yesterday and we were just joking like what if we just jumped, you know, you could have a Broadway premiere and still be eligible for Page 73.

[43:12] Aditya Joshi: No, but I—so it's actually interesting. It's like, it sounds very easy to say like here are my silos right now, but it's hard because Sid and I don't just write about South Asian stuff. Like, you know, we write about all sorts of things and we wrote like a big crime movie set in the world of South Texas, North Texas megachurches, you know? And like Anna doesn't just write about Puerto Ricans. She wrote this like crazy play about vampires and performative males recently that I love. And like I'm involved in both of those things and I want to write about my experience being on the outside looking in and Latino community about my experience as a South Asian guy and also about all the other things that I'm interested in that are like totally unrelated to race because I have kind of grown tired of writing about race.

Yeah, myself. And so it's hard to like find the boundaries. And the way I started writing theater on my own was really like because it felt like an untapped safe space for me to try outside of my partnership with Sid, which was really all-consuming.

[44:12] Aditya Joshi: And so I wrote a play called The Last Shaker and I started applying to things and now I—that was like my version of a play that I was like this is what I think a play is, you know? And then in this fellowship and in this writers group for Page 73, I've just been like what is it that I would not be able to write in any other medium? Like what is it that I feel so intensely that I want to show and write about? And the thing about theater is it's so freeing. Like, yeah, you do—I mean some people probably do, like most playwrights I know aren't writing plays being like this is gonna go up at the Lortel and then transfer to Broadway. Like, yeah, yeah, people don't write plays for commerciality and money.

People write plays because they have something to say. I'm gonna say. Yeah, and so this has been a really amazing way for me to find what I have to say outside the boundaries of, well, is it gonna sell well? Can I get you staffed? Well, and if it sells, if it goes up, great. But I'm in a really unique position having come from film and TV and moving into plays where like I don't have to learn the commerciality skill. I have to learn the voice.

[45:23] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah, do you write every day? Like are you someone who like I have to have time Monday through Friday or whatever schedule is like you have a schedule for writing?

[45:25] Aditya Joshi: Aspirationally, I would write every day, but I don't. Yeah, I think sometimes I write out of a place of like requirement, busyness, anxiety, and that's when I find myself writing every day or when I'm like so deep in a project. But like I haven't written a word of anything in like at least a week. But I've been working on a deck for a feature I want to direct, you know? And like I presented a play last night at a writers group and I took notes on what I need to change. And yeah, so I feel like—and I just got my first commission, which I can't announce yet, but like that will be exciting, right? And so now I'm like at a place where I've kind of done so much writing that now there's like a lot of like, okay, here are like 50 things that I've written or that I'm in the process of working on.

Like let me pick the four or five most important things with the show I'm developing and Minnesota Goodbye being like the most urgent. Yeah, and then like pick up—like I don't want to be writing five things at once. Yeah, I want to be like in rewrites on something, writing something new, pitching something else. Like that's ideal.

[46:35] Jason A. Coombs: That sounds ideal to me. This is hard to hold it all in your head, I'm sure. Are you someone who's like always taking notes on like the notes? I like—like how do you keep up? 'Cause I feel like I always have these ideas and I'm like scrolling down and then like I'm writing a different paper. Like I got to be more structured.

[46:52] Aditya Joshi: So I am newly a person who has a notebook. Okay, I think otherwise I was just like I would text it or Anna. Yeah, you have to do. But what I found is that the more work I've started to get or more projects I've started to like have actually people care about and be like what happened to that play you wrote, I have had to start getting my to-dos out of my head in a way that I never felt like I wouldn't have had to because my—I just feel like my brain is so to this do this and yeah, like I don't forget to-dos very often because my brain runs on like anxious achievement disorder, you know? Yeah, and but now I'm far to see that, oh, I have this play that I've had sitting in a first draft that's been done and I did a table read of like three months ago that is like one of my favorite things I've ever written, but I have like big rewrites to do and I don't know what I'm gonna do that. And I just keep forgetting about it. So I go look at my notebook and I see it there. I see wedding play. I'm like, I got to get into the wedding play.

[47:51] Jason A. Coombs: Almost at the end of our time together. It goes by so fast. I'm also very verbose, so I apologize.

[47:56] Aditya Joshi: No, don't ever apologize. This has been so fantastic to chat with you. I'm like really honored to like share space with you to hear—to learn about your story. I read your website, but like it's different to read something versus, you know, I'm gonna talk about it. It's how passionate you are and how hard you work clearly, you know? I hope, like I said, people have their notebooks out and getting this information. This is good.

[48:16] Aditya Joshi: Well, thank you for making the space for people like, yeah, talk about stuff like this. I think I've actually found that podcasts are one of the best ways to learn—not that I should be teaching you anything, but like my podcast, like there's a podcast called Script Notes that I listen to religiously. I think about it with writing and even just podcasts that are like IndieWire has a filmmaker toolkit podcast and I just listen to like The Town and all these podcasts and I just feel like my brain like it's saturated with information and ideas and strategies and so it becomes with enough of that become second nature. So I'm—yeah, it's nice to have a space where people who are like in that early mid-career can like talk about what's going on as opposed to like Script Notes.

It's like they have Chris Nolan on, great. It's great, but it's like Eileen's like, yeah, I've got like six projects I'm developing. I'm like, that's just you because you're a Devil Wears Prada, not like me, you know?

[49:09] Jason A. Coombs: So you've done so many wonderful things, honestly pretty incredible your story so far. Can you share with us—like this is our pivot. This is like our question. Yeah. Where did the light land for you? Like when did things change for you, whether it was professionally and personally, where there was like a shift in how you approach your career or your journey?

[49:30] Aditya Joshi: That's a great question. I think there are probably a couple. Hmm, I think the sale to FX, even though the show never got made, it just felt like so—and in hindsight it is like such a crazy thing that happened because I think like you learn so—that I'll give you two. So that's one where I feel like Sid and I wrote a TV show having never written a TV show, never been assistants, I've never worked on any show ever in any capacity. Like living in New York, they don't make TV in New York really. And we wrote a show that was about a colonial Indian tiger hunt set in 1860. It was a horror thriller. It was a period piece and a mostly brown cast—everything they tell you not to write. And it sold in the room to like one of the best networks around, right?

And I think in the aftermath of that, Sid and I were like, okay, now we need a procedural. Like how to write a procedure. And then I think looking back when we wrote Minnesota Goodbye, we were like that ethos—the thing of like we found something interesting that only we could write and only we could write it that way, only we had thought to write it that way. And that's what people resonated with. They weren't like what's their spin on the pit? Like great, but every exec always comes to you and is like, we're really looking for The Bear right now, like because The Bear was just a hit or we're looking for The Pit, like whatever the show of the week is. They're great for that. And I think if you try to—I—we spent years trying to like keep up with those trends.

Yeah, and I think like so it's both a moment that I look back on being like that changed my life because it gave me the confidence that someone else outside of me and Sid cared about what I was writing and cared enough about it to pay me to do it.

[51:13] Aditya Joshi: And it gave my parents confidence and it gave my brother, my family, and yeah, there's a thing you can talk about and be like I'm working on a show with FX. I'm a real writer. Yes, even though if you write, you're a writer. But like I think there's so much imposter syndrome with like every screenplay, but no one's ever made one and no one's ever bought one and the fact that it's so fucking hard. Yeah, it's so hard. And so that was one.

[51:32] Aditya Joshi: Yeah, and then the other thing that I think is more indicative of my current—like my—the path I'm currently on is like so a couple years ago, Sid and I were applying separately to some fellowships because it was like TV writing stuff and whatever. And so we each had to write an individual pilot. We had never done that. So Sid wrote a pilot and I wrote a pilot and Sid's pilot is so good and this fellowship that we apply for, Sid gets an interview and he gets finalist and he's basically I think about to get the fellowship and then we get staffed on We Were Liars and you like can't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean while no interview, no call, generic rejection email. I'm like at that point we've been directing from so many fellowships and I've been personally rejected from so many fellowships.

I was like, I was like, okay, like maybe I'm just not a fellowship person. Like people at Sundance or back—they don't care what I have to say, right? Yeah, and which I know, which now I was in hindsight, it's not true. It's just like of course, but what it feels like in the moment doesn't—the moment? Yeah, I was like this is—I'm just not that kind of guy. So like, but I was very nervous because Sid and I started talking about writing separately and I was like Sid just was a finalist for something and I—what am I doing here? Yeah, like this really amazing fellowship that I really wanted to be a finalist for didn't even send me a note about my pilot, you know?

[52:46] Aditya Joshi: So then I kind of went back and reread it and I sent it to a friend. I was like, what do you think about this pilot? And the friend was like, I really like it. I think it's really you. It's the most you thing I've written, I've read. I was like, okay. So then, you know, the next summer like Sid and I decide officially, okay, we're gonna start doing TV stuff separately just because the economics of staffing and like the stuff we want to work on and write just like starting to diverge. So I call my agent and I'm like, okay, I have this pilot. I want you to read it. I didn't get into this program twice in a row with the same pilot. I think I really like it, but I don't know if anyone will ever like it.

Yeah, he reads it. He's like, I really like it. He's like, I have a couple small notes, but like I think we can go out with this fall. I think people will enjoy it. Yeah, then the way that pitching a TV show has worked for me is like I've written the spec. My agent will call 35 production companies and be like here's the concept for the move—for the TV show. Like do you want to read it? They'll say yeah, everyone say yeah. And then most people won't like—other people won't read it. And if you get like five out of thirty places to be like I want to have a second conversation about this thing, that's like a really good ratio. Yeah, I—my agent sends it out and I get like 15 people are like—15 companies are like I want to hear the pitch and I forget like—and we ended up setting it up with people I'm really excited to work with.

[54:04] Aditya Joshi: I'm so excited about this project, but I think that moment I was sitting there, I was at home for the holidays when all this happened. I was talking to Ana, I was talking to my mom, and I was like, this is so crazy because I feel like for so long I have felt like without Sid and his instincts, or that Ana and her stories. This is after West Side is premiered or Tribeca and everything. I'm like what, like, do I have anything individually that people are interested in? Like, I know I have craft and I know I work hard, I know I can write, but like the story that I care about, does anyone care about that story? Yeah, and does anyone find commercial value in it? Does everyone find artistic value in it?

And I felt like in that moment I was like, it's crazy because I feel like these fellowships were all like, I don't care about this TV show. And then the industry, and again, their tastes, fellowships, it's all subjective. I remember being like, there is a place, to quote West Side Story, there is a place for me here in this world with the thing that I want to write that is like a part of me. Yeah. So I think that gave me a lot of confidence going into this year to be like, well now I know what I want to pursue, and I'm gonna write from my instincts. I'm gonna get notes and I'm gonna get feedback, but I'm not gonna let like this fellowship not accepting me tell me that I, the script isn't good or that I'm not good.

It's not worthy. It's not worthy. Yeah, because worthiness is so subjective. Exactly. And to be honest, and this you should write your, take your notebooks out, get it out. Fellowships and agencies and production companies and financiers are most attracted to you when you've already won once on your own. People will come call, like we win AT&T Tribeca and people are like, what are you doing next? You know, like I've got one playwriting fellowship and suddenly these theaters are like way more interested in me than last year when I was applying for all their same stuff. Yeah, and I got generic rejection emails. My writing didn't get a hundred times better. Right? Just I have a stamp now that's like Tribeca.

Stamp of approval. Page 73. We were liars. Whatever it is, right? And so you have to continue to operate as if you are a moving train and you are gonna make the movie. You're gonna make the show. You're gonna put on the play. It's gonna get produced whether producer guy, Jason the billionaire financier is there or not. You're gonna make it and Jason if you want to be part of that, I got a lot to offer you and I could use your help. But if you don't want to be part of that, that's fine too. To tie it back to a West Side Story story, I think that's part of what endeared us to Louise is like Louise. He was like, hey, these guys didn't wait for someone like me to give them permission. Yeah, they went and made a thing that felt very of them, right? And I'm really into that. Yeah, it resonates and resonates with me. Yeah, and that's what I did authenticity authenticity. So that's why I jumped on it. And I think that's what he would probably say.

[56:56] Jason A. Coombs: Wow, and I really also appreciate that sharing the feelings of like having a partner who like achieved something and having feelings around that, right? Whether those feelings are because your feelings are valid. Yeah, it's okay to have them, right? And I think addressing that, sharing that too is also really important. I thank you for being so honest about that.

[57:19] Aditya Joshi: Yeah, of course. I mean, I think a lot of people work with whether it's their romantic partner or a creative partner. I mean film is a collaborative medium. Yeah, you might make a film with someone, they're producing and you're producing and you're just like separate producing companies and you go on and then you make this movie, you get really close and then someone, the other producer goes and makes everything everywhere all at once and suddenly wins an Oscar and you're like shit, why didn't I get to do, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and it's like I have a really hard time with that. Yeah. Yeah, and I think ego is the thing that will screw up your relationships in these and I've experienced it. I've let my ego screw up relationships like yeah, it happens and I think it's like taking those wins that I was talking about but not letting them like I, I'm really trying hard not to be like, you know, like fuck them pics.

Like I don't, I don't care what any of these fellowships think like I know I'm sick, I'm gonna make shit. Fuck everyone else. Like I'm not, yeah, I can't be like that either, you know, right? I have to just be like I know who I am. I know what I have to say. I would love for them to be involved. I could really use their help. I could use the network, I could use the support, I could use the financial support, but I'm not gonna let them break my spirit.

[58:27] Jason A. Coombs: Thank you, thank you. Yeah, thank you. I'm so motivated. I want to start writing more. Come on, come through. Before we go, yeah, I want to do this quick really quick scoring a moment. Yes, you chop so many gems and I love, I love music. Yes, so I want to just give me a song. Oh scoring the moment. You said scoring the moment. I was thinking out of ten. I was like, oh no, sorry with the song the song. Yeah. So like if we're, if your life was a movie, you know, what would be like the song that plays over to opening credits?

[59:00] Aditya Joshi: Okay, sorry, easy, sorry say my easy. Okay, I'm gonna say this just because it's the song that I've written into the opening credits of the TV shows. Okay about yes, like one of my favorite songs ever is dreams by the cranberries. Okay. Yeah, really good vibe. Yeah. Okay. How about when you were valedictorian when you got announced as valedictorian?

[59:22] Aditya Joshi: Oh, taking it back. Trying to think what I was listening to 2013. I thought I was listening to a lot of like pop punk. Mmm. What was I listening to? I was listening to like four-year strong. Okay. I was like a big warped tour kid. Oh, were you actually? I couldn't do that. I used to have a very floppy. Yeah, I don't know probably something of probably something that's like angsty yeah, and I can't think of the song names right now.

[59:55] Jason A. Coombs: That's okay.

[59:56] Aditya Joshi: Something from that era of like if you were, if you went to warped tour in 2012 and you wore Vans and skinny jeans like what was your like fuck the world playlist like that was that was whatever's on top of that. That was that moment.

[1:00:08] Jason A. Coombs: I love that. That's so funny. How about when you met Sid and you were gonna decide to write together?

[1:00:12] Aditya Joshi: Oh, wow. Yeah. I feel like there is this in the movie The Big Sick. This is what I always think about what with Sid because we have this shared playlist. I mean it's his playlist but I use it. Yeah, we use what we write called calming instrumentals and there is a song from The Big Sick that goes like and it's like very like it's like Kumail's like walking through, you know, it's like all everything is possible. Yeah kind of vibe and I think that whatever that song is called. I can't remember it right now but from The Big Sick Michael, do you think that that song?

[1:00:51] Jason A. Coombs: Love that. How about you and Anna's first date? What song would play for that?

[1:01:04] Aditya Joshi: What am I voice I'll get all like low and link. Wow, I'm trying not to be too literal about it, it's okay. Okay, there's a song that now has become like a fun running joke for us. This is I'm trying to be expansive in my like from this Hindi movie that I grew up watching called kush kush hot. I okay and there's like a main theme like instrumental theme that runs through that and Anna when we first started it was like showing her mom and her sister like Hindi movies and yeah, they all love this theme and I think that theme is like a love theme and it's about like best friends.

[1:01:45] Jason A. Coombs: Okay. Why are you guys so cute together, that's adorable.

[1:01:54] Aditya Joshi: How about the song I do two two more the song that played when you were getting ready for Tribeca your first time we brought to go under red carpet?

[1:02:03] Aditya Joshi: I don't know if you like took an uber or like whatever what song was playing right before you got on that red carpet?

[1:02:08] Aditya Joshi: I think literally what song was playing might have been like yo, oh yeah DTMF it just come out. Yeah last year and Puerto Rican film huge Puerto Rican cast. Yeah, I was I went to Puerto Rico. I went to Madrid to see Bad Bunny recently. Yeah, either that or actually maybe DTMF. Yeah, like 'cause it's one of those moments that you'll never, you'll never forget your first big film festival.

[1:02:31] Jason A. Coombs: Of course.

[1:02:31] Aditya Joshi: And to do it with my girlfriend and like our friends and my parents were there and her parents, they met for the first time at the festival like it's just so much. So I think that's a moment that I like think about in pictures.

[1:02:39] Jason A. Coombs: I love that. Last one, when you in Paris a couple weeks ago and you was you one thing. Yeah, 1.2 million dollars to make your first feature film. Yeah, so a movie that was a big inspiration for me and said when we first started writing and it doesn't it like kind of relates to this film, but there's a score. Have you seen the movie The Namesake? No, it's Amir and I are movie. Yes. Cal Penn is in it. It's like six, it's like one of the first modern diaspora movies. Okay, and they have some like really beautiful like Indian America like a sitari type of scores, okay, and it's not that this movie is like super diaspora-y because it's really not yeah, it's more just I think about how emotional that movie makes me in those in that with that score in particular and how?

It's so much about inheritance and fathers and sons and like this long journey of like finally feeling acceptance in a community that you've always wanted to be part of and I think for that moment a lot of things running through my head. I think the big one was like Sid and I've been working on this idea a movie set at the cabin since 2018. It has taken like so many forms it like almost got made then got canceled and we killed the whole project and then but that whole time we were also like fighting for acceptance and like approval from these like gatekeepers and like the South Asian film space in the film space generally and I think to just feel like not even like they had accepted us but like we had made it happen.

[1:04:27] Jason A. Coombs: Of course, so I think about those like the score from that movie.

[1:04:27] Aditya Joshi: I love that. Yeah, what a great soundtrack. Thanks.

[1:04:34] Jason A. Coombs: Yeah, it's really eclectic. I love your life. I wish I had a better recall for songs. No, this is great. And I know we spent a long time talking about you but I always like to end episode highlighting a cause or an organization or someone else that you want to shine a little bit light on.

[1:04:49] Aditya Joshi: Well, I'm trying to light a light on Anna. So I'll continue to do that whatever people ask me but an organization that I think is worth talking about is the organization that we partnered with for West Side Story story, which is Brooklyn music school. So West Side was a nonprofit collaboration with the school Brooklyn music school run by this guy Brian Adams ik it's in Fort Greene very close to where I live cool, and it's a community music school. It's been around for a hundred and twenty years. I mean, it's a beautiful old building right next to Barclays Center or like a panic Avenue Barclays Center station. Yeah, and they do music programming for kids like in Brooklyn and they almost went under a couple years ago and Brian had this like heroic fundraising effort and I love that they let us shoot in their space for free.

Brian has been like so supportive. He came to Tribeca and the work that they do is amazing. They bring in resident artists from all over the world and you know just Brian just basically like leverages every connection he has from all this time being a working musician to make sure that the kids at the school who are both like kind of like old school Brooklyn family neighborhood kids, you know, like and also like it's kind of like a new class of people who are living in Brooklyn kids but it's a good place for them to mix and like spend time learning arts and just like giving them access to things that they may not have all their parents are at work or like, you know, it's hard in a city like this, especially when you're a kid to like have a space to just like be creative and it's a beautiful building and they do such great work and they still need donations and they still need support support them over a hundred years over a hundred years and the theater space there is gorgeous, so rent it out shoot a movie there.

[1:06:37] Jason A. Coombs: Thank you so much for spending time with me today, I love you, you're amazing. Yeah, this is great. I love, I love this. Thank you. Shop your social medias website. Yeah, follow you support you. They're not supporting you already. Yeah.

[1:06:49] Aditya Joshi: At my name ad it way a dot mo V and then my website is 80 it way 80 it way a mo V calm.

[1:07:00] Jason A. Coombs: Amazing Fran consistency. Love that. Love that so much. Congratulations. Thank you. We're gonna do a part two after the movie. Yeah next year. Yeah, but I said, yeah, we'll have a good time. Congratulations, my friend.

[1:07:11] Jason A. Coombs: I appreciate you and I went my website calm Jason the coons on all the socials follow support like share we appreciate your love your support and thank you again for sharing time with me today. I love y'all and thank you Alan for recording us.

[1:07:29] Aditya Joshi: Thank you everybody.