Joined: Mon Dec 03, 2001 4:13 pm
Posts: 439
Location: Houston, Texas
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Here is an article about the movie and a review of this movie which is made in my home town of Houston!!!
Review
About the Makers
For local 'Yaar' filmmakers, all's well that ends
By BRUCE WESTBROOK
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
Their ethnic comedy may not outgross My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but for the Houstonians behind Where's the Party Yaar?, the triumph was simply getting it made.
"I'm just glad we finished it," director Benny Mathews said of the lively, low-budget Indian-American film, opening today in Houston and six other cities.
Yaar, the Indian equivalent of "dude," is the story of an eager but awkward immigrant who has trouble fitting into the Houston scene. The local Indian-American kids, who have absorbed Western culture, consider Hari (Sunil Malhotra) a geek. With his dorky ties, white sneakers, oily hair and lame slang, he's a guy they'd rather not see at their big dance parties. But Hari is earnest and good-hearted, so perhaps there's hope for him yet.
Sunil Thakkar, who wrote the film with Mathews, Soham Mehta and Rikesh Patel, can relate: Yaar is essentially his story.
When Thakkar moved to Houston from his native Bombay in 1986, he was just like Hari -- an FOB, or "fresh off the boat" immigrant, who didn't use deodorant and was shunned socially.
"Like Hari, I was a guy people didn't want," said Thakkar, who performs in the film as one of Hari's equally clueless friends. "I wanted to fit in and didn't."
After earning his MBA from Rice University, Thakkar began working for Shell, then started staging his own dance parties as money-making events.
But he wasn't the kind of guy he wanted to attend.
Sunil Malhotra plays the main character, Hari, an earnest, good-hearted guy everyone thinks is a geek.
"If I came to my own party, I wouldn't let me in," said Thakkar. "Deep down, I'm the king of FOBs. I stuttered when I was young and wasn't in the cool crowd. You've got to have a cool crowd to keep people coming to parties. Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense from a business standpoint."
Since 1993, Thakkar also has hosted the weekly radio show Music Masala, named after his small music company. Airing 1-6 p.m. Saturdays on KTEK (1110 AM), it offers "cool music for Indians," with the kind of energized dance tunes played at his parties. (More information on the radio show and parties is available at http://www.musicmasala.com.)
Two years ago, Thakkar got the bug to turn Houston's South Asian party scene and his own immigrant experience into a movie.
Encouraged by Farid Virani, a friend and jeweler who agreed to bankroll most of the movie, Thakkar quit his day job two years ago. He and wife Sandhya Thakkar joined Virani to executive produce and invest in the film.
Mathews, another friend, had moved to Los Angeles to direct music videos for rap acts such as Bone Thugs N Harmony and Scarface. He returned home for his feature debut, directing Yaar's hectic four-week shoot. Locations ranged from the University of Houston campus to Bush Intercontinental Airport to homes in Sugar Land.
If Thakkar is akin to Hari, then Mathews is more like the movie's Mo (Kal Penn), Hari's cousin and son of a prosperous doctor. A UH student, Mo has been absorbed by American culture and is hip to styles and trends. Though born in India, Mathews grew up in Houston, graduating from Willowridge High.
Though Mo refutes stereotypes, Hari plays to them. The filmmakers admit they deliberately used a comic stereotype -- the equivalent of Steve Martin's "wild and crazy guy" -- to get people into theaters.
Melissa Phillip / Chronicle
Sunil Thakkar is the co-creator of the semi-autobiographical look at Indian immigrants, Where's the Party Yaar?
"But we also tried to open their eyes to what's really there -- to the humanity and the truth," Mathews said. "Hari is just an innocent guy trying to fit in. He's funny, but we also show compassion for him."
Yaar wound up costing about $500,000 to shoot and another $180,000 for post-production. When it was finished in January, Thakkar started showing it at film festivals and shopping it to studios.
Luckily, other movies about Indian immigrants had also begun popping up. One was 2001's American Desi, in which Penn and Malhotra also starred.
Though Thakkar calls it "a landmark film," the movie made little money. But when crowds flocked to this year's Bend It Like Beckham, a tale of Indian immigrants in Britain, Yaar drew interest from Miramax and Fox Searchlight.
"At first, nobody returned my calls," Thakkar said. "After Beckham, it was, `Let's look at your movie.' The timing was right."
Yet the studios still failed to make a satisfactory offer, so Thakkar decided to distribute the film himself. So far he's struck 15 prints, booking Yaar into art houses in Houston (the Angelika), New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and Chicago for today's opening.
On Sept. 12, Yaar will widen to two more Houston theaters, and in early October it will spread to Dallas, Austin, Boston, Atlanta and other cities.
"We are learning the game as we go along," Thakkar said. "But I believe in my marketing over Fox Searchlight's. We're opening small and hoping for good word-of-mouth (support) so we can expand. We're also hosting parties in different cities to hype the movie.
"With the recent exposure of Indian films, a lot of people are curious. In New York they are crazy about this movie, which we've been promoting via e-mail. We have very little money, so we're relying on grass-roots, 'guerrilla' marketing."
Thakkar credits the AMC chain as "the first company that held my hand. They came through, big-time." On Sept. 12, Yaar will expand to AMC's Studio 30 and First Colony 24 theaters.
Though his core audience is the many thousands of Indian-Americans, Thakkar also hopes his film will have a wider appeal.
"Indians will get some of the jokes more, but we can all relate," he said. "We are all FOBs at one stage of our lives."
Though they poked fun at Hari, Thakkar and Mathews also tried to humanize Indian immigrants by showing more dimensions.
"In America, we are not just doctors, cab drivers or convenience store owners," Thakkar said. "We are also party people.
"It's a very quirky culture, which people in America will slowly start to recognize. In India, the parties are wild. Also, in India, more movies are made than in Hollywood, and they are high-energy musicals."
Drawing from the colorful, boisterous style of such "Bollywood" productions, Thakkar used one of his own Houston parties as backdrop for his film. "Everybody throws their hands in the air and goes crazy," he said of his parties. "People come for one thing: to go wild to the music and celebrate."
Most cast members were nonprofessional actors from Houston. Penn, who came in from L.A., had a few major credits, such as Van Wilder and Malibu's Most Wanted.
"This film is completely independent, down and dirty, and as cheap as possible," Thakkar said. "But we did not compromise on the look or the music," which includes techno dance songs by popular group Cornershop.
After "begging and pleading," Thakkar got the band to accept payment of $1,000 per song rather than a higher fee suggested by their label. "But if the film grosses more than $3 million, it goes up to $10,000 per track," he said.
Yet he tries not to focus on the money.
"For me, if the film succeeds financially, great, but if it just makes people smile, then I'm looking for that, too."
Yaar ends with a dedication to the "fine folks of Houston." For Thakkar, that is heartfelt.
"This country opened the doors of heaven for me," he said. "It is the greatest in the world, and Houston is the perfect home for me. Here, if you strive for what you want, you can get it. If not for Houston, I wouldn't have gotten a chance to be on the radio and to express my life.
"We are Indian-Americans, yes, but we now live here. This is our life, and we are so blessed. India is the motherland, but Houston is my home."
'Yaar' has fun with touch of ethnic humor
By ERIC HARRISON
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
The success of My Big Fat Greek Wedding showed there's a healthy appetite for broad, ethnic-based humor, particularly when it's attached to conventionally told, sweetly romantic tales.
Where's the Party Yaar?, a locally filmed movie about Indian immigrants, is broad and ethnic-based, and it's got a sweetly romantic core. But its younger characters and loopy hipness -- not to mention the driving dance music and videolike visual touches -- likely won't endear it to the audience that made Wedding the reigning champion of indie chick flicks.
Where's the Party Yaar? (loosely translated, yaar is Indian for dude) plays like an extended Saturday Night Live skit, though it's funnier and more substantive than most of the comedies that really sprang from the show.
Sunil Thakkar plays Shyam Sunder Balabhadrapatramukhi, a clueless FOB in search of the coolest party in Where's the Party, Yaar?
Despite a shaky beginning, it blossoms into a charming if inconsistent comic essay on assimilation. Its characters, whether FOB (fresh off the boat) or second generation, are figuring out what it means to be an American, taking their cues from television, movies and popular music.
Some adopt hip-hop style and patois, turning their backs on everything Indian. Others walk a line, embracing some elements of their heritage but ashamed of anything deemed too Indian. The youngest character tries on a different identity every time we see him.
The main character is Hari, a college-age FOB who comes to live with relatives in Houston. His cousin Mo, who is about the same age, promotes "Desi Fever" parties for young East Asians.
Mo is thoroughly Americanized and wants nothing to do with the poorly dressed Hari, who doesn't use deodorant and is horrible at slang.
The film has a romantic subplot. Just before leaving India, Hari's palm is read by a holy man who predicts he will meet the woman of his dreams in America. He's eager, but how does he know when he finds her?
The issue of identity is brought to the fore when a classmate films a documentary for a college class. He drifts through the movie, interacting with East Asian groups that have little to do with each other, interviewing them on the Indian experience in America.
This is a true independent movie. It opens today on 11 screens in nine cities before branching out to two other Houston-area theaters next week.
What happens after that will depend on the reception it gets.
Grade: B-
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