June 25, 2020
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Sachin Bhargava Dharwadker
NFFTY has grown into a wonderful community of over 2,700 filmmakers from around the world. Alumni have experienced success in many areas of the media industry. To celebrate these achievements, we are highlighting NFFTY alumni here!
Sachin Bhargava Dharwadker (NFFTY ‘16, ‘17) is an award-winning screenwriter and director based in Los Angeles. Since graduating from NYU in 2016, Sachin has been selected for a Sundance Ignite fellowship, a Richie Jackson Artist fellowship, the Sundance Episodic Lab, and the New York Stage & Film Filmmakers’ Workshop.
Sachin’s pilot for a television drama, THE KOLATKARS, was recently optioned for development by Paramount TV. You can check out Sachin’s NFFTY films, as well as his more recent work, at sachinfilms.com.
OUR INTERVIEW WITH SACHIN:
You have experience working in new media, television, and film — do you have a favorite or preferred format to work in? When you have a new idea, how do you decide which medium would be best to bring it to life?
Before I start talking about myself, I just want to say that Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter. The story is the same it’s always been but the atmosphere really is different this time. Let’s keep going. I also hope the next one of these Alumni Spotlights highlights a Black filmmaker, because there are a lot of Black NFFTY alumni who are killing it right now.
On to the question. I’m at home working with moving images of any kind, but if I had to choose one, it would be narrative film. The feeling of working on set with actors and camera and crew, breathing life into something that previously only existed in my head or on the page, and then seeing it through to completion — that’s what it’s all about. New media and television both offer an abundance of opportunity, visibility, and employment as steady as it gets in this business; I’d be lying, however, if I said I don’t work in those fields as a means to an end.
Right now, I pretty much split any new ideas between television and film. I’m in more of an immediate position to make things happen on the TV side — whether it’s writing a new staffing sample or developing a show for sale — so there’s definitely more volume there. Let’s put it this way: my more practical and accessible ideas fall to TV, while my weirder and more personal ones are reserved for film. I’m trying to make a living in TV so that I can spend more time working on film without worrying about health insurance and a dwindling savings account.
As a writer, where do you draw inspiration for your work?
Two places, and the first is life. In general, I think the most important thing you can do as a writer is to live an observant and curious life, because if you can’t watch people and be fascinated by them, how can you write about them? As for inspirations from my own experiences, my tendency to resist stereotype while growing up South Asian-American had a lasting effect that I think shows up in my work. You won’t find those dominant images of South Asian diaspora — conservative parents, religious guilt, you know it — anywhere in my bio. I’m the second child of two non-religious lit professors who spent most of his childhood drawing, playing competitive basketball, and doing theater. I was bad at math too. That freaked out the white kids in Wisconsin because it meant I didn’t fit into the box that made them comfortable. This made my social life hard, but I also loved not fitting into their box. So part of the mandate I’ve given myself is to tell South Asian-American stories that actively reject the box. When the vast majority of Desi movies and TV shows are rom-coms about resisting our parents, I want to help create a space for something different. The movies have such a potential for beauty, danger, and mystery. Why can’t that regularly include Brown people?
The second place is other movies. I grew up in a house where I saw movies like PERSONA and THE RULES OF THE GAME in my teens, so I caught the cinephelia bug well before the filmmaking bug and have found it incredibly useful as an inspirational tool. It’s not necessary to be a scholar of the medium, but the kind of work I want to do — creating something fresh that’s still rooted in classical forms — requires a close reading of films and film history, with an emphasis on work that falls outside the white patriarchal canon. My favorite part of this process has been discovering the amazing stuff that was made in India throughout the twentieth century under the shadow of commercial Bollywood: the films of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Shyam Benegal, and Saeed Akhtar Mirza among many others. These were serious humanist films about Indian life that, with the exception of Ray’s, mostly sit in sheds collecting cobwebs. They’re a primary source of inspiration for me and nothing would bring me greater joy than to filter their spirit into contemporary Desi experience.
You have had the opportunity to participate in many prestigious fellowship programs, including Sundance Ignite. What was it like to be a part of those creative communities? What did you gain from those experiences that’s most valuable to you?
Sundance Ignite was the door that led to all others. I knew about the program because a friend from college had done it the year before, and when I applied in fall 2016 it was on a last-minute whim. Little did I know. The creative community I joined when my Ignite experience started in January 2017 has been a fixture of my life ever since, and it doesn’t just consist of people from my class. Ignite fellows from different years seek each other out and become friends and collaborators in cities all over the world — it’s like an international friend group that’s always down to read your scripts, help you on your sets, or just hang out. A blessing. Ignite taught me that the best thing you can do in this industry is to find your people, because they’re out there and they make everything better.
While I was doing Ignite in 2017, I was mulling over a pilot I’d been writing sporadically (THE PRINCE OF HYDE PARK) and the team encouraged me to submit it to Sundance’s Episodic Lab, which would take place that fall. I ended up getting in, and where Ignite had been a lesson in the interpersonal aspects of the industry, the Episodic Lab was a ruthless professional boot camp. Suddenly I was getting notes from Lena Waithe and mock-pitching a whole season of my show to HBO’s Head of Drama while suffering from altitude sickness. The experience lit a fire under my pants and after six short days in the mountains, I knew that I’d be moving to Los Angeles the following year to try and work as a TV writer. That had never been a part of my plans in college, but the Episodic Lab showed me how fertile that area of the industry is right now, and how much more opportunity TV holds for someone like me to make a good living doing what I love. Before I made the jump to the West Coast, though, I also took THE PRINCE OF HYDE PARK to the New York Stage & Film Filmmakers’ Workshop, which was similar to the Episodic Lab but different in key ways. The main events of that lab were readings of the scripts by a company of professional actors, which really changed the game. Hearing the thing out loud gave me the insight I needed to finish off HYDE PARK as my first staffing sample for TV jobs.
If it wasn’t clear: fellowships are great and filmmakers should always be applying to them. Hollywood runs on nepotism and these programs can give you a way in if your mom isn’t a partner at CAA. When people aren’t hiring their friends’ kids, they’re usually looking up the latest crop of diverse fellows from Sundance, Film Independent, etc. Especially if they have a mandate to stop hiring the same white people over and over, which may be happening more and more if this movement continues apace!
What was it like working for Broadway.com and on THE TONY BEAT?
A whirlwind. I hadn’t yet graduated from college when I got the job and right in the middle of production, I was in that infamous balcony collapse at a fellow NFFTY alum’s apartment (crutches for a week). On top of that, it was a challenge because my background is mainly in fiction and here I was trying to shape and conceptualize an entire docu-series on the fly — while in deep pre-production for my thesis film, which I took time off to shoot. I’m anxious just thinking about it, and looking back I really do wonder how I held myself together.
But it was all fine, because making THE TONY BEAT was ultimately a huge pleasure and a rich learning experience. Broadway.com was so accommodating and gave me ample freedom to explore, something they were clear about from the beginning. The concept was this: in a handful of six-to-eight-minute episodes, capture the madness of the 2016 Tony Awards season by following Broadway.com’s editors to all the junkets and galas and dinners. The idea was to get a behind-the-scenes view of the energy and machinery of Broadway during that time of year. One thing that blew my mind was the stamina of the actors nominated for Tonys — they were out there performing eight times a week and then showing up at 8am the next morning for two hours of interviews in some random hotel lobby. I get exhausted remembering how Lin-Manuel Miranda, who had twelve jobs in HAMILTON, bounced off the walls every time we interviewed him. Understanding how much stage actors have to do really gave me a newfound respect for them. They make a lot of these movie stars look even more lazy and entitled.
That fall I continued working at Broadway.com as a videographer and editor, and held that job down until I left New York. When things were slow during my first fall in LA, they very kindly started giving me steady work as a remote editor, and the flexibility of that system made it easy to write and take meetings whenever I wanted to. It’s been so nice that I just kept doing it instead of finding a minimum-wage assistant job in Hollywood. I was working for Broadway.com right up until coronavirus hit. Shoutout to them.
Your pilot for a television drama, THE KOLATKARS, was recently optioned for development by Paramount TV. That must have been so exciting! Can you share a little about what that process was like?
The path of THE KOLATKARS so far has been so full of surprises. In early 2019, after THE PRINCE OF HYDE PARK had been floating around for a while, my managers encouraged me to get another drama sample out there. I knew I wanted to center an Indian-American family in this one but felt short of ideas. So I stole from myself. The fall I moved to LA I had written a feature called the THE LOVE COMES SLOWLY about a family that suddenly moves from India to the states and has to address deep familial wounds while adjusting to immigrant life. So I extracted the same main characters, switched the move to a cross-country one, and had the parents accidentally kill a white supremacist who goes to their daughter’s new high school! Finishing that pilot was the most innocuous and straightforward writing experience of my life, and I was just relieved that I finally had a second sample. So naturally, any and all development interest was startling. A young exec at Paramount TV was particularly enthusiastic and wanted me to come in and do a “soft pitch” of what season one looked like. (My sense of time has completely deteriorated, but I think the meeting was in January 2020.) His boss, an SVP of Development, also attended and she shared his enthusiasm. The whole conversation was productive yet casual and I really wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Six weeks later, just as COVID-19 was starting to cancel every event, I got the call that Paramount wanted to option the show and develop it with me before eventually pitching to networks. The process since then has all been remote but I’ve been learning how much paperwork and complexity there is to even the most basic Hollywood deals. Once everything closes it’ll be the first time I’ve ever been paid for my writing, which also qualifies me for associate WGA membership. One step closer to health insurance after I turn 26! I’ll take that bit of good personal news from this year that was forged in the deepest pit of Hell. Medicare-for-all would be better though.
Having lived in both cities, can you talk a little bit about how your experience with the film and television industry has differed between New York and Los Angeles?
With the exception of its vibrant independent film scene, New York is mainly a production town, while Los Angeles is where the vast majority of development and writing happens. Think of LA as the center of industry infrastructure and New York as one of its most active satellites. My sensibility is definitely more East Coast, and if it hadn’t been clear that LA had better opportunities for me in the short term I probably would’ve stayed in New York longer. There’s a decent number of TV writers’ rooms in New York, but unless you’re a successful playwright or you spent a lot of time in LA earlier in your life, it’s hard to get those jobs. (There are always anomalies, of course, but this is the general wisdom.) Case in point: I have a friend from the Episodic Lab who had lived in New York and worked on a show there as a Script Coordinator, then later moved to LA to find her first writing job; that first writing job ended up being in a New York room, so she came back for it and lived in an Airbnb after moving her life across the country. If I’m lucky enough to have that happen, I’d do it in a heartbeat, but it’s much more likely that my first staffing gig will be in LA.
What’s funny is how many of the same things happen in both cities, industry-wise, but how different the approach is. New York is all noise, all grit, all the time, while LA becomes a ghost town after 9pm every night. I love both places equally, in different ways. But I think that when I left New York — I had moved to the city at 18 and spent a total of five years there — I was burned out and ready for the healthier, quieter Cali lifestyle. I’d love to make a New York movie someday, though. The LA movie has nothing on the New York movie.
Do you have any advice for young filmmakers looking to break into the world of television?
Disclaimer: everything below is for the drama side of things, because that’s where my experience is. Comedy is a whole different game. I’ve seen comedy people get TV jobs right away after slaying at stand-up, sketches, and Twitter. I envy them, because comedy also seems relatively more receptive to younger BIPOC voices. Drama skews older and more conservative. Although I’m sure at least some of my advice can apply to both.
If you’re a writer, you can do worse for yourself than moving to LA, writing a good pilot, and having it read widely. As I mentioned earlier, fellowships and labs are a great resource if you’re BIPOC and don’t have family or friends in high places. If you have money saved up and can afford to work intense hours for highly exploitative pay, a job as a Writers’ PA will open a lot of doors. On a typical multi-season show, Writers’ PAs often get promoted to Writers’ Assistant on the next season and maybe even Staff Writer on the next. This is a much more straightforward path than the one I’m on, and it circumnavigates the need for managers and agents initially. If you’re lucky enough to attract interest from literary reps, look after that relationship carefully and make sure they’re consistently setting general meetings for you at the studios and production companies of your dreams. General meetings can get tedious and feel useless, but you really never know when the stars will align.
If you’re a director, the easiest path, as I understand it, is to make an independent feature film that premieres at a major festival (because that’s so easy isn’t it!) and let the calls come in. There’s a very strong tradition of indie filmmakers working as rank-and-file TV directors while they develop and finance their passion projects. I’ve also heard of experienced TV editors stepping into the director’s chair.
How has NFFTY impacted your life or career?
I first came to NFFTY with my short film BREATHE IN BREATHE OUT, which played Closing Night in 2016. That was my first real festival experience and I had such a blast watching the work, meeting everyone, and exploring Seattle — at the time I had never even been on the West Coast. I also roomed with Tim Hendrix, which wasn’t as horrible as you’d imagine. I was back the following year with my NYU thesis film THE ALTERNATIVE, and that festival was extra special because it was during my Ignite fellowship and we had a cohort of fellows there with their Ignite films. The overlap between NFFTY and Ignite is really consistent and, frankly, unsurprising!
As great as the NFFTY experience is, the most lasting impact for me, like with most things, is the people. So many lasting friendships were born at the festival. This past October, I actually came just so I could hang out with all my friends who had films playing.
What’s next for you?
I haven’t made a short in ages, and right before the pandemic exploded I had launched a Kickstarter for my short film Bhumika — only to cancel it when people started losing their jobs, because at that point it was awkward and tone-deaf to be sending daily emails asking for money. I’m still unsure if I’ll relaunch the Kickstarter or just make a much cheaper version of Bhumika, which is about a South Asian Uber driver who completely changes his personality and background for each passenger. I’ve cast my dream actor in the lead role and I’d honestly shoot the whole thing myself on my iPhone if I had to. It’s the kind of short that may even benefit from being made as cheaply as possible.
Aside from working with Paramount on THE KOLATKARS and continuing to search for TV staffing jobs, I’m also in the middle of writing a new feature film called THE STRANGER. The story follows an Indian-American mother who’s forced to reveal a buried family secret to her two children when a mysterious man shows up at their door one morning. It’s a combination of generational family melodrama and mystical horror, and everything takes place during one day in one house, from dawn till dusk. In other words, ideal first feature material. Aside from being an extremely personal tribute to strong Indian mothers and brother-sister relationships, THE STRANGER is also an attempt to evoke and evolve the spirit of those Indian filmmakers I mentioned earlier.
And finally: one thing I pledged to do this year as the world burns was write a paragraph about every movie I watched for the first time, whether oldie or new release. At the end of the year I want to compile them all into a book-length zine thing called COME AND SEE and sell it to my friends and family for $10. I don’t know why I’m doing this, but it’s how I’ve been procrastinating from procrastinating. I promise I do go outside too.