Maz Jobrani – Jimmy Vestvood: Amerikan Hero

Q) What are the recent projects that you are working on?

A) I have my movie Jimmy Vestvood: Amerikan Hero. It premiered at the Austin Film Festival and it is a comedy. I compare it to the Persian version of Pink Panther. Nine times out of ten, when you are of Middle Eastern decent and you go to audition for a film in Hollywood they will say, “Oh, you’re of Middle Eastern decent. Great! Can you say, ‘I will kill you in the name of Allah!” And you say, “I could, but what if I played the doctor?” There doesn’t tend to be a lot of positive parts for people of Middle Eastern decent. So, we made a movie where the guy that saves the day is Persian and he is kind of a bumbling idiot, but he saves the day. Go to http://www.jimmyvestvood.com to check out the trailer! I’ve also got a book that I have written that comes out in February called I’m Not A Terrorist, But I Played One On TV. That is my biography told in a funny way. it’s about all my travels around the world. Then, other than that it has just been a lot of touring.

Q) How did the film do at the Austin Film Festival?

A) It won the “Best Comedy Vanguard Award.” We were very excited about it. Good things are happening! I have to get used to saying, “I’m an award winning filmmaker now.”

Q) Talk about the process of creating the film and now having it appear in film festivals.

A) It was a long process for my cowriter Amir Ohebsion and I. We started writing it about ten years ago and in those ten years we had many different versions of it. We had a couple of times people said they wanted to finance it. In 2008, there was a guy out of Dubai who said he wanted to finance it, but then the stock market crashed. After that, a man contacted me and said he was the biggest roofer on the East Coast and wanted to make the film. Then, he disappeared. Film making is not easy and we kept running into those types of things. Two years ago, right around this time, we started an Indigogo crowdfunding campaign and we were able to raise a little bit over a hundred thousand dollars. Once we had our seed money, Amir and I thought we could either make the film or run away to Brazil. We decided we were going to make the film. We got the rest of the funding and were able to film it last year. We did the editing this year and then applied to festivals.

Q) You wore a number of hats making this film. What were some of the challenges you faced while you were balancing being writer, producer and acting?

A) At an independent level, you end up doing a lot and I got such new respect for filmmakers. It is not easy! I’ve made a short before, but I’ve never done a full length film. This experience just really humbled me. Even things like scouting locations, we didn’t have the budget to have a major scout out there looking for places for us. So, we were doing that ourselves. There is a character in the film that lives in a mansion so we were trying to find a mansion we could use for like nothing. We didn’t really have the money to pay people who had mansions to be able to let us use it for a few days. So, we would get up early in the morning and drive like an hour to an hour and a half out of Los Angeles and go scout these places. They would be beautiful on the outside and rundown on the inside. We would be like, “Maybe we can use the exterior here and then the interior at another house. Or I have a friend that lives two hours away and maybe we can use their house.” Then, the line producer would say we couldn’t go two hours away because the amount of money we would have to spend on gas for the trucks to go down would negate the money you would save. It was this crazy puzzle that we were putting together and yet, somehow, it worked.

Q) How did the casting for the film come together?

A) A lot of the people put in the film were people that I knew that are friends. I just basically called them and said, “I’m doing this movie. I’d love for you to play such and such a character. Are you in?” A lot of people said, “Yep! Let’s do it.” Then, some of the people we had to go out and get. The main bad guy is played by John Heard of Home Alone and Big fame. John has been around so a guy like that we just got him the script and heard back he wanted to do it. I was talking to one of our producers, Ray Moheet, and he was the one who finalized John. I couldn’t believe it, but it was great. He was in and we were done. He did a great job!

Q) What are some of your most memorable moments from filming the movie?

A) Every day on the beach was so much fun. It was hot and we were out on a sunny day in LA. It was fun because I was in this funky leopard print Speedo. We just got to play and there was a lot improvising going on. Sam Golzari plays a character in the movie. I accidentally run into his character on the beach and I start giving him advice. With Marshall Manesh, he plays a butcher and owns a grocery store. Sam plays his son in the movie and Marshall’s character basically says in front of me, “When I retire, my son is going to take over my business.” The son says to his dad, “I can’t be a butcher. I told you I’m a vegetarian.” The dad gets real serious and then we did a scene that was an homage to The Godfather. The scene where Fredo is in Cuba and is told, “I know it was you. Fredo, you broke my heart!” We took that out and basically goes Godfather on his son. He gives him a big kiss on the cheek and his eyes glaze over. His son is saying he doesn’t want to take over the business and he says, “Homayoun, don’t break my heart!” We punch in some Godfather-y and it was fun! The beauty of doing an independent film is that you can do whatever the hell you want because there is no studio exec there saying yes or no. We just came up with it that day and we went for it. It was a blast.

Q) You have great comedic timing. Is it something that is natural to you or you have had to hone it?

A) Well, when you are gifted like I am….No, I don’t know. I think that I have had an ear for comedy because as a kid I would watch it a lot. When I was twelve years old, I started doing musicals and learned how to be on stage, smile and be present. I think that added to my ability to be comfortable on stage. After that, the rest of that with the writing and timing with punch lines, that comes with doing it. I’ve been doing it sixteen years and when you’re doing standup comedy five to ten times a week you just keep going. You eventually learning timing and how to milk a joke. You learn how to play with an audience. It all came from doing it for so long.

Q) What message do you hope people take away from viewing the movie?

A) The movie is just a silly film. It’s very much like Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther. I want the message to be a very subtle one that is just to enjoy the film, laugh, like the character and not even think about the fact that he is of Middle Eastern decent. You will think about it because a lot of issues in the film talk about that, but like the character and like a Middle Eastern character that saves the day. Want to see more of him and more of the community. The message is to show a side of people in those kinds of movies that we are not used to seeing, especially with the news these days with ISIS and all these other terrorist threats it is fun to show these funny silly sides. We want to show them that this exists as well. It’s not always FOX News.

Q) Is there anything else you want to be sure to share with our readers?

A) Check out the website and if you enjoy the trailer, share it with your friends. We are looking for distribution. We’re the little film that could! We don’t have a major studio behind us. Any help with people enjoying it and spreading it can help us get it into theaters so other people can enjoy it, too.