The Outsider, page 17
The way the shows worked was that each comedian would have about two and a half minutes for their set, and since I was the “headliner,” I did my forty-five-minute set and tried to include new material each time I did. If that sounds like a power grab, you should know that the other comedians got two and a half minutes because that’s all the material they had. I was on TV and was known around town, so I wasn’t headlining as some demented ego trip; I just had enough recognition to bring people in (people I was not sleeping with). Completely by accident, I basically put these comedians through every horrible thing you can do to a new performer: the gong, two and a half minutes to make people laugh, a crowd that had to stand the whole time as if they were in a frozen mosh pit (there were no seats), and, worst of all, celebrities in the audience. Imran Khan—the Bollywood actor and my costar in Delhi Belly, not the former prime minister of Pakistan—came to one of our shows. If that doesn’t sound impressive to you, it would be like Ryan Gosling randomly showing up to an amateur comedy open-mic night at a small rock club where one slightly known and several totally unknown comedians were performing. Maybe Ryan Gosling spends his Monday nights this way, but I doubt it. He’s married to Eva Mendes.
Pretty quickly, our buzz went through the roof.
* * *
A lot of the people who showed up to tell jokes at the Blue Frog were hobby comics, guys who worked in advertising who thought they should be famous because they were the funniest people at their conference room tables. Many of them never came back after their first attempt, but of the comedians that did, at least ten or fifteen are now huge comics in India. These were careers that, like mine, were forged in fire. Forged at the Blue Frog, in between gong strikes. By the way, the worst audience member in the world is that advertising guy who feels like he’s funnier than the comics onstage and is sitting there thinking, “Yeah, I can do this shit. How hard can it be?” Those guys got eaten alive onstage every time they performed.
I paid for all of the Blue Frog shows, and I lost money every single night. But I loved it. I was dating Shivani by this time, so she did our event management. We had massive fights before each gig, and crazy sex after. It worked for us.
The shows allowed me to hone my material and introduced me to a small group of comics who became longtime collaborators. We got an office and made Weirdass Comedy official. I had some money from my CNBC gig, so that helped me pay for the office. We were like the cool pothead kids with eight thousand ideas, so we started writing sketches. It’s not easy to motivate a bunch of potheads, but somehow, we churned out a ton of material. Some material was so terrible it should have been sent off to sea after being lit on fire like at a Viking funeral, but some of it was pretty great. It felt like punk rock.
We wrote all the time. Sketches, comedy, rock songs. We did improv. Within six months, we had enough material to put on India’s first sketch comedy show, with new material every month. Unless someone was doing improv in a small rural village somewhere with no internet, I’m pretty sure we actually were the first. Our shows turned into a scene. When I look back at it, I realize that my comedy then was pretty vulgar and borderline sexist. I call that time my “Look at Me, I’m Bill Burr Phase,” which is a phase I’m pretty sure every wannabe male comedian goes through. I wanted to be edgy, but it’s hard to create alternative comedy when there is no existing scene to be an alternative to. In your twenties, you also usually don’t have enough life experience to back up any edginess you’re trying to put out there.
But what an environment like that does is make you ready for literally any crowd. I’ve done some pretty terrifying gigs, but nothing could compare to the sheer unbridled fear of a Weirdass Hamateur night.
Five Hamateur nights in, models and celebrities and DJs were coming to our shows, possibly because they’d heard about Delhi Belly…
* * *
About that.
Because I was doing comedy all over town, managers, agents, and filmmakers started paying attention. I’d landed a major part in Delhi Belly alongside Bollywood stars like Imran Khan (a.k.a. Ryan Gosling of Bollywood). Delhi Belly was produced by Aamir Khan, who is just a cinematic icon and perhaps our most credible film producer to date. This man is single-handedly responsible for elevating the intelligence in Hindi cinema, and Delhi Belly was his gamble on a young, fun, vulgar caper. If you ever get the chance to be around someone who works at his level, fucking take it. My work ethic today comes from having been around people who work at the top and seen the hours it takes.
I had already shot the movie when Weirdass Comedy was taking off, but for whatever reason the movie sat on the shelf, as they say, for a Long-Ass Time. But because Imran was in it, people in the film industry knew about it, and by association, they started to know about me. In case you don’t know about Delhi Belly, it finally came out in 2011 and was a hit. It was kind of like the Indian version of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, a Guy Ritchie action comedy peppered with over-the-top violence and crazy, ridiculous shit going down at every turn. I made my big movie debut wearing a curly black wig and glasses, which you really should google if you haven’t already. So there I was, this short Indian comedian acting alongside the Ryan Gosling of Bollywood. I felt totally out of place, but I loved it, which is the story of my life.
So at this point life is pretty good. Shivani and I have moved in together. I’m getting enough corporate work to tide me over and make rent, and then I made Delhi Belly. I got to be where magic is created from nothing, a film set where kids from small towns show up to be part of someone else’s madness until hopefully, someone is dumb enough to fund their own madness. It’s hard to describe how addictive that is. When I quit/lost my job at CNBC because I was too busy juggling it with film work and a global recession was coming down, film was all I wanted to do.
While we waited for Delhi Belly to come out, Imran and Ranbir Kapoor, who may still be the top actor in India today, were set to host the Filmfare Awards. The Filmfares are like our Oscars, with like 98,000 more sponsors and 7,000 percent more attitude. They had been struggling with a scriptwriter who had been around for about twenty years and was writing jokes as if he had been around for twenty years. By the way, as I write this, I realize I’ve been around for close to twenty years, and now I am having an existential crisis about my own age and writing. And so it goes.
The Weirdass gang was called in on a Hail Mary to see if we would write some segments and sketches. We did, and it went great. It was possibly the most stressful writing gig I’ve ever experienced. Very little time to work, rushed deadlines, total pressure.
Then the following year, 2010, we got a call to write for Shah Rukh Khan. Yup. That one. Mumbai-suitcase-by-the-sea-balcony-platform-six-thousand-people-on-Sunday-waving Shah Rukh Khan. I was invited to Mannat, his dream house by the sea. Imagine George Clooney mixed with Marlon Brando inviting you to his 27,000-square-foot mansion. You know someone has achieved an otherworldly level of wealth and fame when even their house has a name that literally translates into “Dreams.”
So welcome to one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. This was the first time I was exposed to true fame. People who are as famous as he is can call meetings at strange hours, because who would question him? He’s Shah Rukh Khan. I arrived at the appointed time—11:00 p.m.—and was met at the door by a security guard, who politely asked, “Where have you come from?” I was so nervous I replied, “Myself. I’m Vir Das. I’ve come from myself.” I was there to get hired as a writer, and my first conversation out of the gate was a total failure and made zero sense.
The guard led me into the grand study lined with grand bookshelves. I waited there for three hours, alongside a few other mere mortals who were called to hold court with Khan. It was me, a doctor, a politician, and a few event organizers all waiting around. To ease my nerves, I gorged on his fancy food and looked at his books while we waited.
Then he arrived. Court began. All I remember is that he walked in followed by roughly seventeen people, who moved like they were extra parts of his body. You got the distinct impression that this was someone who was NEVER alone. Which made me fascinated by what he possibly did or thought about when he was alone.
He smoked a cigarette and said, “You read the script?”
The room was utterly quiet as he and his posse waited for my reply.
“Sir…”
“And?”
“I don’t think it’s funny.”
More silence while everyone exchanged looks that very clearly telegraphed the thought “This dumb punk kid is getting tossed off the balcony and into the sea.”
Khan stood up and walked closer to where I sat. “All right,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” Translation: “Bring it, young blood.”
So the kid who got kicked out of boarding school, the one who snuck porno magazines onto a Lagos rooftop and got left behind by a Carnival Cruise ship, was writing jokes for an icon who was worshipped by millions. If I fucked this up, I was pretty sure I was done. I would have to leave India and start a comedy scene somewhere else, somewhere remote and humorless, like Siberia, or maybe I’d just go back to my boarding school, as a teacher.
I pitched jokes for five hours, got some laughs, and changed some punch lines while he smoked and drank black coffee. We wrapped at about 7:00 a.m. I could see the sun starting to come up over the ocean through the antique-looking and yet somehow entirely automated electronic wooden blinds.
“Go home and rest up, and come back later,” said Khan. “We’ll start again then.”
I basically moved into his study in Mannat for four days to work on his jokes. I was in my twenties and he was forty-something, so I’m sure some of the material I came up with was immature, but he was never patronizing, and always kind. People say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but Khan was an exception. Hanging around him was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. If you’ve ever seen someone walk into a room and felt the energy shift, that’s what it was like. When he walked into a room I could feel the ground move, and I mean this in the literal sense. When he walked onstage at the Filmfare Awards, thousands of people shifted in their seats, I swear. I’ve played large crowds myself, but I have never experienced anything like that. It’s another level. You can’t manufacture that kind of magic or charisma or whatever the hell you want to call it. He just had it.
Here’s the thing: Being a writer is heartbreaking business. You write words that you fall in love with and then you have to watch someone butcher them. Weirdass Comedy wrote almost every major award ceremony in India for the next three years, for almost every single major Bollywood star as a host. Khan is the only person I’ve seen take a line, make it entirely his own, and then somehow make it better.
Khan has met millions of people, and each one of those meetings likely meant way more to the person than it probably did to him. Do you know how many writers for movies, books, articles, ads, and more he meets a year? Probably thousands. But somehow, he makes you feel like you are the only person in the room, and that your voice is being heard. He also makes sure you are fed when you’re in his house—and that’s very, very Delhi. For that brief moment he spends with you, he finds a way to be kind and entirely present. It’s something I have tried to learn, a feeling I try to conjure up each time I go onstage. I try to make my audience feel the way he made me feel. I haven’t always succeeded, but it’s a noble goal to make someone feel entirely seen, heard, and like they’re part of your story. That’s when fame truly means something beautiful.
We love Khan because he is the king, and yet he is the perpetual epitome of an outsider. The Delhi boy who showed up with a suitcase, no contacts, no family backing, and built a house by the sea. If it’s possible for him, it’s possible for us.
I’ve toured the world, I’ve made movies, I’ve become a part of show business, I’ve crashed and burned, been canceled, been investigated, made my way back. I now have a global audience, bigger than the Blue Frog. I am, by many people’s yardstick, a success. But I know only two things for sure: I’ve been audacious, and I connect with people. Whether it’s moving to Mumbai, putting flowerpots down onstage, deciding to be in the movies, heading to Alabama, going on prime time, or starting a company. I have never believed something I do is going to be small. In my mind, it’s going to be huge, and it’s going to require everything I have. There is no other way.
I’ve usually been wrong, but when I’ve been right, boy, have I been right.
I think that’s really the only upside of fame. You can believe that something is going to happen. Khan or Dave Chappelle can wake up in the morning and think of something and know that it is probably going to be believed in, funded, listened to, and seen. The amount of time that passes between them having an idea and that idea reaching a green light is down to the minimum. I’ve woken up with eighty ideas in my head every single morning since I was eighteen, and fame to me means reducing that time span between having an idea and having someone green-light that idea. That span is still far from short enough.
I recognize that even though the person on the stage is literally elevated, the audience members are the ones on a pedestal. I learned that from being in the room with greatness when I was very young. Most truly famous people, most truly great artists, understand how humbling the experience of being in front of an audience can be. Fandom is fickle. But attention and respect, hopefully, last a long, long time.
I wrote the Filmfare Awards later that year. Twelve years later, I had just turned my phone on again after going underground after having performed at the Kennedy Center, which got me canceled and which you’ll read more about soon. After that debacle, I came back to Mumbai and was keeping a low profile, editing a show I had just starred in that we all were convinced no one would buy. “Starring the terrorist Vir Das, here’s a show for kids!” Everyone, from my management, to my family, to the press, to the industry had written me off.
I was taking a cigarette break at the edit suite when I got a call from an unknown number. I answered.
“Vir. Shah Rukh.”
I froze.
“Khan?”
He said yes and laughed, as if we talked every single day. I had never spoken to this man on the phone in my life. He had just heard something I had said about him on Whitney Cummings’s podcast the year before. I have too much respect for him to share exactly what he said. I won’t talk about what he and his family had been through that year. But let’s just say he was kind, during an extremely rough year in my life.
I will share that he ended with “This is my number. Now you have it if you need me for any help.”
Courage from a king is worth more than gold. That’s when fame, or stardom, or artistry, is truly beautiful. When it inspires, connects, and makes you brave. I finished my cigarette and went back in to edit.
I knew I wasn’t done.
That was three years ago. I went from being at a complete low to codirecting a movie, acting in three, winning an Emmy, and working on a new special. I finished my first solo director’s gig, starred in a show. Only in Mumbai.
Whatever comes next, I know this: It’s gonna be huge. It’s gonna take everything. We’re probably going to have to build it ourselves.
A SHORT DOSE OF GROUNDING
I once walked into an audition for Gabriel Iglesias’s sitcom, Mr. Iglegias. I think they saw my headshot and thought I was Mexican. I walked into the hallway and saw about fifty Mexican guys there. Then I went into the audition and told them I was Indian. They politely asked if I could do a Mexican accent. I had never done a Mexican accent in my life. So I did an audition in some sort of a racist Cheech & Chong rip-off accent. I said “amigo” five times in three sentences. I would give anything to get my hands on that tape.
CHAPTER NINE BOLLYWOOD ANTIHERO
Vir having some fried chicken before hosting the International Emmy Awards. Is there some kind of unwritten rule that says if you write a chapter about a certain industry, you have to have actually succeeded in that industry? Because if that’s the case, I have no business writing this. Here’s why: I have been in eighteen movies. Five of them were successes. I’m told that’s a pretty good ratio. Now consider that I’ve been the lead in four movies, and none of them was a success.
So why am I writing this? Because I want you to understand Bollywood.
In case you don’t know, Bollywood is a big, flashy word that is supposed to encompass the entire Hindi film industry. First of all, you should know that most Indians in the industry detest the term “Bollywood.” It’s reductive and crude. It’s the equivalent of calling Hollywood “Marvel Town.” Even though I have not succeeded as a leading man (as I write this), and by all popular accounts I have kind of crashed and burned out of the film industry, I now head to an editing room every morning to finish the edit of a film called Happy Patel, which, if all goes according to plan, will be my first Hindi release in eight years. Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years, as LL Cool J says. But yeah, it will hopefully be called a comeback, if you consider the middle of the celebrity ladder an exciting place to come back to. I do. But we’ll get back to Happy Patel much later.
Just like in Hollywood, manifestation and delusion are the two things that you need to succeed in the Hindi movie industry. You have to have an undeniable level of confidence mixed with an undeniable level of luck mixed with—if you’re really lucky—an undeniable family tree. And even then, on any given Friday you could be rejected by the audience. Why? Because the movie wasn’t good enough, because you were not tall enough, because the role you were playing didn’t suit you enough, because your voice wasn’t deep enough. Who knows? But the audience somehow, collectively, decides how they feel about you, and they usually are in complete agreement. There are very few actors that an Indian audience is divided about. They either love you, or they fucking hate you. All of us. It’s pretty unifying, and also utterly heartbreaking if you’re on the receiving end of the latter.
