Brennan 0:00
You’re listening to Dodge Movie Podcast. Your hosts are Christi and Mike Dodge the founders of Dodge Media Productions. We produce films and podcasts. So this is a podcast about films. Join them as they share their passion for filmmaking.

Christi Dodge 0:17
Welcome back, everybody to the Dodge Movie Podcast. This is episode 106. Closing out the month of February and our four films for you to try to figure out what the theme of February is. Get those guesses in and we will announce the winners. I’m being positive because so far we have one winner, but I anticipate some more so get those guesses in so you can be included in all of the shout outs and and get to choose a movie for next year. So that’s I think a big week we keep getting people suggesting movies to us, here is your chance to be responsible for one of our episodes. Today we are talking about The Big Sick that came out in 2017. We watched it for free with our Prime subscription and it stars Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Bo Burnham, Aidy Bryant, Kurt Braunohler, and David Alan Grier. Quite the comedians in this one. Michael Showalter is the director and he is responsible for Spoiler Alert, that I just watched this last weekend, I Love That For You, The Drop Out, The Shrink Next Door and The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

Mike Dodge 1:35
Is Showalter Wet Hot American Summer?

Christi Dodge 1:37
Yes.

Mike Dodge 1:38
Okay.

Christi Dodge 1:39
The DP for this film is Brian Burgoyne and he did Cake in 2017. And he also did Spoiler Alert. So directors…

Mike Dodge 1:49
They like to work together.

Christi Dodge 1:50
Yes. And The Lovebirds from 2020.

Mike Dodge 1:53
Which also is Kumail, right?

Christi Dodge 1:55
Yes.

Mike Dodge 1:56
Issa Rae, I thought.

Christi Dodge 1:57
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And and Kumail Nanjiani and his real life wife, Emily V. Gordon were the writers for this film and this film was shot in and around Chicago. The synopsis for this film is Pakistan-born comedian Kumail Nanjiani and grad student Emily Gardner fall in love, but struggle as their cultures clash. When Emily contracts a mysterious illness, Kumail finds himself forced to face her feisty parents. Wow, alliteration much? And his family’s expectations and his true feelings. Holy cow,

Mike Dodge 2:25
Lots of…

Christi Dodge 2:35
Somebody was exercising their writing muscle in that one.

Mike Dodge 2:40
Now that’s a source for their birthday.

Christi Dodge 2:42
Yeah. This one is an awkward true story, what do you think?

Mike Dodge 2:47
Super descriptively accurate but not…

Christi Dodge 2:50
Yeah, doesn’t really make me…

Mike Dodge 2:51
Yeah, no sizzle.

Christi Dodge 2:52
Yeah. Doesn’t make me, won’t make me go out and watch this one.

Mike Dodge 2:55
Yeah, it’s like the guy who doesn’t say he wants to drink booze. He says, like CH5OH or whatever ethanol’s formula is that’s what it’s like, right? Totally, completely accurate and boring.

Christi Dodge 3:08
I liked this little bit of trivia. The film was released in the United States on Kumail and Emily’s 10th wedding anniversary.

Mike Dodge 3:16
Which is sweet.

Christi Dodge 3:17
Yeah, it was funny. I just watched in doing some research a clip of them. And she said something about this is so exciting, like, people are gonna see our movie. And he said, nobody’s gonna see this movie. This is our 10th anniversary present to one another. Like he just had no hopes. And it was a huge hit spoiler alert for the numbers, but…

Mike Dodge 3:39
By the way, I gotta say before all the chemistry nerds write in and yell at me. I have no idea what the actual chemical formula for alcohol is. But you can tell me but don’t don’t make fun of me. Because I don’t know what I’m talking about and I made up some letters.

Christi Dodge 3:54
And when you write in to tell him make a guess of what the theme is.

Mike Dodge 3:58
Yes. It could be movies about booze. You don’t know.

Christi Dodge 4:02
You don’t know, you did talk about that last week. So…

Mike Dodge 4:05
There it is, lots of alcohol.

Christi Dodge 4:07
I just want to say before you read your pickup line, that Kumail Nanjiani personally contacted Anupam Kher about taking the role of his father Azmat. Kher accepted the role after learning that Nanjiani’s real father personally expressed the desire for him to take the role.

Mike Dodge 4:27
Right. Wow.

Christi Dodge 4:28
Isn’t that sweet?

Mike Dodge 4:29
That is sweet.

Christi Dodge 4:30
That would be hard. It’d be a lot of pressure that this person personally picked you out and…

Mike Dodge 4:36
Right.

Christi Dodge 4:36
And now you have to portray them.

Mike Dodge 4:38
Yeah. So I trying to think of who I wanted to portray me. And I think for pure accuracy, of course, we’d have to go with John Cena, you know, similar bill.

Christi Dodge 4:51
No, who’s the one everybody says?

Mike Dodge 4:53
Well, I think Michael Chiklis is probably who you would cast if you’re a casting director. Yeah. And I’m sorry for that Mr. Chiklis. Please don’t hold that against me.

Christi Dodge 5:03
That’s who I was thinking. All right, kick us off with your pickup line.

Mike Dodge 5:06
Okay, there’s actually two here. First we hear the first dialogue we hear is this off screen and I don’t always count that. But it’s the MC, probably David Alan Grier saying, keep it going for the next performer, my man, Kumail Nanjiani, which actually describes the film. But then the actual line of dialogue from Kumail is Hello, I’ll tell you about myself. Which is also accurate.

Christi Dodge 5:29
Yeah, very accurate. This is a great movie. And I’m partial, because I love movies. I love comedians to begin with, but then movies about their life. And I, I appreciate how they got a bunch of other comedians like Aidy

Mike Dodge 5:45
And Bo.

Christi Dodge 5:47
Yeah, and Bo Burnham, and Braunohler.

Mike Dodge 5:48
And Braunohler.

Christi Dodge 5:50
Yeah, because it just gives an air of reality.

Mike Dodge 5:54
Yeah, I don’t think actors can be comics, like you have to get a comic to play comic.

Christi Dodge 5:58
Yeah. And I hate it when they write jokes for him. But this one felt like they let the comedians just go. And I think Kumail probably has that sensibility. So he probably advocated for that. And the only I just want to say, I was so excited for the punch line as a teenager, and that one kind of did disappoint.

Mike Dodge 6:16
Sally Field and Tom Hanks, correct? Yeah, it was as good as we wanted.

Christi Dodge 6:20
Nope.

Mike Dodge 6:21
So one thing I noticed that says to me that this is a film by comics is comics love bombing. They don’t love to bomb themselves, but they love the the, the event of someone bombing horribly. So there’s a part when Kumail’s has gotten some bad news. And so his big break stand up performance is a disaster. And realistically, the other comics, love, they enjoyed watching him fail, and they enjoy bringing it up and talking about it. And I had a note in here, which I didn’t actually catch until I reread it right now is why does the audience need to see his horrible one man show? And I realized is because comics love bombing, they love watching him bomb and that one man show that’s part of it. That’s the whole shtick. And he kind of bombed with her parents, too, now I think about it.

Christi Dodge 7:13
I was gonna say, I think the thing that that had so much comedy to this is, which is a really, they ride a fine line. And I I’ve been watching some YouTube videos, and they talk about it. Like, how can we go from this very serious. You know, most parents if you hear your child’s in the hospital, and then you hear that they’ve been put in a coma and you didn’t get to make that decision. And then what’s going to happen to them, and you you know that this person was dating your child, but now you know, has decided not to. And so no, there’s going to be a little bit of animosity, but what they did so well, is they rode this line of awkward, especially Ray Romano, and I think that’s a lot to do with his acting but also his the lines that he had to deliver, but he’s so so so so good at at doing that awkward thing. And, and to me the scene that most epitomized, well, there’s two, one in the hospital cafeteria when he awkwardly brings up 9 11…

Mike Dodge 8:19
Okay, I have to say yeah, credit to Kumail.

Christi Dodge 8:22
Yeah.

Mike Dodge 8:23
That joke of it was a terrible tragedy. We lost 19 of our best guys that day. That is so funny.

Christi Dodge 8:31
Was so off the cuff to it.

Mike Dodge 8:33
And it’s because it’s so inappropriate. And that reminds me, I think I’ve told this on the podcast, I’ll try to be quick about when I was a kid and George Nashita told the joke when he got the the kite that had the Marines Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima because he was a Japanese American. He said hey, we lost that one again. I thought that was hilarious. I was 12 and that is my sense of humor. That incredibly over the top inappropriate joke. I loved that we lost 19 of our best guys that day that was…

Christi Dodge 9:04
Delivered so earnestly.

Mike Dodge 9:05
Oh yeah, it was really funny.

Christi Dodge 9:07
And then the second time is he and Kumail are in the same room sleeping but one is on the floor and Kumail’s I think up in the bed, Ray’s on the floor. And he starts talking about love. And and he says something like well, that’s why it’s so scary. That’s why they call it love or something. And Kumail goes, I don’t understand that. And he goes, yeah, I just started talking and I was hoping that it would kind of…

Mike Dodge 9:33
Yes. And at one point Ray says, out loud, it sounds stupid. And I was like, Oh, that is perfect. Right? Because he pauses out loud. Pause. It sounds stupid. Like yeah, it does.

Christi Dodge 9:47
And he just he’s not they don’t paint him as inept. No, but they definitely paint him almost as the yin to Holly Hunter’s yang and she’s very much the Shirley MacLaine from Terms of Endearment. She is…

Haven’t seen that film, but I get the reference.

Yes, she is just, you know, a dog after a bone, you’re going to take care of my child, we’re going to put her in the best hospital. And if this one is in it, then we’re gonna move her and like, she is her child’s best advocate. And I think Ray is kind of like, let’s just walk down and get them all kind of attitude. He’s not that he doesn’t want to take care of his daughter, but he just does it in a different way than his wife does.

Mike Dodge 10:29
Yeah, I think Holly Hunter’s character and I are the ones who are going to lock and load and drive the suburban through the front doors to break our child out of the hospital. I get that that, but I think what I really liked about the writing, and filmmaking of this is how we see that when we first meet them, their characters, they’re united, which would be your daughter has been put in a coma, this is a big deal. But then we start to see the cracks showing, and then that relationship kind of unfolds over the film, which in some sense, in Ray’s awkwardness, as well, but it, it allows Kumail to kind of fix his relationship with Emily. Right, as well. So I thought that was, I love that progressive disclosure. There wasn’t like a real big moment where they immediately start fighting, it was like as things had gone on. And you could see that they’re being worn down. And then I loved the writing of the line. Like, where they’re in the hospital, and they’re arguing, I think it was about whether to move her. And Holly Hunter’s character says something about him. And he’s like, oh, okay, the greatest hits, I can play this one back from memory. So it was…

Christi Dodge 11:44
Ray says that.

Mike Dodge 11:45
Yeah Ray’s character. So you can know that they’ve gone down this for they’ve had this fight many, many times and sick of it. So I thought that was super realistic, but really well done.

Christi Dodge 11:55
Right. And I, I didn’t even think of this until I was watching some of the clips, and and Showalter was talking about, how do we get the three of them out of the hospital, because as the parent, you wouldn’t want to leave, you do not want to leave your children, your child’s side, if they’re in the hospital. But in order to have them, you know, like, why would the parents go to a comedy show? You know, like, why would they go out for dinner? Why would they go stay at her apartment?

Mike Dodge 12:26
Are you asking me to answer that?

Christi Dodge 12:27
No, no, no, sorry.

Mike Dodge 12:29
Okay.

Christi Dodge 12:30
And so they said, and Emily herself, the real Emily said, because part of when someone is in a coma, life goes on.

Mike Dodge 12:39
Right?

Christi Dodge 12:39
And so it’s not that they were any of them were being disrespectful, but he had to do a show that night. And if he didn’t do that show, and it would help the parents just get their mind off of it like and so I thought it was really creative, how they worked over this, and they realize that we need to figure out a way to get them out of the hospital. So it’s not a movie set, you know, like a bottle ep. for two hours, we’re in this hospital room.

Mike Dodge 13:05
Yeah.

Christi Dodge 13:06
And I thought they did a good job because I never once went, wait, why do they leave?

Mike Dodge 13:09
Horrible filmmaking to put people in one location for the entire film.

Christi Dodge 13:14
If it’s only a 12 minute film, it’s okay.

Mike Dodge 13:16
Okay. So I like the dialogue of Ray when they’re at the Comedy Club, and Holly Hunter picks a fight with the frat boy and raise little fit as he was leaving, I thought was so poignantly accurate, that he really isn’t the kind of person who gets in fights in bars, but he’s just got this this like power, powerlessness that is fueling him. And he says, like, I’ve got levels or something he just really dumb, dorky, not at all threatening kind of thing. But you could tell, good acting on Romano’s part, that there’s an emotion there that he’s just kind of venting.

Christi Dodge 13:54
Yeah. And then Kumail’s family. And this is the other thing that I appreciated that they didn’t do. They didn’t make them the like cold, immigrant, stereotypical East Indian, you know, Pakistan, Pakistani family. They made them a very dynamic, like, parents want the best for their kids. And mothers usually are a little more picky about that. And the father’s a little bit more easygoing, and the brother is going to poke fun and…

Mike Dodge 14:26
Right.

Christi Dodge 14:26
They made them still a loving family while showing that no, but the mom wants him to marry a good girl.

Mike Dodge 14:34
Right, which is, I think realistic but also wrong. But that’s something that I think families from that culture are struggling with, as their children grow up and have love met. So they get culture clash, right? But I think it was summed up by this great line when Kumail is leaving for New York and his father has come by and as a touching moment, his mother made his favorite food, but she refuses to talk to him. And the father says, To be clear, you’re still not a part of this family, but call us when you get there. Right. And I thought that really well captured this kind of this tension that Kumail’s character talked about, and I’m sure he probably felt as a real person between, like, the tradition and the do what your parents want, and all that. And then actual life and you know, so it’s complicated. I thought they captured it well.

Christi Dodge 15:30
They very much did. And in one of the interviews, they talked about how both of their families had a nickname for each other, and they weren’t maybe the most appropriate. But her family, his family called Emily Fair and Light, there was a product, a skin lightening product. And maybe it was called Fair and Light, or that was the tagline. So I can’t remember if they called, I think they call her Miss Fair and Light. And so I wish I could remember what and they both Emily and Kumail didn’t take offense to it, they realized it was how the family members each of them, because they both did it, we’re trying to kind of wrap their brains around, we’re not going to have a daughter or son in law, like we thought, but I think they could see how much the two loved one another and they weren’t going to stand in the way and you know, they you ultimately you want your kid to be happy. And when you see them happy, then you make peace with okay, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be. But I’m just going to be happy about it. So anyway, I thought it was interesting. And I thought that the film did a good job in talking about this cultural difference that we’ve got to kind of, and I think that happens in anything. I mean, I’m thinking of, you know, how we do our holidays and, and how our kids’ spouse does their holidays is going to be different. Every family has their own culture, but it is probably much more dramatic and more. I don’t know what the word is obvious or whatever, when it’s two different cultures.

Mike Dodge 17:06
And that’s I think, the, again, the tension of immigrant families. Is that that tension, right of inserting into this new culture, but it’s made even more worse, I don’t mean to say worse but more of an issue when you marry into it. Right? And at one point, Kumail says something like, why, why did you know if you moved here? Why, why are you still trying to be like it’s in Pakistan? Right? And I don’t think his parents are wrong for that. I think that is the challenge of all immigrants. And I liked that his parents were, they can never softened, right? Again, the Hollywood thing would be to have them be like, oh, Emily’s so cool. I guess we were wrong all along.

Christi Dodge 17:52
Right.

Mike Dodge 17:53
And his mom was like, no, you should marry good Pakistani girl. I brought 25 of them by the House. Come on.

Christi Dodge 17:58
Yeah, I have that. That was a montage of all the women that came by.

Mike Dodge 18:03
Yeah.

Christi Dodge 18:03
And I love how proud Kumail is of Pakistan throughout the whole film. He’s always saying like, well in Pakistan, and different things, like he’s definitely assimilated. And there’s that funny scene with him and his brother, when his brother says out loud, like, you’re dating a white woman, and this white family turns and looks and he’s like, you know, we love white people. We’re not we ain’t the terrorists or something.

Mike Dodge 18:28
Yeah.

Christi Dodge 18:29
And so it’s, it’s very funny how he kind of handles it. But I just it’s so sweet. Because I just noticed in this viewing, how many times he says, well in Pakistan, or, you know, and, kind of, he’s sharing his culture with Emily. And so he’s talking about how it works over there.

Mike Dodge 18:45
Right. And she has a funny line after the one man show something to like, I didn’t know where you were from, or something like that.

Christi Dodge 18:54
Right?

Mike Dodge 18:54
Were kind of making fun of him.

Christi Dodge 18:56
Yeah. So is there anything else? Like in the cinematography of this film, I didn’t notice. I don’t have any notes because it just, it was kind of like just true to what it would be. I didn’t notice any, like swinging for the fences scene.

Mike Dodge 19:10
Right. So this is maybe more titled sequence in cinematography, but I liked how they opened with actual snapshots of Kumail. That was cute. Right, early on, they have a walk and talk backstage at the Comedy Club. And that was maybe a nod to the West Wing I don’t know but it was a pretty long Steadicam walk and talk I did notice speaking of cinematography, though, backstage at comedy clubs is very challenging because all the black walls so getting that lit and exposed properly was probably a little bit of a challenge. There’s a fair number of shots in cars and those are pretty stable so I’m not sure how they did that if they did process track or if they like actually mounted like screw the, the the camera mount to the hood or something but it was nice, stable footage.

Christi Dodge 19:58
I felt like there were a couple, I was like, oh, that was done on a set.

Mike Dodge 20:02
Yeah, could be.

Christi Dodge 20:03
Where the grain is grain.

Mike Dodge 20:04
Yeah.

Christi Dodge 20:04
Any other writing notes?

Mike Dodge 20:06
I will say from a safety perspective, I want to say too much food and drink all around the mac when when Holly Hunter was having the munchies and then looking at stuff made me feel nervous, but early on, you just don’t see a lot of that. I got to take a dookie humor anymore. That was a non trivial plot point. You just don’t see number two based humor not so much.

Christi Dodge 20:29
Okay. I don’t know how to follow that up so…

Mike Dodge 20:32
Yeah there is no way to follow that up.

Christi Dodge 20:33
Because there isn’t a way to segue here under sets. I thought it was hilarious. And I know you noted this too in the trivia that Zoe Kazan admitted on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that she fell asleep during some of the scenes where she was supposed to be in a coma, and was eventually, her little naps were ruined when she woke up during the middle of takes. Or if the tapes were rolling when she woke up.

Mike Dodge 20:57
Yeah. It’d be funny if she woke up like a cougar. Ah!

Christi Dodge 21:03
Right. Okay, was there any head trauma in this film?

Mike Dodge 21:06
There’s, I guess you would call it a narrative head trauma storytelling. When Terry tells a story about like hopscotch or something, some kid Jimmy gets hit in the head with a piece of chalk. But that’s kind of the point of the story, gets hit in the head.

Christi Dodge 21:20
And that was it.

Mike Dodge 21:20
That’s all the head trauma I’ve got.

Christi Dodge 21:22
All right. Did we get a smoochy in this romance?

Mike Dodge 21:25
Smoochy smoochy smoochy. We do have that Kumail kisses Emily during when they’re trying to watch The Walking Dead. This kind of they jump each other’s bones and then there’s an implied one when she comes over again, they’re watching a movie. But after all of that by the end of the film, no extra smoochies.

Christi Dodge 21:42
Well, it was very uncomfortable for Kumail to be kissing another woman in front of his real wife and calling her Emily. So I think maybe he put the kibosh on a couple of them.

Mike Dodge 21:53
Right? I think to be fair, maybe Emily should have kissed Zoe Kazan, and may may like everybody’s kissing her. It’s like normal.

Christi Dodge 22:01
Oh you mean off screen off screen.

Mike Dodge 22:02
Yeah, yeah, just on set just to kind of break the ice.

Christi Dodge 22:05
The real Emily said it was just awkward because when they were filming those scenes, she went out of eyeshot of Kumail, because he requested that and the crew kept looking at her as they were kissing, like waiting for a reaction. And so she just felt really awkward. Like she gave him a thumbs up. But she was just like, what what do you want from me?

Mike Dodge 22:25
Right? I would say maybe turn around or just like, yeah, go around the corner or something.

Christi Dodge 22:29
She didn’t care. So it was Kumail who cared.

Mike Dodge 22:31
Right.

Christi Dodge 22:32
How about a driving review? You mentioned driving.

Mike Dodge 22:36
So he drives a 2005 Toyota Corolla. And it looks like it says, I’m really broke. Like he’s so broke he can’t even afford a Prius to be an Uber. But I have to say when they’re getting ready to go to New York, Bo and Aidy and him. That was a really nice Subaru wagon for a comic. I don’t know where they got them.

Christi Dodge 22:57
Maybe they rent it.

Mike Dodge 22:59
Oh, there you go. They rented it. That makes more sense.

Christi Dodge 23:01
All right. Shall we go to the numbers?

Mike Dodge 23:03
Let’s go to the numbers.

Christi Dodge 23:04
Okay, right. Before we do that, I’m just gonna give you this little tidbit. While searching for funding, the producer submitted the script to a variety of potential studios within three hours of submission Filmnation made an offer to fund the whole movie, no strings attached. So that’s a that’s, you know what every filmmaker wants to hear.

Mike Dodge 23:23
Totally, although I think they should have had a string attached that Kumail would come over and do their son’s Bar Mitzvah.

Christi Dodge 23:30
Okay, this film, which came out just about five years ago, in 2017, I guess six years ago now. The budget was $5 million. And domestically it made $42.8 million which is 11.4x the budget.

Mike Dodge 23:47
Good job, Kumail.

Christi Dodge 23:48
Big success. Big, huge. Alright, worldwide it made $56.8 million, got a 7.5 out of 10 on IMDb. Critics absolutely loved this movie. It almost got a perfect score at 98%. Audiences were a little cooler at 88%. But still, that’s definitely a win, they loved it too. It is right dead on two hours. It is rated R probably for some language and it is listed as a comedy, drama, romance. Apatow Productions and Filmnation Entertainment are the studios that put it out. I think I said this before, but it was filmed in Chicago and it was a huge award winner. I am not going to be able to name them all, but I will let you know that it was nominated for Best Screenplay, Holly Hunter was nominated for a SAG Award and an AARP award. Woot woot! It won the AFI for movie of the year and many, many, many other wins and nominations. So this was a big movie that year.

Mike Dodge 24:51
Rightfully so, this is I was very excited. When I saw that Kumail had a movie coming out and I think it lived up to it.

Christi Dodge 24:58
Um hmm, it was good. It was a fun one. Not one I minded watching again and this is probably at least my third or fourth viewing.

Mike Dodge 25:05
Right. Oh, and again to extend the invitation of Kumail to come on the show, be happy to have him.

Christi Dodge 25:10
Absolutely. And Emily!

Mike Dodge 25:11
And Emily.

Christi Dodge 25:12
I want to chat.

Mike Dodge 25:13
I mean, maybe we could do a month of Pakistani movies.

Christi Dodge 25:15
There you go. I’m down. Okay. Hey, text us your guess. You have two days left to guess the theme. So text it, text or call to 971-245-4148 and let us know what you think these last four movies have in common. Come on, guys. This was a layup. But never forget…

Mike Dodge 25:40
Dodges never stop and neither do the movies.

Brennan 25:42
Thanks for listening to Dodge Movie Podcast with Christi and Mike Dodge of Dodge Media Productions. To find out more about this podcast and what we do. Go to dodgemediaproductions.com. Subscribe, share, leave a comment and tell us what we should watch next. Dodges never stop and neither do the movies.