Culminations

(An invitation)

You probably know that for the last few years, I’ve been working on a project called Problematic, loosely inspired by my residency in the hot take outrage machine which is not operational anymore, not in the same way.

Let’s set the stage if you didn’t know me back then. Pre-COVID: I was just an entry-level content minion, at my first job in New York, taking the train to work with comedian (and family friend) Pranav Behari. We would complain about the world, about movies, about writing, about the train itself, sometimes. Then I went viral for the first time with a somehow still notorious take on Nanjiani’s The Big Sick that I only accidentally saw a preview of because a friend was invited to a screening.

The audience laughed at all the immigrant jokes, and especially laughed at the South Asian women on screen. I was charged up, angry, righteous. Pranav was like, you should write about this. I did. It was picked up immediately, unlike any of my attempts at getting published before. It was heady — I found myself at the epicenter of both hype and controversy. I received hate mail. Well-known people followed me on Twitter. I was interviewed on WNYC. I was just a nobody, and suddenly, I wasn’t. What if I cashed in?

You also probably know how this story goes. Turns out I am pathologically allergic to cashing in. I just couldn’t do it. I wrote more takes, went viral a few more times. I started working on my first book. COVID hit. I started an MFA. I moved in with my partner. I got two dogs, who I loved way more than I loved hating things. And the hot take outrage machine totally collapsed. Now you can go viral but you won’t get nice things for it. Or maybe something else is happening off-site — TikTok, say — and I’m just too old and boring to know what’s going on there.

But what if I had cashed in? What does cashing in on identity politics even look like? Pranav and I speculated.

That’s what Problematic the series is about: a parallel universe where a South Asian wannabe writer goes viral once and goes all in. A Pandora’s box of mixed blessing opens. Our logline:

An unknown writer becomes an overnight media sensation when her public throwdown with a finance douche goes viral.

After we wrote our pilot, Pranav brought on producer and actor Devyn Inez Fusaro. And then BRIC TV came on as our funders and platform — our executive producers from BRIC, Kuye Youngblood and Kecia Elan Cole made this version of Problematic as a web series happen. As did our amazing Grace Sin of Paradoxic productions. Pranav, Devyn and I co-created the web series with the support of so many people.

It was a long, hard road. Shooting in a heat wave sucked. Post-production with us spread out across the country was confusing. But then it was done. It had an amazing festival run. We met so many filmmakers, saw so much good, indie work happening in the industry, and got to see audiences react to our little comedy in real life.

So now I’m writing to you, excited to invite you to come see the first full screening of all six episodes of Problematic at our launch party the evening of Friday, November 21 at BRIC in downtown Brooklyn.

We’re raising money from tickets to put towards the next step of the project — marketing and PR to get attention on the series, to get it into pitch rooms. The tickets are $10 (and you can donate more if you like!). We have a whole Seed & Spark campaign going — our goal is only $1,500, so I hope we can reach it by next week!

The theater at BRIC has limited seats, so please buy your tickets today. Please forward this email to your friends who you’d like to come. I’m relying on this little list serve to do the most for me.

I would love to see you in person, party it up, celebrate culminations and new beginnings.

And if you can’t afford to buy tickets but would like to come, please reach out to me.

I’ll have more Substacky things to write soon, but for now, help a nan out <3

Love and anxiety from Hyde Park, Chicago,

Aditi