Overcoming Challenges: Making 'Salam', A Documentary on the Ahmadi Muslim Physicist

0:09Jawad MirWelcome back everyone to another episode of King No Dreams podcast. I'm your host, Jawad Mir. My apologies for being a little bit away during the holidays. We're back full in action with regular episodes every other day. Today my guest is director Anand and producer Zakir, who have had the pleasure of knowing for the last couple of years, but we're here to talk about their film Salam, which came out 2019. The film is about Dr. Abdus Salam, who was the very first Muslim Nobel Peace Prize winner way back in 1979. We talked about archival footage, we talked about how much knowledge they had about Dr. Abdus Salam and the community that he belonged to, and many other things. It was a great chat. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Zakir and Anand about the feature documentary, Salam. Thank you so much guys, for coming on to talk about your film, Salam. Thank you so much for doing it, first of all, and coming on and talking about it.

1:06Guest 1Yeah, my pleasure.

1:08Jawad MirAnd for taking, thank you.

1:09Guest 1Yeah, in fact, I got a text yesterday. Somebody has, somebody in India wrote a book, just released a book, it's a fiction novel based on, Dr. Salam's life, which is coming…

1:22Jawad MirReally?

1:24Guest 1Yeah. I…

1:24Jawad MirThat's cool

1:25Guest 1... Somebody sent me a review of the book published in, a newspaper. So that was…

1:31Jawad MirWhat's the book called?

1:33Guest 1It was called...

1:36Guest 2I think it's fiction inspired by Salam's story.

1:39Guest 1Yeah, fiction…

1:39Guest 2But it…

1:39Guest 1... Inspired by Salam's story. Wasn't, wasn't the other one also, like one of your friends wrote, Zakir?

1:45Guest 2Pure Land, yeah, by Zarar Saeed. His was also a fiction inspired by Salam's story.

1:52Guest 1Yeah, the book is… ... What's the book called? It's called...

1:58Guest 2Which is interesting because like, I mean, it's, the real story's interesting enough.

2:03Guest 1Yeah. It's called Everything That Is by M.G. Vassanji. Inspired by the life of Pakistani nuclear physicist. I can, I can…

2:14Jawad MirYeah, I'm not sure why would they do two books inspired by, as opposed to, like Zakir said, just doing a, you know, based on his life essentially, taking that kind of a route.

2:27Guest 1Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the, I met the other guy who's Zakir's friend. What's his name? Zeyad. What's his name? I forget.

2:33Guest 2Zarar. Zarar Saeed.

2:35Guest 1Zarar Saeed, yeah. I think he had some visions of making a feature film or something he was saying.

2:41Jawad MirYeah. Well, let's talk about your film. I would love to know, and I don't think we've ever talked about this, how did this whole project started? Like, what's the journey, of this entire storyline that you went out to make on Dr. Abdus Salam? Whoever wants to take…

3:02Guest 2So it took, 14 years to make. I'll begin because we took 14 years to make. Had it been Anand, it wouldn't have taken that long. But so Umar and I were met in college in Jan 1996. And that year we read Salam's obituary in The New York Times. And now the both of us were there to pursue degrees in science. Umar was studying biochem, I was studying physics, despite which we knew very little about our country's only Nobel laureate. And as soon as we realized that we didn't know much about Salam, we also realized the reason why we didn't know enough about Salam was because the state hadn't told Salam's story. And it hadn't done so because Salam belonged to a sect that was persecuted in Pakistan, ostracized from mainstream Islam, and then persecuted in Pakistan. So as early as then, at some level we thought, you know, let's, this is a good story to tell. We had no idea we'd, sort of one of us would end up becoming a filmmaker. And then I think, now there's a bit of retrospective recoloring here. You know, one tells the story sexier than it than it actually transpired. So I think in a…

4:15Guest 2... Post 9/11 climate where you sort of identified as a Muslim, you were asked to opine or speak to the Muslim condition. So Salam then resurfaced in our minds because here was someone who went to Stockholm wearing a turban, not to blow the place up, but to receive a Nobel Prize. And so it was in 2004... Well, 2002 that we informally started researching Salam, and then 2004, in which we formally started researching Salam's life. Anand, we met in 2016. So all those years and find out and, yeah, struggling to raise money because prejudice again. And then, yeah, so 2016 is where, when we... Well, what helped in terms of raising money, every other Higgs boson, because it became inevitable, Salam was mentioned everywhere in every other newspaper, right?

5:21Guest 2Because their work had paved the way to make the search for the Higgs boson a meaningful thing to do. It, you know, kind of theoretic is that there was good reason to believe that the Higgs boson exists. And then Malala won the Nobel Prize, and again, newspapers had to mention who'd won it before her.

5:43Guest 2That eventually resulted in us being able to raise a fair bit of money. And, we asked a mutual friend to recommend someone, and she put us in touch with Anand, which was a game changer.

5:58Jawad MirAnand, How much did you know about Dr. Abdus Salam as well as the whole background story of where he comes from and his community?

6:08Guest 1Yeah. Not really that much. I mean, I, of course, growing up in India and living in that part of the world, I had heard the name. You know, I did my bachelor's in science, so that name was always sort of, you know, in my, in my sphere as far as one of the few people to have won the Nobel Prize from that world. That's about all I knew. I mean, I didn't know anything more than that. Yeah, so when I came on board, I mean, they had, they had already had about a couple of drives full of footage. So I said, "You know, I'll have to look at what I have to actually see if I really wanna do this." And when I saw the footage and I did some of my own digging, that's when I realized that, wow, there's enough layers here to tell a really good, deep story. Not just like the science part of it where it's just, you know, some guy who's brilliant wins a Nobel Prize. I mean, what really made the film what it is all these layers that his life had and the politics of the, of his, of his time.

7:11Guest 1Of course, all the religious bigotry around it. I mean, there were so many angles you can come at it at, come at it as. So that kind of, you know, really, just made me kind of get into the project saying, "Yeah, there is something that we can tell today and which might be relevant for today." Because, you know, making movies about dead people is, you know, can't be like the greatest hits kind of movie, right? It has to be relevant for today and why is somebody watching it today, and what are they learning that they couldn't get from, say, reading a Wikipedia page or doing their own little research online. That's where it comes down to, like, what more can you bring to the story? And when Zakir and Omer and I met, I mean, that's when I realized that, yeah, there is enough here, there's enough meat to get going. But then I told them directly that, you know, what you've shot so far probably will not work.

8:12Guest 1We'll have to come at it at, from a different angle and tell the human story as the primary, part of the story, and the science part would take a backseat other than being the basic informational stuff. Because, you know, every film works when there's an emotional hook, and the emotional hook was his amazing life, you know, from the village all the way to London, to his wives, to his, you know, his politics, to his belief in Islam while being a particle physicist. I mean, all these things were quite deep to explore, and that's how we got started, you know. We really didn't know. I mean, like you do documentaries, too. Like we, you, or any film for that matter. You really don't know where you're going with it until you get going, and then you get to where you get to and you say, "Okay, I've reached an interesting point, so let me stop and not go on any further and just put it to bed."

9:13Jawad MirYeah.

9:13Guest 1So yeah, it took me two years to get it from where they were at to where it eventually came to be.

9:22Jawad MirGreat. Zakir, you know, you said you were, in the '90s you were studying physics, and that's when you came to know about Dr. Salam, Abdus Salam. The whole, the, how much did you know about the backstory of the community that he comes from and the 1974 incidents and the 1984, I think, the certain elements of the law that were passed? Like, how much familiar were you, were you with all that and the persecution?

9:49Guest 2Back in 19…

9:49Jawad MirAnd then same, and then same question for Anand afterwards. All right.

9:54Guest 2Back… Virtually nothing. Virtually nothing. It was a steep learning curve in terms of absorbing all that went down. I just had a sort of vague sense of there was this community that was declared heretical by an act of Parliament in 1974. Obviously, one had Ahmadi friends in high school, you know? But one knew very little as to, one knew very little as to what their beliefs were. One also knew that they would keep it, keep it hush-hush.

10:27Guest 2And, you know, those among us who were progressives would tell them to not reveal their identity. I remember this one friend of mine, wrote Ahmadi on a piece of paper, where you had to declare what your, religion was. And I remember another friend telling him, "What? Are you mad? Don't do this." And then I was rather intrigued and I asked him, "Why? Why are you telling him to not reveal what he is?" And they're like, "No, it's super controversial and they're persecuted."

10:54Jawad MirWeird.

10:54Guest 2The friend went, "Thank you, thank you," you know? And so, you know, s… very superficial sense of what all was at play. Of course, by the end of it, we got to know everything extremely well. I mean, you know, knew it inside out, knew it far better than, far better than some Ahmadis, I'll say. I'm, I don't wanna sound, at the risk of sounding like Imran Khan. At the risk of sounding like someone who says I know the West far better than Westerners know themselves and... But yeah, but initially, nothing at all. And it's, what's interesting is what Tariq Ali ends up saying in an interview, that the, when there were riots against the Ahmadis in the mid-50s, the Munir and Kayani commission wrote this scathing report of what transpired, and they couldn't get, any two mullahs to agree on a definition of Islam. And Tariq Ali calls it one of the most illuminating documents in Pakistan's history, and it should be mandatory in e… in our curricula because it's extreme lightning.

11:56Guest 2But obviously those things you realize only retrospectively, right? Once you've, once you've done a deep dive…

12:01Jawad MirYeah

12:01Guest 2... And you, oh my God, there's this, and this, which everyone should know about.

12:07Jawad MirRight. Right. And Adam, you?

12:11Guest 1No, I was completely clueless. I mean, I, you know, I grew up in India, so we are familiar with that part of the world, you know, all the religious hatred, bigotry, all that, the politics behind it and how the two nations got to where they are today. I mean, I mean, I knew a little bit about the making of the bomb and all that history and, you know, and his name would pop up. I had, I think I had read that. You know, in college I did math, physics, and chemistry, but it was just sort of very gen… general, you know, I did my bachelor's in physics, so, you know, you had... There would be some particle physics mentioning that, and I guess the name would pop up there, but nothing, you know, I didn't know anything much about the Ahmadi, angle at all. I mean, I know I've, you know, the word Qadiani was... I grew up…

13:07Guest 1... In a city, Hyderabad, which is half Muslim, and, that word would every now and then appear, but I was like, "Okay, maybe it's another," you know, we had Aga Khanis, we had, you know, various… ... Sects even in Hyderabad, and, Bohras. So yeah, and that name would come up, but I really didn't know beyond that what it really meant and what the history was behind how the whole, sect began, came to be and,.. So that to me was a huge revelation when I dove into this film and this topic, and that's the best part about making these films that you make.

13:45Guest 1You learn so much and you know, even if you're writing like a PhD thesis, I mean, probably you would not learn as much as sometimes when you make a documentary film because you come at it from so many different angles, and there's so many layers that you unpack.

14:02Jawad MirYeah.

14:03Guest 1And, yeah, no, there was... And then that led me to research more, like, the history of the Ahmadis in India itself, in Punjab and all that, which is sort of mentioned lightly in the film.

14:16Jawad MirYeah.

14:16Guest 1And then the story of Salaam coming to India to meet his teacher, that was quite like, I was blown away by that story. And there was another story which is not in the film, but he had also come to Hyderabad, somebody told me after they watched my film, that actually, the city I was born in, Salaam had made a visit. There was some interesting information I learned about that. So yeah. And, be… before the film I mean, it was just a name and, of a person who had reached, you know, great heights in his field. That's about it.

14:51Jawad MirYeah. In terms of, one of the things I loved about the film and, you know, having watched a lot of documentaries of people who are not around anymore, for the lack of better word, you know, it becomes challenging how do you, how do you angle, especially if there's not that much, available…

15:10Jawad Mir... In terms of interviews, in terms of footage. One thing that to me stood out the most is normally when you show, any, I wouldn't say any, a lot of directors or producers, when they would have, when they wanna show, let's say, Istanbul from the 1950s, they'll probably show a shot in the present time of Istanbul and go on to the story, you know, wherever the story is taking you. But you guys were able to dig in and find archival footage of each cities and each town and each villages of relatively around the same time, which really took me to that time and I really appreciated that. It didn't, it didn't occur to me the first time I watched it, but today when I watched it hit me that how important that was. How was that in terms of getting all that stuff? And I'm sure Za… Zakir and I talk about archival footage all the time, but I would love to know more from both of you guys, the angle of getting that and the pers… the process of getting that.

16:09Guest 1Yeah, no, I mean, I should give kudos to Zakir for this. I mean, we have this amazing footage of Lahore, which actually came from India, came from actually a movie called Lahore. That's where we found that footage.

16:21Jawad MirOkay.

16:21Guest 1And it's quite a endeavor to chase it down because the archives wouldn't release the footage to anybody, so they, we had to like, when once we found it, I was tapping into contacts I had, and once we got to the footage, they couldn't transfer it, so we had to like pay for somebody to go from Pune to Bombay to…

16:41Guest 2Drive it like Bombay

16:43Guest 1No, I mean that's, I mean, that's, that's where these films come down to, right? I mean, yeah, you know, when you see old footage in a movie, it's not just it takes you back to that place, but it's also kind of, just like when you watch like an old photograph, you know, it does trigger something.

17:00Jawad MirYeah.

17:01Guest 1And, I mean, we... I… in the beginning when we had a discussion, I had said like, "You know, we have to make this film by not just telling Salaam's story, but also Pakistan's story," and, you know, interweave it with what was happening during that time in, i… in its political, you know, the other s… the unrest and, the political, upheaval that the country was also going through. And so using footage, old footage became sort of, yeah, we have to. I mean, we had, we have clips of Jinnah, we have clips of, Lahore, we have clips of other s… you know, places, even London, from that time period. So yeah, I mean, I guess it was sort of a no-brainer to go and see what we can find, and luckily, we did find some amazing stuff.

17:54Jawad MirYeah. Zakir, just how do you…

17:57Guest 2We…

17:57Jawad Mir... Go about doing that?

17:59Guest 2Yeah, it was a, it was a nightmare. It was, it was an obsession. I got obsessed with, archives and trying to dig stuff up. I remember Googling Salaam every single day for, like, decades. Even remember googling Abdus Salam because I had a feeling that dyslexic loggers would have gotten that incorrectly, and we found, the prison court shows up if you look up Abdus Salam. So, not when you google Abdus Salam. But if you notice, we did a cross dissolve. We moved back and forth and done…

18:35Jawad MirYeah

18:35Guest 2... The same cross through space.

18:36Jawad MirI love, I love that. Yeah.

18:38Guest 2It was very hard to do because how the hell do you... So not just find archives, but find…

18:43Jawad MirYeah

18:43Guest 2... Archives in the same, time you're, you're looking at, and the same cross section of space. Some of it was premeditated, some of it was accidental. But

18:55Jawad MirWe had a clip of…

18:56Guest 2It's looking and constantly looking and revisiting and just trying out all sorts of crazy things, and searching constantly because the in… the net is so searching for something once and not coming up on something doesn't mean it's not there, or that someone who has it hasn't put it up. You know, constantly looking for things. But it was funny how Anand and I were filming in Italy and my wife, we were, we were getting married and my to-be had told me to get a suit from Italy.

19:25Guest 2And I remember Anand and I were like, "Man, let's get that bloody shirt." That was a shirt we used to go back in time. So we're like, "Screw the suit, we have to get the shirt."

19:34Jawad MirYeah.

19:35Guest 2So we'd figured out what cross section to film and where to film it from, you know, for that one cross dissolve. But yeah, I mean, we're trying to y… y… you know, we've also managed to do it quite well for this other film we're working on together. But, not being able to find one particular, appearance of this person on a show really torments me.

20:01Guest 2You know, because you can't get obsessive and, you know, let go of stuff you can't find. The worst thing to have happened, and I think Anand and I both felt the same way. We found great photos of Salam and Bhutto together, and found some stuff in better quality only after we'd done the film.

20:19Jawad MirAfter you had finished, yeah.

20:21Guest 2You know, which is…

20:22Jawad MirThat's always the case

20:22Guest 2... To happen. That's always the case, but it really hits. I mean, it is, you know, so yeah.

20:29Jawad MirYou know, you mentioned Bhutto and, for people who don't know, Bhutto was the president or prime minister of Pakistan in the 1970s. But there was... One of my favorite parts in the film is there's a photo of Bhutto sitting at a rally, and you guys push in, and then all of a sudden it stops and it starts going up, and then you see Abdus Salam speaking. I thought that was really creatively done. It's a very simple movement, but it just worked so well with what was being said, and the timing of it and the way it was done. I love that moment.

21:04Guest 2Yeah.

21:04Jawad MirI absolutely love that moment.

21:06Guest 2Thank you.

21:06Jawad MirThere's footage of it. That's exactly the footage we found afterwards.

21:10Guest 2Oh, really? That's awesome.

21:11Jawad MirWhat I also loved, and that was Anand's doing, this empty hand. You know, that Salam is about to shake someone's hand…

21:17Guest 2Yeah

21:18Jawad Mir... And move into an empty hand.

21:19Guest 2Right.

21:20Jawad MirVery symbolic of he has no, he has no collaborator, he hasn't seen... Y… y… you know, no one to shake his hand.

21:27Guest 2Yeah.

21:28Jawad MirThat was really nice, too.

21:31Guest 2So did

21:31Guest 1I mean, certainly, I mean, even this new film that we're doing, it's... I mean, there's no real parallel, but both are sort of tragedies. You know, Salam's story is sort of a tragedy. I mean, it's, you know, not getting the recognition that he was seeking. I mean, he got the Nobel Prize, but the recognition he was seeking was more from his nation and from his people and all that stuff…

21:55Guest 2Yeah

21:55Guest 1... Which didn't really come to, come to fruition. And this new film we're working on also is sort of a tragedy about this guy who reached, you know, success and then sort of crashed and burned and didn't really... I mean, s… even, like, mentally, he kind of lost it just like Salam. It's, it's interesting how, you know, that's, that's one of the things when you look back at people's, people's life or the arc or the trajectory of where they started, where they, arrived at, it's, it's always begs that way, what does really success mean, right? I mean, what does it... I mean…

22:39Guest 2Yeah

22:39Guest 1... For Salam, I guess it would have been to be loved by his own people and be... And in the end, we actually, in the film you do see he was loved. I mean, the amount of people who show up at his funeral is a testament. But he himself probably didn't feel that, I don't know. I mean, that's kind of what we…

22:56Guest 2Yeah

22:57Guest 1... The film.

22:59Guest 2I wanna come back to your new film in a bit, but I, one thing I really liked what you said, and it's, I think it's true for all of us, we're always having something that we want. Not all of our wishes come true all the time, period. Like, that's just the way it is.

23:14Guest 1Right.

23:14Guest 2There's always something left, right? Even the people who are like, you know, let's just say for example, Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese, I'm sure they have something missing from their life, or even Oppenheimer. So that's, that's just human nature and it's sometimes maybe it's a blessing, I find, because we don't know what will happen to us if we get something that we really want.

23:37Guest 1Wow.

23:39Guest 2Because you don't know how that would play with our brain and our psyche. I'm just being a devil's advocate, but it's just interesting that I think we all go through it. Dr. Abdus Salam being obviously…

23:48Guest 1Yeah, it's like the Greek Icarus… ... Like, you know, mythology where you... I mean, it's good that we don't go too close to the sun, otherwise everybody will burn up.

23:59Guest 2That's great. That's a great way of saying it.

24:01Guest 1So yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I find interesting in doing these films about people who... I mean, this is, I don't know. I mean, I never really decided to do biographical films, but it just so happens that I've done like one after the other…

24:16Guest 2Yeah

24:16Guest 1... Biographical films. Some alive, some dead. But yeah, that's, that's basically it comes down to, like, what drives these people to do what they do, and ... You know, from us looking from the outside in, what lessons do we learn, right? I mean, you know, it's easy to make a hagiography like Zakir always says, you know, "Yeah, he was a great man, and blah, and, you know, he won... He was an exceptional person. Yeah, applause." But that's, I mean, that's not what they are about anyway. I mean, no matter how successful or, you know, he could be the richest man in the world like we're seeing now, I think something else that has to bring them down to the ground, you know? And that's kind of what's interesting to explore.

25:05Jawad MirYeah. Zakir, and for both of you guys, making a film like this specifically in, you know, at least some of the elements were done in Pakistan, especially the cemetery, and I'm sure some interviews and everything. Whether it was during the process or even after, what kind of problems you guys ran into from, if any, from the government, from distributors, or anything like that?

25:36Guest 2None, surprisingly, none. I, and I can't explain why. Nothing untoward has happened. Knock on wood, shouldn't jinx it. I mean, there's always the occasional buffoon who says something stupid, but other than that, it's been very well received. I was careful in not screening it publicly in Pakistan initially.

26:06Jawad MirOh, so you have been able to screen publicly? That's awesome.

26:09Guest 2At universities, yes. At universities, screen company in Islamabad, screened at universities in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad. Went down surprisingly well. You know, one of my favorite places to screen was Lums. They were all laughing, sighing at all the right times, great questions. There's a journalism school in Karachi where it was also very well received. It's kind of surprising. I, you know, I've, I've been asked this question earlier in here and there also, and it still kind of surprises me as to why, it was well received. It was on Netflix. I mean, you know, obviously it's limited by people who subscribe to Netflix. It's in English, right? The, English press in Pakistan can get away with a lot in English…

27:08Guest 2... If, you know, the Urdu press doesn't have the same freedom. But I mean, you'll find incredible instances of bigotry in well-written English online also, you know.

27:22Jawad MirYeah.

27:22Guest 2Despite which, I think it went down well. I don't know the reason.

27:28Jawad MirHow much…

27:29Guest 2It's the beauty of the long form, format that it drives a point home and builds an entire case. There's enough time to emote with, characters. I don't know what it is.

27:46Jawad MirYeah, no, that's, that's interesting to know, too. I did not expect that. But one…

27:51Guest 2Yeah

27:51Jawad Mir... What you just said could be true, but also I think maybe the younger generation and the education element being in there, but I know people who have, who are educated who don't act like they're educated. But having said all that, in terms of access to his family, and for both of you guys, what was that like, and were there any kind of pushbacks that, "No, you guys shouldn't do this." What, did they have, you know, anything like that? Because the, obviously you're telling their, you know, their family member's story, their father, and whatnot.

28:26Guest 2Access wasn't a problem. It was, you know, easy to look up their emails, and we wrote to them. There was a sufficient length of time to build rapport, so we'd show up at their house in London every year, Umar and I, and would scan the photos and just scour through Salam's, notebooks, his diaries. So we built a great r… rapport with the family. They weren't entirely thrilled with the film, and there was pushback, but, we held our own, we stood our ground. Obviously, you know, the community is a tad conservative, and they observe the purdah, so one had to be sensitive around those things. But we, yeah, we stood our ground, and I think by then they understood that we knew more about Salam than anyone else, you know, that they factually they couldn't really challenge us. You know, for example, I mean, we knew, like, intricacies of, what all Salam was, what Salam was working on, the science, the nuclear weapons program, his friendships, his aspirations in that he sort of desperately wanted the Nobel Prize and lobbied hard to get it.

29:42Guest 2You know, by the end of it, we knew the subject matter really well. And so I think there was a cognizance of, you know, we're, we're dealing with guys who really know the subject matter. It becomes difficult, right, to then sort of override them, because you can't use facts, right? We've, the facts we were aware of.

30:07Guest 2Obviously it was tricky because we were getting archives from them, right? So it had, you know, the relationship had to be carefully navigated.

30:17Jawad MirYeah.

30:17Guest 2But I think by and large, they were rational.

30:21Guest 1You know?

30:22Jawad MirRight. I'm…

30:24Guest 1And I would…

30:25Jawad MirSorry, go on

30:25Guest 1... I think it's typical. Sorry. I think you would encounter this in any biopic. I think people are too close to their family members and can't see them objectively.

30:35Jawad MirI don't think it's just true for biopics. I even think it's like if you're making a... And I went through this too, like, whenever you're making a film about a certain community or a certain cause, and for them to sort of see what I, you know, what you're trying to do on the flip side of that…

30:54Jawad Mir... Is really challenging, right? Like, for this, and for s… well, for In Search of My Sister, I, the protagonist in my film, even to this day when we have screening, you know, we joke around that how she wasn't happy with certain things, and she wanted to boycott the film, and I was like, "Go ahead." And she didn't. But I think that's because you're just so close to it, you can't, you can't see those things, and that's understandably so. On in terms of, you know, sort of wrapping up on Salaam, and we'll go on to your next project. In terms of,.. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, one of my favorite scenes, and I would love to know how that sort of came about, or was it just like a, you know, just it happened by organically. When, there's a, in, they're in his room, I think it was son, in his room, and they were going through all the stuff, radio and, you know, different things.

31:52Guest 1Yeah.

31:52Jawad MirHow was that or c… how did that scene come about? Because that made it very personal in many ways.

32:00Guest 1Yeah, no, that scene, I clearly had a vision in my mind how I wanted to do it. You know, when we entered his house, when I saw the room, I clearly had an idea about how I wanna, you know, shoot that whole sequence, with his son being there and kind of demonstrating what, you know, what a day in the life of, Salaam would have been like in that house.

32:27Guest 1... So, you know, and the fact that room was just left like it was when he was around with the glasses there and the books there and, you know, he talks about very specific things about his dad, like P.G. Wodehouse and, you know, he listened to this LP and, you know, the incense burning and LP and the Quran. I mean, everything was just, it was a no-brainer for me as far as visually how I wanted to come about, you know, building that sequence, that scene. So yeah, we spent a whole day that day in that house, you know, filming. You know, hi… his son is, like you were talking about, you know, everybody, I mean, everybody in the family, even with this film, like, everybody has this one image of Salaam, right? And they wanna protect that, and, that's when they have issues with, how they come up, come through in s… in something like a film where they feel like, okay, these strangers are coming and taking…

33:33Jawad MirYeah

33:33Guest 1... My dad's story or whoever's story, and now they're gonna make it their own, and that's where the insecurity comes in. But I feel like once they get comfortable with you, and then that's when they open up and, I think…

33:44Jawad MirYeah

33:44Guest 1... I think he got pretty comfortable with us when we were in the house, but later he had some issues. I don't know if I remem… But the other son, he was pretty forthcoming then, because the older son felt like he was the, guardian of everything Salaam, right? I mean, he had to…

34:03Guest 1... Make sure that whatever got out of the gate was thoroughly vetted and... But then as a result, now they have a blue plaque on the house. I mean, he got, he got a lot of traction as a result of the film as well. So it's always that give and take that goes on.

34:18Jawad MirYeah.

34:18Guest 1But

34:19Jawad MirAnd that's... Sorry, go on.

34:21Guest 1No, but even with this film, Rick, I mean, this particular film that we're making right now, it's the same story. You know, we're dealing with a lot of the family members. It's like Rashomon, right? Each family member has their own…

34:33Guest 1... Version of the person, you know? And then you're trying to ascertain, like, which version is actually…

34:40Jawad MirTrue

34:40Guest 1... Real. But…

34:41Jawad MirYeah

34:41Guest 1... You know, all versions are real for them, you know? So it's like this, so you show, you show all the versions and let the audience decide which version they wanna believe in.

34:51Jawad MirOf course.

34:52Guest 1And that's kind of what…

34:54Jawad MirT… tell me about this film. What is it about?

34:55Guest 1And you have to draw the line as to how far you wanna go with showing one aspect of the person, unless you have enough evidence or enough, you know, opinions to corroborate that this version of this person is actually true.

35:11Jawad MirTrue.

35:12Guest 1And that becomes…

35:13Jawad MirYou know, it's very interesting. My daughter goes to a Montessori, and she's extremely well-behaved there. By contrast, at home, she's like an unruly monster. And so I was telling the person who's founded the school that she has two distinct personae, or kids have two distinct personae, and she's like, "Everyone does."

35:31Guest 1Everyone does.

35:31Jawad MirAnd it's so true. I mean, ev… all of us, we're multitudes. We're different people to different things, and I think geniuses are far more complex.

35:38Guest 1Right.

35:39Jawad MirI mean, look at what all Salaam was doing, right? He was both a scientist and a scientific administrator, scientific advisor to Pakistan, professor at Imperial College London. I mean, the guy was like, had three lives rolled up into one, married, had two wives. He, for sh… certainly leagues ahead of the curve in terms of intellect. There's so many scientists out there vying to win a Nobel Prize, right? So many come so close. Even fewer actually win it. You know, brilliant mind. He had to have been enormously complex. One of his students said, you know, "I don't know who the real Salaam was, only that he was a number of disparate personalities rolled up into one." He was an amalgamation of a number of different personalities.

36:23Guest 1And that's one of the, I mean, that's one…

36:25Jawad MirAnd that's what's making me, to me, the family would all have completely different takes on him

36:32Guest 2And we've encountered…

36:32Guest 1But the…

36:32Guest 2... Such people, right? The families has a singular perception of them, whereas the outside world has a completely different take on them.

36:42Guest 1Yeah, also memory plays a, you know… ... What you remember and what you conflate and what you pick up.

36:48Guest 2Right. Yeah

36:49Guest 1Especially if you're remembering somebody who's gone, is an interesting needle to thread as well because who knows you know?

36:55Guest 2Yeah.

36:56Guest 1They're making up certain images of the person probably may not be true, and some may be true, some maybe you may not, you might maybe only partially know and but…

37:05Guest 2Right

37:05Guest 1... You're sort of adding other information that you may have heard of. So yeah, I mean, it's... I mean, that's the thing with documentary films. I mean, you know, it's a film at the end of the day, you're editing, you're framing, you're doing all these things, but you're at least trying to create this illusion that what you're, what this person is eventually gonna watch on their TV screen or in a movie theater is actually, co… will come away feeling authentic about what they saw, right? I mean, that's what…

37:35Guest 2Yeah

37:35Guest 1... You're trying to get at. You're not gonna get at, you're not trying to tell, you know, the most accurate story about this person, you know? You're trying to…

37:44Guest 2Right

37:45Guest 1... Tell an authentic story, as authentic as possible without having a narration, without having any other ele… without the audience feeling manipulated in how they're getting this story of this particular person or this particular moment in time, and that's where it comes down to, editing and the craft…

38:04Guest 2Right

38:04Guest 1... It takes to put things together.

38:07Guest 2Yeah. And to Zakir's point, I think one of the things that you talked about multiple personalities, for the lack of better, I think we all have that. We're different people to a teacher versus…

38:17Guest 1Different people

38:19Guest 2... A friend, to parents, to coworker, and we all try, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen that, I'm going in a little bit comedy mode here, Seinfeld episode. I don't know if you ever watched Seinfeld.

38:29Guest 1Yeah.

38:29Guest 2There is a scene where George Cost…

38:30Guest 1Every Tuesday.

38:32Guest 2There is a scene where George Costanza says that, you know, the worlds are colliding, so you keep them…

38:36Guest 1Independent George.

38:37Guest 2Yeah, independent George. You keep your worlds, you keep your worlds separate.

38:40Guest 1Separate.

38:41Guest 2I think we all do that.

38:42Guest 1Yeah, we all do that. We all do that.

38:45Guest 2Tell me about your next project, what it is about, what is it called, how did you guys get started on it?

38:53Guest 1Yeah, it's another pretty big biographical film about this guy called Adam Osborne, who invented the first sort of commercially viable portable computer, and he was a success story for a couple of years. People thought he would like be the next Bill Gates or the next Steve Jobs, and, he had a lot riding in his favor, but then fate didn't really, respond in the way he thought it would, and he basically crashed and burned and, basically became, not known to anybody in the world of personal computing. But w… with, I mean, without his contribution, probably we wouldn't be where we are in terms of how we use these gadgets, so ubiquitously these days, right? I mean, he clearly accelerated the personal computer world pretty significantly, and, nobody knows of him, you know?

39:59Guest 1I mean, unless…

40:01Guest 2I didn't.

40:01Guest 1Yeah, unless you Google and go searching, he's not a household name, and he should have been. He could have been. He could have been like a Steve Jobs kind of character, not only making amazing products, but also being this sort of tech guru and tech optimist or tech, evangelist or whatever you wanna call them. He could have been a big player and, so yeah, so we are telling his story just like Salam's story, you know, where he began and where he ended and what was his journey and, what are the reasons for his collapse and was it, and his family and his... You know, we're telling the whole, story just like we told Salam's, you know, threading…

40:49Guest 1... Both the professional, the personal, the belief systems, faith.

40:55Guest 2Nice.

40:55Guest 1All these topics that we touched with Salam we're touching here as well interestingly. But again, it's, it's just a, again, a story of a guy who, you know, was really good…

41:06Guest 2Yeah

41:07Guest 1... And he…

41:08Guest 2Wanted, yeah

41:10Guest 1... What he could, and he, just like Salam, I mean, even he had sort of a unique upbringing. I mean, he didn't grow up in a village, but he do… did grow up in sort of a village kind of place, like in a little commune back in India…

41:24Guest 2Sure

41:24Guest 1... In deep south, in the backwards or beyond, and then rose to Silicon Valley, you know, peak, and then, and then yeah, then you have to watch the movie to find out what happens next.

41:38Guest 2Of course. Zakir, what drew you to the film? And then also where…

41:48Guest 1Good point

41:48Guest 2... Where…

41:49Guest 1Good question.

41:50Guest 2Yeah, go ahead. Answer that, and we'll go to the next question. I was really struck by the fact that he grew up in an ashram in India, and I, it reminded me that Steve Jobs was into, like, spirituality and this Indian, feel good kind of

42:11Guest 1Yeah

42:12Guest 2... Mysticism, whatever you may call it. I don't have the right word for it.

42:16Guest 1Yeah, his life changed after he went to India, he said, Steve Jobs, but go on.

42:19Guest 2Yeah, but the one thing I was very intrigued by is Osborne grew up in an ashram in India, and there was this footage of him running, and, this guru, Ramana Maharshi, has grabbed onto the back of his shirt… And it was, it was a very interesting image, and it's still sort of etched in my mind. And I interpreted that image as, you know, maybe he had this anchoring and that kept him from being ruthless like Jobs or Gates.

42:50Guest 2There's just something holding him back. I don't know how correct it is now that I know more of the story, but there was just something about that image, you know, this kid wanting to run and the guru grabbing onto the back of his shirt only to let a photograph be taken. But for some reason, it's just, it created a permanent sort of visual memory in my mind. Obviously we'd also become very dear friends, and so anything Anand works on, I'm, I'm roped into. But I liked it archivally also, so, as a challenge, because there was little to nothing on Osborne, like to the, to the... On cursory examination there was nothing much, nothing significant. It took a fair bit of, you know, digging through…

43:41Guest 2... Several haystacks to find several needles. Anand, I don't know if you can talk about this, but we've managed to negotiate, outtakes from CBS 60 Minutes, which is a huge deal.

43:54Guest 1Yeah, I mean, we found so much now. I mean, I mean, Zaki did an amazing job finding photographs, which probably nobody else would have found, you know? Amazing. I mean, this guy was photogra… I mean, we realized, my God, this guy's been photographed so much. We didn't know until we began to dig and find all these resources. And I'm sure there's... As we almost close, but we still keep finding new stuff every few days. Something new pops up, "Hey, have you seen this?" Or, "Have you seen this?" But again, like the, him talking about that image, yeah, I mean, that's kind of the metaphor of the story basically, you know. You know, what does success mean? I mean, you know, you run around this world and you try to do all these things, and, eventually you do have to come down to the ground and really ask that question to yourself, you know, you know, what is it all about? And I think at the core of our film, we are trying to answer that question is, sure, I mean, he could have been the next Elon Musk. I mean, somebody says in the film he could have been the next Elon Musk, but is that a good thing?

44:57Guest 1Is that like a... I mean, we celebrate success by, you know, how much money people have in their bank accounts, and how much is their net worth as far as…

45:10Jawad MirYeah

45:10Guest 1... Their stock and this and that. And is that really mean anything, is kind of the question we…

45:18Jawad MirTry to answer

45:18Guest 1... Sort of pose in the film. In fact, one of the guys says like, you know, technology in one level has given us all these amazing gadgets, but has also created these billionaires who are now actually ruling over us like the oligarchs, right? I mean, so now we have Elon Musk, who's actually making decisions for the nation, and he's not even been elected. I mean, he can actually

45:42Jawad MirYeah

45:42Guest 1... Change the Congress's, you know, a bill that's being, going to be passed in Congress gets derailed by a tweet by this guy, you know? And technology has gotten him where he is. So like oil back in the day, technology is now creating these barons and oligarchs and…

46:03Jawad MirYeah

46:03Guest 1... Bureaucrats. So we kind of pose these questions in a very kind of subtle way in the film.

46:09Jawad MirRight.

46:10Guest 1And yeah, I mean, yeah, hopefully people will resonate to it the way they resonated with Salaam. And again, you know, again, it comes down to the human story. Again, I mean, it's an amazing human story. It has, like the Greek tragedy, it has, you know, pathos, catharsis. What are the four stages? It has all those four stages of…

46:32Guest 2The other,.. You asked me what attracted me. Sorry, to,.. Didn't mean to cut anyone off. What's interesting is he's known better by MBA students than by computer scientists, and that's because… ... He made a marketing faux pas. He kind of shot himself in the foot, and it's come to be called the Osborne effect. So he…

46:57Jawad MirYeah

46:58Guest 2... Ironically, he's…

47:01Jawad MirYeah, and people read about it without really knowing what it, who, you know, who or what it's about.

47:05Guest 2S… s… superficially.

47:07Jawad MirYeah.

47:07Guest 2But it's sad that this genius, this absolute genius, has gone down in history more for a, has gone down more as a symbol for a marketing folly…

47:18Jawad MirRight

47:18Guest 2... Than being a pioneering genius. He also dabbled, he also began to dabble in AI.

47:26Guest 1Yeah. This is one thing we just found out.

47:28Guest 2Where his company went bust…

47:29Jawad MirWow

47:29Guest 2... You know, and was working on neural networks. So it's interesting how he went from the sort of the zenith of technology, let's make a portable computer, to another what would become the zenith of technology. You know, just always cutting edge, always…

47:44Jawad MirYeah

47:45Guest 2... Top-notch, top shelf, you know.

47:50Guest 1Yeah.

47:52Jawad MirSucc… You know, it's funny, you... The whole thing with success is, right, like some people who get suc… don't get successful, they save themselves from all the bringing down that comes on later on, because once you become to a certain point, then it's like, it's just like a, it's a story, right? You go up, and then what goes up must come down, and then you go up. So maybe I find it in… interesting that, Anand, you said that how, Salaam and this story, Osborne, are very similar, that how people who have not been successful, what their life, what they could have done, what they have done, so just to bring into light. What is the deeper mean… attraction for you to those two similar stories? Is there any... I mean, we all d… make what we, who we are and what…... You know, sw… turn the switch on for ourselves. Is there a specific part in your life that you feel that sort of connects you to those two stories or?

48:54Guest 1Yeah, no.

48:55Jawad MirDo you…

48:55Guest 1I always find this, dialectic or whatever you wanna call it between, you know, faith, religion, you know, spirituality and all these things and, material success and... I mean, if you notice, I don't know, in the last 20 years es… I mean, now I'm like 55, I've entered this zone where, you know, a lot of people my age are like, all like, have feel like they've reached their peak and they've done, you know, made all the money that they want, and now they're all like chasing some guru or becoming spiritual or suddenly finding…... Christian or going on, pilgrimages and, you know, some have even retired and are like just, you know, hopping around temples or whatever, you know? And, this always fascinates me. So in both these stories, I mean, of course, Salam, I mean, there's that, you know, which we talked about in our film is like, you know, you are a particle physicist.

49:57Guest 1You're basically trying to understand the universe from a whole different angle, and then you're also a committed, you know, believe in devout believer of faith and all that. And so with this story, I mean, he grows up in a sort of spiritual just, setting, kind of rejects it, you know, and then chases money…

50:18Guest 1... Fame, success, whatever you wanna call it. And then he has no choice but to come back to where he started, not by his own, design, but sort of by default. I mean, he has no other…

50:31Jawad MirYeah.

50:31Guest 2I was trying to not give it away, but…

50:33Guest 1Yeah. I don't wanna g… I mean, I'm not giving the whole thing away.

50:36Guest 2Yeah, you're not giving the…

50:37Guest 1I mean, I mean, he does go that, go through that full circle.

50:39Guest 2Full circle.

50:40Guest 1So yeah, I mean, it is, it is, it's... I mean, in any story, I mean, you want the full arc, you want a full circle. Any story you wanna write or read or, you know, appreciate somebody's life, I mean, that full circle always makes it that much more interesting, right? I mean, some, I don't know if I'm consciously exploring that, but I, when I start working on something, I really am looking at, you know, what is, what is this story really about, you know?

51:09Jawad MirYeah.

51:09Guest 1Like we always like, what's the log line in a movie, right? I mean, if you can define…

51:12Jawad MirYeah

51:13Guest 1... It in one sentence, then you got a good movie or a good film.

51:16Guest 2Now that you've said…

51:17Jawad Mir100%

51:17Guest 2... Full circle, the image that we talked about, acquires more meaning. You know the image of the guru holding on the back of his shirt, right? It's kind of interesting how that's also symbolic of him coming back the full c… like, you know, so…

51:33Guest 1Yeah

51:33Guest 2... Something pulling him back, something pulling him back to his base. That's a lovely image, by the way.

51:42Guest 1Yeah.

51:42Jawad MirI can't wait to see this film, man. When are you guys…

51:44Guest 1Yeah, I mean it's…

51:44Jawad Mir... Hoping to?

51:46Guest 1Yeah, I think we're very close now. It's a question of, you know, fine-tuning. We have to take out some time and get it to a... So we're gonna have two cuts. One for, it's gonna be on PBS nationwide.

51:58Jawad MirAmazing.

51:58Guest 1So, we'll have to have one cut for that and one for the festivals, which will be slightly longer. But I think we have packed in all the elements that we were hoping to into the film. Now it's just a matter of getting all the stuff we need to make it, you know, this sort of heavy film that it is. Heavy in the sense not emotionally heavy, but you know…

52:22Jawad MirRight

52:22Guest 1... It has a lot of stuff packed into it in terms of…

52:25Guest 2Dense, you mean.

52:26Guest 1Yeah, storytelling in terms of, we have some amazing archives and interviews and

52:32Jawad MirAmazing

52:32Guest 1... So yeah, so…

52:34Jawad MirWhen is it coming on PBS? Have you guys, have they figured out a date yet?

52:37Guest 1We don't have an air date, but hopefully like March if we can pull it off. You know, I think it's come down to like every film, you know, getting the money or getting the resources to complete it.

52:50Jawad MirYeah.

52:50Guest 1But as far as ed…

52:51Guest 2We're looking for completion funding.

52:54Guest 1Yeah, completion funding.

52:54Guest 2If there's any rich people listening to your podcast.

52:58Guest 1As far as editing goes, I think it's almost there. I mean, our, producers at ITVS who funded the film love what they're seeing. And, I think this story will be again, appreciated and, people will know about this person and, you know, appreciate what he contributed to the trajectory of computing and personal computing and also, life in general, yeah.

53:34Jawad MirWhat I find so…

53:35Guest 2Jawad, the whole thing that I... Sorry. I keep cutting people off. The…

53:38Guest 1Go ahead

53:38Guest 2... The other thing that really did it for me is that, Rosa Parks had a precursor of sorts who we never hear about, right?

53:49Guest 1Yeah.

53:49Guest 2Knowledge is cumulative. You know, a lot of changes that we see happen before us, erupt before us have had slow progress in the background, right? The world tends to remember that one person who finally pushes the wall down, but we tend to forget the people who've kept sort of pushing at it, and that's something that really struck me. Eventually, the laptop is something all of us use, right? But the persons who have really made it commercially viable, history's forgotten in the course of its trajectory. Anand, what was the name of the woman who did something very similar to Rosa Parks?

54:26Guest 1Yeah. It's a very famous name, too. My…

54:29Guest 2Colette, Codette

54:31Guest 1Yeah. Claudette Codette or Claudine Colette, Collette.

54:34Guest 2Yeah.

54:35Guest 1Yeah.

54:35Guest 2Interesting, very few people have heard of her.

54:37Guest 1Yeah.

54:37Guest 2Everyone's heard Rosa Parks, right? And so there was another reason why we felt

54:42Jawad MirOr why I felt that this story had to be told. We live under this illusion that, I mean, Salaam's work, for example, was a culmination of a lot of these incredible long chain of contributions to quantum mechanics.

54:56Guest 1Claudette Colvin was her name. Claudette Colvin.

54:59Jawad MirRight.

54:59Guest 1Yeah.

54:59Jawad MirRight. Isn't that interesting? ... That too excited my mind.

55:05Guest 1I…

55:05Jawad MirAnd yet another thing which excited my mind, sorry I'm cutting you off again, was that…

55:09Guest 1It's okay

55:09Jawad Mir... Anil gets pitched these great ideas while he's on a plane, or, you know, people tell him with really cool ideas. N… never happens to me. I've sat only next to…... Losers on planes. Remind me…

55:21Guest 1Yeah, I mean, I, there is a connection…

55:22Jawad Mir... Frank Sinatra

55:23Guest 1... To Salaam with this one too. This person who came to me with this idea had actually saw Salaam on Netflix.

55:30Jawad MirRight.

55:31Guest 1And he, and he thought that I might be a good person to tell this story, partly because I'm also Indian. And, he kind of wrote me an email saying, "Hey, you know, have you heard of so-and-so?" I said, "No." "I think you'd be good in making a film about him." I said, "I normally don't solicit stories like this, but if you have like a one-pager, you can write me a one-pager and I'll look at it." So he sent me this one-pager, and it looked sort of interesting. It was telling a story of this father and son, India, growing up in the commune and all that. And then I met the guy, and he had sort of written a, sort of a manuscript of a book he wanted to publish between the father and son story kind of, which was not…

56:14Guest 1... Sort of the way this film could have been made. So yeah, so that's how the story sort of came to me.

56:21Jawad MirInteresting.

56:21Guest 1Because I made Salaam in the sense that…

56:24Jawad MirI totally lo… agree with what you... I love what you guys are doing and kind of what Zakir said. Nowadays, a lot of streaming platforms and production companies, all they're attracted to is true crime and biopics of famous people, because there's already an audience there, right? Even with true crime. But it kind of connects to what you're saying, like there's always people behind, you know, who pushed the wall. Like there's, like, you know, people look at John Williams, which who I absolutely love his work, but majority if not close to all of his themes from Star Wars and Superman come from a great musician in the 1800s, Gustav Holst. Not many people know about him. Like if you look, pick up…

57:07Jawad Mir... Go to listen to his album called, The Planets, you'll s… you'll lit… literally heal, hear the Death St… Star's theme in there. So it's, it's completely true that how there's so many people who we don't know, and I'm glad that you guys are doing these because, you know, not many people know about. I only knew about Dr. Abdus Salam because, A, I share the same birthday, plus comes from the commun… community and that's how, that's the only reason. Otherwise, I wouldn't have either. So it's awesome what you guys are doing.

57:37Guest 1Yeah. And I'm sure there are a whole bunch of stories like this which are remaining to be told. Hopeful…

57:43Jawad MirYeah.

57:43Guest 1Yeah.

57:43Jawad MirHopefully you guys change that trend of super popular people biopics, which are great. People should watch, we should make them, but also people who have been forgotten, the forgotten heroes, right? So. But it's quadruply difficult to star, 'cause, you know, who'd want to empower you to tell those stories? And they're phenomenally important because, you know, just driving home the point that knowledge is cumulative, right? It takes many people…

58:10Guest 1Yeah

58:10Jawad Mir... To enact a major seismic shift…

58:14Guest 1100%

58:15Jawad Mir... In any given thing. But there's, you know, there's very little by way of... I mean, if they've, if they've sort of disappeared away in history, there's little interest, right? 'Cause, you know, people force what's known already, as opposed to unearth…

58:34Guest 1Yeah

58:34Jawad Mir... These buried treasures and teach, you know, or I don't want to say teach, but enlighten people vis-a-vis something they're, they haven't heard of before. Unless, of course, they're con artists or serial killers or…

58:46Guest 1Yeah.

58:46Jawad MirYou know?

58:47Guest 1But part of it, part of it is also, right, like, you know, what happened with Dr. Abdus Salam and the history in Pakistan being erased about him, not, I truly have, see that now happening all over the world, even North America to a certain extent.

59:06Guest 1Like, you know, in a very finesse way where you're slowly eliminating certain elements in the history, and then when it's not there, then it never happened. And that's, that's a shame because history teaches us everything, you know, about who we are, where we came from. And I hope things change, but, you know, it's, it's just, it's again, like you have to make these stories because, and I'm really excited about Doc… the Osborne film that you're doing, and I'm not even gonna read anything on it because I'll just wait for the film to watch it from scratch and…

59:41Jawad MirYeah

59:41Guest 1... And kind of get into it that way.

59:44Jawad MirYeah, no, in one of these film, films that I had worked on, again, it was another, it was called 300 Miles to Freedom, and it was again about a slave who escaped a plantation in Virginia, and came to New York in search of freedom back in the 1800s. Again, you know, nobody heard of him. Everybody knows about Harriet Tubman, but…

1:00:08Guest 1Yeah

1:00:08Jawad Mir... John W. Jones is his name. If you Google him, you'll find enough information. He saved up to, like 800 slaves to freedom, right? And I mean, unless you grew up in this one little part of America, you wouldn't know his story, and what a story that was. And in that, one of the historians says, like, you know, "It's from the past that we make our present, and from the present we shall make our future."

1:00:33Jawad MirAnd I think that's… ... That's history. I mean, if you really don't understand your past, you can't make your present

1:00:42Guest 1Exactly

1:00:42Jawad Mir... And that's, I mean, that's kind of what, I guess, this profession that I'm in or we are in…

1:00:48Guest 1Right Or hist… or history, capturing, whatever you can call it, is that's what we're trying to do is... That's why I always say, like, you know, you have to make a film which can speak to the times you are in, even though if it's of the past. Otherwise it becomes difficult to make it…

1:01:12Jawad MirYeah

1:01:12Guest 1... Entertaining, at the same time engrossing enough for people to…

1:01:17Jawad MirWell, you gotta make something timeless, right? So, and that's all it is. And just to sort of…

1:01:22Guest 1Yeah

1:01:22Jawad Mir... Wrap it up, guys, besides this Osborne, documentary, if both of you can separately talk about what other one project that is sort of in the early in the stage or in the middle stage that you are able to talk about, if you're willing to.

1:01:40Guest 2Interesting question.

1:01:41Guest 1Yeah. You wanna? Yeah, I mean, I have a short film that I wanna make. This is not a documentary. This is my... If I can pull it off this y… I've been working on it for a very long time, and if I can pull it off this next year, it'll be, like, my first time working with actors and things like that. But I hope that comes to pass. I don't know. We'll see. But again, Zakir and I are... I mean, Zakir is involved in a couple other projects, but we both are also pursuing a idea about the Bubble Boy. I don't know if you know. I mean, you were talking about Seinfeld a while back.

1:02:16Guest 2Yeah, I was gonna say, that's the Bubble Boy from Seinfeld.

1:02:19Guest 1Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this, if you know of the real Bubble Boy, it happened in the '70s.

1:02:26Guest 2Yeah.

1:02:26Guest 1'60s. It's a fascinating story, and we found some interesting information that nobody knows about, and we are hoping it can be something. It's very early. We're still doing... I mean, Zakir…

1:02:40Guest 2Sure

1:02:40Guest 1... Has already pulled two hours of archival footage on this, but

1:02:44Guest 2More.

1:02:45Guest 1More

1:02:45Guest 2... Almost 100.

1:02:47Guest 1But we are trying to find an angle that somebody will throw money at us to go at it. But we'll see.

1:02:54Guest 2It's always about money, man. Throw money at us and watch us do crazy shit. I'm involved in, I'm making a documentary on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, so we're, producing it. Again, fundraising. I think that seems to... We're always fundraising, aren't we, Jawad? Jawad and I compare…

1:03:10Jawad MirYes, sir

1:03:10Guest 2... A lot of fundraising notes. This idea which Anand just mentioned was pitched to him on an airplane.

1:03:17Guest 1Yeah

1:03:17Guest 2... I always call the scene from White Club, where he's like, "You're the most interesting single serving friend I've had."

1:03:23Guest 1Yeah.

1:03:23Guest 2Like, I've never had the pleasure of sitting with an interesting person on a plane. Never.

1:03:27Guest 1Yeah.

1:03:28Guest 2My friend sat next to Susan Sarandon, and other friends sat next to God knows who. Anand sits next to people who pitch him great ideas. I've only sat next to morons.

1:03:38Guest 1Yeah.

1:03:39Guest 2Breadth and body of work.

1:03:40Jawad MirWell, it's also could be that maybe Anand is making an effort to have a conversation, and you're not.

1:03:46Guest 2I wonder what's up. I mean, I've, I've, I've, you know, I've gone bald. I'm wearing glasses. I'm trying to emulate

1:03:52Jawad MirBecause I find that on the plane you have to be very careful, 'cause, if you start talking to someone randomly, they might think you're creepy.

1:04:01Guest 1Yeah.

1:04:01Guest 2Yeah.

1:04:01Jawad MirRight? Because you're just... But sometimes there's an organic thing that happens, and it's happened with me a few times, but nothing to an idea of

1:04:07Guest 2You've gotta cross the threshold of non-verbal communication to say the first word. You know, you…

1:04:13Jawad MirYeah, that's true

1:04:13Guest 2... You've gotta sort of cross...

1:04:18Jawad MirThat's true.

1:04:18Guest 1Yeah, I mean, in this…

1:04:19Guest 2You gotta pick, break the ice.

1:04:22Guest 1Yeah. In this case he approached me saying, "Are you a professor?" I don't know why. Maybe I look like a professor. I don't know. But I'm a filmmaker, so I said, "Oh," and then he sort of started talking about this book that he wrote, and I said, "Wow, that's interesting." But anyway, yeah. No, it is

1:04:38Jawad MirAwesome. Well, this is interesting. This is really good. Well, guys, thank you so much. You know, unless you wanna add something. Oh, I do have one more point before I wrap it up. There was a scene in the film which is interesting, because the film came out which year, Salam? 2019 or '20? 20…

1:04:54Guest 22019. It had a Netflix release in 2019.

1:04:57Jawad MirOkay. So obviously you guys started working 2016, as you said. There's a photo of Dr. Abdus Salam and Oppenheimer, right?

1:05:04Guest 1Yeah.

1:05:04Jawad MirAnd now we have a film by Christopher Nolan last year on Oppenheimer. Was there anything more to that? And I wonder if you guys were making it around the same time when Oppenheimer was being made, would you have done something different bringing that a little bit more into it, or was that the only thing that you guys had in the film from the beginning?

1:05:23Guest 1I think we, if I remember, we have two pictures, right? One…

1:05:27Guest 2Two pictures. We've used both. We've used both.

1:05:29Guest 1Yeah, there's two.

1:05:30Guest 2The one is when S… Oppenheimer is in a, formation of ICTP.

1:05:35Guest 1Yeah.

1:05:35Guest 2That's the International Center of Theoretical Physics…

1:05:37Guest 1Yeah

1:05:37Guest 2... Meeting. But that was the only photo we had of Salam and Oppenheimer, and Tariq Ali mentions that Salam was the only person who was plugged into the international circuit of theoretical physicists, cutting-edge theoretical physicists. He knew Oppenheimer. I mean, he's speaking about Salam's connections vis-a-vis trying to amass knowledge and intel about how to go about making a bomb.

1:06:01Guest 2There was no one else, really. You know…

1:06:04Jawad MirYeah

1:06:04Guest 2... No one of that stature, no one else who was rubbing shoulders with the likes of Oppenheimer.

1:06:09Jawad MirYou know, I would love to know, and I'm sure there's a way to find out now that we're talking about it, if in the actual Christopher Nolan Oppenheimer movie there was ever in a script stage mention of Dr. Abdus Salam. That would be really cool to know. I don't know. I'm just kinda curious.

1:06:23Guest 1Yeah, no, I mean, knowing, I mean, having watched the film twice, I watched it twice, one with a Q&A with Nolan, I mean, it's c… it's completely based off of that book. So…

1:06:33Jawad MirYeah

1:06:34Guest 1... If it's not in the book, it wouldn't be in the movie.

1:06:37Jawad MirYeah.

1:06:37Guest 1It's so close to the book, and it's... I mean, I personally found the film to be extremely dense. I mean, it's beautifully made and everything, but I just thought it was so dense that somehow it kind of left out s… sort of some of the... I mean, you do get a sense of his humanity a little bit, but the focus was so much on the, because the book itself is so dense. It's, like, what? 800 or 900 pages. I tried to read it. I read, like, half and, like, oh, I gave up on it. American Pr…

1:07:08Jawad MirI'm so glad that I know somebody else who thinks like that, because I saw Oppenheimer on IMAX and, well, first thing that ticked me off was because it kept switching between IMAX and then, you know, regular 35 millimeter. But it didn't... I don't know why people went crazy over it, because it didn't hit me in the same way that, let's say, you know, Inception did or Interstellar did.

1:07:34Guest 1Yeah.

1:07:34Jawad MirThere was no emotional connection for me, at least for me.

1:07:38Guest 1No, me too. I mean, and then second time I watched it, I realized it was, like, wall to wall music, if you notice. There's no beat.

1:07:44Guest 2Yeah, that's, that's what bothered me the most.

1:07:47Jawad MirIt's crazy.

1:07:47Guest 2That's what bothered me the most.

1:07:47Guest 1The only, the only time you ac… the only sequence which I truly loved was when the bomb goes up. You know, there's silence in the film for the first time.

1:07:55Guest 2Yes.

1:07:56Guest 1And it's, you actually, you don't hear the bomb, but you just see the bomb go off, and then, and that whole sequence is well done, beautifully done. But, the rest was so back and forth. I don't know. Anyway.

1:08:08Jawad MirI agree.

1:08:08Guest 2That's like the scene…

1:08:09Guest 1And it's a tough…

1:08:09Guest 2... There's a scene in The Fast and the Furious when they're walking, 'cause they've just dest… they've just wrecked their car.

1:08:17Guest 1Yeah.

1:08:18Jawad MirAwesome. Well, that's a different topic for a different day, but, listen, guys, thank you so much. I've been meaning to do this for a while. I'm glad we did it.

1:08:25Guest 1Yeah, I'm glad we did it. Yeah, it's good.

1:08:26Jawad MirThank you so much for the time, and thank you for making

1:08:28Guest 2Thank you. Thank you for having us.

1:08:30Jawad MirYeah. Awesome, guys.

1:08:31Guest 1Thank you, and have a good rest of the day.

1:08:34Jawad MirYou too. Happy holidays. Take care. Bye-bye.

1:08:37Guest 2Bye-bye. Bye-bye.