'Delhi Crime', Director & Creator, Richie Mehta

0:03Jawad MirHow's everything?

0:04Richie MehtaVery good. Nice to see you after so long.

0:07Jawad MirYes, likewise. It's been quite some time.

0:09Richie MehtaYeah. And thanks for continually reaching out and just keeping me posted on things, and congratulations on all your successes.

0:17Jawad MirThanks, man. You too. I'm looking forward to your new series.

0:19Richie MehtaThank you. Thank you.

0:21Jawad MirWhen is that? Is there a date for that yet or?

0:23Richie MehtaNo. No, we're still figuring out the release plan, but, I sus… I expect it'll be sometime in the fall.

0:29Jawad MirOkay. And I think you guys showed it at Sundance, right? How did that go?

0:32Richie MehtaThat's right. That's right. Yeah, we showed at Sundance. It was really good. First three episodes, and it went very well, and it was nice. As you know, you never get to show a series in front of an audience.

0:43Jawad MirYeah.

0:44Richie MehtaSo nice to just have those memories going forward.

0:47Jawad MirThat's fantastic, man. Good. Good. And you're in the UK right now?

0:51Richie MehtaYeah. Yeah, just in my home.

0:54Jawad MirCool. Awesome, man.

0:56Richie MehtaYeah

0:56Jawad Mir... You know, just, tell me your... I know w… we've chatted here and there and, you know, probably around the same time when you and I were in school and… ... But at the same time, just tell me your story, how you got into films. What got you into it?

1:13Richie MehtaI mean, it was around that time. It was... I was just s… really interested in film growing up and, always engaging in them, I'm sure like yourself, and just watching them and analyzing them and studying them and always had a big attraction towards every aspect of how they were made, and, a… as a young kid, I just had that desire to learn more, and the aptitude for it. It... I seemed to absorb the information about films easier than everything else. And I had a love for art. I would, you know, draw and s… sketch and draw and paint and sculpt and do all those things throughout high school, and then the last semester of, OAC, we, in 13th grade, we used to have, I took… I just changed all my courses into drama and art, basically did, like, a last-minute change from the science and math world.

2:03Jawad MirRight.

2:03Richie MehtaAnd, engaged fully in the arts, and it was just the most fun I'd ever had and the most I'd, most kind of love I'd ha… I've had of academia. And then I went right into…

2:13Jawad MirAnd that was at John…

2:14Richie MehtaThat was John…

2:14Jawad MirSorry, go on.

2:15Richie MehtaWhen I... That was at John Fraser, yeah. And then, and then I remember going to the ca… guidance counselor and asking, like, "How do I get into film?" And he was like, "I don't know." I'm like, "Wait a sec, aren't you supposed to help me? Like, at least figure out what to do?" And he's like, "We've never ha… I've never had anyone ask that question before." so I just looked into all the programs. At the time, it was, you know, three universities in the Toronto area that had them. And two were practical, and one was academic. And I took the academic route bec… at University of Toronto because, I could also then focus on art, painting, and sculpture, and here I did an art degree in, University of Toronto with a minor in cinema studies. And the art degree, I just painted, sculpted, did photography for four years, and journalism. And I just figured I just wanna learn all the liberal arts that feed into filmmaking before I actually start making film and learn about it academically and historically. So that, those four years were really formative, and it just really helped me to discover my voice and the stuff I wanted to talk about, at least out, right out of the gate.

3:22Richie MehtaAnd I tried my hand at all those different art forms for years, and it was really enriching learning about, you know, color and composition and framing and all the things I wanted to teach myself. And then Sheridan College had a post-grad film program that just opened at the time, right when I graduated, and I went straight into that. I just applied and got in with a portfolio and did a one-year intensive everything filmmaking. I made six short films in every format you can imagine. And it was, that was the, that was it. I was just like a wind-up toy up until that point, and then that year was letting go of the toy, and I just kept shooting and writing and learning, and I was kind of on fire that year in terms of my energy. Came out with a bunch of short films. Started applying to festivals right out the gate. Got into a few South Asian festivals in Toronto.

4:16Richie Mehta... That was really helpful because I met people like Bob and just, like, friends, people who ended up becoming long-term colleagues and friends who were experts in their own field in the South Asian community in Toronto. And at that point, this was 2002, it was kind of exploding. There was so much talent in the music scene, the art scene, the film scene, people of my age who were just getting out, of their own res… respective journeys, getting out into the field. And it was a whole new awakening for me of the level of artistry, in our community. And, I then decided to tap into that to make my next short film, where I just, the people I had met in those festivals in Toronto, like Bob and a few other people, I just said, "Hey, let's go make, let's go to India, and let's make a short film about this and this," a short film my brother had, a short story my brother had given me, which was very moving. And that became the basis for my short film, Amo. So we went to India, for a couple of weeks, in December 2003, and we shot that, with 10 of us, and it was an amazing experience.

5:22Richie MehtaAnd then that short film ended up, I finished it and ended up going to festivals all over the world, and we sold it, and it just became this really big success in the short film world. Went to, like, festivals like Telluride and London, like…

5:33Jawad MirRight

5:34Richie Mehta... Kind of the first international exposure I had. And then I decided after that, I had done a bunch of shorts alongside that as well that, to try my first feature film, and I just wanted to do that story again 'cause I, the first time was kind of an exercise, an experiment, rather than just fully immersing myself in it. And so used that as the basis, and my brother and I basically wrote a feature film version of that, and we pitched it to tele… we pitch, we pitched it through TIFF. We did a pitch to this competition at TIFF We ended up winning that, and, that became the start of the financing process through Telephone Canada. The soft money system in Canada to finance my first feature film. And then, you know, each feature film led to the next, as it were. That's the short form of how I got into it.

6:28Jawad MirThat's fantastic, man. You know, the thing about Amal is when I saw it first, when it... I don't know what year it was, but whenever I saw it the first time…

6:38Richie MehtaYeah

6:38Jawad Mir... I, it was such an, simple film. I mean, nowadays, you know, you see a lot of that stuff, here and there, but for me that was, it was just something straightforward and simple, yet extremely complicated at the same time…

6:53Jawad Mir... If that makes any sense. You know, one of the things that I loved about that film, there's a scene, and I saw this again a couple of days ago just to refresh my memory, and as soon as I saw that scene, as that scene was unfolding, I knew exactly what was gonna happen because I remembered it because I loved it at that time, too. When, I'm really bad with character names so…

7:12Richie MehtaIt's okay

7:12Jawad Mir... Forgive me. The girl who's always sitting in Amal's rickshaw… ... And she comes to her house and, you know, to give him the carburetor.

7:21Richie MehtaThe carburetor.

7:23Jawad MirYeah. And his mom is standing there, and they're just exchanging, you know, eye contact, and so much was said in that moment… ... As opposed to, "Hey, you know, this is what I'm feeling," or, "That's what I'm feeling." That was just so beautifully done. It was just, there was just nothing there, but so much, you know? Less is more, as they say, so…

7:43Richie MehtaThank you

7:43Jawad Mir... Wanted to say, wanted to say that was, that was really masterfully done. You know…

7:47Richie MehtaThank you

7:48Jawad Mir... Just a lot of directors would go in a completely wrong direction with that, as you can imagine.

7:52Richie MehtaNo, thank you. I remember that scene was actually the most difficult scene to edit because of arriving at what you just said. We, me and my producer and I, one of my producers, Steven, we, and the editor, we just, we went back and forth so much. We were... A… in fact, we actually went to, got to... It was the only time in my life with that, with that producer, who I still work with all the time, we're, we're friends from school, we actually almost got in arguments. Like, almost, not shouting, but really heated because we were trying to find the balance of, like…

8:22Jawad MirYeah

8:22Richie Mehta... Telling what needs to be told but pulling back 'cause it's one of those scenes you hold on a person a second too long or a second too short, you've kind of lost it. And we kept losing it. And I have to say to his, to his credit that he kept pushing me to get to, w… to where it needed to get to. And that's one of the key reasons that I'm a… probably able to make a living is I've been very lucky to surround myself with people who push. Nobody, n… I've never been with yes people. Nobody ever... I never get a free ride…

8:52Jawad MirYeah

8:52Richie Mehta... On that.

8:54Jawad MirThat is a terrible thing to do and, you know, it's something I realized about nine, 10 years ago, too, is that you need to surround yourself with people that will challenge you, that will push you…

9:03Richie MehtaYeah

9:03Jawad Mir... That will disagree with you because that's when the best stuff comes out. Then you gotta put your ego on the side and…

9:09Richie MehtaYep

9:09Jawad Mir... Let it flow and, yeah, you know.

9:11Richie MehtaYeah, and they have to care, they have to care enough. It's actually, it's a, it's a real, it's a real service to be honest because the credit is not g… not enough credit is given to people like that who basically are investing so much of their heart and soul into somebody else's vision to try and improve it. So there's a real selflessness to it, and it's very easy to, for someone like me or someone in the cr… who's creating the project to have your back up against the wall and say like, "You know, just leave me alone. Let me do my vision. Why are you in my way?" In fact, they're facilitating you, and they're just trying to push you to grow. Like a kid would have, you know, a problem with their parents. We all do at some point when the parents are just trying to do their best. It's, it's that kind of thing, and I've been very lucky to have that team around me. And that team continually shifts and changes.

9:59Jawad MirRight. Right. You know, you had three major actors in the film. I mean, people in the South Asian community know them obviously…

10:07Richie MehtaYeah

10:07Jawad Mir... Really well. You know, Seema Biswas, who was in Banded Queen with Shekhar Kapoor. And you got, Roshan Seth who played Jawaharlal Nehr… Nehru in, Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, and then you had, of course, Naseeruddin Shah who was in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…

10:23Richie MehtaYeah

10:23Jawad Mir... As one of his Western, West, Hollywood credits. How did you... W… were they all your first choices? How…

10:28Richie Mehtahuh

10:28Jawad Mir... How was that, how did that go about?

10:31Richie MehtaYeah, very much. It was all just a systematic process. I mean, Seema I had met at an event in Toronto Film Festival in 2005 at a party, and I pitched her. You know, those kinds of things once in a while really come true where you just bump into somebody and you pitch them. And then I said, she a… she said, "Give me a s… give me a hard copy of the script tomorrow. In my, leave it at the concierge in the, in the hotel I was staying in, and I'll look at it." And so I did that, and then she went back to India, and a few months later I was in India and I called her and I'm like, "Did you read the script?" She's like, "Yep." And I went to set on a film she was shooting to meet her, and we just developed that rapport and she really loved it. So I was very lucky, that she happened to come to Toronto, when…

11:11Jawad MirYeah

11:11Richie Mehta... When it was on my mind. And then Naseer and Roshan I went to that, on that trip hunting for them, and I bumped into Naseer on the street literally.

11:20Jawad MirOh, really?

11:20Richie MehtaIn Bombay, yeah. It was the weirdest thing. It was the day after I arrived and I was looking for him, and I literally bumped into him in Bombay. And I pitched him on the street again. And he was intrigued 'cause I don't think he'd ever had somebody just fly across the world and pitch him on the street. And then we just developed a, you know, a rapport as well over time, and he read it and he loved it and he was in and, it was, it was literally that simple. The, what... We had done so much work on the script, so the script also spoke to, spoke to…

11:49Jawad MirYeah

11:49Richie Mehta... These people. And also they're, they also, they love investing in young talent. They're eternal optimists in that way hoping that the next person will do something really special with their... W… if they can help, basically, which they did. And the same thing, in that, on that trip I went looking for Roshan and I connected with somebody who knew him, and then I got a meeting with him and we had really great conversations in Delhi and… He read it, and Roshan actually took a while. It took about eight months for him to say yes. He kept giving me script notes, and we'd have a lot of discussions about character, and I learned a lot from him. I remember after about eight months of discussions, he was giving me more notes, and I'm like, "Roshan, man, I've incorporated everything you've said. Like, are you doing this?" He's like, "Oh yeah, I'm doing it. Didn't I tell you that?" And I'm like, "Oh, no, you never told me that. Like, this is really good to know, you know? I thought I was still in the courtship, but you're saying it's, it's good. We're, we're good." and he w… and he was amazing. He's... They all have their own takes on things, but, you know, because he ha… he, like you said, he's worked with the best.

12:50Richie MehtaSo he… all of their standards are very high. I mean, Seema... You know, Nasir, he… his instinct on everything was always spot on. I didn't have to direct him much. Seema actually took... When I was doing the translations, on Amal to get into Hindi, I had a translation, w… dialogue writer that she'd connected me with, and then at the very last minute she wanted to make sure those w… they were even better than they ended up being. And that was actually Rajesh Tailang, the star of Siddharth, one of my films, and s…

13:20Jawad MirRight

13:20Richie Mehta... The second lead in Delhi Crime. She introduced me to him, to do my dialogue in Amal, and then she wanted to make sure it was the best it could be, so we sat, Rajesh, Seema, and I, on my birthday, on my 28th birthday, in pre-production in Amal. We sat for about, I don't know, 15 hours, went through every piece of dialogue, and sh… and she would slightly improve things, 'cause she cared so much. So all of them kind of came together to really help me on that project. And I ha… I have such affection for them to this day. But that's the thing with India, too. You really do get a lot of actors like that who are so well-established. They… they'll just act on instinct, and if they like you and they get a good vibe, they'll do it.

14:00Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, there's a... There's obviously a mainstream actors, you know, who probably would rarely do something like that with some exceptions. But, you know, the names that you, that you worked with, of course, and then you have people like Shabana Azmi.

14:15Richie MehtaYeah.

14:15Jawad MirYou have people like

14:16Richie MehtaYeah. She's, yeah, very similar

14:18Jawad Mir... Shefali who you worked with…

14:19Richie MehtaYeah

14:19Jawad Mir... Like that. She's one of my favorite actresses. And so it's good to see that, you know? That, and then that's, that's how... You're familiar with, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, I'm sure.

14:30Richie MehtaYeah.

14:31Jawad MirYeah. I mean, that's how he pretty much got the break, is through, you know, people like Anil and Jackie believing in him and…

14:39Richie MehtaYeah

14:39Jawad Mir... Giving him that break with that film Parinda. But yeah, no, A… Amal was just, you know, again, watching it the second time. I've seen Siddharth too, but it's been a while since I've seen it. And Delhi Crime…

14:52Richie MehtaYeah

14:52Jawad Mir... When it came out, I remember I told my wife that we, because of the topic obviously, because of Shefali being one of my favorite actresses in the India, and then obviously you worked on it, you know, we sat down. I think we normally don't binge-watch.

15:07Jawad MirWe will just take like one episode a day or every other day. Just too much. But we finished that on a weekend.

15:13Richie MehtaWow.

15:13Jawad MirIt was so…

15:14Richie MehtaReally?

15:15Jawad Mir... Well done, and it was so intense. You know, and that's what I loved about the rawness of it that you… ... Didn't shy away from, which was so important. It was so well done, and some of the scenes without any kind of visuals, just hearing about it…

15:32Jawad Mir... You know, just kinda gives you that, you know, cringey feeling. And, how did that come about? What was the source of that? Like, was it because of... Obviously, when that happened in 2012, but what was the genesis stemming from there and getting into an actual, you know, eight-part series?

15:51Richie MehtaYeah, I w… I was finishing, Siddharth, actually. I had gone to Delhi to do some ADR on Siddharth with Rajesh, a few other people, and that's, that was December 2012 when the crime happened. So…

16:02Jawad MirYeah

16:02Richie Mehta... I was around to see the aftermath of it, to try and come to terms with it and try to understand what had happened, and the whole... It felt like the whole world was collapsing around.

16:13Jawad MirYeah.

16:13Richie MehtaAnd then, just kind of sat with it and, you know, e… everyone wanted to do something about it. Every artist wanted to do something. Everyone wanted to do something about it. So I was sitting on it, and then a few months later I was back in Delhi. This was in March. And, I had a project I was working on, which in fact was a response to that, to that crime, something I was stewing on, and I wanted to meet the Delhi Police 'cause I didn't understand anything about police procedure. I needed to know some things about the story I was constructing.

16:42Richie MehtaAnd so I met the former commissioner, who had recently retired, through a family connection, and sat with him and told him what I was doing and what information I needed, and he basically said, you know, "Mate, forget about what you're doing." He... And he gave me the verdict that just came out, which sentences those six guys to death, and it was like this big, very thick 300-page document the judge, the sessions court judge had, put together to sentence them to death. So it was like the whole narrative of the crime, the people involved, how they were caught, and their motives and methods. And I... He said, "Why don't you read this? And if you think there's a story there, I'll give you all the connections you want into the police, to discover it." And so I was intrigued. I didn't think it was the right thing to do to make any story out of this, 'cause it was too fresh at the time, but I was really intrigued just to know. So I read it, and I'm like, "This is the most remarkable thing I've ever seen. I mean, I've ever read." Just, it's so harrowing. It's so, it's so much worse than what I thought.

17:43Richie MehtaAnd at the same time, you know, there are people who really rose to the occasion, especially women who really rose to the occasion to combat this. And then I ended up connecting with the main female cop, who Shefali ends up playing.

17:56Jawad MirYeah.

17:56Richie MehtaAnd I thought she was such a remarkable person. Her whole team around her was remarkable, and I'm like, these are like 12 Serpicos running around in the Delhi Police Department, and really trying to make a difference, and especially these women. And so I figured, look, there's a story to be told. It's to be told not about the brutality against women, not just about the brutality against women in India. The story is also about the women who are rising to the occasion to try and combat it, which… Iro… is an irony, but also a very painful one, that men cause the issue and then they don't even solve it. And so I felt that could be a way in, and if nobody else is doing that story, then I'll, and I have access. The very least I could do is try.

18:37Jawad MirYeah.

18:37Richie MehtaSo I started that research process, and it just led to a 400-page script, which le… which lends itself to a eight-hour series rather than a film.

18:47Jawad MirThat's crazy, man. And was it always your plan to direct all the episodes?

18:53Richie MehtaI mean, I, again, I was just doing it as a long film, essentially. And there was a whole process by which I arrived at that because I didn't know how to write series, and I wasn't... I had no experience in it, and I ended up, finding a mentor in L… in LA who really helped me, do that. And then I took it to market, and everyone said no, to it. And I knew how to do it, and I, like, I knew that I wanted to work with a lot of the actors I'd worked with on Amal and Siddharth, and then people like Shefali, of course. But, I knew how I wanted to approach doing it. It was a big departure creatively for me in many ways. And I, and I didn't trust anyone else, I, to direct under me because I didn't know how to manage that. It was my…

19:39Richie Mehta... It was my shortcoming, not anyone else's.

19:41Jawad MirNo, I get that.

19:41Richie MehtaAnd I figured it's, yeah, it's just easier to do it than to manage somebody to do it because I didn't know how.

19:46Jawad MirYeah.

19:46Richie MehtaAnd then we found financiers to back my vision because they saw my other work. And they read the scripts, and they saw my work, and they knew what I could deliver.

19:57Jawad MirGood. That's fantastic. And how... Was Shefali your first choice? How did that…

20:02Richie MehtaOh, yeah.

20:03Jawad MirYeah.

20:03Richie MehtaYeah. I mean, she was, she was suggested by the casting director. Again, somebody else, Seema, connected me with on Amal for the first time, and then I worked with him subsequently on everything, and he's become really a, the premier casting director.

20:17Jawad MirGot it. And…

20:20Richie MehtaIn India, and he just…

20:21Jawad MirWas…

20:21Richie MehtaIt was a…

20:22Jawad MirSorry, go on. You kind of broke off there.

20:25Richie MehtaOh, I said, no, I just described the character to him, to the casting director, and his first choice within a minute was Shefali.

20:32Jawad MirYeah, no, that was a great choice, man. And just from a technical standpoint, in the police station sequence, scenes, or anywhere else, and, maybe I'm... Maybe it was done so masterfully that I didn't pick it up. How much actual lighting was used other than natural lighting or the ones that were in the room already? Was... Did you guys sway away from it, or was it just done very subtly?

20:57Richie MehtaOh, no, we lit the whole thing, fully.

21:00Jawad MirYou did? Okay.

21:00Richie MehtaIn fact, yeah, we lit the whole police station, 'cause it was a real station. So we literally,.. There was a courtyard in the middle, which we walk through sometimes…

21:12Jawad MirYeah

21:12Richie Mehta... Near the jail cells. And so we… and so the DP actually put light, basically put a skimmer over the whole station, like a sheet o… o… basically covered the station…

21:21Jawad MirOkay, good

21:21Richie Mehta... With a sheet, so it's a soft light.

21:22Jawad MirMakes sense now. Yeah.

21:23Richie MehtaAnd then every fixture was either altered or we put our own fixtures in all over the place. So we lit the whole thing.

21:29Jawad MirSee, that's, that's what's so amazing about when you don't notice lighting…

21:33Richie MehtaYeah

21:33Jawad Mir... And you're, like, wondering if it wasn't, and that's, that's, that's amazing, man. I, 'cause I, you know, as a creative eye myself, and I sometimes I get, you know, okay, how was that done? And I, to me, it was always either this was done very masterfully or there was nothing there. But, you know, kudos to your team and you for pulling that off…

21:54Richie MehtaThanks. Yeah

21:54Jawad Mir... Because the look of the entire series was amazing.

21:57Richie MehtaThank you. I can't wait for you to see Poacher because it's the same team and kind of done the same thing to the jungle now.

22:04Jawad MirHow many parts is it? Eight?

22:05Richie MehtaEight, yeah.

22:07Jawad MirAnd what was the inspiration behind that?

22:10Richie MehtaInspiration was I did a film in, called India in a Day. It's the poster over there. Right?

22:16Jawad MirRight.

22:16Richie MehtaWhich Ridley Scott had produced…

22:18Jawad MirYeah

22:18Richie Mehta... And Google had financed, documentary. And people all over the country just sent me footage on one day in 2015, on October 10th. That was a shoot date for anyone who wanted to participate. And so because you could just t… use your phone and, you know, shoot whatever you want and upload it to me, and I'll take it and use it to make a, basically a mosaic of a film. And one of the pieces of footage I got was an ivory raid in Delhi, the big… for a massive ivory raid. And I am like, "What is this? This is crazy, like, a bunch of cops breaking into a house and finding ivory, and this is nuts." And I contacted the person who sent it, and they worked for an NGO, a wildlife NGO called the Wildlife Trust of India in Delhi. And they s… and I said, "What is this?" And they said, "Hey, you know, your shoot day was October 10th, 2015 on your Google project, and we did the biggest raid in the history of India on October 10th, so figured we'd send it to you." And I'm like, "Isn't this, like, evidence in a, in a case? Like, don't you need this? Like, I can't just publish it." at the same time, it's cr… it's a crime scene, so I don't think I'm...

23:18Richie MehtaIt's not right for the film. But I said, "Give me, like, a few years, and, I need to do this," and I was gonna do Delhi Crime after. So I said, "Give me three or four years, and I'll come back, and I'll do a whole project on it, 'cause it sounds really fascinating." And so after Delhi Crime, I contacted them, and I met them, and I just kept going and meeting them all over the country, the various people involved in wildlife crime fighting, which I thought was the coolest title I've ever heard, wildlife crime fighters. And, they described to me this case, which was the biggest ca… ivory poaching case in the history of the country, which they solved. And it goes into the whole wildlife mafia, wildlife crime fighters, people who are involved in poaching, dealing, smuggling, buying, people who are the civilians, and the government officials who are trying to stop them and save the species. And I just thought it was so fascinating and really something we should know about because now you have a procedural drama, which is true, and it's also about people trying to save the world. The stakes are even higher, and trying to avert extinction. So I spent, a few years researching and writing that, and then during the pandemic I'd had all the research done, so I just sat at home for a year and a half writing it.

24:27Jawad MirWicked. And shooting experience in, you know, in blazing heats and, you know, the jungle and all that stuff, how was that? Because Delhi Crime was not necessarily was controlled, but it was controllable, like…

24:42Jawad Mir... You were ... Here you have, you're open to mother nature.

24:45Richie MehtaYes.

24:45Jawad MirYou know, whether it's rain, whether it's other distractions, other wildlife…

24:50Richie MehtaYeah

24:50Jawad Mir... Et cetera. What was that like?

24:53Richie MehtaYeah, it was crazy. I mean, it was... When I was doing Delhi Crime, I remember thinking after, I don't know, 40 days of shooting or 50 days on the streets, I'm like, "I can't wait to not be in an urban environment on my next project. I wanna just be in a place with clean air and, just no noise and all these things."

25:10Jawad MirYeah.

25:11Richie MehtaAnd so I was looking forward to this, and then when we got there, you know, it's the jungle. So like you said, it's 45 degrees, and it's raining every day, and there's leeches, and there's, you know, anything, leopards and cobras can fall on your head from the trees and all kinds of stuff. But the rain is the big thing, and w… and with the rain comes all kinds of creatures and all kinds of dangers. You know, at one point, one of the, one of our advisors was like, "By the way, if you ever see something you think is a swarm coming at you, it could be a swarm of bees, and they'll kill… they're g… they'll kill you. Like, you have to get away from that swarm." And I'm like, "This is a thing in the jungle?" Like, you know, there's, like, a whole list of things. So it was tough. It was really tough. But y… you know, the air was clean. Nobody got injured, luckily.

26:00Jawad MirYeah

26:00Richie Mehta... The poisonous snakes that came near us, we were able to avoid, and if there were wild elephant herds, we were able to avoid them. Like, the whole thing also was low impact. I didn't wanna hurt anybody. I didn't wanna get in the way of the wildlife. I wasn't there to interrupt their lives or disrupt their lives. I was there to actually help. So that was a challenge. The most challenging part, though, actually I would say was the isolation, being a… being away from civilization for a while. And then the most challenging was the last six weeks we were shooting in Delhi, again, the last two episodes, and, that was the summer of Delhi. That was 50, 52 degrees Celsius. That was the worst heat, I'd ever experienced in my life, and that's where we all kind of collapsed, at the end of that journey. 'Cause I always generally shoot in India in the winters. But this we just had no choice the way it turned out. So that was really hard back in the city again in the summer. If I could go back in the jungle, I'd happily go back.

27:00Richie Mehta'Cause the other thing is, on the one hand, it's unpredictable what you're dealing with. On the other hand, it's kind of predictable, that you're pretty sure no humans are gonna be around, and that's…

27:09Jawad MirYeah

27:09Richie Mehta... That's great. I do love shooting, and not having to contend with that type of, potential disruption.

27:20Jawad MirYeah. And how many months or weeks were you in the jungle?

27:25Richie MehtaFive months.

27:27Jawad MirStraight?

27:28Richie MehtaYeah. For, yeah, including prep. Yeah.

27:33Jawad MirWow. So it was... I would imagine it would be probably from October to, like, March or something?

27:37Richie MehtaNo. The shoot was January till, July.

27:42Jawad MirStarted from there, January.

27:43Richie MehtaYeah. I'd done, I had done some prep trips in December, yeah.

27:47Jawad MirThat must have been really intense and, you know, being away from family and everything. Was that same…

27:52Richie MehtaYeah, it was very tough. Very tough. But I have a very, I have a very understanding family.

27:57Jawad MirYeah. Good for you, man. That's awesome. Five months is a long time, but you know, at the same time, it... You work for five months, and then you, not that you don't work for five months again, but you just have a little bit of more controlled schedule, to s… to sort of…

28:10Richie MehtaYeah, definitely. I mean, now I... Yeah, it's, it's a controlled sleep schedule and time with the family and stuff like that. It's still intense because now I'm just managing very elaborate post-production and hu… and very heavy visual effects schedule 'cause there's so many effects shots in this series. So that's a whole other world that I'm now experiencing for the first time.

28:30Jawad MirGood. Good. And how... When you're looking for... What I should... You know, for me personally, when I'm, whenever I'm looking for a story, it never happens, but when I'm not looking, that's when I… ... Tend to get. Right? It's... What part of a story strikes you at a core that you're like, "This is, this is what I wanna do"? Is it the emotional element? Is it a character? Is it a certain feeling?

29:00Richie MehtaIt's usually relevance, actually. Yeah. I, and it's the same thing. I'm never looking for it, ever. But certainly if I encounter something that's even slight… that slightly implies it, I'll pursue it. So with this case, you know, with the footage that came in from India today, I was like, "There's something here." And when I spoke to them, I'm like, "There's something here." And then when I would meet them in Delhi, and, in their office, and they would say, "You need to meet our wildlife crime fighter," I'm like, "Yes." And I didn't even think twice. I'm like, "Yes, of course I've gotta meet him." For Delhi Crime, he literally handed it to me on my lap, the commissioner, and just placed the papers and then said, "Here you go." And he was very extremely respectful about it. He's like, "If you think there's a story, then, you know, I'll help you, I'll help facilitate you making it." and for me, it was very hard to say no because it was access. It was access to something that most other people in the media world didn't have. And that, and then along with that comes a kind of trust. So I think with,.. And relevance is not an issue on Delhi Crime.

30:01Richie MehtaIt's very clear what the relevance of that story is and what it means to all of us. With Poacher, the relevance is very clear. We're talking about extinction, and something very important to me. I think about it a lot. When we were shooting Delhi Crime, the most painful experience I had on that set, because I had gone through the emotions of what Delhi Crime represented when I was writing it. As you know, you write it, and you go through that all, and then when you're directing it, you're executing it, and it's a little bit more dispassionate. The most painful day I remember on Delhi Crime was when the northern Kenyan white rhino went extinct the news of that had come out, that a subspecies of rhinoceros had w… had become extinct because of us. And that I will never for… I'll never forget that day of how sad I felt. And so taking that forward, when a project about extinction came along, I was... It was very easy for me to jump on it because I care so much. So I… for me, it has to do with relevance. If something really relevant to what I'm thinking about or what I really care about, comes along, generally I'll pursue it.

31:03Richie MehtaAnd the other thing is anyone else doing it? Like, if 10 other people are doing it and doing something similar, then I'm very happy not to do it, then I don't have to go through the pain of birthing that thing.

31:18Jawad MirSo relevance is there, sure, but I think maybe I should have worded my question a little bit more better, is that sometimes, I don't know if it's happened to you, but certainly it's happened to me, sometimes you don't realize there's something that is relevant to you until you hear about it and it hits you.

31:37Richie MehtaYes.

31:37Jawad MirLike, oh, right? So, like, not saying that, you know, what happened in Delhi you didn't care about it or what's happening to the… ... You know, the poacher you didn't care about. But was there... Has there been ever, like, a moment, and doesn't have to be what you may have done or what maybe what you're already working on, where not that you don't care about a subject, but because we have so much information all around us, it sometimes it goes in the back of your brain. Has something come out…

32:03Richie MehtaOh, yeah. Most of it is like that. I mean, Siddharth was that. It was a 10-minute conversation with a rickshawala in Delhi who had lost his son, and he was asking me to help him find him. And when he told me the story of how he lost him, I was so hurt by it, but I was going to a meeting, and so I'm like, "Oh man, that's awful." And then, and I didn't, never saw that guy again. But it just sat with me in my head for... In the back of my head. I never forgot it. And then when I was casting a science fiction movie I ended up doing, I was in LA for I think for a month or six weeks or something. I was staying at a friend's place, while she wasn't there, so I just had the place to myself while I was around the, every day going to casting meetings. And at night I was just alone sitting there, and I remember one night I'm like, I just started typing. I was there for a different project. I started typing this. This had been like nine months since I'd fir… met that rickshawala, and I just typed the whole story, the whole script for Siddharth. I just did it in a couple days because I was so moved and I just, it just wasn't leaving me.

33:05Richie MehtaAnd it ended up becoming something that was relevant to me.

33:09Jawad MirMakes sense

33:09Richie Mehta... Another experience, I had in China in 2014, which, was just kind of a life-changing ex… experience I had on the street, and then I just put it away. And then a year later I'm like, oh my God, I just kind of started typing something out and it came out again. So it does happen often where I'm not looking for something and I... Either I know right away where something is, somebody has said something or I've had an experience and I'm like, "Ah, damn it, that's gonna cost me a couple years. I've gotta deal with that." Or it just percolates and becomes something over time that's relevant to me. It is exactly what you said. Yeah. But the, but what's universal across all those experiences is that it's not an active decision to make it. It's just a, it's a, it's a automatic one.

33:49Jawad MirMoral obligation.

33:50Richie MehtaYeah. Exactly right.

33:52Jawad MirYeah. With Siddharth, the gentleman that you met, in India, you know, the sto… from who the story got inspired…

34:00Richie MehtaYeah

34:00Jawad Mir... Was there a moment... I know you met him very briefly, and obviously it was a lot of information that you were absorbing. But, afterwards, was there any ever an inclination like, should I make a documentary on him looking for his son?

34:13Richie MehtaNo, because, first, the first instinct was like, can I help him? He asked me to help him find his son, 'cause I had access. I was educated. And so I tried to help him and, but it had been too long, since his son had gone missing. And so when I called the number he gave him, he gave me, which was a num… neighbor's number. This was 2000... I met him in 2000, 10. I met him in April of 2010. So he'd have a phone, and, this was just the start of smartphone world, so most people in the, in India and labor class didn't have it.

34:51Richie MehtaSo he said his neighbor had a phone, and I called the neighbor and the phone didn't, the phone number didn't exist. That guy's name was Muhammad Ali, so good luck finding him, you know? And that's that. So his story was, like, there's nothing I could do there. But I did pursue where I thought his son could end up going.

35:08Richie MehtaJust to sort of try and see what the deal is. And then it all started coming together. So, and the other thing is I'm not that guy who initially thinks, "Oh, I gotta do a documentary on this." I'm not that guy. I'm, I'm, I'm very much... I mean, looking at the environment around you and you're similar, I think narratively, I think in dramatic fiction terms…

35:29Richie Mehta... Where everything is controlled and constructed, and I actually believe fundamentally it's, often a more clear-cut way to get to the truth of something is through narrative fiction. I think people feel it more, if you do it right, emotionally. So I've always... That's how I've always been, slanted.

35:50Jawad MirMakes sense.

35:51Richie MehtaYeah.

35:52Jawad MirCool. No, that's awesome, man. That's good. Any… anything that you can talk about that you're working on in terms of script, or have you got a bunch of scripts that you've written that you want to turn them into some sort of film series?

36:03Richie MehtaYeah. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of stuff I've been working on. You know, there's this project I wanna do in China which is based on that experience I had, which I'm trying to get off the ground. But that's amongst many other things that are going. I've always wanted to do Passage to India as a limited series. It's one of my favorite books. And so I've been tooling away at that for a while. And then there's a ton of things that have come my way. There's a few other kind of dream projects I'm tooling away. Poacher is obviously one of them, which is almost done now. And, there's a few other dream projects that I'm just starting to work on and research and things have come my way, which are really fascinating now. And now I'm getting some offers that are…

36:47Jawad MirOf course

36:47Richie Mehta... In… enticing. Certainly I can't entertain things that don't have some sort of social relevance or environmental relevance of some kind. You know, I'm not just a, I'm not the pure entertainment guy, though I love watching that stuff. But yeah, there's, there's lots. There's lots on the go. Actually maybe a little too much on the go, but as you know, you know, just to get one off the ground, it's like you throw 10 into the air and hope for it.

37:14Jawad MirYeah. Is your... And stuff that you're working on, or even if you're not working on any of the script, is something that you wanna do that is outside of the subcontinent, like India… ... Like maybe in the Western part of the world, like, you know, US, UK, Canada?

37:33Richie MehtaYeah. Yeah. I mean, look, the China project is not India, but it's still Asia, of course.

37:37Jawad MirYeah.

37:38Richie MehtaBut, no, there's, there's a handful of things, in fact, that would take place. One project takes place in New York. One takes place in, between the UK and the Middle East. One takes place entirely in s… like small town USA.

37:57Jawad MirOkay

37:57Richie Mehta... One is in, yeah, one is in London. It's, it's kind of all over in a way. The thing with India I just keep finding is that, for me the stories that have real relevance, to me that are coming out of India are the ones that have a global application in some way. Like Deadly Crime, there's never been a crime any… anything like that on earth that any of us had ever heard about. Poacher is about an i… issue that all, affects all of us and there's never been a case like this globally. Passage to India is very singular for what it's saying globally. There's... My... The stories that I'm interested in India are global stories. More local stories or hyperlocal stories are not necessarily for me because there are way better filmmakers locally, that can tackle that than I can.

38:48Jawad MirRight. Right. Good. That's fantastic, man. And, you know, one thing that I really,.. I'm, I'm kind of going all over the place with this…

38:57Richie MehtaNo problem. No

38:59Jawad Mir... Is that there's always... The characters that you have, like Amal or Siddharth or even, the character that, you know, Shefali plays… There is just... Just trying to find the right words. There's just so much depth for, to them, but the most amount of depth that never showed, and which I don't know if it was intentional or if it came across like that, was Amal. Like, the actor that played him, any time somebody was talking to him, he just had this, no matter what it was, what situation he was going through, aside from the time when the doctor comes and tells him about the death of the girl that, you know…

39:38Jawad Mir... Got into the accident, he just seemed content. And was that, as a director, your approach throughout the film that because this character is... And what was at stake, like he was gonna get all this money, you know, at the, at the end, he just seemed content in his own world. Was that very driven from your end or did that just sort of happen on the set and you kind of took it from there and made sure that continues on?

40:06Richie MehtaYeah. I mean, I had the privilege of doing it twice, right? 'Cause you did the first short film.

40:11Jawad MirSure.

40:11Richie MehtaI did the first short film and then, and then I went back and the same character, same actor playing him both times. So we kind of did an experiment the first time, as I said, and I made a big mistake on the first film, which I rectified in the second as best I could at the time.

40:25Jawad MirWhich was?

40:26Richie MehtaWhich was, when he's, when he... Amal meets this old man, right? And they have this ride around. He's... For anyone who's watching this who's never seen the film, he's a rickshaw driver, he's like a taxi driver, and meets this old vagabond and drives him around. They argue a lot. The vagabond's so angry at life. And then when he drops him off, the bum refuses to pay the fare and then Amal says, "It's fine, you know, you pay me whatever you feel I deserve." And he's... A… and the old man is so moved by this that he ends up leaving him his fortune, as you know. That conversation is the, is the linchpin of the whole movie, the conversation between Amal and the old man at the end when he drops him off. And in the short film, the way I had directed him, was pretty much on the page and we just did it. And it was very much my fault. But he did, he did it in a manner that he basically says, "No sir, like, if you're not happy with my service then it's my fault. And so keep your money." And I remember watching it before I did the feature film and I'm like, "Oh my God, he's making a big deal of this, of giving the money back," which means to him it's a big deal.

41:41Richie MehtaAnd the whole key to... I fi… I think about the idea of goodness is that the person who is being good doesn't know they're being good. They're just being. So that idea of goodness is something that we as observers ascribe to him or her, based on our life experiences, and our understanding of the opposite. So in the feature film, he just says, he gives him the money, and then Amal gives him this tiny bit of change back. And the old man says, I don't know, ke… you know, "Keep the change." And Amal in the feature film just says, "No." And it's that simple. And he just has this look, like you said, he has a look, and when he looks at him, he looks in his face of like, "I don't need it. I'm okay. I'm totally cool." It's not, and it's not as abrasive, he's not being confrontational. He's just

42:38Jawad MirNo Yeah

42:40Richie MehtaAnd that's the difference. That's the difference between hi… him being a good person that we see as good versus…

42:47Jawad MirYeah

42:47Richie Mehta... The difference of as a filmmaker me saying, "Look, he's good, isn't he?" And that was one of the reasons I wanted to redo it. And I think if we got it right, it's what you're saying. It's all throughout the film, that tone of he just is.

43:02Jawad MirThat he just is.

43:02Richie MehtaI remember when we were writing the script, it was a big thing 'cause we… one of the notes we got back from one of the financiers was, "Hey, there's no character arc with Amal. He starts off good and he ends up good." And I'm like, "Yeah, you're right." And I'm trying to think of a movie that does that, and it's Forrest Gump, the movie right behind your head. And we tr… we were struggling to come up with an analysis, like a comparison in the mainstream world where you don't have a char… your main character doesn't have an arc. And we came up with that, and I'm like, "That's it." That's... And that's the... And it's the same quality we give to Forrest Gump, that goodness. That in fact, the purpose of the movie is to see how the world bounces off of him. It's to see how other people react to that. That's what we're actually watching, 'cause he's kind of this throughout even keel. And he obviously has some variation. Like you said, he's devastated when the girl dies and all that kind of stuff. But by and large, he's the same person, and that's why everyone is up in arms. That's what Roshan's character, and Amal, is trying to wrap his head around. What is it that makes this guy so special?

44:03Richie MehtaThat's the point of the movie. We are asking the question, what makes him so special? Which means he's this.

44:09Jawad MirYeah

44:09Richie Mehta... And that was a fight we had to have where you had to come up with precedents sometimes.

44:14Jawad MirNo. It... And now that you mention Forrest Gump, it makes complete sense now because I'm, I'm envisioning Forrest Gump in my head right now, and it literally, he had the same kind of face when Jenny was leaving…

44:27Richie MehtaYep

44:27Jawad Mir... When Jenny came back…

44:28Richie MehtaYep

44:28Jawad Mir... When he meets his son, everything.

44:31Richie MehtaYep.

44:31Jawad MirAnd, cool.

44:33Richie MehtaYeah.

44:33Jawad MirThat's super, man. I wanted to ask you, so y… you were born in India or Canada?

44:38Richie MehtaNo, I was born in Canada. Yeah, in Toronto.

44:40Jawad MirOkay. So when you went back, did... Was it the first time? Were you always going back to India on and off throughout your childhood?

44:46Richie MehtaNo, I went when I was 16. For the f… I'd gone when I was 3, and then I went when I was 16. And that 16, that age 16 trip was so seminal because I just had my rude awakening Prince Siddhartha moment of like, "Oh, my God. This is the world that I come from?" Like, "This is the poverty."

45:01Jawad MirYeah.

45:01Richie Mehta"This is the pain. This is all that stuff." And I said I would never go back to India ever as a tourist after that. I would go back if I had something to contribute positively to the community. W… and then the films ended up being an opportunity for me to do that in some way. And then I went back again in 2003 when I was, you know, 20-something, to do Amal the short, and then each subsequent trip has been work-related since then.

45:27Jawad MirYeah.

45:27Richie MehtaAnd I have lots of family and friends and stuff, but, the whole thing is for me is if I, if I can contribute something positively to that environment, I'll go. If I can't, then I won't.

45:38Jawad MirYeah. No, I agree, man. India, I went to India in 2013 for work. And it was the first time in 23 years that I went to that part of the world. And I was there for three weeks, so we were all over north…

45:54Richie MehtaYeah

45:54Jawad Mir... South. Life-changing experience.

45:57Richie MehtaYeah, it is. It's life-changing.

45:58Jawad MirIt completely flipped my life upside down.

46:02Richie MehtaYeah.

46:02Jawad MirAnd that's pretty much, I think... How much... When did I go? December or January 2013, and I directed my first feature in two months after that…

46:13Richie MehtaYeah

46:13Jawad Mir... Because I came across a story, and I genuinely believe it came... It was connected to that because I'd had this awakening…

46:20Richie MehtaYeah

46:21Jawad Mir... That the world is, like, the way it is.

46:23Richie MehtaYeah, this is the world. This is the world, and we're, and we're in, we're in this little tiny bubble we live in.

46:28Jawad MirYeah.

46:29Richie MehtaYeah.

46:29Jawad MirAnd your other film, the science fiction film… ... You made, Continuum, I haven't seen it, so I can't talk much about it, but I would just…

46:36Richie MehtaOkay

46:36Jawad Mir... Love to know what was... If you can just kinda give me the synopsis and the genesis of that, how that came about, and what…

46:43Richie MehtaSure

46:43Jawad Mir... Inspired you to do that.

46:45Richie MehtaSure. Yeah. I mean, first of all, the title is I'll Follow You Down. The UK title is Continuum, which was changed without me knowing. But the, but the m… the title I gave it and the title in North America it was released under was called I'll Follow You Down. And, that was a story, something I'd written, which was ba… which was, I guess, I guess loosely inspired by my parents' divorce, but not really. I mean, it had more to do with a lot of things I wanted to talk about. It wasn't just divorce. It was, it was all kinds of things about... Actually a project about, very much about mental health. And, something that was close to me when I was growing up, as a, as a topic. And I always wanted to do a s… a film where a adult son has a conversation with his dad who hasn't aged. So it's like the whole Back to the Future thing where you're, you're able to meet your parents at a similar age.

47:45Jawad MirRight.

47:45Richie MehtaBut in a more serious manner. And so that spurned me to kind of start writing that project, which was a... It's a time travel project. But essentially a relationship drama. And it took me years to write that one because it was so, in a way, very personal. I started putting it together. I started writing it in film school, in fact, in screenwriting class, and then I put it away for years. I kept coming back to it as I would grow more. I didn't finish it until about 12 years later. And each time I'd come back to it, I would figure out some things I couldn't figure out, and then there was the time travel aspect which created all kinds of paradoxes which didn't work for me and stuff.

48:23Richie MehtaAnd then finally I figured it out, and then I remember when we ended up going out to market with it and we ended up getting Gillian Anderson to come in, come on it, that's when I really thought there was something real and very beautiful that could come from it. And that relationship, that collaboration, was life-changing for me, working with her. And working with some of the other actors, Victor Garber and Rufus Sewell and Haley Joel Osment. It was really a very special experience for me doing that movie because, my whole point of relationship with them was either as, like, they would, they would approach it either as parents or children. So Haley's viewpoint was as a child, how would he view the situation? Gillian's viewpoint was as a mother, how would she view it? My viewpoint was as a child. Victor and Rufus's point… viewpoint was as parents, or children even in some cases. And it was al… it always created a opportunity for connecting between all of us in a very profound way. It was a film I had to direct the least in terms of not...

49:23Richie MehtaLike, I, all my energy was into shots and lighting and composition and all that kind of stuff, logistics. But it was my first time working with actors as kind of at, of that caliber in the Western world, where they just show up and they just know everything.... And it was such a, it was, it was just so... And also, you're, you're controlling everything, right? If I have 100, 200 extras in an airport, I remember we were doing an airport scene, we shot it in Hamilton, and the first AD, who I'd worked with even in school, he was like, "All right, Rishi, tell us what to do." And I'm like, "Oh, yeah." I'm so used to shooting in a live situation in Delhi…

49:58Jawad MirYeah

49:58Richie Mehta... Where there's just 5,000 people doing their thing, and we plop our one person in it. We actually have to direct these people. It was just a different way of doing things since school. So it was the opposite way of constructing a film, where you construct everything from the ground up, every aspect of it from the ground up. Every aspect of the frame is controlled, versus what I had been doing for years, which was capturing real life in a frame with some artifice of my performances. So it became a, it was an amazing experience. I love, I love what we did with that. It was also an experience where, you know, working with, like, crews in Canada, and the restrictions you have with the budget. I remember we had 20 days of shoot on that film, 20 production days, and we had…

50:43Jawad MirOoh

50:45Richie Mehta... We had 10 hours to shoot each day because the 11th hour was a, was a, transport going to Hamilton. So I'm like, "Well, I have 200 hours to shoot this film, and it's not enough time." so literally, like, every minute I was counting as I was shooting. Whereas in India, you would have a little bit more leeway. I, it's not that I pushed the workdays. I'll never go overtime on India, ever.

51:06Jawad MirYeah.

51:06Richie MehtaBut you're always able... I mean, I always budget a few more extra days. I'm able to budget for... So there's a bit of, because you have to, otherwise you can get rained out…

51:14Jawad MirYeah

51:14Richie Mehta... And not gonna finish or, you know, some sort of civil issue that shows up, some strike happens, you can't shoot. You have to account for that. So there's a little bit more calmness. But with this, it was literally like, I remember one day, I was always very respectful of crew. I always have been. It's sacred to me, that bond, you know, director and crew. And, I think if they see how hard I'm working and how efficiently I'm working, they too will be the same.

51:42Jawad MirRight.

51:43Richie MehtaAnd I remember once I needed to go five minutes over, and, you know, you have to ask everybody and all the HODs and stuff, and they were all very gracious. They're like, "Look, you've, you've been so thoughtful f… to us, we'll give you the five minutes." And we did it and it was, and it turned out fine. I remember thinking, "Five minutes." Like, this is that type of restriction. You know, 300 seconds more I need to finish the scene, and I have to go with hand in my hat asking for it, for those seconds. And that's a really tough way to make something that you... This personal and artistic. And the actors can't feel it. That's the, that's the other... I remember, I'll never forget that, one of the biggest learnings for me. And I was successful on that. The actors never felt rushed because they were so good, and if they feel rushed, they're gonna, you know, it's not gonna be good for them. So I got away with that. But after that was my 2012 production experience, and then the next thing I shot, In the End of the Day, was not sh… I didn't shoot it, I edited that as a director, was Delhi Crime.

52:45Richie MehtaAnd we came in 25 days early on Delhi Crime, ahead of schedule. Because my whole thing was I'm never, ever gonna be in a position where I have to ask somebody for 300 seconds again.

52:55Jawad MirYeah.

52:55Richie MehtaI'm gonna be ahead of schedule so that if I need those, I can just do it. So now I generally l… light the space and, like I was saying with the police station, I get to a point where I minimize turnaround time on respective shooting and stuff, and, I just try and finish early every day so that I have the leeway I need.

53:17Jawad MirThat's fantastic. Good. Good on you, man. And I know this is a very difficult question to probably answer, like asking to, select a favorite child, but among the work that you've done, which is the most closest and deeply connected to you? Doesn't have, you don't have to give me a reason, just curious.

53:38Richie MehtaOh, that one.

53:39Jawad MirThere is…

53:39Richie MehtaProbably In the End of Day. Yeah. In the End of Day is the one I f… it's the one I, it's the one I feel the most for because I didn't shoot it, because it was stuff that was given to me. And the process of curating and editing that with my editor, Beverly, at the time, it's still the film I can go back to and watch and burst into tears because I was a witness to it. And obviously the curation will involve some type of manipulation just by juxtaposing two images together, as we know what editing does. But I so, I believe so much in what we accomplished with it, what we ended up saying with it, the humanity of it, I find... I think about it and it moves me. I, it's the one film I can watch over and over and over again for the rest of my life.

54:40Richie MehtaEverything else is, you know, stuff I've written and put out there. Except for this one episode I did of Apple series called Extrapolations, which just came out it's a big series on climate change. It's like Black Mirror, big science fiction type of thing.

54:56Jawad MirYeah, I've seen the trailer. I've seen the trailer.

54:57Richie MehtaYeah, I done, I did one episode of that, which I didn't write, and that was, anthology, so it's, it's like a 45-minute film. It just came out a couple weeks ago. That's the first time I've ever…

55:06Jawad MirYou directed it?

55:06Richie MehtaYeah, I directed it, yeah.

55:08Jawad MirOkay. That's good to know. I didn't realize that.

55:09Richie MehtaYeah. Yeah, if you get a chance to watch it, yeah. Again, it's really kind of an fun... Not fun, I mean, fun, it was fun to do, but very intense sci-fi, 'cause it's India 2059 based on climate projections, so it's a gangster story. So it was a really interesting genre exercise, which looks at climate change. But still, all the projects I've done, that I've written and kind of conceived and seen out there, I love them all. Like you said, they're all children. All of them. But this is the one I can... This was the one I was the luckiest to work on, because the footage was not mine.

55:45Jawad MirThat's good. That's good. I'm gonna check out the episode, that you did on Apple… ... In the next, coming weeks. But this is, this has been great, man. Anything else you wanna add or say? I mean, I think we've gone…

55:57Richie MehtaNo, I, it's, I mean, this was, this was pretty comprehensive. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, the journey's ongoing and we'll see. My whole thing is just to continue making movies and make a living. But I also have a backup plan, which is basically to just do corporate videos for, wildlife n… wildlife NGOs. If things don't work out in the narrative space, I'll use all my skills, and I would recommend all of us do the same, to basically just use our storytelling skills for pl… people who need it…

56:26Jawad MirYeah, I…

56:26Richie Mehta... And organizations that need it.

56:28Jawad MirThere's a, there's a photographer I... He's actually an official Nike ambassador. Not Nike, Nikon. I think his name's Sean or something. He does ridic… And he's, I think, mostly in India and Bengal and…

56:42Jawad Mir... All those places. He does crazy photography of leopards and… ... You know, amazing stuff, and I am a big nature buff. Like…

56:52Richie MehtaYeah

56:52Jawad Mir... You know, b… because my first film was literally surrounded by nature, and… ... And that's what probably attracted me to it. But yeah, you're right. You know, I... But the thing with wildlife stuff is that you need to be ha… Like, I remember watching... What was that series? Earth, the first one that came out?

57:08Richie MehtaYeah, Planet Earth, yeah.

57:09Jawad MirYeah. There was a sequence and there was a time lapse of plants growing.

57:13Richie MehtaYeah.

57:13Jawad MirAnd it took them a year to

57:15Richie MehtaYeah, I know.

57:16Jawad MirThat's just... You know, you have to have severe patience for that, and…

57:19Richie MehtaBut that's different. No, but that's different, because that's working for, like, big budget documentaries for…

57:23Jawad MirOh, 'cause you were talking about yourself.

57:25Richie MehtaI'm talking about actually putting our services out there for n… for NGOs in whatever space that need it.

57:31Jawad MirAh. I see. I see.

57:32Richie MehtaLike, if an NGO's trying to raise money for a good cause and they don't know how to do that, it's like, "Hey, I'll make a five-minute video for you," 'cause I can... That's something I can do.

57:40Jawad MirYeah.

57:40Richie MehtaThat's my whole thing, is to use your skill set to make things better, essentially.

57:46Jawad MirAwesome, man. Good stuff.

57:48Richie MehtaYeah.

57:48Jawad MirThat's wicked. Cool. Thanks for your time.

57:50Richie MehtaThanks, man. No, it was really nice to, nice to see you, and I appreciate the questions. And again, just please continue to let, give me notice when you show up here, and I hope I'm in town one of these days when you come to London, and vice versa. When I come back, I'll let you know.