Sujata Day, Actor, Writer/Director: Everyone I talked to, everyone I had coffee with, everyone I was hanging out with I would say Hey, can you put money into my movie or do you know of anyone who would put money into my film?
Film Courage: Can you tell us more about how you wrote Definition Please?
Sujata: Yes, so I was in a UCB [Upright Citizens Brigade] sketch writing class in 2015 and every week we had to write a new sketch, always coming up with new and different ideas. One of my sketches was entitled Spelling bee winners, where are they now? which was based on my fourth grade spelling bee experience. If you research spelling bee winners they are all doing amazing things. They are working for NASA, they are designing robots, they are winning the world poker tournaments and I just thought it would be funny if one of these spelling bee winners grew up to be unsuccessful, a loser, living in their mom’s basement playing video games, just not doing much with her life. That was the gist of my sketch and this was four pages long and then at the end of 2016 I got into a Sundance Screenwriting Lab. I went to the screenwriting lab and it was really inspiring and amazing and in 2017 a couple months later I decided to go to the Sundance Film Festival for the first time and I went as a Sundance Influencer. Sundance asked me to take over their Instagram and their Twitter and go to certain events and interview people and it was actually a great way to experience a first Sundance kind of within the Sundance family and my friend Justin Chon‘s film was playing there and so I went to the premiere and was just completely blown away by the film. I cornered him at his post party and I asked him how he got it made and he said I just got money from my friends and family and we just went out and made it ourselves and I was like Great! That’s what I’m going to do. So I went back home after that first Sundance and started jotting down ideas for Definition Please based on that sketch that I had written two years prior and then throughout…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
With her infectious personality and unique sense of humor, Pittsburgh native Sujata Day has established herself as a performer, creator, writer, and director. She regularly performs in Upright Citizen Brigade’s hit Asian AF show. Sujata is known for her starring role as CeCe in Issa Rae’s The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. She’s recurred for three seasons on HBO’s Insecure. Sujata is a Sundance Lab fellow, Sundance Film Festival influencer, and Sundance Collab advisor. Her short film, Cowboy and Indian, sold to a major studio for series development. She served as HBO Visionaries Ambassador in 2019. She directs This Is My Story, a series in which beloved storyteller LeVar Burton narrates real life personal experiences of everyday racism. Sujata’s debut award-winning feature film, Definition Please, is currently touring the film festival circuit.
CONNECT WITH SUJATA DAY
Advertisement – contains affiliate links
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
More affiliates:
Camera we use for interviews – https://buff.ly/3rWqrra
Editing system – https://goo.gl/56LnpM
Sound we use for interviews – https://amzn.to/2tbFlM9
Writers, try Final Draft free for 30-days – https://ow.ly/Gz4w30rDSKt
Other books on Amazon that Film Courage recommends – https://buff.ly/3o0oE5o
