Interview: Jameel Khan

Man walks into a Radio Shack and accepts a job there. Three weeks later, he finds himself too bored with the job, subsequently quitting.

Next thing he knows, he is directing his first-ever movie, coincidentally about his brief yet boring ordeal in retail, poking fun at an entire industry in the process.

While most people do not jump from working in retail to directing a film set, for Jameel Khan, the Pakistani-American filmmaker thought it was quite fitting to make his cinematic debut by crafting a hysterically comedic script revolving around his unique experiences.

All the while, Khan believes his first film, The Strip, will be one everyone can relate to – not because we can see a bit of ourselves in each of the characters, but because most of us have retail-based experiences similar to the ones presented in the movie.

“I worked in a Radio Shack for three weeks, so my experiences there were quite brief,” Khan said in an interview with Buzzine. “Three weeks was long enough to know what retail is like, and I know it was boring. I think boring is funny. I think people can relate to the boredom. A lot of people have worked retail, so they know what it’s like.”

Interestingly enough, while Khan themed his directorial debut after his three-week experience in electronics retail, he did not craft any of his diversely odd lot of characters in the name of those he had worked with. Instead, he just themed the characters of his film after the unique intensely career-minded retailers, and it is this aspect of The Strip that he believes will tickle the audience’s funny bone.

“What I find funny about the boring jobs is a lot of people are really excited about them and they take them very seriously,” Khan told Buzzine. “I didn’t base any of the characters (from my time at Radio Shack), but it was fun to work with.”

Instead of basing the characters of The Strip upon his real-life experiences, Khan instead worked with the talent he had, such as Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall, NewsRadio) and Improv comedian Cory Christmas.

In playing Glenn, Foley personified Khan’s idea of a retail professional being overly excited about his mundane job. Specifically, Glenn is deluded, loving his position as manager of a low-end retail store named Electri-City a wee bit too much, revolving his entire life around his job.

Khan also used Christmas’s character, Rick, to poke fun at the other side of retail — those taking such jobs as a temporary gig until other, bigger dreams materialize. In Rick’s case, he is a snobby salesman and a former high school basketball star obsessed with becoming an actor while living with his mom.

There was also Avi (Frederico Dordi), the stereotypical South Asian immigrant working at the electronics store while hoping to find love and success in America; Kyle (Rodney Scott), the store owner’s son who is being groomed to take over the family business; and Jeff (Bill Aaron Brown), an underachiever who constantly gets in trouble.

Along the way, Khan managed to feature a smorgasbord of characters with a cast of relatively inexperienced actors (save for Chelcie Ross, Jenny Wade, of course, and Foley). Somehow, it all came together – mostly because, as Foley attested to in a separate discussion, the script was well-written.

Indeed, Khan himself said he focused less on being funny and more on screenwriting and directing – two things he had limited experience in but knew well enough to develop what eventually became The Strip.

“That’s the thing about it — I really wasn’t an improviser,” Khan candidly told Buzzine. “In film school, I knew I was going to be a writer, and I took Improv to become a writer. I thought it would help me, and I began to really like it. I think having a background in directing and screenwriting made things a little bit easier. I tried not to make this a sketch comedy.”

Yet, in the process, Khan made a pretty good comedy on the overlapping cultures of strip malls and suburbia – all on a low budget and even lesser directorial experience.

“We were going to do it even lower budget than we did,” he said. “I was just going to shoot with five friends. I didn’t have much directing experience, but I auditioned people for everything and used different people than I thought I originally would for the characters.”

Of course, Khan probably did not originally think his first feature film would be a parody of strip mall and suburbia culture, but here he is, at the helm of The Strip and preparing for the film’s opening this Friday (December 4th).

“I feel grown up now,” the 29-year-old debutant director said about his first film finally releasing.

Now he hopes his growth continues beyond this weekend, not only with moviegoers heading into theaters to watch The Strip, but also using this project to further his filmmaking career.

The Strip opens this weekend and also stars Indian-American actress Noreen DeWulf; it is presented by Bata Films and is rated PG-13.