In May of 2004, I found myself sweltering in humid triple-digit heat, sleeping on a ratty futon in an apartment in Bombay, thinking why did I come back? But the answer was simple, I was finishing research on a script I had been writing with my friend George Wing, Outsourced. It was going to be my directing debut, the story of Todd Anderson, a simple guy from Seattle who is forced to go to India to train his replacement.
I had spent time in Bombay before, working on a documentary on the Indian Film industry, AKA Bollywood. It was then that I had the idea of shooting an American independent film in India; a low budget project that would take advantage of the low cost of shooting in India.
Two years later I found myself at the Toronto Film Festival awaiting the premiere of our new film. The weeks after we bit our nails awaiting the Variety review that would tell us if our film would live, or die. Variety trumpeted outsourced as "A sure-fire hit!" It was going to live, it just wasn't going to live with any help from a major studio. The distributors apparently liked the film but didn't know what to do with a romantic comedy without a "star."
We went on to play in Goa, at the International Film Festival of India, Dubai and Mumbai. The Indian community was embracing the film in a way I had never expected, international sales began to happen and it looked like our little film was starting to find an audience, at least internationally.
We premiered in the US as the opening night film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. We left with the John Schlesinger Award for Outstanding First Feature or Documentary, beating out Little Miss Sunshine and The Unbelievable Truth, things were looking good. We've been to five more festivals since Palm Springs and we've won the audience award at every one including the Golden Space Needle Award for Audience Favorite at the Seattle International Film Festival. We still weren't getting the interest we had hoped from the industry, no one saw any marketing potential for an outsourcing comedy without a mainstream star and a mostly Indian cast. This is when my producers David Skinner and Tom Gorai of Shadowcatcher Entertainment decided to step forward and release the film themselves.
One year since our premiere in Toronto and I'm about to experience my first theatrical release as Outsourced opens in select theaters across the country on September 28th and I hope that once again our film will live.