You hope that the guests at the Friendsgiving attended by the couple at the center of Suha Araj’s “Mashed Potatoes” like their spuds especially creamy when it seems like a whisk is all that’s keeping the unnamed chef played by Cynthia Samuel Bakri from swinging a knife around when a conversation with her boyfriend (Adam Bakri) takes a turn for the worse. Tensions are high already around the world when the darkly comic short unfolds weeks after 9/11 in 2001, but the pair should be in a safe haven in San Francisco where she and her roommate (Noura Erakat) keep an apartment where potatoes can be peeled in peace and he’s returned from a ski trip, eager to spend some quality time with his girlfriend before the holiday festivities. The two can’t help but be a little anxious already with relatives in the Middle East and need only to take a walk outside to be confronted with intense xenophobia, but little do either know how hot things are about to get in the kitchen when the boyfriend takes out a copy of Thomas Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem.”
Naturally, it’s pretty amusing to see the implosion of romantic relationship over how they feel about a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, but Araj finds the unlikely ingredients for a potent political satire in “Mashed Potatoes” when bringing the book to her home not only reveals how inattentive he’s been as a partner when she’s complained about the e-mails she’s received all morning from friends sending her the writer’s latest column in disgust, but how little attention the world at large paid to the Middle East when anyone like Friedman could hold so much authority over shaping national views at America’s preeminent paper of record with his reductive and Islamophobic views when pushing for globalization, eventually revealed to be a charlatan himself after helping to construct the case for war in Iraq.
With Friedman still employed as the war in Gaza continues, the short is unfortunately timely as one is reminded of how much international coverage has failed to call the horrific genocide for what it is, yet Araj conveys a concern faced by the diaspora for generations when the easiest reads regarding the complex region have a tendency to become the definitive ones in the West and the good intentions to seek understanding, expressed in the boyfriend’s desire to learn more about what he calls “the third wheel of their relationship,” lead to bigger issues when they go without scrutiny. The writer/director may have to make things concise herself when only working with 12 minutes of screen time, but you’d be surprised by how much she packs into “Mashed Potatoes,” which throws its fair share of punches during a fight that never gets physical. As the film makes its premiere this weekend at the Woodstock Film Festival where Araj’s previous short “Rosa” was a major hit, the filmmaker graciously took the time to talk about real-life inspiration for it, casting a real-life couple in the leads and leaving the rest up to her imagination to craft the clever comedy.
How did this come about?
It was based on a lot of true conversations I’ve had, and I think at that time of 9/11, really before social media, Thomas Friedman was much more of a voice, and I don’t know if his voice is as significant as it was then, but I know that every time he published an article, a lot of people would send it to me for my thoughts. And I’m like, “I’m not the guy!” But I get how effective he is, and therefore dangerous. And I’ve always said, “Oh, I broke up with someone over Thomas Friedman,” just as a line that I would tell people, [and of course], relationships aren’t just one thing, but I did argue about this man a lot in this relationship. Then maybe 10 years ago with a friend, we were just laughing about this, and I’m like, “I have to make this film of a breakup over this guy” — this intellectual yank, as my other friend called it — and I [thought] that’s such a great log line.
It came about now [because] I was doing casting for a feature with some actors, and I was like, “Hey, there’s a short I’ve been thinking of making. Would you guys be into it?” And they were both into it, and they’re both great actors, and it just started from, “What can I do with two characters in a room?” And they said, “Can we read the script? And I’m like, “Yeah, let me write it,” literally. [laughs] I have my friend who’s a producer [Aya Sloan] that I was telling I was thinking about this, and she’s like, let’s do this, I’ll produce it. That was in May, we shot it on June 16th. And now we’re premiering in October.
Was it interesting to build with the actors in mind?
It was a performance film, which is what I was interested in making and I really worked with the actors on it. They’re married and we did readings and rehearsals and Cynthia [Samuel Bakri], the actress, even was like, “Here’s what I want to say right now. Here’s where I feel like really icky.” From the first reading, she was annoyed in all the right places. She just really related, and I think all of us have had some form of this experience. She wrote some lines, [Adam Bakri] wrote some lines, and it was all organic once the three of us were really working together. And Noura [Erakat], who is [the other actor] trapped in the bathroom, also definitely contributed in the big picture and with the details. I texted her one day because I met her during the Iraq war protests in San Francisco [back then] — she’s definitely one of our voices, and has been for years — and she was on a podium, on the mic, and I was like, “Who is that person!?!” We became friends at that point and I didn’t want to bother her at this time, while she’s working on so many consequential things on but I texted her now [to ask], “What were our chants during the Iraq war?” And she told me and I [told her], “Oh, I’m making a film about a couple breaking up over Thomas Friedman.” So it was very collaborative and once the structure was set, I was able to write. I went back to [Thomas Friedman’s] articles over that exact time period, so I could feel my feelings again and it flowed from there.
What this does brilliantly is get at an information gap that I experienced myself at the time of 9/11 – the line “You can’t read Edward Said all the time” really landed hard because I feel he’s been such an authority on such matters for so long that it can feel stale and I remember at the time Thomas Friedman felt like he had fresh ideas because he was someone you hadn’t heard from before and because of a lack of general interest in Middle Eastern coverage by Western media and he was being published in the paper of record, that was all you had. Was that a difficult thing to dramatize?
I think I’ve been living it as a Palestinian. You live that your whole life. So it’s a conversation I’ve had so many times and in so many different ways that that part wasn’t really [difficult]. That line “You can’t read Edward Said for the rest of your life” was actually real. And I was never interested in these Western talking points. They’re not based in reality. They’re coming with an angle and an agenda and that agenda, if you just want to be a Zionist and be upfront about it, that’s one thing, but if you want to pretend that you’re coming from a non-biased, informed position [as Friedman was], that’s where I don’t feel is right. I feel like Edward Said is well-researched and clear about his position and where he’s coming from. He wasn’t publishing weekly in the New York Times and maybe not as prevalent or pop culture or mainstream, but I would never question his validity or authority, he was an intellectual giant.
And I made the film [thinking], “Is this the story I want to tell in this moment?” I knew that it was going to be controversial. The first draft was just six pages of her being irate, and there was tension in the reading [with the actors], and I [thought], “Oh, there’s something here. This isn’t just a funny, cute story about a breakup. This is hitting people,” and I thought about how this conversation is coming into people’s intimate lives in friendships and family relationships. This is the riskiest film I’ve made, so I did pause before plowing forward with it. Now I’ve come to realize that it’s really about media’s responsibility as a whole when these grave crimes are being committed. That’s a conversation that has always been important to me.
Creatively, it’s a challenge when it’s just one scene and you’ve got to set up so much of the context for it in details outside of the dialogue. For instance, I loved the idea she’s making these mashed potatoes for a Friendsgiving when it can be implied that everyone can’t be as close as they want to be to their families and this apartment was full of telling decor. What was it like to set up?
That was the challenge of the edit. The story was the story, but then it was about how to tell it most effectively and the dialogue was the dialogue, but when to go to Her, when to get reactions, when to be close, when to be far, those were all the editorial decisions that were made. And my amazing editor Hind Shoufani is a filmmaker and a poet. She was the co-writer and editor of “The Present,” which did wonderfully and I felt like everyone that came to the table was a top talent. I called in all my favors because we just made this [instantly]. We shot it in my friend Kevin’s [Hayden] home and he was the cinematographer, and I’d been in that space, so I knew that space and I could write to the space. Then the set designer A.J. Archer was great, and one day I [thought] “Orange, that’s the theme. I want warm colors. That’s the color, that’s everything.”
How difficult was it to find that orange era-appropriate Mac iBook?
That was my mom’s laptop. She shipped it to me. And maybe that’s actually why I decided on orange. I don’t know if the laptop or the orange theme happened maybe on the same day, but then it was like, all right, we’re going. Oddly enough, it felt like one of those things [where] everything came together once it came together where all of Kevin’s chairs were orange [too].
It sounds like kismet. Was there anything that happened that you may not have expected once you got on set, but could get excited about?
What happened is that everyone that came to the project was either living this genocide in a very visceral way or and wanted to contribute into making something in this moment, so the energy on set was great. Everyone was so happy to be creating something together right now. And for Noura, who’s talking to pundits and dealing with these questions on live TV, to be able to take a day off and let go and just have fun was wonderful. She showed up with such great energy, and when she’s the person on TV having these conversations, to have her in the room [with us] and have her energy was incredible.
What’s it like getting to this point with it and getting ready to share it with the world?
It all happened so fast. I’ve never made anything from conception to premiere in six months, so I still think “Oh my God, we made a film.” And “Rosa” won at Woodstock, and because it was during COVID, I didn’t get to fully have that experience, but I was so thrilled, so I think Woodstock is the perfect home and timing as far as Thanksgiving. When I was writing, I wanted to like land it in a [certain] time and space, and Thanksgiving has its own connotations and connections, so I’m just excited to get it out there. I have no idea how this film is going to land, but I’m very excited to find out.
“Mashed Potatoes” will screen on October 19th at the Woodstock Film Festival as part of the “This is America” shorts program at 1:30 pm at the Woodstock Community Center. It is also available now through October 20th online.