Kabul Camera

Thanks to the magic of Skype, film maker Tarique Qayumi and I recently talked about returning to his native Afghanistan and creating a TV series unlike anything the country had ever seen. My favorite part of the interview was when he described the difference between the usual dialogue on Afghan TV shows and the dialogue on his program: “On other Afghan TV shows,the cop would be like, “Stop assault! Thou shalt not move!” Because they want to formalize everything on TV and there’s a huge difference between colloquial language and formal language. It sounds ridiculous and the actors are just fumbling over their words. That was the first thing I changed. On my show, it’s like, “Freeze!””

You can read my full interview with Tarique in the most recent edition of UCLA’s alumni magazine.