Mom Vs. Machine cooks up a mix of biryani, special FX, and brawlin' at Crazy8s
The show manages to go on amid pandemic restrictions at the eight-day filmmaking challenge
Nimet Kanji’s Kamal fights for her right to cook in Mom Vs. the Machine.
Tesh Guttikonda
Crazy8s streams its Gala Screening on May 1, followed by a Virtual AfterParty on Gather
IN A REGULAR YEAR, Crazy8s is already a super-intense task: six filmmakers and their crews have eight action-packed days to complete a short movie.
Throw COVID-19 safety protocols into the process, and you up the stress factor considerably.
At one point, co-executive director Paul Armstrong recalls, he and Crazy8s partner Erin Mussolum were juggling four possible scenarios to run the festival as the pandemic climate shifted over the past year.
The event started last year, as usual, with more than 100 aspiring filmmakers presenting short film ideas with a three-minute video. From there, 40 semi-finalists pitch in person to a jury, then 12 finalists workshop a script with a professional story editor. From there the final six winners get $1,000 each to bring their vision to fruition.
This year, when production finally took place in mid-March, crews minimized social interactions beforehand, and Crazy8s provided all the necessary PPE and other safety gear.
Paul Armstrong
“We also made sure each team had a COVID captain and that we didn't cross-pollinate between sets,” Armstrong explains. “Normally Erin and I go to each set, and we couldn’t this year. It felt a bit like flying blind. We had to have more faith that they could pull it off without it being as hands on. It was like we had the hands off the handle bars.
“But filmmakers are resilient, especially the ones in independent film, so they adapted well,” he adds. “In the end you’d never know they were shot under pandemic circumstances. We didn’t want the films to be time stamped. I’m impressed with the high production quality; they still look amazing and the artistic vision wasn’t sacrificed. So I’m impressed they were able to pull off what they pitched in the fall.”
Biryani, mancaves, and a rumble
One of the filmmakers who pulls it off particularly well is Tesh Guttikonda, whose hilarious, neon-hued, special-effects-amped Mom Vs. Machine debuts as one of six chosen works at the fest’s online gala this Saturday.
To describe the experience of the time-crunched process of Crazy8s, he makes an analogy appropriate to someone whose film centres on a guy obsessed with video games.
“You already play a video game in hard mode, but then there’s the really hardcore setting that it has, and you just take it up a notch and add in all of the challenges possible,” he explains. “I kind of feel that's what making a movie during COVID is like--like it’s just set at the hardest difficulty!”
Guttikonda adds the pandemic had another more positive effect on the process, too: starved for creative opportunities, a team of A-list designers, crew, and post-production people threw everything they had into the project.
“Everybody just brought their best,” he marvels. “I also feel like there was something about people being locked down for the entirety of last year, being able to put all that energy into this kind of project--one that is a comedy and is creative enough to open up a space for people to pour themselves into it. I feel like there was some sort of creative outlet and energy that was coming out there.
“I definitely felt it too!” he adds. “I felt refreshed, and it sparked this kind of story. I don't know if it would have come to life if it wasn’t for the pandemic, because before that was such a rat race. But this gave me the pause to figure out what I really wanted to make. And I think there is a kind of latent energy that comes from putting creative people in a lockdown where they just want to express themselves.”
A scene from the Mom Vs. Machine shoot in Vyom’s basement “mancave”. (Photo courtesy Mom Vs. Machine Twitter.)
Guttikonda’s standout effort opens with Kamal (Nimet Kanji) lovingly kneading, rolling out, and frying rotis before toting a steaming plate of curry down to her basement-dwelling video-game-addict son, Vyom (Praneet Akilla).
Turns out he doesn’t need dinner anymore: he has a high-tech new 3-D-printer-type machine that will cook up his favourite biryani. All he has to do is feed it the recipe—the same one Kamal’s mother-in-law has refused to hand over to her. Fearing her own displacement, Kamal must take on the machine—a rolling pin in one hand, a tawa roti pan in the other.
The story was influenced a lot by pandemic lockdown, even though, like the other films at the fest, it never directly references it. Mom Vs. Machine was inspired directly by an experience lead actor Praneet Akilla (who’s also a producer on the flick, not to mention Guttikonda’s roommate) had while holing up with his own mother during the early days of the pandemic last spring.
“For her birthday, he gave her a Rotimatic, which is like an automatic roti-making machine. And she was livid,” Guttikonda relates. “Because she loves cooking so much, she saw it as an insult more than what he felt was a convenience. She thought he didn’t understand what cooking meant to her, because she was always experimenting and would try out all these dishes all the time.
“So when he first told me about it, I thought, ‘Oh man, this is just such a fantastic idea for a short—the idea of machines replacing people just taken to a full extreme. Like, what if a machine can make authentic Indian food?’ And then my mind just went to a place where the mom just has to fight the machine.”
Some of the biggest laughs come from Kamal’s exasperated visit to gruff Grandma Seema (Balinder Johal), who first appears as a shadowy silhouette straight out of Marlon Brando’s first scene in The Godfather.
Guttikonda points out the story plays out the idea that Kamal has replaced Seema, the same way Vyom’s new machine, “Homemaid”, threatens to replace Kamal.
The eight-day time limit didn’t dissuade the filmmaker from using special effects, something he manages to pull off with a spectacular fight sequence as the machine comes to life.
That upped the challenges in the Crazy8s format, he admits, but it was worth the risk.
“Crazy8s gives a platform to push the envelope,” says Guttikonda, who developed his skill for conjuring a lot out of a little on a stream of low-budget films. “I love everything about evoking that sense of magic, and it’s what made me fall in love with filmmaking.”
Mom Vs. Machine’s look is also punched up by a distinctive palette of bright colours—including the neon blue and red glow of Vyom’s “mancave”.
“I was a kid who was always inspired by anime and Bollywood growing up,” Guttikonda says. “Indian filmmaking: it's just so full of colour, and it’s the same with anime.
“That’s kind of is why representation is so important in filmmaking too,” adds Guttikonda. “I wouldn't see it any other way.”
With that same idea, he’s launched his own production company, Kalpana Films to branch out and create empowering, diverse stories that bring people together.
Guttikonda credits a lot of his approach to his upbringing. Raised by a farmer in India, his father hustled hard to give his family more, moving them around often, from city to city, before immigrating to Canada. Until he was 14, Guttikonda hadn’t lived in a place for longer than two years at a time.
“It’s really amazing how my dad was able to push himself to a place where I’m able to make movies,” Guttikonda reflects. “I didn’t have a lot of best friends growing up, and each time you move to a different city or country and have to assimilate….At the time it was absolutely miserable, but at the end of the day it created a very empathetic world view.”
Although it’s less than 15 minutes long, Mom Vs. Machine manages to speak across generations and cultures. But in the end, Guttikonda seems just happy to give a few solid laughs to viewers weary from pandemic times.
Where those laughs don’t bring them together, the propulsive electro score by Skinny Local and Kevin Watson might. And so will the plates of steaming biryani and rotis.
“Food and music: I feel that those are the access to world peace,” he says with a laugh. “If you smell something delicious, it always bridges the gap to North America.” Just stick to making it in a good, old-fashioned pot or pan.
Find more info and the full lineup here.
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