Rekha Shankar's upcoming indie flick wants to make you laugh and cry
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"Who would have thought there's going to be people that learn the name Rekha for the first time by ordering that pizza?" comedian Rekha Shankar says. Photos: Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vulture; Courtesy of Queen & Rook
Rekha Shankar believes there's humor in everything, so she's shooting an indie flick about a "dumb Hindu" trying to reunite with her raptured family — a buddy comedy about grief.
Why it matters: You've seen Shankar on "Hacks." Or heard of her "Smartypants" streamer, the belly buster where comedians present PowerPoints on farcical topics like how vegetables aren't real.
The big picture: "Vidhya's Guide to the Afterlife" is the first feature-length film for Shankar, the Philadelphia-raised comedian whom New York mag called one of the country's biggest up-and-coming comics to watch.
- She's crowd-sourcing it, and so far has raised more than $114,000 from about 1,400 supporters through Kickstarter — more than doubling her initial goal.
- The extra kitty will allow Shankar, director Sandeep Parikh and the crew to shoot scenes beyond her Los Angeles apartment. If they raise enough, she aspires to set and shoot parts of the movie in Philly.
The intrigue: Her hometown's already showing up.
- Queen and Rook in Society Hill named a new samosa chaat vegan pizza after Shankar, plus had an employee fly to LA to hand-deliver a pie to her before a fundraising kickoff event.
Zoom in: Shankar, who will star in the film, says she began working on the "Vidhya" script after the death of her grandfather, a "brilliant" guy who'd watch "Jeopardy!" with her and help with her chemistry homework.
- In the film, Vidhya is "such a bad Hindu" that she's left virtually alone to grapple with the loss of her family following an absurd Hindu rapture — a Christian concept that doesn't exist in Hinduism, Shankar says.
- She teams up with a huckster-y local priest to try to bring everyone back through a 13-day Hindu death ceremony.
What they're saying: Shankar tells Axios she struggled to wrap her "Americanized brain" around the Hindu rituals at her own grandfather's ceremony. A Hindu priest told her that if she cried, she would tie her "grandfather's soul to the mortal realm" — the solemn ceremony is supposed to ensure the departed's peaceful transition.
- "It's so difficult when your family of origin does all these things one way, but then your Western therapist is like, 'No, no, it's totally OK to cry,'" she says.
The film also pays homage to her grandfather's playfulness. He was a "prankster" who once blew a French horn to wake up Shankar's cousin at 6am.
- If he were alive, Shankar says, her grandfather might not appreciate the movie's humor — but he'd still support it.
- "What's great about him is he would have hit replay on it every single time it ended to be like, 'I'll just get you a bunch of views,'" Shankar says.
What we're watching: Whether the indie flick, which could drop as soon as 2027, gets picked up by a big platform like Netflix.
- Parikh, the director, joked in the fundraiser announcement that the filmmakers must recruit "Monkey Man" director Dev Patel to make the movie a box-office smash.