From the "People" Archives:

by Dave Ratzlow

Ramin Niami, the enthusiastic forty-two year old director of "Somewhere in the City," attracted an impressive cast of indie-bred actors and international stars for his debut feature with little more than a quirky script, self-determination and his unpretentious charm. The film, which follows the overlapping stories of six residents of a New York City tenement building, also features an equally impressive soundtrack and production design for such a low-budget film.

Shot on a tight six week schedule, the black comedy features Sandra Bernhard ("Without You I'm Nothing"), Bai Ling ("The Red Corner"), Peter Stormare ("Fargo"), Robert John Burke ("Simple Men," "First Love, Last Rites") and a cameo by former New York mayor Ed Koch. Scored by Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale, the film also includes songs by Yoko Ono, Ani DiFranco and the performance art/punk band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.

Niami fled his native Iran soon after the peak of its "cultural revolution" closed the video store he operated and the film school where he taught. He bounced around Europe for a few years and eventually landed in New York City. In the next dozen years, he directed an Off-Off-Broadway production of "Uncle Vanya," edited a very bad low-budget horror film, and produced fellow Iranian director Amir Naderi's "Manhattan by Numbers."

While living in an illegal sublet in the East Village and musing about his odd assortment of fellow tenement dwellers, Niami got the idea for "Somewhere in the City." He soon hooked up with co-writer Patrick Dillon, and working in tandem with his wife and co-producer Karen Robson, spent the next year assembling a cast and crew and finding the cash.

Artistic License ("Clockwatchers") will distribute the film which opens in New York on September 18th.

indieWIRE: A pretty impressive cast for a first film. How did it all come together?

Ramin Niami: It's really a dream come true. It was very hard, because, of course, when you have a low budget film, and I mean low (everybody was paid minimum Screen Actor's Guild), the first problem is all the agents who want to stop you.

Basically, I think the reason that [the actors] participated in the film was they liked the script, they liked the roles, particularly because they were playing [characters] different from what they usually play. This is how you can attract an actor. Peter Stormare, for example, was playing villains. For Sandra Bernhard, it was appealing to her to play a vulnerable single woman looking for a husband, something she'd never done before. It was really a dream cast. I got everybody I wanted. Although I knew of most of them, I didn't know any of them personally except Robert John Burke who I had met once. I really wrote that part for him because Robert is such a funny person in real life, and in Hal Hartley's films, he's always very cool. I wanted to bring out the other side of him.

iW: But if you bypassed the agents, how exactly did you get to the actors and get them interested in the film?

Niami: Now European agents are generally much more sympathetic. They read scripts. But with the American actors, we basically went through people who knew them or people [who] recommended us to them. For example, with Sandra, two people I knew who had read the script recommended [me] to her manager. Some of the actors, we had to avoid the agents totally. These agents did everything they could to keep the actors from participating. But I'm not naming names.

iW: There certainly are a lot of characters. Did it ever become overwhelming?

Niami: The film is really about New York. That's the central character. It's about this building and these people. Of course I was always worried if people could follow it, but [all the characters] have certain things in common. They are lonely, they have big dreams, they feel misplaced. So there is a common thread there. But I didn't know if it was going to work. You know, it's funny. Most of the characters, besides Bai Ling's character and Paul Anthony Stewart's character, are in their 30's and early 40's, but the film appeals very much to a younger audience. The reason I think is that younger audiences watch so much MTV and are always channel surfing that they have no problem with following so many plots and subplots.

iW: How did the soundtrack come together?

Niami: I was very fortunate from day one. Walter Yetnikoff, who used to be the president of CBS Records, and now has his own label Velvel, was very supportive from the beginning, before we even shot the film. But still it was a limited budget. Approaching the bands was exactly like approaching the cast. I did everything I could to reach the bands personally. You have to understand that rock stars are like film stars. They're artists. They're not businessmen. If they like something, that's how they decide if they want to participate. Sandra Bernhard sang the opening song. Yoko Ono, we sent a videotape to her apartment. Ani DiFranco, we sent her a tape. So one by one we got everybody.

iW: And you had a similar experience with financing?

Niami: Yes, the thing is, I tried for many years to raise money in Hollywood. Of course we all know that your first film is very hard. I sent the script to a couple of people and right away they said, "Why don't you have Sandra play a gay woman?" So instead, I did something different. I approached five hundred people and finally got twenty-five investors for the film. Also some pre-sales to Europe. We sold Spain, we got some German money...

iW: Did the European money come after casting Ornela Muti?

Niami: Yes, that was certainly a factor in getting the European money. That's when they become interested. She's a big star over there. She's done 64 films. [Being in] this film is very brave of her... It's very different than anything she's ever done, and I admire her for doing a low-budget film like this in New York. And the role is so crazy. She has done some American films, and from what I hear, she wasn't too happy with the experience. The last thing she did [in America] was "Oscar" with Sylvester Stallone.

A lot of the actors wanted to know who had editorial control over the picture. They all came to me with their own horror stories of production companies who re-cut it, re-shot it and destroyed the film. The question was, "Who is in charge? Is it just you?" And I said, "Yeah." That's one good thing about having 25 investors, nobody can tell you what to do.

iW: What did the film cost?

Niami: We shot the film for $350,000 and the total budget was $650,000 including everything. Sixty-four speaking parts, a good crew, good producing. No re-shoots, not a single line of ADR, and we sent the crew home a couple of days early. We all worked very hard though. I spent a year of casting... A lot of time on pre-production. We didn't have money to make mistakes.

iW: You particularly got a lot of bang-for-the-buck with the production design. Why did you decide to do the interiors on sets?

Niami: A number of reasons. I thought because I had six stories, the sets, the environment, can really say a lot about the character. You're spending so little time with each character, so you need to establish what kind of person they are. The therapist, Sandra Bernhard, has lived there for a while so she has a lot of junk in her apartment. It's very different from Bai Ling, a Chinese student who has just arrived. An empty apartment. The colors are different. We wanted the colors, and the sets to say a lot about each character right away.

The second thing is, if you have the right crew and the right stage, the production goes much faster. Because really, the problem with New York, I know from my other shoots, is sound. You don't want to stop the shoot every time a car alarm goes off. And working with stars you have very little time. We couldn't even afford SAG overtime.

One thing about working with stars --see people complain about working with stars, but I like working with stars, because they are very experienced-- you never have to teach them. You share ideas and lead them. That's how it should be. They know everything already. They aren't nervous about working on the set. So it all went very fast. It was a lot of fun. That's the great thing about doing comedy. I had to stop the shoot at times, because the crew was laughing so much on the set.

[Dave Ratzlow is a screenwriter and script reader based in New York.]