'Naz and Maalik' :: To Be Young, Gay & Muslim

One Friday afternoon in the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn, New York, two closeted, Islamic high schoolers spend a contemplative, sometimes argumentative and often revealing day with one another.

This is the basic premise of Jay Dockendorf's first feature, "Naz and Maalik," which follows the tentative, sensitive Naz (Kerwin Johnson Jr.) and the more confident and open Maalik (Curtiss Cook Jr.) on an odyssey of sexual and philosophical discovery.

The thoughtful indie explores what it's like to be gay, Muslim and in love, something rarely (if ever) seen in a narrative feature.

"Naz and Maalik" world premiered last spring at SXSW; since then it has played both Frameline and Outfest (where the two leads shared the Best Actor prize) and recently bowed at Newfest. Wolfe Releasing is distributing the film in January of 2016.

A fresh American story

EDGE recently spoke with Dockendorf about the film.

"I wanted to create a story about LGBT characters that are not the kind of characters you typically see, Dockendorf explains about the genesis of the project. "I was living with two gay men when I first moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, after college, and I was really struck by their relationship and how wonderful it was and, yet, different from typical relationships of gay men depicted in the media."

The writer-director interviewed his friends, who were partners and, "that became the genesis of "Naz and Maalik," with a particular focus on both their experiences as closeted teens." Both were in their late 20s when they Dockendorf spoke with them. "It gave me a lot of great insight into what it was like to be a Muslim teenager after 9/1 and that felt like a very fresh American story. And a very important one...And I thought it would make for a potent exploration of something that was ultimately relatable."

Linklater, Lee & James Joyce

Dockendorf has been writing plays for a while and for his foray into narrative film he was looking to create," a certain kind of meditative energy that I really wanted to be at the heart of it. I wanted to make a movie focused around the technique of walking and talking so it was a matter of interpolating those walks and talks with plot points and drama that I thought would realize the various ideas I was interested in playing with."

Admitting the influences of certain works by Richard Linklater and Spike Lee, Dockendorf was most consciously affected by James Joyce's "Ulysses." "I read it two years before at a seminar in college and was amazed at how much magic you can cram into the quotidian... 'Slacker' and 'Do the Right Thing' came to me after the fact, but 'Ulysses' was a more straightforward influence (although) my movie isn't outrageously long or outrageously weird."

The one-day structure and philosophical chattiness also recalled another Linklater film, "Before Sunrise." "That's part of my palate as well," he contemplates, "It's a very natural thing to talk at length about your values or your world view because it matters whether or not you and this other person would react the same way if the building was on fire or you came across a person drowning in the river... Frankly, I think we often stay in love with people who wouldn't react the same way philosophically, morally."

Improvisation vital

The director made certain there was a significant amount of rehearsal time. "We rehearsed the movie on location walking through the journey the characters take for about three weeks before shooting. We shot the movie over the course of a year. We shot the lion's share in the summer of 2013, pick-ups in November. And we won a grant from TriBeCa Film Institute on the basis of our rough cut in March 2014 and took that money and shot for another seven days in June of 2014. There were rehearsals in between all of that."

Improvisation was also a major factor. "The majority of what you see onscreen is their (actors Johnson and Cook's) own devising. It was the first feature film for all three of us, so we all ended up working closely together as a kind of teepee of support for one another. I know that Curtis and Kerwin spent a lot of time running lines together in between takes and I spent the most amount of time with the actors compared with any other department. And I think that that comes across. I really love being there psychologically with the leads and supporting actors, making the movie out of conversations."

Filming the intimate scenes

Working on the streets of Brooklyn presented its share of joys and problems for the cast and crew. "Oh, the agony and the ecstasy of filming in New York was something we felt 100 percent during production," Dockendorf recalls. "There were so many times when people supported the film and asked to be in it and humbly stood out of the way and went quietly by and there were other times when people -- even if we weren't in their way -- just barged in front of the camera and flicked the camera off and, (mock yells) 'fuck you, you're on my sidewalk...' For most part it worked out well, but naturally my naivet� got the best of me sometimes. Production challenges became legion and we had to roll with it. It was thrilling but not enjoyable."

One of the filmmaking challenges had to do with the love scenes between the two characters, but not for the reasons you would expect. Dockendorf explains: "We went into production very shortly after 'Blue is the Warmest Color' premiered at Cannes and there was a lot of controversy over the fact that the director had essentially asked the actresses to improvise their love scenes. This was not the kind of problem I want to have on set, so I carefully scripted in my mind precisely where I thought hands should go, what kind of kiss we should be seeing at each point in time, and so on."

Despite the fact that most of the film was "assembled in rehearsal through improvisation," Dockendorf thought it best to "leave nothing up to chance," when it came to the more sensual moments. "By doing that we were able to get very intimate and quiet and realistic moments...I'm very happy with the way those looked. They reflected the kind of energy that I wanted when I wrote the scenes."

Tackling topical issues

In the feature, the director tackles two very timely forms of prejudice: anti-Islamic fear and hatred as well as religion-based homophobia. "In some ways these are two of the great canonical themes and one of the great themes in the LGBT film universe right now," Dockendorf continues. "I decided I wanted to approach both of them somewhat subtly and keep the consideration of those two topics within the minds of teenagers. There's a certain reality distortion (with teens) and yet American teenagers, in 2015, can be much more casual about things than you would imagine."

Dockendorf realized he wanted to make films late in his college experience. "In high school I wanted to be a Jazz musician. In college (at Yale), I wasn't as taken by the music program as the English department and the creative writing opportunities. Someone then suckered me into writing for the newspaper immediately it felt like writing stories fit hand and glove with where my creativity had always been. So almost overnight I completely stopped playing music and started filling that hole in my life with writing. And I wrote plays and had the opportunity to direct a play my best friend in college had written and he directed one I had written. That exploded my entire mind and the ambition was set in stone when I was about 21. Since I graduated I've been paying my dues and learning on the job and making my own short films."

And now he's made "Naz and Maalik," a work that looks towards a more progressive way of thinking. Dockendorf sees it already happening, "The most moving real life story I know of is the story of the man I based the movie off. He's since come out to his family, who has embraced his sexuality. And he married his partner."

"Naz and Maalik" is in limited release.

Watch the trailer to Naz and Maalik: