After my debut effort, AMERICA SO BEAUTIFUL premiered at LAFF, I hunkered down at my day job helping to build my father’s real estate business while working on my next script, a biopic about a gay Iranian activist who escaped to Germany while still the most popular singer of the pre-Islamic revolution Iran of the 70’s. The script went on to win the Slamdance screenplay competition in its first draft but studios were not banging on our doors ready to finance this picture. I continued to re-write and develop while looking for financing. After nearly 8 years, I began to wonder if I was really a filmmaker or just another ‘wanna be’ wandering around LA waiting to get produced. Increasingly frustrated, I decided to set my sights closer to home, put on my ‘guerilla’ suit and embrace the spirit of CASSAVETES, writing something from within. Grabbing personal journals from these wilderness years, I began re-reading old entries, embellishing each story as I took notes for a new screenplay about the son of Iranian immigrants pursuing his cinema dreams from within the tight-knit Iranian Jewish community in Los Angeles and dealing with the familial and cultural tension this entails. These are themes artists in immigrant communities have struggled with for as long as there have been artists and immigrants and they resonated with me deeply.

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Sourced from my own experiences, this script told the story of ‘Bob’ who reluctantly works with his father while struggling to write his next screenplay. After many titles such as, ‘Bob Makes A Film’ or ‘Then what, Bob’ , I settled on SHAH BOB as a nod to the Royalty Iranian culture knew before the Islamic revolution of 1979. We were raised with Kings and Queens in Iran. In Los Angeles, we were no longer Shahs; we became Bobs and Mikes. No one wanted their ethnic names because no one wanted to be Iranian. Everyone wanted to fit in. From Shah’s To Bob’s in three generations.