One of Sujata Day’s earliest failures has turned out to be a fertile source of creative inspiration for her filmmaking career.
The Greensburg native vividly remembers winning her fourth-grade spelling bee but losing in the first round of regionals after adding an extra D to the word “radish.” In 2015, she channeled her disappointment into a “where are they now” sketch about spelling bee winners for an Upright Citizens Brigade class. The joke was that while most spelling champs were doing great, one was experiencing a bit of arrested development.
Two years later, Day dipped into the spelling bee well again in the script for her debut film, “Definition Please,” which she wrote, directed, produced and stars in as a former Scripps National Spelling Bee winner. The film is set in Greensburg and was shot there in the summer of 2019. Day took full advantage of her hometown’s cinematic possibilities — including filming some scenes in her childhood home.
“Even while I was writing the script for it and imagining the house, it was always my house,” Day told the Post-Gazette. “I imagined the locations and it was always places around Greensburg.”
Fans of Issa Rae’s web series “Awkward Black Girl” and HBO show “Insecure” may recognize Day from both. In addition to promoting “Definition Please,” she will participate in Thursday’s “PITTch! Presents: A Special Virtual Event,” in which she and other Hollywood folks with local ties discuss their work in film and television.
As an Indian American, Day loved growing up in an area where she could be “around her culture all the time and immersed in it.” She spent a lot of time at the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Penn Hills and the Hindu Jain Temple in Monroeville. She also attended Hindu summer camps on Lake Erie and her parents often hosted other Indian families on Thanksgiving. Day still affectionately refers to Greensburg as “GBG.”
The Hempfield Area High School alumna recalled not being able to speak English when she started preschool and her teacher forcing her daughter in the same class to play with Day. The two have remained close friends and Day even shot a few scenes for “Definition Please” at her mother’s house.
“A lot of my scripts and writing are set in Greensburg because I have the best memories of me and my friends hanging out,” she said. “I was a nerd, but I still had friends. We just had a great time and we made the most of being in a smallish town.”
Her Hollywood journey kicked into high gear about 10 years ago after she and Rae became Twitter mutuals. Rae was seeking a performer for a web series she was developing. A few weeks after her audition, Day found herself in an Inglewood doctor’s office shooting a 20-minute hallway scene for “Awkward Black Girl,” which ran from 2011 to 2013.
Then, when Rae was ready to shoot the pilot for “Insecure,” she asked Day to be a part of it. Day accepted and played the role of Sarah, Rae’s co-worker at the fictional nonprofit We Got Y’all for the show’s first three seasons.
“It was surreal going to set on the day of shooting the pilot where we had gone from this small-budget web series to this full-on HBO production,” Day said. “I looked around and I was like, ‘Wow, we came a long way.’”
On “Definition Please,” Day’s character is dealing with an ailing mother (Anna Khaja), a difficult situation with her brother (Ritesh Rajan) and a stalled personal life. Day said filming in Greensburg helped add a layer of authenticity to the movie, especially the shoots at her childhood home, where her dad took photos and her mom secretly tidied up the bedroom and living room in between takes.
One evening particularly stood out to Day. She had stuck hand-written notes on neighbors’ doors informing them that the production would be shooting a late-night scene that might be loud. Not only were the neighbors totally fine with that, but one family set up lawn chairs and cracked open beers to watch the movie magic.
“It was so quintessentially Greensburg at that moment,” she said. “I do believe the entire community came together to make this movie as wonderful as it was.”
Though “Definition Please” doesn’t have a release date or platform yet, Day recently found a distributor. It’s also gotten support from a few folks with Hollywood clout, including producer and “Community” star Yvette Nicole Brown — who connected Day with actor LeVar Burton for a very amusing cameo — and Mindy Kaling, who has talked up the film on social media and is now on board as an executive producer.
Day is excited to have them champion a film that she hopes will break stereotypes for how Indian Americans are portrayed in popular culture.
“I knew the power lay in writing characters for myself that I knew were real and grounded,” she said. “I wanted to tell those stories as opposed to stories I had seen being developed over the years in Hollywood. That was something I set out to do.”
She also set out to show off Greensburg.
“I always look forward to coming back every year, especially around the holidays,” Day said. “I’m just so thankful for Greensburg for making me who I am and inspiring most of, if not all of, my stories.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: November 29, 2021, 11:00 a.m.
Updated: November 29, 2021, 1:13 p.m.
