Get to know me

Hey, everyone! Thanks for coming. I will be your screenwriter this afternoon. Hailing from Southern California, my creativity was born from the great inspirations gifted to me by a multicultural family. I am the son of an immigrant Persian mother. The myriad flavors at family dinners exposed me to the complexity and depth within each and every one of us here on this planet. From Kashke Bademjon to Ghormeh Sabzi, all these dishes presented to me had their unique effect on who I am. Saffron is worth more to me than gold. Now I’m the husband of a loving Japanese immigrant. Suddenly, the flavors of my family dinners are natural and down-to-earth. There is beauty in umami. Miso soup or a thin slice of maguro represent the easy tastes that currently hit my palate and allow me to take a moment and slow down to see the simpler parts of life.

            I believe that having been exposed to a wide variety of cultural perspectives has been an imperative part of my growth as a creative writer. These differing cultural viewpoints have given me a new lens through which to understand the characters I create. Though I’m not just exposed to other cultures through my loved ones.

I lived in Japan teaching English to nine-month-olds. Quite a difficult job teaching English to Japanese babies who can’t even speak Japanese yet. Children still figuring out how to put one foot in front of the other were being thrust into a classroom with harsh fluorescent lighting and a large foreigner in a tie and facemask doing his best. That’s when I realized that if I wanted these kids to stop crying, I needed to entertain them. Spending nights rewriting lesson plans to turn them into stories involving emotional story arcs for the flashcard with a picture of an elephant on it.

So, I started to pursue my MFA in screenwriting. With each passing script I wrote, I felt the door of opportunity widening. My first script advanced into the second round of the Austin Film Festival. Then, a director hired me to write a short film for him, and that short film was shown at the Culver City Film Festival. I have plenty more projects of all different mediums and genres that I’m eager to work on.