With his new legal dramedy Trust Me, I'm A Doctor now playing in theaters, we recently caught up with director Thane Economou to detail his experience adapting the wild true story of Dr. Sandeep Kapoor's trial for the big screen.
In our conversation, he walks me through the unique challenge of bringing Dr. Kapoor's personality into the biopic, pairing Kal Penn with the legendary Linda Hamilton, the important family dynamic, revealing the actual outcome of the trial, and a whole lot more!
The film follows "Dr. Sandeep Kapoor after his life is turned upside down when he is implicated in the death of his former patient, model and reality television star Anna Nicole Smith. Set against the height of the early 2000s tabloid era, the film chronicles Kapoor’s fight to clear his name as paparazzi descend on his office, police raid his home, private journals are leaked, and every aspect of his personal life becomes public. With the guidance of respected attorney Ellyn Garofalo, Kapoor must navigate a high-stakes drug conspiracy trial while confronting the intersection of celebrity, justice, politics and personal redemption."
The cast features Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle; House M.D.) as Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, Linda Hamilton (Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Chuck) as Ellyn Garofalo, David Julian Hirsh (Weeds; CSI: NY) as Howard K. Stern, and Abbie Cornish (Bright Star; Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) as Anna Nicole Smith.
Thane Economou (The Wedding Party; First Date from Hell) directed the feature with a screenplay he wrote based on the book by Dr. Sandeep Kapoor.
Trust Me, I'm A Doctor is now playing in theaters!
Watch our full interview below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: We've seen a lot of medical dramas and legal dramas, but you strike a very unique tone in trying to get Sandeep's personality into your film. What went behind that decision, and what made that the best entry point for this story?
THANE: Honestly, the tone came out of my reaction the first time I read the memoir, which is, you know, I'm reading it and it of course starts with this very tragic impetus, which is the death of Anna Nicole Smith. But from there, I started reading about this trial—I knew nothing about this trial. And the more I read, I couldn't believe what was happening on the page, and the more that I researched it, it felt like your classic "truth is stranger than fiction." And I was looking at the films that I love like The Wolf of Wall Street, I, Tonya, The Social Network, Goodfellas, and I said, "This is the way in." This is the way to capture how I felt when I experienced the story, was kind of having a tone that balanced between some of the lighter and darker elements.
ROHAN: You also have a very unique pairing here with Kal Penn playing Dr. Kapoor and Linda Hamilton alongside him. We obviously know Sarah Connor and we know Harold & Kumar, so what brought them together, and why did you feel that pairing was so electric?
THANE: Kal, for me, is such a comforting presence on screen. I think that's one of his superpowers as an actor, and I felt that that was necessary if audiences were going to go along on this ride with this character. It turned out that Kal couldn't have been a more perfect choice for it, given the amount of research and the amount he threw himself into the character. But for me, it was that—it was that I knew that he was someone that audiences always want to gravitate towards and understand things from his perspective.
Now, with Linda Hamilton, the way that I wrote the character of Ellen Garofalo was... I wrote it in the script, I said, "She's someone that's comforting when she's with you and intimidating as hell when she's against you." And I was like, "Man, that's Linda Hamilton, isn't it?" You know? That's Sarah Connor. That's the iconic presence of Linda Hamilton. So very early on, we started to kind of zero in on Linda for that role.
That not only proved true on screen, which I think you see—which is that she is such a force on screen, especially in those courtroom scenes—but she also just has an inherent human quality that connects with people, and I think connects with Kal so well on screen. You're right, it's not a pairing that I ever thought I'd see on screen was Kal Penn and Linda Hamilton, but anytime we had the two of them go in together on a scene, I swear the whole set got quiet. People were just zeroed in on watching their chemistry.
ROHAN: He gets acquitted at the end in that famous case, but family means a lot to him throughout the movie, and we see his parents supporting him, especially his dad. Why was it so important for you to capture that dynamic? As an Indian American myself, I felt like you really nailed why that relationship was so crucial and what he was fighting for.
THANE: It was, one, built into the memoir. He's very close to his parents. He lived—as it's shown in the film, it was true—he was living with his parents at the time that his house was raided and he was going through this trial. They are so important to him, but the thing that I found was so interesting in that dynamic was he was so close to them, he loves them so much, and yet he is keeping a major secret from them. He is an intensely private person, even around them. Part of the push and pull of this movie is, as the movie begins, he is a closeted gay man, and he's closeted to his parents. The journey that he goes on through this film is about truly becoming closer to his parents in that regard.
ROHAN: You make a very distinct visual choice to keep the film looking bright, especially in the Anna scenes, right up until it gets darker toward the end. What went into that decision-making process between you and DP Bobby Shore?
THANE: You're 100% right. I mean, those were early conversations with my DP, Bobby Shore, where we said, one, we wanted to have the feel of what it felt like to be around Anna Nicole Smith. Anyone who ever met Anna Nicole Smith said there was never a person full of more life, full of more energy. You wanted to be around her. So, especially those early scenes, I wanted to capture that in a way that I feel like... I mean, I'm sure you see this, films are too desaturated these days. Where is the color in our films? And I wanted to capture that. Beyond even Anna, I wanted to capture what it felt like in Los Angeles—it's a classic LA movie, it's sunny, it's bright... until it's not.
TRUST ME, I’M A DOCTOR follows Dr. Sandeep Kapoor after his life is turned upside down when he is implicated in the death of his former patient, model and reality television star Anna Nicole Smith. Set against the height of the early 2000s tabloid era, the film chronicles Kapoor’s fight to clear his name as paparazzi descend on his office, police raid his home, private journals are leaked, and every aspect of his personal life becomes public. With the guidance of respected attorney Ellyn Garofalo, Kapoor must navigate a high-stakes drug conspiracy trial while confronting the intersection of celebrity, justice, politics and personal redemption.