“Poreless” is the story of a fabulous, queer Muslim beauty entrepreneur who must figure out how to compete in a Shark Tank-like product pitch contest after suffering an untimely allergic reaction. You can watch it above via Switchboard Magazine. And in the piece below, director Harris Doran, who wrote the short with Fawzia Mirza, recounts the making of the short film.
“Bad news. Amazon said the fuchsia chairs would be delivered tomorrow but now they won’t be coming until two days after we shoot that scene.” These were the words I heard my production designer Rashi Jain say when she had to let me down about my vision for the opening scene with fuchsia chairs in a white space. Rashi and I held hands and dove into the internet until 3am trying to find pink chairs in NYC, which we found quickly somehow did not exist. But she figured out getting pink into the throw pillows, before magically changing the white curtains to blue.
I’m not really sure how she was able to create the constant magic she did, but this was the experience of the entire shoot — starting with a vision and then trusting your collaborators to take ownership of their part of the vision.
Let me take it back.
It all started with Akbar Hamid, He had been a success in PR, helping to tell other people’s stories, while secretly wanting to be an actor and tell stories himself. He had a vision and revealed this to Fawzia Mirza, a successful filmmaker who I have been friends with for years. She knew that I have coached actors over the years and she suggested Akbar and I work together.
The first time I met Akbar, I was struck by how he was a total fashion plate — handsome, impeccably dressed, and with a bright personality. I gave him some sides to read and he instantly leaped off the page. A natural with great comedic timing. I was like, “you could be the Pakistani Dan Levy,” and he smiled joyfully.
Because Akbar has such a unique and delightful personality, I wanted to avoid spoiling that with him getting too in his head with formal acting lessons, so I said — “You are ready. You should just start. You should make a short film.”
He and Fawzia decided to make a short film together, but Akbar kept suggesting very heavy dramas. And Fawzia was like, “you’re funny. Lead with funny.” Akbar ended up suggesting an idea that happened to be an idea that I already wrote, and I said, “I will write something else for you guys to make together.”
This led to Fawzia and I brainstorming. I’d had success with my short film “F^¢K ‘€M R!GHT B@¢K” that premiered at Sundance a few years ago, which was inspired by the real life of DDm, the lead actor, and I thought that approach might be a good one here.
Fawzia and I both have similar silly senses of humor so we started riffing — beauty, fashion, identity. Fawzia had an idea of identical gay Muslim triplets, and I love classic farce, so I suggested he be hiding something — which is how the allergic rash plot came about.
It was fun, but I thought it needed to be about something deeper to ground the comedy and I suggested the scarcity that people of color sometimes feel about getting that one “diversity slot.”
Akbar, who had never produced a movie before, got to work — and if you want to see a human set a goal and achieve it, spend five minutes with him.
Fawzia and I had decided that whoever was available to direct at the time would direct, and as she was on a whirlwind tour of her fantastic feature Queen of My Dreams, I was the one available to direct.
We brought on the wonderful Rabia Sultana to help produce.
In order to nail the specific comedic tone, we needed the visuals support it. We all pooled our resources to bring on the best people we could. Rabia brought Rashi as well as the amazing Bill Kirstein to shoot the film, who was just coming off being the cinematographer of the Mean Girls musical movie. He used camera movement create the heightened tone. Allison Calhoun brought the high fashion looks and Andrew Sotomayor the chic makeup.
We needed a cast that would be able to nail the comedic tone: Diane Guerrero through Akbar, Parvesh Cheena though Fawzia, Allyce Beasely, Lucy Owen, Sophie von Haselberg through me, Henry Russell Bergstein, our casting director, brought on Gia Crovatin, and Sureni Weerasekera was the only person we auditioned. She was so perfect that Fawzia and I offered her the role in the room.
One of the main issues we faced was how to do the “glow up” where the “Poreless” product really works — and so we had a group meeting including Bill, Andrew, and Jeff Kyle, who was our colorist and also did the VFX.
We went through all kinds of ideas like the camera diving into one of Akbar’s pores and seeing some kind of cartoon inside the pore, but we realized we don’t have the budget for those shenanigans, so went with a push in, where when you when pull out the person’s face would be glowing — Andrew added shimmer and lashes, and Jeff gave an extra glow in post.
Another issue was the face rash. Andrew did all sorts of tests. I was advised that the rash might be time consuming if it melts off and has to be reapplied. Fawzia and I had already put masks in the script, so I ended up adding masks throughout a chunk of the movie to avoid the makeup melt mess. This ended up being an asset to the film as there are a zillion masks!
It’s been a wild wide. And has been a pleasure to see audiences falling for Akbar the way Fawzia and I hoped they would. We ended up having our NY premiere at Tribeca and now here we are Oscar qualified. It started with Akbar having a dream and then one by one each person has added to that dream to make one big silly (with something to say) movie.
Main image: Akbar Hamid in “Poreless.” Switchboard Magazine.