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Big in Bollywood (2011)

I have a Roku, and one of the weird free channels is called Indie Crush. It had the documentary about Omi Vaidya, the NRI villain of 3 Idiots. These friends of Omi's from LA followed him to the premiere of 3 Idiots and caught that exact moment when an unknown became a star. They faked press passes for the red carpet, and then stayed to film all the way till his debut and comedy win at the Star award ceremony. It was wild to see the craziness of 3 Idiots take over India day by day.

I loved how Omi told the story of auditioning for the film on a whim for one of the leads, and his Hindi was so bad that they just stopped him. But then said, come back tomorrow, we're writing another character that you might be right for. Then they loved how he emphasized not knowing Hindi well and warned him NOT to learn it so that it would stay just as funny in the film. After the premiere, you see him working with a Hindi tutor trying to learn Hindi so he can speak at all the crazy events.

Omi was born in Palm Springs and his mother's family is from Goa. He spoke really no Hindi, and as you saw in his biopic on IMDB had had lots of small roles in things like The Office. Just the funny Uber driver or whatever. He couldn't get traction in LA, and while visiting India, tried out for 3 Idiots -- for one of the leads, mind you. He was perfect for playing the snobby NRI -- who doesn't know Hindi well enough to get the word substitution joke. The doc plays clips from 3 Idiots and they explain in detail why what he said in the big speech was so funny.

He also seems to just be the sweetest guy. His wife was a PHD student in LA during the whole 3 Idiots thing, and they show him a few years later at his house in LA, where he loves being anonymous compared to the craziness in India. He flies back and forth to film in India while she completes her studies. But I saw on IMDB that he's doing some sort of Brown People TV series here which should be interesting.

Also, the doc tries to explain and define Bollywood for the audience (they show clips of Aamir doing song numbers and so on), Aamir defines it, and Omi's father describes it as being like I Love Lucy -- larger than life. I think besides spending time with the sweet Omi -- it's worth seeing just because they really show what Bollywood is, and how crazy a world it is, and how HUGE it is.