Leaving the halcyon days of college and starting a full-time job can be like getting hit by a truck. Unfortunately for Maher Jafari, producer and development consultant for TV and film, that’s exactly what happened.
The then-recent George Washington University graduate was on his way to meet a Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) agent in 1997 when he was swiped, just behind the passenger side door, by a truck, causing him to spin around and go backwards on the freeway. A couple of inches to either side of where the truck hit the car, and Jafari, who came away from the incident unharmed, would have been hospitalized or dead. That same day, Alexandria Productions, where he was working as an intern, offered him a position as an associate producer.
Working for a small company allowed Jafari to do a wide variety of jobs, from pitching story ideas to sitting in on financial meetings often closed to associate producers at large production companies. After a year and a half, he had a good understanding of the development process of TV production.
What he didn’t have was a solid knowledge regarding the streets of Hollywood, but he quickly learned how to navigate them during his first job as a production assistant for SAG Awards, driving around to pick up directors, producers, and the occasional A-lister and Hollywood star.
While many people spend years waiting tables while hoping for a break, Jafari was, within months, hired as an agent’s assistant at William Morris Agency, which boasts clients such as Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Affleck, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kate Hudson, Hugh Jackman, and Omaha’s The Faint.
“[It] was kind of luck, that I got in, because it’s not very easy,” Jafari said. “They were changing over the computer systems and had hired temp floaters to cover for the full time assistants while they were learning the system.”
Because he wasn’t full-time, Jafari was again able to perform a variety of jobs, learning along the way that he preferred TV over film, as film production can take years.
He also discovered he preferred working in development. When Bruce Helford’s Mohawk Productions hired him as development director, Jafari handled the development of more than 350 TV episodes for early-2000s comedies such as the Emmy-winning show “George Lopez,” “Freddie,” “The Drew Carey Show,” and “Wanda at Large.” The job involved scouting comedians to see if they fit into the mold for the production company.
Melissa Gelineau, the co-producer on “Freddie,” described Jafari as “a former boss-turned-friend-turned sometimes producing partner,” who was indispensable to her.
“He’s so smart, and he understands budgets and how to make it so that we see what we want on the screen,” said Gelineau, now an executive at Laurence Fishburne’s Cinema Gypsy. “I trusted his tastes so much that if he told me [a script] was great, I would read it. If he told me something was not, I didn’t.
“While he knew, and saw, several of the shows’ lead performers and other Hollywood A-listers, he never got star-struck.”
“They’re just people,” Jafari said. “I’d hear them talking on the phone, and they’re talking about their kids and, you know, [television and film] is their job, just like we have a job. It’s just a really weird job.”
That weird job can lead to weird incidents.
“On the second day on a job (after he had left Mohawk) I found myself at an FBI training center, holding a computer-connected Glock, and immersed in a large-screen raid simulation with an audience, including my new boss,” Jafari recounted. “I later dined with a group of badass female agents… It’s part of the development process.”
He also discovered there’s plenty of monkey business to be had in Hollywood—literally.
“I showed up for work one day with police cruisers and the Humane Society surrounding my parking spot,” Jafari said. “And a giant ape [also] in the spot. They were testing an animatronic ape for “Zookeeper” (the 2011 movie starring Kevin James), but our office was in a residential neighborhood. That freaked some people out.”
Around 2015, having worked for “the industry” for more than 20 years, Jafari, his wife, and their then 2-year-old son moved back to Omaha, where Jafari worked more on consulting and developing writers, flying back to Los Angeles when necessary.
These days, Jafari’s working in film and living full-time in Omaha. He premiered his short film “Damned If You Do” in March at the Omaha Film Festival, with the West Coast premiere taking place at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood as part of the Dances With Films Festival in late June. He also has a feature-length film in post-production and hopes to produce a new project in the fall.
The switch was intentional, as TV requires development and production people to be more in-person than film. That’s one reason he thinks the burgeoning local film scene in Omaha is happening at the right time, and Jafari has been instrumental in elevating it, speaking in March to the legislature about the potential economic impact. He has also been coaching and educating young filmmakers, as he has for years.
That was good, if not surprising, news to Gelineau.
“There isn’t anything he cannot do, in my opinion,” she said. “If anyone can bring Omaha into more of a film center, like Atlanta or Canada, it would be Maher.”
For more information, visit voyagemedia.com/producer/MaherJafari.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
