Jon M. Chu sat down with The Hollywood Reporter and walks us through his journey as a director. From creating 'Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,' 'Crazy Rich Asians,' 'Wicked' and many more, he tells THR the advice from his mom that changed his life about filmmaking, casting Ariana Grande as Glinda and more.
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00:00I fell in love with making films when I was a kid.
00:04I got the camcorder in my hand.
00:07Looking through that lens, people looked at me differently.
00:21I showed my parents the video that I made of our vacation and they started to cry watching it.
00:25And for the first time I felt heard.
00:27For the first time I felt like I could express myself.
00:30That stuck with me and from then on I was all in.
00:33Doing wedding videos, bar mitzvah videos, you name it.
00:35As soon as I got out of film school, I got into the business.
00:38My short film got a lot of attention in the town.
00:41I was pair play on Bye Bye Birdie at Sony.
00:44So I got involved in the business very young.
00:47But I didn't make my first movie until five years after that.
00:49So during that five year period it was really hard.
00:51I'm on the bench of an NBA team.
00:53I need two minutes to go prove myself.
00:55And my managers, who are still my managers today, sent me a bunch of stuff.
00:59And they said, hey this is a sequel to a dance movie but it's direct to DVD.
01:03And I was like, oh I don't do direct to DVD guys.
01:05I'm a studio filmmaker, remember?
01:07That's how I got into this.
01:08And I called my mom and she said, well when did you become a snob?
01:11If you're a true storyteller, you can tell it in any medium.
01:14And that advice changed the rest of my life.
01:16I said, okay I'm going to make the best damn direct to DVD dance movie sequel of all time.
01:20And it's a new star!
01:26Break!
01:34Break!
01:35Boom!
01:36Boom!
01:37Boom!
01:38Boom!
01:39Break!
01:40Into a beat down the street like water.
01:42My G look good but she ain't no teller.
01:44Shut up, you talk too much, you get crushed.
01:46I'll be right, get turned from down to death.
01:48That's us all day, homie, don't run up.
01:50Cause my crew so tough, like a Tonka truck.
01:52Lean back with a T-set.
01:54Going into a subculture, learning about that.
01:56And people think, oh you're a dancer, because I did the Step Up movies.
01:59I love that, because I'm not a dancer.
02:01But I became that for that moment.
02:04I'm going to become a Justin fan.
02:05I want to find out how they discovered him.
02:08And so, Adam goes, you have to talk to one person to get the job.
02:12I was like, oh who?
02:13Oh, Scooter Braun.
02:14So I had my conversation with Scooter.
02:16And he was like, okay, are you ready to do this?
02:18I was like, I think this is a rocky story.
02:20I think this is the first time that teenagers got to choose their idols from being online.
02:26You could see their first comment on his very first video.
02:28You could watch it grow.
02:30Digital fingerprints.
02:31So we can make a story that's not just a concert film.
02:34It's a story about a generation of people choosing their idol.
02:37And the person at the middle of this.
02:39I've been a fan of him from when he posted his first video.
02:41And I'll be his fan till he posts his last video.
02:49You hear these stories, how tough it is for adults.
02:51He's 16, and he's doing it all on his own.
02:54The first time we met, he almost passed me by.
02:59Security's early.
03:05They're all dead.
03:06There's only one man who could authorize a strike like that.
03:10And I voted for him.
03:14You're insane.
03:15It started to itch at me.
03:16Like, when am I going to do my own thing?
03:18What is something that I need to make for myself that scares the hell out of me?
03:22And what scared me the most was my own cultural identity crisis.
03:27Of exploring what it means to be Asian American.
03:30And I had gotten this book, Crazy Rich Asians.
03:33I saw the opportunity because every character in that was someone I could pinpoint in the world.
03:37Whether it was Gemma Chan, or Ronnie Chang, or Jimmy O. Yang, or Michelle Yeoh, or Constance.
03:43We could define what's beautiful in our culture.
03:46We could define what it means to be split between cultures.
03:49And this Asian American character, Rachel Chu, in the middle of this, was going to Asia for the first time.
03:54And to me, that was my experience.
03:57Going to Asia for the first time and feeling like, oh, is this my homeland?
04:01And maybe being convinced of it for, like, two days.
04:04And then realizing, oh, they see me as a foreigner, too.
04:07Didn't think anyone was ever going to see this movie.
04:09And luckily, people did.
04:11A highly anticipated new movie that has Hollywood buzzing.
04:14And everyone else, too.
04:15Crazy Rich Asians.
04:16Crazy Rich Asians is breaking records.
04:18Crazy Rich Asians had big expectations when it opened last week.
04:22It did even better.
04:241.2 million.
04:27The Nick you're dating is Nick Young?
04:28Yeah, you guys know them or something?
04:30Hells yeah.
04:31They're just the biggest developers in all of Singapore.
04:34Damn, Rachel.
04:36It's like the Asian Bachelor.
04:41They're talking about kicking out all the dreamers.
04:44It's time to make some noise.
04:48We had to assert our dignity in small ways.
04:52Shh.
04:53Just listen.
04:54I'm a huge fan of Wicked.
04:56So I come from the perspective of a fan.
04:58I know the areas that I need to protect.
05:00So I had no...
05:01I didn't have to translate anything between me and the fans.
05:04I knew.
05:05The hardest part was, what do I wish was there?
05:08Daily Zooms, three or four hours a day,
05:10where we would go through every line of the script,
05:14of the Broadway script,
05:16and the current movie script, which wasn't quite there yet.
05:20And we would read every line.
05:22And they would tell me why he wrote the lyric this way.
05:26Or how did the number end up this way?
05:27What were the past things they've tried?
05:28And so we'd put these little divot points.
05:30And the amount of numbers you have to cut to get the story in
05:33is just not plausible.
05:35It's just not...
05:36You want all the songs.
05:37So let's split it into two.
05:39Commit to that.
05:40We have to make sure that that movie is emotionally fulfilling,
05:42so it doesn't feel like we're stopping in the middle of a story.
05:45She came in as Ariana Grande,
05:47which has its own aura.
05:49And I think she had a higher mountain to climb.
05:51Wicked is too big to have Ariana Grande,
05:53who's really big, to then sit on top of it.
05:56It's just too many competing things.
05:59And does she really want to commit to a Galinda?
06:02This is a very difficult role.
06:04You have to be funny.
06:05You have to be a great actor.
06:07You have to be obviously able to sing.
06:09She can handle those parts.
06:10But can she be intimate and let us in?
06:12Also, you have this amazing, iconic Galinda in Kristen Chenoweth.
06:18So you can't do an imitation,
06:20but it has to be the Galinda that was sort of built.
06:24This is skilled, high-craft stuff
06:29that takes a lot of experience to do.
06:31There was no way Ariana Grande,
06:34who had never led a movie, could do this.
06:36And when she came in, she committed.
06:41But she has all her Ariana Grande makeup on.
06:44Let's see if she'll come in with no makeup.
06:46Next time she came in, all makeup gone,
06:49and she was in it.
06:50She's so funny, and she's so interesting.
06:52She's like she's from another planet.
06:54And she's doing Galinda, but not imitating.
06:57Then we kept bringing her back the next time.
06:59Again, she's the most interesting person in the room.
07:01And the next time, every time, you're just like,
07:04the only Galinda you want to see is her.
07:06And is she really winning this role?
07:08So by the end, it was very, very clear.
07:11But when she showed up, day one, she was Galinda.
07:13Her voice was different.
07:14The way she walked was different.
07:16When she put on the blonde wig, she was different.
07:18When she put on the dress, it was different.
07:20She inhabited this character.
07:22I have never seen anyone change like that.
07:25Elphaba, you can room with Miss Galinda.
07:28Popular.
07:30I know about popular.
07:32Oh, I saved you some space, by the way.
07:34Do you really think this is fair?
07:35I do not.
07:36I was promised a private suite.
07:38But thanks for asking.
07:40The great thing about Hollywood in the past
07:43has been that it's run by mavericks,
07:46artists who are rebels and troublemakers.
07:49And they're willing to say things
07:51and release things that are controversial
07:54and that cause dialogue.
07:56And through that,
07:59comes some sort of new perspective
08:01on something that we didn't know we needed to hear
08:03or maybe even wanted to hear.
08:05So I miss those days of that.
08:08I hope to just keep going
08:10and telling stories that bring joy
08:14and optimism, not naivete,
08:17but re-explore beauty,
08:19re-explore the American dream,
08:21re-explore ambition,
08:23re-explore what a hero can look like,
08:25what a villain can look like,
08:27so that we have new perspectives
08:29on these classic things
08:30that are part of our human experience.
08:46© BF-WATCH TV 2021