Fresh Air - 'Wicked' Director Jon M. Chu On The Hard Work Of Creativity

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Chu takes his inspiration from his dad, a Chinese immigrant who worked both the front room and the kitchen of their family-run restaurant: "The guy that in the back of the kitchen, that was my hero." The director of Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights talks with Terry Gross about growing up in Silicon Valley, seeing Wicked for the first time, and learning to be adaptable. Maureen Corrigan reviews Dinaw Mengestu's new novel, Someone Like Us. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. After making the hit film Crazy Rich Asians and the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony Award-winning Broadway musical In the Heights, my guest, John M. Chu, is now adapting Crazy Rich Asians into a Broadway musical. He's directing a film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Wicked, which is expected to open in November.

He loves musicals, and his first feature film was supposed to be an updated version of the musical Bye Bye Birdie. Why that never happened is one of the disappointments he writes about in his new memoir. The memoir is part prequel to his career, but it's also about making movies. Chu grew up in Silicon Valley at a time when Apple was getting started, lots of startups were starting up, and his friend's father was also the father of GPS navigation. Chu was an early adapter to as much new digital tech as he could get his hands on. His tech know-how served him well in his film career, but he soured on the tech industry's

impact on how movies are seen, mostly at home and not in theaters. His parents are immigrants, his mother from Taiwan, his father from China. They own a Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley that they opened in 1970. Chu says it started as a lunch counter restaurant in a nothing special strip mall, but by the time he was born in 1979, it had become a local institution. Steve Jobs was an early customer. Years later, Jobs helped Chu launch his career without knowing Chu's connection to that restaurant. John Chu's new memoir is called Viewfinder. John Chu, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be talking to you. It's my pleasure to have you.

So you're best known for the film Crazy Rich Asians and for how it showed off the talents of great Asian American and other Asian actors who are so underrepresented in Hollywood. And for showing that an Asian cast can be a huge hit. It was also a breakthrough for you personally. But previously, you hadn't wanted to emphasize that you were Asian American, the son of immigrants. You were taught to blend in to assimilate. What are some of the ways you were taught to blend in? Well, my mom and dad, like you said, came from Taiwan and China. And so they always wanted us kids, I'm the youngest of five kids, to have an experience

that was different than theirs. So they put us in dance classes. I took tap dance for 12 years, piano, drums, saxophone, violin. I was terrible at all of those. I did sports camps, basketball, tennis. We did etiquette classes where they taught us how to sit at a table and greet people. And they dressed us similarly in like polo. And my mom really wanted us to be the Kennedys. So she would even call me John John sometimes. So it was very much like we are ambassadors. And some of the people who come into the restaurant,

this is the first time they're going to interact with a Chinese family. So we have to show them that we can hang just as well as they can. Tell me a little bit more about the etiquette training. I didn't even know they did that anymore. Yeah, I mean, this was a long time ago now, too. But yeah, they would show us where the forks go and how to take the napkin off and put it away. And it was also built into, like, my preschool. My preschool teacher taught us a lot of how to act properly, as they said.

Did you buy into that, that you needed to assimilate and be the Kennedys? 100%. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I had a choice, but I enjoyed it. The people respected our family. We weren't just like, oh, that's the Chinese food restaurant people. We were as embraced as anybody else there, as the engineers or the VCs that were there at the time. I went to a school that was very sort of an Americana small school where musical theater was a part at the time, Los Altos, California felt like Main Street, USA, with this sort of tomorrow edge that everyone was trying to invent what tomorrow would look like. And engineers were number one.

No one was on cover of magazines at that time. It was Stanford. It was HP. It was Apple. Everyone was striving to invent what it would look like. And I totally bought into that. It was beautiful to live in that. So you made Crazy Rich Asians because someone in your family had read it and called your attention to it.

And I figured who the other person was who said, you got to read this. And coincidentally, I think your agent was just on the verge of sending you the novel, suggesting that you do an adaptation. So after all the years of trying to blend in and be the perfect American family, how did you feel about doing an Asian-American themed film? Well, before that, I would have never at that point. You know, I had done a short film at USC.

I went to USC film school. And it was the only time that I did something that dealt with my sort of cultural identity crisis. I was very, you know, all-American boy, but looked Chinese. And so the last thing I wanted to do was put myself in a category of,

oh, that's the Asian director. I just wanted to be a director. And so I was very resistant. After 10 years, maybe more of that in the business and feeling like I had made it, there was a point where I was working on Now You See Me 2 with some of the biggest actors out there,

Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson. And we were flowing and it felt really good. And I felt like I hit my 10,000 hours. I was like, okay, I belong here. I can do this. And then the big question came that landed on my head basically was like, okay, then if you could do this and what story do you need to tell that no one else can tell? And what are you trying to say with your movies? And so I told my agent and my managers and my whole team, I don't know what's happening with me, but I need to get off of any movie I'm doing right now. And I need to start fresh with something that scares me the most.

And so I went on a search for something that felt like it was going to deal with the scariest thing in my life, which was my cultural identity crisis. And that's when my sister and my mom sent me Crazy Rich Asians and just so happened that my agent and my manager were going to send me the script for it. coincidences happen, I felt like compelled that this is the story of Rachel Chu, who's in that movie. She's an Asian American woman who's going to Asia for the first time. To me, that was my story. I 100% understood what that's when I went to Hong Kong for the first time or Taiwan for the first time. And you feel the sense of home. And you feel the sense of, oh, people are treating you like you're a cousin. But then they call you foreigner or they call you guilo, which means foreigner. So that's what compelled me to do Crazy Rich Asians at that time. I think you left out part of the story here, which is that you had done a movie that was a huge flop. I mean, like really big.

Thanks, thanks. And I forget the name of it because I didn't know about it and I don't know the thing it's adapted from. Yeah. It was called Gem in the Holograms. Yeah. But it's only a flop if you look at the box office. I'm so proud of that movie. But yes, it did not do well in the box office.

Okay. But that got you thinking, like, what track are you on? Like, what's the point of what you're doing? Is it success? Is it money? Is it something that means a whole lot to you? And isn't that part of what got you thinking about being on a different track? There was a certain point where when the box office numbers are disappointing, if that shifts the reason for you making that movie, and it did, it jolted me. Then I knew I needed to recenter for myself, that whatever I was making, I knew I could not depend on who was showing up.

That I had to make it for me, I had to make it for the audience that I knew needed this or may not know they want it, but need it in some way. And that was sort of the process I was going through when Crazy Rich Asians came along. So you adapted the movie from a novel by Kevin Kwan. And there's a lot of personal things from his life in that movie. And you're kind of referenced in it in a roundabout way. Because he knew your cousin? It's the weirdest story like this again these when these weird i don't know what you call it uh things happens maybe spiritual

maybe the universe telling you it compels you but he was friends with my he is friends uh very close friends with my cousin vivian who lives uh in here in new york and after reading the book, there's a section where the character talks about their cousin, because she's defending the Chu family in Cupertino, which is Cupertino's like 10 minutes from my house. And these stories apparently were from stories that Vivian would tell him about our family. And so Rachel Chu and the Chu family in Cupertino, there was one point where the main lead, the guy, is defending their family about how much money they make to his mother. And he's saying, you know, they work hard for their money, and they even have a cousin who makes movies in Hollywood. And that's you. Which, when you read it, you're like, oh, that's weird.

That's really close. I only found out when I met Kevin Kwan in person later that he said, no, that's a reference to you. And that was mind blowing. hit Broadway musical In the Heights. I really enjoyed that, but it was criticized for not having enough dark-skinned Afro-Latino actors in a movie that was set in a predominantly Dominican neighborhood in New York. And you write that, you know, you were upset, you were hurt, but you tried to just listen, just as you wanted people to listen to you when you called out a lack of representation. Lin-Manuel Miranda issued an apology.

And I was just wondering, you know, when a criticism, there's a fine line between criticism and condemnation in a situation like that. And I'm wondering which side of the line you felt it fell on. I don't mean to put you in an awkward spot, so I will just say this, that if it comes close Which side of the line you felt it fell on? You know, honestly— I don't mean to put you in an awkward spot, so I will just sayational as you could of the Latino American community, it can discourage people from going. It can discourage other people from trying to make a similar film. Yeah. And it can make you feel like a bad citizen if you liked it. You know what I mean?

Yeah. It's like, how come I didn't notice that? I'm not supposed to like this film. So I think the question of representation is really important. But I also think that, you know, it's possible to go too far. Yeah, I mean, it's complicated. And I think that that's the work we're doing. We're on the front lines of trying to make change. And in that change, yes, there's could be condemnation, it could be criticism. But I, I'm really glad I went through the gem experience. I'm really glad I went through a decade of making movies and hearing criticisms. Every movie has criticisms. Because it already had a solid sort of state to stand on that I'm so proud of this movie.

In the Heights shows beautiful people and their beautiful stories that a dream as big as any Hollywood musical could make can happen in an apartment building above a bodega, that a bodega owner could be the main character of a story. And that's what we tried to do throughout the movie. That's what every single actor there was, every single dancer. We worked our butt off to really create a world that was beautiful. There's no violence, there's no guns, there's no drugs. This is about dreaming. Dreaming at the highest levels and that the American dream is complicated

and that everybody has their own version of how to fulfill the American dream or keep it going. And for me, for that, I am so proud of the movie at a time when Latino main characters in Hollywood movies was, I think they had like 2% of the dialogue that year and we made a full movie full of it. So yeah, it's hard to hear those things. I, you know, I, I was trying to go through a transformation in the way I make my movies that I make the movie and the audience takes it for as it is. And I have to be at peace with that. And, um, that's sort of, you know, there's a one thing where you say that's the case and there's one thing where you practice it. And that was a great test for me. And I think our movie that I wasn't going to push back and take down some argument

from these people who were speaking out. Again, there's plenty of other complaints you can make about any of my movies, but I wanted to show compassion and that's not easy sometimes. And sometimes it's at the risk of your own art that you've spent years on. That said, I hope people really do discover In the Heights because I think it's at the risk of your own art that you've spent years on. That said, I hope people really do discover In the Heights because I think it's a beautiful movie and has a great message.

And at the same time, I hope we have grace for each other because if we're changing, that everybody's going to have blind spots or things they need to learn along the way. What did it do to your sense of self, to your personal identity, to be the person criticized about representation instead of the person criticizing about lack of representation? It, you know, I definitely questioned myself for moments. I had a lot of support, of course, from everyone who was part of the movie, people outside of the movie, people who found the beauty in it. And, you know, I was getting messages, crazy messages from people. Like I posted a picture of my daughter when I got home from the press of In the Heights. We were in New York. I came home and posted a picture of my daughter who made a sign that said, like, welcome home, daddy.

And someone wrote, wow, you're saying you're raising racist children. And I was like, whoa, I need to get off the internet. And when it goes that far, you sort of like, okay, all right. I won't be their father. I won't let them be a part of my life. But I will keep making the thing that I believe that the world needs and make adjustments accordingly. But, yeah, it was hard. And it was a little bit, it was during sort of

the end of COVID's period, lockdown period, I guess. And so there was a lot of reassessing. It sort of led me to Wicked in a weird way. This idea that Elphaba sings in Defying Gravity, she says, something has changed within me. Something is not the same. And those words, which I've known for many, many years, meant more on that day than anything else. And I felt like this is what we all feel. We are all rejiggering our, how we see the world and what we thought the world had prepared for us and how we think the American dream was and how it actually is. And now we need to write the new story. What is that? And I felt compelled that I had a microphone, I had a movie to make that kind of could help us all heal from that idea. So you're working on Wicked now and adapting that into a film. What did The Wizard of Oz and Wicked mean to you when you first saw Wicked

and when you were young and watched The Wizard of Oz? Well, Wizard of Oz obviously means a lot to a lot of people. It's the great American fairy tale, the one that was written here and about the Yellow Brick Road and this wizard

that was going to give you everything your heart's desire. My mom would talk about it often. My dad would talk about it. I mean, it was so, in a weird way, international, this idea of this place that you could go.

And so it's always had a place in my life. Watched it many, many times, whether it's on TV or VHS or DVD. And when I saw Wicked, that was, what, 2002? But I saw it before it was on Broadway. My parents would take us every weekend as part of our Americanization, would take us to a show every weekend.

Ballet season, opera season, musical season. And all five kids. And we'd be in our little polo shirts tucked in and trying to stay quiet, even though we were very restless. And so that was a part of our tradition. And years later, when I was just starting college, my mom said, Hey, there's another show coming in. It's a new show and no one's seen it by Stephen Schwartz who had done Pippin and Godspell. And so I was like, yeah, sure. I'll come. And I was blown away by it. This idea that this American story could be flipped

and you could see it from the perspective of the wicked witch of the West and that she wasn't so bad, that there was a narrative to her, that they sold everybody because the only way to bring people together is to give them a real good enemy as the wizard says that was very compelling to me and and the production was so big i mean they did an amazing job and it wasn't even finished yet when i saw it that it stayed with me i never thought i would be so lucky to be able to direct it one day but it always stayed with me and this idea of looking at the American story, flipping it, and then now having even 20 years later to try to invert the ideas of it to say, hey, maybe the yellow brick road

isn't the way to go. Maybe you need to go on your own path. And maybe there is no wizard on the other side waiting to give you your heart's desire. Maybe you have to figure it out yourself. And maybe there's no real such thing as happy endings, that the path just keeps going and you just have to keep walking. To me, those were the compelling things that I was there at the time in my life where I was ready to tell that story. And in a song like Defying Gravity, I sort of need it at that moment. And I felt like that's what the world needed too, this fighter of hope. Well, let me reintroduce you because we have to take another break.

If you're just joining us, my guest is John Chu, and he directed the films Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights. And he's now directing a film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked, which is scheduled to open in November. and he's creating a Broadway musical adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians. He's written a new memoir called Viewfinder. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Two months ago somebody bought Ortega's Our neighbors started packing up and picking up And ever since the rest went up it's gotten mad expensive But we live with just enough In the Heights I lift the lights and start my day There are heights and less debts

And bills to pay In the Heights I can't survive without coffee I search gasoline But tonight seems like a million years away In Washington Next up, ding, Kevin Rosario He runs the cab company, he struggles in the barrio

See, his daughter Nina's off at college, tuition is mad steep So he can't sleep, everything he get is mad cheap Good morning, Usnavi Pan caliente, café con leche So he can't sleep. Everything he get is mad cheap. last night. Sweet. Abuela's been cooking all week. Come by when I see you this weekend. All we gotta eat. So then Yesenia walks in the room. This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today, or WISE.com.

T's and C's apply. Let's go back to the beginning. You grew up in Silicon Valley in the 80s and 90s. What was happening at the time in Silicon Valley that you were aware of? Well, NASA was a big part of our community. HP was a big part. There was, you know, I think when I was growing up, there was Reagan and Bush were around. And so there was, and Stanford, of course, was kicking. Steve Jobs had just sort of been kicked out of Apple. So he was our hometown hero and everyone was rooting for him. George Lucas was in the city making his own movies, independent movies called Star Wars and things like that over there. So it was a beautiful,

magical time. And you had a lot of early digital tech in part because one of your parents' customers distributed them. And so I don't know whether he gave you deals or just gave you the tech, but you had stuff. What did you have that helped create the know-how that you needed when you started making your own little indie teenage films? Yeah, I got them for free from customers. They literally, Russell Brown from Adobe would give me all the Adobe Photoshop. I got After Effects Premiere. I was getting computer equipment from Dave Smith, who had a company called True Vision. I got monitors. This is all free for this.

I was, I don't know, 14 years old. Did they know that you were dying to make movies? Yeah, this is the reason why my dad would talk to them. You know, the chef chooses a house of stories, so he'd be telling them all stories about us. And they would be like, yeah, we have this thing. It's called digital video. It's going to change everything. Before that, I had been just editing on a VHS on different VCRs.

So that changed it. I had no business owning this equipment. It had no manual, so I had to figure it out myself. But that sort of got me started in figuring out the grammar of audiovisual storytelling. Then you started making movies with your older brother. Yeah, my older brother, he's like, you know, everyone loves my older brother. Everyone wants to be friends with me, to be friends with my older brother, Larry. He was like 6'2", and he's like the basketball player.

And so he would have these class videos, and he would tag me along because I could carry the camera or carry the batteries or whatever. And I would just tag along and watch them. And it was also the time of Spike Lee and Michael Jordan. And so the sort of convergence of media and sports, and my brother was a basketball player, so he had a guy who was shooting them and shooting their highlight videos and stuff. It became really cool

to have like a video guy with you at whatever you were doing. And so I was just that guy for them and became that guy for a lot of people in our school. When you were in film school, you did, I'm unclear about this, whether it was a trailer or a movie called When the Kids Are Away, because I saw the trailer uh on online you know on the internet yeah but i couldn't find the actual movie yes i have the full movie is what got me into this business it's what steven spielberg saw it's what all the but i the you can't actually see it online i have not posted it oh no wonder okay okay so let me describe the the trailer because the trailer is pretty funny it starts like a kind of like horror film like

what do mothers do when the kids are away and you see all these like stills with kind of scary music underneath. And it looks like, oh, my God, they're like, they're all serial killers. You know, but it turns out a kid sneaks into like a trash can and hides out so he could see what the mothers do when the kids are away. What they're doing is all these big, joyful production numbers. They're singing and they're dancing while folding laundry and stuff like that. So it's funny and it's fun. And there's so many, there's like a bunch of different production numbers in it edited together in this kind of really fast sequence. Yeah.

And it's quite impressive considering you were in film school and just what it took to do so many songs and to do so many dances and so on. So tell us about the doors that that opened for you. Well, we had no budget for that as well. And we got it all together. And it was at that time, there was no YouTube. So you couldn't just get it online. People had to have a physical copy in their hand, and that's the one that Steven Spielberg saw. That was the one that I got my agents and managers from. That's the one that got me my first movie. There was something magical about it that people saw in it that changed everything for me. What did Spielberg do for you? He asked to meet with you.

What happened? Yeah, he met with me, and I got to go to the DreamWorks office, which is overwhelming when you're 22 years old. And I was prepared to tell him how much I loved him, and all he did was tell me what he loved about my short. It was the kindest thing I've ever experienced. And my goal was to, my friend was like, you got to get a second meeting. That's the goal.

So I tried to maneuver a second meeting by saying, oh, I have a musical that I'm writing right now. And he's like, I would love to hear it. And he was like, how about Thursday? And I was like, yes. So me and my friend had to conjure up this musical by Thursday. And we came back in and pitched the movie and he bought it. And we developed it for a couple

years. It never went but he invited me to his set to visit him and watch him direct and it was the most encouraging beautiful thing that someone could do. When you were watching him direct, he did a scene that wasn't going well. People criticized him for the way it was

done and instead of being defensive he said let's try it another way. And then it worked. It was a master class for me to watch. I'm literally sitting next to him. He gave me a seat next to him. I'm sharing like candy with him. And this musical number that he was shooting wasn't happening.

And so he just took a moment. I saw him totally calm, never panic. And he just said, no, we're going to switch this camera. Forget that whole thing. We're going to switch the camera here. Do this, do that. And the whole machine moved. And he was just right back at the seat with me and it kept going. And there was a lot of tension right before that. So to see that and to see the kindness that he would give in those directions

and the confidence made me want that. Said, oh, you can be at that level and be that kind and giving. I guess the image in my head of an artist is always like demanding and screaming and yelling. And, and that for the rest of my life affected me. Well, let's take a short break here. And then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is film director, John Chu. His new memoir is called Viewfinder. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. Let's talk a little bit about your parents. Your mother was from Taiwan. Your father was from several places.

Yes. Do you want to explain? He moved around a lot and then ended up in Taiwan and then Hong Kong and then the States. But they both met in the Bay Area. So that was their connection. And in 1970, they opened a Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley on a scale from takeout to fine dining. Where does the restaurant fit? I wouldn't say it's like chic dining, but it's nice dining. I mean, people take dates there. There are business meetings there. I've had birthday parties, many birthday parties. People have wedding receptions there. But it's a, you know, my parents, they wanted always to feel open for families. We had a big family. So my mom always wanted to make sure that you never felt uncomfortable by having a mess on the floor at the end. And yet you could still take a date there.

So when you were growing up, what was the menu? Oh, by the time I was around, it was a full-on menu. You know, when they started, I think there was like less than 10 items and there wasn't even a place to sit. And it was one little part of this bigger sort of complex of different stores. There was a salon, a cigar shop or something like that. And so by the time I came around, that was all one. They own the whole corner there, plus other buildings behind it. And they grew up with the Silicon Valley there. So eventually they had sit downs

and people from Stanford would come, people from all the different companies would come. I'm sure my dad got stock tips along the way, and they grew with the community. So it's still there. 50, 51 years later, it is still there. My dad's still in the kitchen, 80 years old. My mom's still out there greeting people. And more people know me from the restaurant than I feel like know me from directing my movies. What did you like to eat there when you were growing up? I'm a simple guy, but I always love the potstickers, the handmade potstickers there. They're delicious. The chicken salad is very exciting there and people love it. They have this garlic noodles with lobster that is to die

for. Of course, their duck is great. So there's a lot to have there. Your parents' attitude, the way you describe it, was never complain. Like we're here to be model citizens. If someone, you know, insults you or behaves badly, just like never complain. Can you describe more what the never complain ethic was like? Yeah, there was a keep going attitude. You know, there's five of us and the middle child, his name is Howard. And he is my brother. We were roommates my whole life, basically. And he has special needs. And so he will always live with my parents or with our family.

And so growing up to have a brother that had those needs, we had to be very adaptable in any situation. Even if we were at a show and he had a breakdown, we had to be very adaptable in any situation. Even if we were at a show and he had a breakdown, we would leave. If we were going on vacation and he didn't want to get on the flight, we would all leave. And my parents, you could never say, but I need to go on that plane. Why are we going? Like that was not part of the conversation. So we were always very adaptable. All right, we're going to make up our own thing at the house now. And that went for everything else in our life. When we walked in and people would look at our family or stare at our family, we had a lot of kids. We'd maybe be a little wild.

We ignored them. When people would stare or when people would say something in the restaurant itself, because sometimes when people come to a restaurant, they think they deserve to be served in a certain way. You ignore it and you keep moving. My parents always said that we don't just fill their bellies, we fill their hearts. And so next time they see a Chinese family, they'll know that they can treat them better than they treated us. So that was always in my mind. And it helped me honestly sort of navigate through the beginning of my business and my career. Yeah. So your brother Howard has autism and as you said, has special needs. You shared a bedroom and sometimes had to like turn back from a vacation or leave a show because he wasn't

able to handle it and was causing a fuss so the family would leave. Did you resent him for that? Like how deep was your understanding and your empathy? I was sort of led by my oldest brother. By the time I came around, no, there was zero, no anger, none of that. It wasn't part of our family. My oldest brother had sort of set the table early. I remember one time when I was young, I think I imitated my brother once, Howard, and my other

brother slapped me across. I don't get hit. I've never been slapped before, maybe never since. And he's like, you do not ever imitate Howard. And that landed on me so clearly that I can feel the slap today. We take care of Howard somebody who is from Singapore goes to meet his family. And his mother, who's played by Michelle Yeoh, is very disapproving of this young Asian American who plans on having a career. And, you know, the potential mother-in-law says to her, you know, she describes to her how it's all about family, how she gave up her interest in being a lawyer. She gave up law school to raise a family and to be part of that family. And it's implicit that she would expect, you know, her daughter-in-law to be the same, but she suspects her daughter-in-law would not do that, that her daughter-in-law would not sacrifice her career and the life that she wanted for her family. And I'm wondering if that resonated at all

with your family. Yeah, I think that's an argument that I have often with my parents or grandparents about sacrifice, what it means for our generation to sacrifice and put someone else in front of your own dreams. Again, I was the youngest, so I was maybe allowed a little bit more elbow room than my brothers and sisters. But I was allowed to pursue this crazy dream of becoming a filmmaker. But it was always impressed upon us that that sacrifice was a part of what we did. You know, when my when I had my short film, when the kids already played at USC for the first time, my my family came and the right before they're like, what are you feeding everyone? I said, Oh, no, nothing. I have like sodas.

They're like, Nope. They went to Costco and got tons of frozen food, made it in my apartment kitchen and they served everybody there. They were there to see my movie and enjoy time. And no, they worked and they were serving people wine and champagne and things like that. And so it always, it wasn't just talk. It was, it was, it was impressed on me of that. And so, yes, when I see Rachel and the mother of what that standard is like and programmed, did you see your friends having more flexibility, more free time, more freedom than you did? Yes. I was always the busy one in our group of friends. I saw them having fun and doing other things for sure.

Did you want that for yourself? Yes. I mean, I was always, it was always busy, so it was hard to fully let that sink in. But yes, I wanted that for myself. I also wanted when I would go to their house, I would, their, their moms would cook them cinnamon rolls in the morning and they would all go to church and they would all have game family game time and the dad would be home at 5 p.m. and and I I would look at that big this is the perfect family this is amazing that was not our family at all we were much less traditional than that but I that always stayed in me it's like oh that's the way a family is supposed to be and why can't my family be a little bit more like that but I suppose you certainly learned a work ethic and many skills.

Yes, absolutely. There's a point in the book where it was hard to get through in my audio book. I kept crying, but there's a piece that's called like, be the guy in the kitchen. And it talks about my dad watching him greasy in the back of the kitchen, sweating. And then moments later, he'd be in the front cleaning up his tie and then greeting people. And he was like so suave, making jokes. And then he'd go back in the kitchen and be the sort of captain of this pirate ship. And I always, the guy in the back of the kitchen, that was my hero. That guy was so freaking cool. Not the guy who's making the jokes, but the guy in the back working his butt off because he was the planner, he was the architect. And so I think about that often as my own life. I want to be the guy in the kitchen.

You feel that way as the director of the film? Yeah. I think about, it's not about red carpets. It's not about this press tour. It's not about any of that. It's about doing the work and it's hard and creativity, even though some people, oh, creativity is your creative genius. It comes out of the air. No, it's hard and creativity even though some people oh you creativity is your creative genius it comes out of the air no it's like hard i gotta schedule my time i gotta put time into when i ruminate and when i come up with something and it's a routine it's not the the the secret is it's not magic it's it's it's work john shoe it's really just been such a pleasure to talk with you thank you so much

I look forward to seeing your latest projects thank you very much it's an honor to talk to you Terry John M. Chu's new memoir is called Viewfinder his film adaptation of Wicked is scheduled to open in November after we take a short break

Maureen Corrigan will review Someone Like Us, which she describes as a most idiosyncratic American immigrant novel. It's by Dinao Mangestu, who was born in Ethiopia. This is fresh air. Dinao Mangestu was born in Ethiopia, and his novels, all of them chosen as New York Times notable books, deal with issues of immigration, race, and displacement. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says, Mangestu's latest novel, called Someone Like Us, is another standout.

Here's her review. There's a recurring fantasy running through Denao Mangestu's new novel called Someone Like Us. It's a fantasy about a word-of-mouth nationwide network of taxi cabs that would come to the aid of immigrants, migrants, refugees, anyone who was in the wrong place and needed to be somewhere else but didn't know how to get there. The drivers would be immigrants themselves and therefore more trustworthy to their nervous passengers. The character who cooks up the idea for this taxi service is named Samuel. He's a taxi driver and an immigrant from Ethiopia who lived most recently in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Samuel is also the absence center of this story,

given that he's just died when the novel opens. Our narrator, an Ethiopian-American journalist named Mamouch, has flown in from his home in Paris to visit Samuel. Mamush tells us, I'd known for years that Samuel was my father, but neither he nor my mother had ever expected me to treat him as such. Samuel and Mamush's mother grew up together in Ethiopia and share a long history, most of it muffled in silence. Given that Mamouch missed his reunion with Samuel by only a few hours, a melancholy atmosphere of too-lateness hangs over this novel, like exhaust fumes from that imaginary rescue fleet of taxi cabs. I love the way Mengistu writes, beginning with his stunning 2007 debut novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. He's given voice to characters engulfed in their own solitude. I also sometimes feel frustrated with how Mengistu writes, specifically with how this novel keeps reminding readers of the near

impossibility of breaking out of the same old mold when it comes to telling immigrant stories. Ironically, Mengistu's own ingenuity and eloquence as a writer show at least one way to do so. In Someone Like Us, Mengestu has wedded his signature postmodern musings about the imprisoning limits of narrative to a chronologically scrambled but traditional searching for origins tale. After Mamouche arrives at his mother's home and learns that Samuel, whom he hasn't seen in almost five years, has died, Mamouche begins doing what journalists do, interviewing people and digging up court records. There's even a moment, a kind of tongue-in-cheek homage to many a mystery novel when Mamush discovers a secret room of sorts where Samuel has left behind an autobiographical manuscript for Mamush's eyes only. Why all this urgency to uncover Samuel's history? Like his characters, Mengestu prefers silence over explanations, oblique rather than direct talk,

but we readers can draw some inferences. Mamush, as his wife Hannah tells him, is drifting, and like Samuel, he struggled with the demons of addiction. Perhaps knowing more about the backstory his mother and Samuel share would help anchor him. Fear and grief may also be propelling Mamouch's desire for reconnection. He and Hannah have a young son who's developed severe disabilities. Here's how Mammouch describes their life in Paris. Hannah and I had only recently come to the table of adult-sized problems laid out specifically for us. In doing so, we had learned to stop asking ourselves if we were living the lives we had imagined, if we were happy with who we had become, whom we had married. Our jobs grew dull, our rent went up, but it was only after our son was born that we understood the possible scale of things to worry about, lying in wait.

At one point early in the story, Mamush recalls how Samuel used to signal the start of conversations by saying the word play in Amharic, an invitation to play with words. That's what Mengestu does here, slipping from present to past, reality to dream, within the space of single sentences. Mengestu also plays with other forms, most strikingly with photographs included in these pages that he's taken from his own life, suggesting there may be a trace of autofiction in this novel. In Someone Like Us, Mengistu has written a most idiosyncratic American immigrant novel, a genre that's been available to generations and to recent arrivals from every point on the globe. All the resonant tropes are here, the crowded apartments and the random acts of nativist violence.

But by altering the reader's vantage points, Mengistu ultimately turns the story back onto us and the control we think we have over the story of our own lives. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Someone Like Us by Dinao Mengestu. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, as the war between Israel and Hamas, which is based in Gaza, continues, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon, is escalating. We'll talk with Dexter Filkins of The New Yorker about his reporting trip to an area of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah fighters, meeting with a Hezbollah commander, and why this conflict

could draw in Iran and the U.S. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on our show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Tariq Rose. This message comes from NPR sponsor Grammarly. What if everyone at work were an expert communicator?

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