The Big Picture - The Theatrical Movie Business Is a Disaster, So ‘The Farewell’ Is a Miracle, With Lulu Wang | Interview

Episode Date: July 16, 2019

The slow box office summer continued this weekend as ‘Stuber’ failed to make a real impact in theaters. Is streaming going to put an end to the big-budget action comedy (0:37)? Plus, a long conversation with Lulu Wang about her path to becoming a filmmaker, the deeply personal experience of making ‘The Farewell,’ and what wider success means for a Sundance darling (42:30).  Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Lulu Wang Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. After you finish the episode, make sure to check out a brand new episode of our live music series on YouTube called The Ringer Room. Each month, we feature a new up-and-coming musical artist to play a live set in The Ringer Studios. So far, we've featured artists like Cautious Clay, Mount Joy, and Earthgang, and we just posted our episode for July showcasing Charlie Bliss. You can check out those videos at youtube.com slash The Ringer.

I'm Sean Fennessey. And I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the dying art of theatrical release in American movies. Amanda, we have a platter of releases to talk about. Later in the show, I'll be talking to the writer and director Lulu Wong, who's made a wonderful movie that was also released last week called The Farewell. One of the best conversations we've had on the show in a while.

You saw this movie as well as I did. We'll talk about it in a little bit. But first, we're going to talk about a few of the other movies that were released last weekend. And as always, kind of where things are heading. Sure and also modern apocalypse. The Hollywood existential crisis. Yes every week I feel like particularly this summer we have been bending over backwards to figure out what to say other than Hollywood's hair is on fire and I think Hollywood's hair is on fire yet again for a couple of small reasons. There were a couple of modest releases in theaters. One was the action comedy Stuber starring Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista. I talked to the director of that movie

last week on this show, Michael Dowse. I think it's a perfectly fun, perfectly forgettable, but not bad at all attempt to remake the kind of lethal weapon style action comedy that we love. You had a nice time at the movies. I had a nice time at the movies. That's great. You know what? Sometimes that's what movies are for. That's what they're for. And I feel like I'm the only person that did because nobody saw this movie. It only made $8 million this weekend, which is quite bad. Right.

I did not see this movie. You didn't see the movie. A handful of people here at The Ringer saw it. I would say they were overwhelmed by the movie, neither under nor over. And, you know, that's a bit of a problem because I think things can't be just okay anymore things can't be solid when you're making a movie well I think I think the movie itself can be just okay the movie can be great and the movie can be bad but the reaction to it and the enthusiasm for it cannot just be like I went to the movies I like to go into the movies because there is an increasingly small number of people who, with good reason, are willing or

excited about going to the movies because it costs a lot of money and it's a pain and they have many other options that are catered to their specific needs at home. So you can't have people are just not being like, hmm, I got some time to kill. What I'll do is get in my car and drive to the local movie theater and pay $30, $40, $50 to see a fine movie. Yeah, we talk about comedies a lot with this, whether it's rom-coms or teen comedies. We talked about Booksmart earlier this summer. And the urge to like eventize a certain kind of movie. Obviously, Endgame is an event in and of itself. I think even something like Crawl, which I'll tell you a little bit about later.

Can't wait. I think you can find a way to make that an event. I think it's really hard to make something like Stuber an event. Certainly, Shaft was very similar. Remember Shaft? That kind of came and went. I didn't even see Shaft. Right.

We see everything. Yes. And the fact that action comedy now gets shuffled alongside rom-coms and teen comedies. And then somebody pointed out that the movie Good Boys is coming out in August, which is a Seth Rogen produced comedy about almost preteen boys speaking filthily and getting into hijinks. And someone said, if that movie fails, then we are truly at the stage of sort of

like we are in full-blown crisis mode for studio comedy that we may not see movies like this on the slate next year because there's no expectation that they can make any money i i still can't quite figure out if that's a bad thing it like it because i know you know there'll be comedies on the streamers right yeah i just don't know know if that middle ground of movie that we're always talking about, especially on the comedy side, I feel like there's something a lot crisper about a $15 million version of that movie than a $5 million version of that movie. And we're kind of splitting hairs here.

But you can even see in a movie like Stuber, a lot of improv, a lot of eighth take, you know, joke writing, a lot of using Kumail to his best abilities to make the movie better the five million dollar version I feel like just sucks a little bit more for lack of a better phrase yes and I'm a little worried about that long term well I think we talked about this last week a little bit and we were talking about triple frontier and then we were talking about genres that are dying out. And this is another example of a genre that's dying out. And I brought up the romantic comedy because not only is it my favorite type of movie, but also we've kind of seen the full life cycle at this point.

Because the romantic comedy died by the end of the 2000s. And then we had all of the, I think around 2010, I believe, Amyolson wrote a great piece about like who killed the rom-com. And there was all the hand-wringing about the genre's over in the early part of this decade. And now they have been brought, I wouldn't say fully back to life, but there are romantic comedies being made, many of them on Netflix. There's kind of like a recognized Netflix romantic comedy genre. And they aren't quite as good. They're still really enjoyable to watch, but we have talked about the jokes aren't quite as sharp.

The setups and the premises aren't quite as memorable. The performances don't really, well, in some cases they are star-making, especially if you want to talk about To All the Boys I've Loved Before, which is like half teen, half romantic comedy, but I think brought those audiences together. And you have Lana Condor and Noah Centineo coming out of that.

Yeah. New versions of stardom though. Yes. I think I was thinking a lot about this over the weekend. I listened to our episode of the rewatchables when Harry met Sally, which you and Juliette Limon and Bill did last week. Great episode. Nice job guys. Thanks. Great movie. I think the power of that show is if I listen to the episode and I want to watch the show,

watch the movie immediately afterwards, we're successful. And I wanted to go back and watch that movie. And that movie, the way you guys talked about it, felt like an event. It felt like something not just influential but meaningful. And I liked To All The Boys I Loved Before. I really liked the Glenn Powell movie from last year. What was the name

of that movie? Set It Up. Set It Up. I thought that movie was great. Also star-making as well. Very fun. But those movies are not that important. You know, they don't really change anything. They didn't really... They sort of change things

in the vagaries of the industry that we're talking about. Sure. You can make a credible version of this kind of movie and reach a lot of people, which is ultimately what we're talking about here.

But the content, I don't think is necessarily as provocative or compelling or you know what I'm saying? I 100% agree with you. On the one side, we should say that When Harry Met Sally is like a once in a generation type of movie. It is tremendous. And that's why we did an episode about it. And it's Nora Ephron coming into her own and Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal.

And it really did start the whole modern romantic comedy that was our thesis and I agree that that's you know so it's singular and holding anything up to it tough probably won't won't hold up an unfair bar sure but at the same time if we're talking about there is a new generation of romantic comedies right now I like I agree with you they are not to the quality even of the lesser romantic comedies right now. Like, I agree with you. They are not to the quality even of the lesser romantic comedies from, say, the early 2000s. Like, Two Weeks Notice, which is a Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant,

pretty much forgotten, I think it's 2002 romantic comedy with an extremely unfortunate Donald Trump cameo, but which basically it's, the movie's unwatchable now, but until recently it was very good and it would be at home on Netflix, but it basically it's the movie's unwatchable now, but until recently it was very good and it would be at home on Netflix, but it's still just of a quality in terms of script and set pieces and performances and stars. Again, it's the, it's the Netflix genre. It's almost

like it's a different type of product that's not quite theater movie and not quite TV show and is really optimal for watching at home and doing other stuff with. But I agree that you're not getting the top flight of these type of genre movies yet. And maybe we will? Well, I'll be curious to see because, as you said, rom-coms have been fully co-opted, I think wisely, by the streaming services. It feels like that's going to happen for teen comedies fairly soon too. Action comedies are a little bit more challenging because they're more expensive. And you talked about the romantic set piece of a movie. The actual physical set piece of an action movie is a little bit more difficult. I did have a bit of a revelation though over the weekend.

I saw the movie Hobbs and Shaw. I won't be spoiling anything about Hobbs and Shaw, I promise. We'll have plenty of Hobbs and Shaw. I won't be spoiling anything about Hobbs and Shaw, I promise. We'll have plenty of Hobbs and Shaw on this show later this summer. But Hobbs and Shaw is a comedy. It is an action movie, certainly, but it is a full-blown comedy. It's a comedy script.

Everything that The Rock and Jason Statham say to each other, those are punchlines. Great. And whether the movie works or doesn't work, it is doing something that Stuber used to do, a movie like Stuber used to do, but with steroids inside of its body. And I mean that in the literal and the figurative sense. And I feel similarly about Shazam.

You know, Shazam is a superhero movie, sort of, but it's just a teen comedy. And even she's, did you see Shazam? No. Okay. I feel like you might like shazam i feel like you target you said it did exactly what it needed to do for the audience that wanted to see it which is actually a great way to make a movie and we should talk more about that with the other movies that we're going to talk about on this episode in this year but it was essentially for teens who

knew the shazam character and and grown-ups who also knew the Shazam character. And is that a character? Did I get that right? Sort of. We can just roll with it. I just know it wasn't for me. And so I was like, okay, that's great. Good that you have it. But that's an interesting thing about a movie like Shazam. It's not for you necessarily, but I think if you were dragged to it, you'd be like, oh, pretty, pretty charming. Okay. Kind of. I'm sure it would. Well, yeah. And I'm sure that I would. And I think part of Hollywood's problem is that it's no longer necessary for me to be to that movie as someone who sees all the movies and does this for a living.

And that's both a problem for people making movies and also for people covering movies as well as there's no center. So I'm just kind of like, well, it's great that you guys all like Shazam and you can have your conversation to the side and I'll just keep chucking along. Let me zero in on a couple more

comedy things from this year. Great. Talked about Booksmart. We talked a bit about Late Night, Amazon's entree into the Mindy Kaling business. That didn't work. We talked about Longshot,

Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron, political operatives. That didn't work. The Hustle, you saw it. I didn't. That didn't work. Did not work. Isn't it romantic? I also saw it. Didn't work.

It made it, it didn't make a huge amount of money. I think that one thing that's interesting about all of these movies that we've named. Yes. Is that they are all a little bit meta. They all seem to be very aware of the genre and the history of the genre. And I would say the same for Stuber. They're all almost comments on the movies that they love. Now, all movies are referential and all filmmakers steal.

And homage is coin of the realm. But these movies in particular literally feel like they're referencing previous aspects of the genres that they're existing inside of. And I'm wondering if maybe some of these movies have gotten too cute. And some of the things that sort of critics and people who are like us, our age, with the same experiences are like, gosh, it feels so nice to know that the people making movies had the same experience as I had when I was growing up. But it's so self-conscious that it somehow feels more frivolous and less of an adventure and less of a kind of a mental getaway like we can't get outside of ourselves when we're watching these movies am i being a little too heady about this no i think it's an interesting point that the flip side of all these movies being meta not the flip side but a part of that is that they're also referencing they're nostalgic they're referencing things that you know long shot was

a studio comedy of the late 90s or the early 2000s that I spend all of my time talking about. And I'm sure everyone's very sick of hearing about it. And also, I'm not sure that that many people care as much as I do and Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron do. And I think Isn't It Romantic was a comment on romantic comedies. At least I thought that's what was smart about it when it pulled together all of those tropes. But maybe other people aren't as nostalgic about that. If they already stopped making the original version of a type of movie, then the nostalgic version, because there is an audience for it, then there's probably not a huge audience for the nostalgic version because there is an audience for it then there's probably not a huge audience for the nostalgic commentary version either it seems as easy as that there's there's yeah there's an exception here yeah yesterday but that's not that's the Beatles nostalgic for

something well that's IP that's what it is that's IP it's Beatles IP, but it's people being like, oh, I love the Beatles, which you and I do. I thought that yesterday, actually, certainly you and I found it a little bit disappointing. I lost my mind. Thanks to everyone who's reached out being like, I hope you're okay. I'm okay. Thank you. We're both doing great. Yesterday was a little bit disappointing, but it's been successful. It's been sort of steadily successful. I think maybe it's because it's an easier sell to people,

just Beatles songs loud in the movies. I just can't get over the fact that I feel like the people making movies know too much about movies now. That sounds like kind of an insane thing to say. But if we look at what's coming for the rest of the year, it's either one of two things. It's either a very sincere look at something based on something else. So you've got Where'd You Go Bernadette, which is based on a novel. You've got Blinded by the Light, which is essentially framed around the music of Bruce Springsteen, not unlike yesterday.

You've got Zombieland Double Tap, which is a sequel to a Zombieland movie or you've got things that just feel awfully self-referential you've got Good Boys which we already mentioned Brittany Runs a Marathon which is another Amazon movie

that feels potentially a bit in the realm of late night in the tonality and the kind of story it's trying to tell Charlie's Angels

we've already seen a Charlie's Angels TV show and two movies that were pretty good. We've got Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Did you know this movie was happening? Jay and Silent Bob Reboot? I think so, but then I forgot about it. How up are you on the View Askewniverse? Not at all. You don't know anything about that? Zero. Okay. I think one of the- I'm like, are you having an episode right now? I don't know what you're saying.

I wrote a piece about Kevin Smith, I think 18 months ago or so. Yeah, I remember that. Wow, she said witheringly. No, it was a great piece. Oh my God. So performative. I think it's probably the meanest and nicest thing I've ever written about somebody at the same time. I really liked Kevin Smith as a young person.

I was the right age to be seeing Kevin Smith stuff, revisiting it. I realized what a kind of a fool I was, but I appreciated how sincere he was about what he was making. You were young once. I was young once. Yeah. The movies that he has made since sort of exiting the view-esque universe, as it were, which is the series of characters, the world that he created, you know, in Clerks and in Mallrats and in Chasing Amy and all of those movies.

They're all sort of interconnected, kind of. But then he kind of moves into Jersey Girl and that bad cop comedy with Bruce Willis. And he exits the view-askew universe. I'm going to keep saying that. Great. And now he's coming back to it because we all have to come back to where we started. Sure. And just like Charlie's Angels, we have to kind of come back to where we started sure and just like charlie's angels we

have to kind of come back to this thing we know just like zombie land double tap we have to come back to this thing that we know and because we're afraid we're afraid to get something new that is different and and these are all theatrical releases none of these movies are being released on streamers honestly like they're all gonna fail with one With one exception, I think, possibly. Tell me. I wouldn't be surprised if Blinded by the Light had, I'm not saying that it's going to make $900 million or whatever Bohemian Rhapsody did, but that is the music of Bruce Springsteen. So people will go see that. And I think a little, all of these are just a little bit of either not understanding your audience or thinking your audience is somewhere other than

where it actually is yesterday i don't mean to simplify this but there are a lot of people who grew up with the beatles who are slightly older and they still go to the movies they really do and you and they'll take their kids to go see the movies or drag their adult kids as the case may be but it's kind of a family thing are those people disappearing too though you know what else didn't do all this year is palms do people even know what palms is that's the one where jackie jackie weaver was in it and also maybe jane fonda diane keaton i'm sorry that was you know respect to jane fond i'm very sorry uh and their adult their grown-up cheerleaders or grandmother cheerleaders? Yeah, sure. Nailed it. Yeah.

That was how they sold it in the room. They're grandmother cheerleaders. Well, fam, sometimes they're just bad ideas. I don't know what to say. Like, sometimes it's just there are bad ideas. But I do think for the most part, Beatles, it's just one word. Of course that worked. People will go see movies about the Beatles, especially older people. But I don't think, you know, Charlie's Angels, I loved those movies in the, I guess they were like turn of the century.

Yeah, early 2000s. Yeah, turn of the century makes them sound far more serious than they actually were because I mostly just remember like Cameron Diaz like dancing in whatever. Jane Austen's Charlie's Angels. I don't need them to remake this. You know? And presumably it's for me.

And I'm just like, well, and it's Elizabeth Banks directing it, which is great because more women should get to direct franchises,

but I was like, ma'am, this is not one I needed. I support everything about this and no thanks. There is an invisible shrine to Kristen Stewart in my home.

I love Kristen Stewart. I will watch her at anything. This doesn't look like a movie I need to see. Right. It feels completely inessential and that's the problem. You know,

we talked about some of the streamers stuff that always be my maybes this year. I think they're like Wine Country, Murder Mystery, and Plus One,

which are all either streamers. Do you see Plus One? I still haven't seen Plus One. I'd like to see it. I will see it soon. Maybe when I go on vacation. Can someone, if anyone is listening who has seen Plus One, can you just send me a gift of Maya Erskine

dancing at the wedding at the beginning of this movie? The internet has not provided this to me yet and I need it. We have an entirely gifted video and social team here at The Ringer. Why don't you just ask someone to help you? Well, it's not their job. I don't want to give them extra work. I just, you know, this is a shared space for film enthusiasm and maybe someone else is enthusiastic will want to give them extra work. I just, you know, in the, this is a shared space for film enthusiasm and maybe someone else who's enthusiastic will want to do that.

It's incredibly benevolent of you to make someone out in the world do it for you. My point being all of these movies were on streamers or could be purchased on iTunes. And I'm willing to bet all of these movies have been seen by a factor of three or four or five more times than these other movies. And there's good reason for that. But you did talk about targeting and finding audiences. And I thought it was interesting this weekend that both Sword of Trust and The Art of Self-Defense had pretty good box offices this weekend. And Sword of Trust is a movie directed by Lynn Shelton, one of the great indie auteurs working in the last two decades.

It stars Marc Maron. You're not in on Maron, are you? It's, again, there are just a lot of things where I'm glad you have them. Okay. And I'm happy for you. It's been my attitude towards you and Chris Ryan for a long time. I appreciate that. I am fond of the WTF podcast.

It always happened. I've listened to hundreds of episodes. Can't say I love his comedy. Can't say I love his acting. He's good on GLOW. This movie's fine. It's nice. It's perfectly well done. The Art of Self-Defense, I love his comedy. Can't say I love his acting. He's good on glow. This movie's fine. It's nice. It's perfectly well done.

The art of self-defense, I think is pretty nifty. I also wanted to underline something that people on this show may have missed, which is when Jesse Eisenberg was on this show. And I asked him,

what's the last great thing he's seen? He said a Spurs Hawks game back in March. I stopped watching movies that have, I don't know, some kind of paranoia.

So I saw like a Hawks Spurs game the other night in Atlanta. That's a film unto itself. Yeah. It came down to the wire and we were all kind of concerned right up until the end and then the home team lost. That's why we stan Jesse Eisenberg. Yes. He is a true ringer consumer. Those two movies though that I mentioned are very small and they have small budgets and they need to find a modest audience to be considered successful. And they kind of sort of did that this weekend. The Farewell, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, did that in a mega way.

It only came out in a few theaters and it has the highest per screen average of the year. So let's, I don't want to get too far into The Farewell yet. I can feel you bursting out of your skin. I do think, I don't think that's the only reason that the farewell is successful because I, we'll talk more about it. I enjoyed the farewell, but I do think they know what they're doing. And I do think they found their audience and they understood how to market it and who would want to go see it and how it would be received. And I think that's essential to having a successful

movie. I completely agree with you. Hold that thought. The one other thing about Stuber going belly up this year that is notable is that it's a Fox movie. And Fox was acquired by Disney earlier this year. And here was the other Fox movie that Disney has presented to the world. Dark Phoenix. That didn't go well. And now, you know, these films are not orphaned. but they're stuck in this limbo that is really unfortunate.

Because people worked hard on these movies, and they really want a lot of people to see them. But you can tell in this transition where some people were laid off at Fox. Some people are making their best effort to communicate. You know, these are two, five, ten years in the making kind of movies. And you can just sense that something is off. There's something not right about the way they're being presented to the world. In August, we have The Art of Racing in the making kind of movies. And you can just sense that something is off. There's something not right about the way they're being presented to the world. And in August, we have The Art of Racing in the Rain, which I guess is a book about a dog. Have you read that book? No. Okay. You seem so dismayed by the idea of reading a book about a dog. You read a hundred books a year. That's true. But none of them are about dogs, including apparently like the greatest

novel of the last five years was about a dog or something, like The Friend. Haven't read it. Won't be reading it. Continue. Okay. The next movie after that is Ford vs. Ferrari, which we're probably going to talk about a hundred times on this show

because it's one of the big, shiny, major studio Oscar contenders of the year. And then I think the third and final is Spies in Disguise, which is a Will Smith-voiced animated action comedy whose date has been moved a few times in this shuffle. I don't know what that means for all these movies. Ford vs. Ferrari getting the big push. They got the NBA Finals trailer release. That's how you know that they care.

They really want you to see this movie star-ass movie with Christian Bale. Right, or at least they want NBA fans to see this movie star-ass movie. Well, there are a lot of people watching the NBA Finals. Sort of. What? I don't know. I thought the whole thing about the NBA is that people like everything, but the actual watching. That's true. There are a lot of people watching the NBA Finals. You've gone too far.

Okay. There are a lot of people watching the NBA Finals, I promise you. More so maybe even than always be my maybe. I was watching the NBA Finals. I know. You've become a basketball fan in recent years. That's true. Go Houston Rockets. Are you a fan of alligators? No, but I gave you some specific homework about this movie,

which I will never see because I don't need to be really distressed. And also, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and I spent a lot of time vacationing in swamp adjacent areas. And so alligator survival techniques are a part of my life. Okay, so I'd be curious to see if you could survive in the setting of the movie Crawl. Yes. Crawl was a fairly modest box office success this weekend in its first week of release. It's directed by Alexandra Aja.

It was released by Paramount. Alexandra Aja has made such fucked-up movies as High Tension. I doubt you've seen that. No, I don't see the messed up movies. Okay. I like his movies. He's pretty nifty. He's got a good idea of how to mess with audiences.

And I saw the movie on a Sunday night and the crowd was into it, man. They were excited about the gator kills. And there are some really good gator kills in this movie. A couple of things though. One, the movie's set in Florida during a hurricane. A father and daughter are trapped inside their house as the gators enter, I guess, from the overrun drain under the house into the crawl space underneath the house. Okay.

And they're all trapped in that space. Okay. I don't totally understand. Is that common in Florida to have a giant drain that runs into the bottom of your house? Well, it is a swamp ground and also being flooded all of the time. So, yeah, you need a way to. I didn't live in Florida. I lived in Georgia and not in the swamp area.

So I'm not a huge expert. But, yes, you need to have special drainage to live in a swamp. Okay. The gators get in through that giant drain connected to the house. I don't know if it's like alligator sized. Again, I'm not a Florida or drainage expert. Okay.

Let me hear just, this is one really important point about Coral. Okay. The two main characters in this movie who are played by Barry Pepper and Kaya Scolodario, great actors, great B movie kind of performances. They get bit like a gang of times

okay like multiple times the gators are just biting parts of their body and then they're like I'm good I got this are they losing fingers

and stuff or sort of I don't want to spoil too much but like a gator just takes a big old bite at a Barry Pepper's shoulder okay

and then he's just doing like moving around and doing things if a gator bites me one time for three seconds I I'm probably going to die. I'm probably going to die of shock. Imagine if an alligator bit you while you were trapped in a crawl space and they get bit multiple times throughout the film. And the whole time I was watching it, I was like, I would instantaneously die out of shock and fear and let alone blood loss.

That seems right. Though it's interesting to me that it's this movie where you decided to unsuspend your disbelief about people getting injured a bunch and then doing ridiculous things over the course of a 90-minute to two-hour movie. I think it's because— Because that's true. People get shot. People, they're just like wounds. You're right. People are traveling long spaces all the time. That's the basis of every action and horror movie.

Many war movies, superhero movies, people just doing stuff despite life threatening injuries. I think despite the ridiculousness of the execution, the premise of this movie is very grounded. It's very much like it could happen in a crazy swamp bog in Florida if a hurricane hit at this time. These alligators are not some mutation where they were infected by a nuclear disaster.

They're just big-ass gators. And maybe that's why. There's nothing fantastical about it. It's just regular people stuck in an extraordinary situation. It definitely seems like you would die if you were stuck in a house with a bunch of alligators in a crawl space. I agree with that. But not even, I mean,

this is like a 24-hour survival that they're going through. And like not just bit once or twice, like three, four times. Like four alligator bites and you're powering through. I just, I'm amazed by it. Anybody who's seen this movie,

let me know if I'm crazy. Can I ask you one question? And I asked you this beforehand and I don't remember. But at any point did zigzagging come into play in the plot of the movie? No. That's so disappointing. I would say that pipes were a big part of it. Like, they're not able to get through pipes in the crawl space.

Right, because of the size? Exactly, because these gators are big. But also, no splashing. That was a key point. Right. Do not, they hunt with splashing. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So if you move softly through the water, they will swim by you.

Okay. I never really got a lot of, I think the advice was stay out of the water near the alligators. But like the key piece of advice that they give you growing up in the South is if you're being pursued by an alligator, you got to run in a zigzag because they have tremendously, they have a lot of land speed, but they can't turn. Okay. So you just run in a zigzag and they slow down on the turns and then you can get away. That's like basically they teach you that and then they send you out into the swamp. One of the funniest things I can picture in my mind is you being chased by an alligator running in a zigzag. I think if you said, tell me what's the most hilarious image you could conjure,

it would be exactly that. You do get away in this version. You're not eaten by the alligator. That's kind of your imagination. You know, I liked Crawl. It's perfectly good. It's the same thing. I think Stuber and Crawl are pretty good movies to go see in a movie theater because it's fun to laugh with other people and it's fun to be scared with other people. It's an amusement park. Totally. That's what it is. And losing that, that sucks to me.

I hate the idea of losing movies like that. I agree. And so do you. And I think there are still examples of that that work. And we're going to talk about The Lion King later this week. We certainly will. And you and I have seen it. and you're saying the lion king worked well i'm curious to see how box office goes but it was it's an event it was there we won't spoil too much of it but i i think it is in line with the

amusement parkification of the movies as the as the successful future at least the theatrical release i think you're right. We'll see if we get Crawl 2. I just want to give a very, very quick shout out to a movie called Point Blank, which is on Netflix, that was directed by a man named Joe Lynch and is stars Anthony Mackie. And it's a pretty solid, similarly B-movie kind of white knuckle thriller. But it opens with one of the more kick-ass scenes I've ever seen in my life. And I feel like these movies are kind of obviating Stuber as well, which is essentially an escape from a house and then a race across town on foot in an attempt to find

like a getaway car, all set to Black Flag's Rise Above, which I don't think Rise Above's ever appeared in a movie before. Holy shit. It's like snorting a line of cocaine just just the way that it kicks you into a movie i really uh i really was impressed by a handful of things about point blank let's talk about the farewell yes as i said the farewell made a pretty good amount of money made 350 000 in four theaters over the weekend that includes a blackout that happened in New York that shut down a bunch of the screenings, which is a real shame. Nevertheless, they made all this money. A24 once again identifies its audience. It identifies a marketing campaign. It identifies which press to go to, how to tell the story, Awkwafina's first dramatic role. Why does this

movie work or not work in your opinion? You and I have not talked about the kind of merits of the film. I was really moved by it. And it really, it snuck up on me, this movie, in the way that... An interesting thing, I realized that, you know, I knew that Aquafina was in this movie. I knew it was a Sundance hit. I knew it was about a relationship with a grandmother. I knew that it was based on this American life story. That's really all I knew it was about a relationship with a grandmother. I knew that it was based on this American life story. That's really all I knew.

I have started really trying to avoid reading stuff and watching trailers where I can just because it really changes the way you experience the movie. So I got in and I was like, oh, I didn't know what this movie was about. I didn't know that they were lying to a grandmother about her diagnosis. I honestly didn't know that. And so I had the benefit of and I also kind of didn't know that. And so I had the benefit of, and I also kind of didn't know that this ultimately was a family movie. It's a movie about a family. Awkwafina is the most famous person in it, at least in the United States. And so the marketing campaign has been around her, but it's an ensemble.

So I got to experience that in real time. And I had the real reaction that this movie provokes, I think, about the premise of whether or not they should tell their grandmother. And then I had the reaction that I think it wants you to have of suddenly finding yourself really invested in the family. And I didn't totally know that I was until about three-fourths of the way through. And we won't spoil everything, but there was a climactic scene when Awkwafina's character is um it's this movie's version of the dramatic romantic comedy like run to make the speech you've realized you've had the realization and and I had the realization that I felt the same way and was just like instinctively cheering her on. So this movie does a great job

of situating you in a family and in a series of events and kind of slowly working on you. And I was moved. I also, I saw it in one of the four theaters last night. It was packed on a Sunday night. So I was sandwiched between two strangers. All three of us were weeping at the end. So it like, you know, I was brushing away tears and so was the other person. So it's clearly not just me. It's working on the audience that it found. So as I said, I went to go see Hobbs and Shaw on Saturday night at the premiere. And my wife was going to join me at the premiere.

And then with about 10 minutes to go before we arrived, she was like, I think I'd like to see another movie. I think I'm not going to join you, which I respect. And she was like, what should I see? And she had some options. I think she could have seen Midsommar. Oh, that would have been a little bit crazy. She could have seen Stuber. She could have seen Spider-Man Far From Home.

But she chose The Farewell. The Farewell is a very, shout out to Eileen, it's a very Eileen movie. It's a feel movie. It's a very, it's a feel movie. It's about people. It's a, it's very intimate. It's about maybe a world she doesn't know very much about.

She doesn't know very much about China. I think she was very surprised to find how much of it was set in China. And she similarly, like you, was just knocked out. And I went to go pick her up

at the Arclight after my movie was over. And she, you know, Eileen is pretty sick of me talking about movies. You can imagine what that must be like. But she wanted to talk to me.

I could tell extendedly about this movie. Yes. And this movie has that effect on people. It had that effect on people at Sundance. It's going to have that effect on people as they go wider and wider and wider. People are going to say, man, this really grabbed me. And it's very memorable. And it got into my bloodstream.

And that's how you make a word of mouth hit. It really is. And they, you know, movies need word of mouth hits. Like this is kind of how we do it. I'll be very curious to see as they go into 40 and 100 and 500 theaters, how many people end up seeing this movie. But if it continues to do what you're saying and affect as many people, you know, last week we talked about Best Picture race and I kind of dismissed the farewell. And maybe I was wrong to dismiss the farewell.

Maybe this actually is the July movie that we were waiting for that's come along that is going to enter the race. Stranger things have happened. It's true. And I think I have to assume that they're going to run the actress who plays the grandmother, whose name is, I believe, Zhao Shuzhen, and who is an established actress in China. I have to assume they're going to run her in the supporting actress campaign. If they aren't planning to do that, please, I mean, do it. She's tremendous. I hope they also run the actress who plays her mother, who I thought was incredible in this movie.

Yeah, it'll be interesting. I mean, I think there's certainly a screenplay, original screenplay case, although I wonder if this would be considered an adaptation because it's based on the This American Life story. I don't know the rules when it's your own thing, but probably. Probably would be adapted screenplay.

I wonder if she would have a better chance at adapted screenplay. Anyway, that's something that we'll probably be talking about down the road. I think it will certainly be in the mix through the Oscar season. I don't know in what form. And part of me is just like, the best picture race gets so ugly.

And so the movies have to bear so much weight on top of just being a good movie. And there was something that I really liked about this, just going in, knowing that it was a thing and I was really going to like it, but without any expectations of, is it Best Picture material? And do we have to, you know, have the 55 meta conversations about it? That said, movies like this, it would be nice to see more movies like this and more movies directed nice to see more movies like this and more movies directed by women and more movies featuring people of color in the Best Picture race. So I don't want to discount it just because I want to protect my experience of it. That's

invalid. Yeah. I mean, these are the vagaries of hosting a podcast about the Oscars, unfortunately. I think it's nice. And it's so funny what you're saying, too, about expectations and not knowing anything going in, because I even thought about this as i was thinking about crawl and suber so the farewell has 100 fresh tomatoes on rotten tomatoes whatever that's ridiculous it's a great it's a really great film but that doesn't mean anything crawl has 88 fresh stuber has 47 fresh what what's going on there's those two movies are not significantly better or worse than one another i mean but it's it's comedy comedy so hard right you think it's funny or you don't that's it but i feel like there is an expectation game that comes with crawl where it's like this is probably

gonna suck and then i saw it and i was like oh this is like a b movie delight i love a good exploitation monster creature feature in the middle of my summer and stuber is like oh kumail from the big sick and daveautista from Guardians of the Galaxy. Those are two of the best entertainments of the last 10 years. Looking forward to this movie. Oh, it's like, it's not that good. It's like, it's pretty good, but it's not that good. And then all of a sudden, 47%.

I don't want to start like a whole tangent, but the studio comedy itself is just like an imperfect form. It always has been. It's always been the first 30 minutes are dynamite. And then they have to land a movie. And the last 30 minutes are just kind of like, well, I wonder what I'm going to eat for dinner. And then you idly laugh at a joke while it happens. So some of that is just the necessity of the form and the expectation of the experience that you're going to have at a theater. A little bit of housecleaning before we get to my conversation with Lulu Wong,

where we'll talk more about The Farewell. We talked about Best Picture last week. I heard from a lot of people about movies that we forgot, quote unquote forgot. I don't think anyone can forget anything that they don't know yet. But I'm going to rattle off a couple of these titles. Ad Astra. Well, we haven't seen it yet. We haven't seen it.

September. And, you know, it got moved back. James Gray never really competed for an Oscar. He makes brilliant films that I think don't satisfy the conventions of Oscar movie. I wonder if this movie about a man and his relationship to father and space. I am looking forward to it because I love movies about space and I love James Gray movies and I love Brad Pitt, even though there's the whole father thing, which, you know, we've done that, haven't we, in space several times now? Isn't every movie about space really about your father or I guess grief in some form? Also about your father and grief is the Lion King.

That's very true. Which we're going to be talking about soon. All movies really are about fathers and grief, if we're being honest, because they're all made by white guys. Yeah. Jojo Rabbit. I don't think we mentioned this. This is Taika Waititi's movie. Oh, I thought we did.

Did we talk about it? Well, if we didn't, we'll talk about it again. Or maybe you and I just talked about it not in this podcast. In the span since we last spoke, I've heard from two different people about this movie who have not seen it, but were like, this is the movie. This is Fox Searchlight's going all out, and it's Taika at his best. And he's one of the few people who's come along in the last five, 10 years who's got a real vision for the world. The Pope? You up on The Pope? Am I? I just Googled The Pope and now I'm just looking at pictures of the Pope. So that's not good. The Pope movie? This is podcasting in real time.

It's a movie directed by Fernando Morelos who directed City of God. It's written by Anthony McCartan. I had no idea about this. This actually is about popes, apparently. It is truly, imagine if it was not about popes. Okay. I mean, it could be about, I mean, I thought it was about Mike Francesa for a second. I don't know. It's a docudrama about Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI. Oh, and that whole situation? Yes. And Jonathan Pryce plays Pope Francis and Anthony Hopkins plays Pope Benedict. And apparently this is a real scorching script. How could you do it any other way? And I'm very interested in this film.

It has not been dated by Netflix. I don't know if it's going to go into theaters and get the heavy push. We talked about The Irishman and the untitled Noah Baumbach film last week. This one also, keep an eye out. That's all I'll say. The Laundromat, also I think a Netflix film, Steven Soderbergh's movie. That's happening. We don't even know about that. I don't know if that's an Oscar film per se. I think it's probably more of an exercise as all Steven Soderbergh movies are at this stage of his career. The Aeronauts is an Amazon movie directed by Tom Harper.

It stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. It's apparently meant to be seen in IMAX. Okay. I think it's a bit of an adventure film. Great. Comes out November 1st. And then The Rise of Skywalker. Oh, yeah.

We didn't mention that. That seems pretty likely, doesn't it? Unless people have a death wish. I don't know. I mean if the oscars have a death wish which maybe they do well i think you can't account for the fact that it might be bad what if it's bad i don't know jj abrams is a real coin flip i that's true everybody's got to calm down on these they're pretty good i i'm like what do you people want everybody's got to calm down i really really think they do. But I just, I went to see, I don't care about these movies at all. And I was just really blown away by each of them. I'm just like, wow, the magic of cinema. Like, what? Honestly, put your toys away and go to the movies and have a nice time.

At the risk of spoiling the podcast later in this week, I feel like you're going to have a very similar take on The Lion King. The magic of cinema. I do think everybody's got to calm down. Everybody calm down. Maybe we can just make that the tagline for the rest of the year. Everybody calm down. Yeah. So when we talk about The Lion King, here's a couple of key talking points we'll have. We'll probably be spoiling it though. Guess what? It cannot be spoiled because it's the fucking Lion King and you saw it 25 years ago. Why did this movie happen, which we talked about a lot with Aladdin? How it was made, which is, of course, very interesting.

And it is an achievement. And that sounds a bit pretentious to say, but it is an actual artistic achievement. It just sounds like you're about to say a bunch of negative stuff after this. Okay. I'm not going to say negative things. I think, why did this movie get panned so aggressively? Even more so than many of its predecessors? Everybody, you know, learn to appreciate life and also have priorities and life outside of the film Twitter. I mean, good Lord. Take a breath. Take a breath. We'll take a breath and then we're going to come back on Friday and talk about this movie.

Hope to see you then. And now let's go to my conversation with the aforementioned writer director of The Farewell, Lulu Wong. Really delighted to be joined by Lulu Wong. Lulu, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Lulu, you've got your second feature film out in the world, a highly personal tale called The Farewell. Yes.

I want to know first, what's the first memory of seeing a movie that you have? Of seeing a movie ever? Yeah. Gosh, that's a hard one i think that um one of my earliest memories is um actually trying to get out of a movie oh um that my parents were watching we would we would uh my parents when we first immigrated to the states we were in miami it was university of Miami. And they were watching Raise the Red Lantern by Zhang Yimou in the student union.

They had like a student theater and they would do these regular screenings for international students and specifically like the Chinese Association. And so they screened this Zhang Yimou film. And I remember it being pretty horrific for a seven-year-old, eight-year-old, however old I was to college, I took a world cinema class and Johnny Moe was one of the directors and we had to watch Race of Red Lantern. And so I had a very different relationship to the film than the rest of the students. Did you have a big relationship

to movies as a kid? Did you always know you wanted to be a filmmaker? No, not at all. Because as immigrants, I just wanted to fit in and I was watching TV, whatever all the kids were watching. And my parents weren't necessarily supplying me with a Super 8 camera and saying, watch all these arthouse films. Because I was negotiating sort of my own, trying to find my own American identity. And they had, you know, Zhang Yimou, and even Ang Lee was really their generation. And so I felt a divide there. And it took me a long time to actually recognize film as something that was, you know, made by an artist and written by somebody and directed by somebody. And maybe that's a job that I could do. And really, it wasn't until college that I really started to, you know, watch films in a very different way. Growing up, my,

you know, my family watched a lot of musicals. My mother loves Sound of Music. Fiddler on the Roof is probably one of her favorite movies. So, you know, Home Alone, like these kinds of like, you know, family movies. When you were in college, who were the filmmakers that you located who, in the voice and the tone and the approach that they took, you really connected with? In college, there were definitely several Asian filmmakers like Edward Yang, Ang Lee, and Zhang Yimou as well. But I think that really, a few of the films that made me want to make films had female protagonists. And so Jane Campion's The Piano was one of those films. And then Secretary, you know, when I saw Secretary, I just thought, what an interesting world and what an interesting film with interesting characters that were so unexpected. And yet it was very romantic and earnest at the same time for a movie about S&M, right?

So when I started to—and I also took, I should say, a feminist film theory class. And so we were reading Lacan and Freud and watching Kieslowski and talking about the male gaze and all of these things. The theory of that and sort of finding a locate, you know, the female perspective in cinema is what started me in film. Was your plan to be a filmmaker when you were in school or was it just to have some sort of life in the arts? Well, I am a classically trained pianist since like the age of four and my mother's a writer. And so I grew up always writing. And so I think I always knew that I wanted to be in the arts, but I didn't know what that was because piano is a very solitary endeavor, as is writing. And I didn't know that I wanted to spend senior year of college where I thought, oh, this is great. Like, I can write, but I can also use my background as a musician.

And I can also work with my friends. And I love the whole process of filmmaking. I love that there's a beginning, middle, and end, you know, that you actually finish a project and then get to start over. And so, yeah, I think, you know, once I knew that I wanted to be involved in films, I immediately knew I wanted to write and direct. I really saw directing as a way to protect my own writing because a screenplay doesn't exist on its own in the film industry. It's all about how you adapt it for the screen. So yeah, I think that's why I became a director. I'm always so interested in that period between, say, the moment you're having right now where you've had this incredible reception at Sundance, this very personal story, beautifully made film. And the I got out of college moment where there's, you know,

there's often a period of time, sometimes longer than others. But how do you, what was your life like between exiting school and trying to, were you trying to raise money for films? Were you working odd jobs? What happened in that period? Yeah, well, I first, I was commissioned to do a couple documentaries right out of college. I had a professor who got me a gig in Nepal, and I also got myself a gig in Panama doing a short doc about overfishing in the Gulf of Cherokee. And then after that, I knew I had to return to writing. That was really why I wanted to become a filmmaker. And so I had to find a way to write scripts and find the stories that I want to tell. So when I first, I'll back up.

When I moved to LA, I was working as an assistant on some big budget productions and Hollywood studio films. And it was exciting for a little bit. But I very quickly realized, one, I was a terrible assistant. I got fired from my second job. almost got fired from my first job. But also just that I wasn't ever really going to become a director by working on these sets. Just logistically, the hours of being on set are insane, and I barely had time to sleep, much less think about what I wanted to say as a writer. So I decided that I needed a job that would provide but would take limited time and give me the flexibility to choose my own hours. So I started doing these corporate videos for

lawyers. I was dating this guy back in college or right after college who was a lawyer and he had shown me these documentaries that he hired someone to do that depict the client's lives after they were severely injured. A lot of the injuries were not visible, you know, and so if the client walked into a courtroom, you wouldn't necessarily see the brain injury and the damage that that's caused. And so I was doing these documentaries called Day in the Life, showing what their lives were before and the severity of their injuries. Very intense job, as you can imagine. But it kept me really grounded. On one hand, I'm trying to write these narrative scripts. On the other side of it, I'm going into people's homes whose lives have overnight been drastically shifted. And so it gave me a lot of perspective of what was important, I guess, in between all of the Hollywood stuff. So yeah, and then I made my first feature, I wrote a script. And my producer at the time had never made a film. I had never made a film. We met in another producer's office, we were both kind of interning and I was reading scripts. And she just said,

we went to Ikea one day and we became friends. And she just said, you know, I want to make movies. I know you do too. Let's just do it. How do we do this? Like, let's just do it. And we didn't know anybody. We didn't know who to call. We just said, all right, we need a script.

And she said, you write. I've read your writing. You know, go. She wanted to make a romantic comedy. I also love romantic comedies, you know, specifically screwball romantic comedies that were inspired by like the 1950s screwballs that weren't made anymore, where women are really, really smart and the men are charming. And maybe they explored some kind of interesting question thematically. So that's how we set out to make Posthumous. That's the period of making films for lawyers and their clients in the aftermath of their injuries. I had not heard that part of your life before. That's fascinating. I feel like there must be a lot of inspiration for future films and the experiences that you had meeting those people and making those films. Yeah, absolutely. It was really interesting because

I think there's other people who were doing that job, but they often would create a big production. They would have a narrator, they would have a studio. And my whole pitch was that I had a very skeleton crew of just me, really. Once in a while, I have somebody help me with lights or something like that as I started to grow, but really it was just me. And I didn't use music. I didn't use a narrator. I didn't use any kind of fancy editing because I think in this day and age, people are smart. So if you show that in a courtroom or in a mediation, they feel manipulated. And so it was all about just the way that I would, you know, talk to these clients. So many lawyers, they were sued, you know, it's some dude, the clients may not necessarily open up to them. I think that people generally have a mistrust of lawyers sometimes. And so, you know, I would go in there very

unassumingly and just say, tell me your story. And it was pretty incredible because, you know, as a director of narrative films, actors are always trying to find the emotion and trying to, you know, connect. In real life, people don't want to connect. They don't want to express their emotions. You know, they're trying to keep it together. And so it's just a very different challenge, you know, trying to pull performances out of actors and trying to pull performances, or not performances,

but, you know, trying to pull that emotion out of real people who are trying so hard to keep it in. It taught me a lot about directing. That's really fascinating. Awkwafina's character in your film, it seems to be struggling with finding her way and finding out how she's going to make a living and she is rejected from a fellowship.

Is a lot of that drawn from your experience? Obviously the film is autobiographical in many ways, but those component parts that you put into her character, is that also drawn from your experience? Yes, absolutely. You know, I spent many years just questioning if I should be doing what I'm doing. In many ways, ways I feel responsible for my parents' sacrifices and that my choices are a reflection on them and the choices they've made. You know, am I living a life? Am I making choices that are worthwhile of the sacrifices that they've made? And some could say that it's a very unfair pressure to put on an individual um but

i couldn't avoid that you know there there's there's no way around it and so they felt a lot of fear for me they were supportive and excited you know for me to now, okay, I wouldn't say excited, they were supportive. But they just didn't know the industry, it's it's a completely foreign arena for them. And to not see people that look like me doing what I do. They didn't know how to support me either. And so year after year, when you're struggling and your parents are worried about you, I feel like it's not just my own struggle, my own pain, it's theirs, right? And so I carried that feeling with me to see my grandmother who was dying to feel like maybe you haven't lived your best life or a worthwhile life and to see all of the sacrifices, right? Even for my grandmother that her children are not around to take care of her because they left the country. And what am I doing with that, you know, after all of these sacrifices? So, yeah, so it was very much based on my own rejections.

The movie literalizes that theme in one scene, in a sort of dinner scene where parents are talking about the expectations around their kids. Like, what success actually means. And is it money? Is it achieving what you want? But then if you achieve what you want and then you get money, is that ultimately, you know, the true success? I love that scene so much. It felt like it was ripped from a very real moment. Is that how your family talked? Is that how you guys communicated, especially during that kind of tense moment with your grandmother? is a conglomeration of multiple conversations that we've been having my entire life. You know, I mean, so many of those, I don't know if it's that exact conversation in one dinner, but many of the things that are said in that scene are just things that are constantly talked about and very familiar for so many different reasons, both in the debate about what was better, what choice was better to stay or to go,

and the justification of different sides. The stories that everyone tells in order to justify the choices that they've made, whether that choice was to stay or to go. And then how those stories, those justifications become a weight on my shoulders, right? Because I have to be part of that justification, that story that know if, like I was saying earlier, I didn't know if I was ever going to get to the point where my parents could say, yes, it's justified. And what, you know, what does that look like? What amount of success would make them recognize that? So I don't want to get ahead of ourselves in this conversation, but do you think that they feel that way now? Do you think that they feel that it is justified that their sacrifices were worth it for where you have found yourself in your life? I hope so. I mean, now they often ask me that question because, you know, seeing the film for them was also eye-opening because they didn't maybe know that I felt that way about how hard it

was to leave. You know, Throughout the process of making the film, my mother and I had a lot of conversations, and I told her about some of the emotions that are explored in the film, and she got very emotional, and she said, we were just trying so hard to stay afloat and to push forward that I didn't necessarily think about how hard it was for you. I mean, now in retrospect, of course, it was impossibly difficult. And she said, but you always had a good personality.

You know, I was always sort of like friendly and light and bubbly. And I was a happy kid. And so I think she felt like, oh, she'll be fine no matter what. And whereas my brother is not that way. My brother's very serious and he grew up in this country. He was born in this country. But we have very different personalities. So I think because of that, my mother was like, you know, Lulu's fine, you know?

And so when we talked about how difficult it actually was, she now asks the question, do you think it was worth it? You know, did we do the right thing? If it was this difficult, did we do the right thing by bringing you here? I don't think that I would be a filmmaker if we didn't come to America. I think that a lot of my drive, my personality, would have been limited by the circumstances if we had stayed in China. And I do believe in the values still, you know, of truth and independence and freedom. It's not that I'm saying it would have been better to stay in China. I don't think that, but it is a negotiation of what you lose for freedom. I mean, I think everything is a balance. After Posthumous, this story that became this film first appeared on This American Life. When you did that, did you think that maybe it should be a film or was this just something else that you were trying? No, I mean, as a filmmaker, when I

encounter a story, I guess, I always think of it first as a film. And I wanted to make this film right from the beginning. But when I would pitch the story, people would ask me, well, is it an American film or is it a Chinese film? What'd you say? And it's a very confrontational question because it's basically the question that I've been dealing with my whole life. Define yourself. Yeah. Are you American or are you Chinese? You know, I identify as American.

And I know that because when I go back to China, I You know, I identify as American. And I know that because when I go back to China, I am like, I do not fit in here. And even though in this country, some people, you know, may not see me as fully American or, you know, there's not enough representation. Inside out, I feel very American, like the values, the culture, this is where I'm home, this is where I'm comfortable. But, you know, if I say that to a producer or I went back then when I was pitching and I would say it's an American film, they had certain ideas of what that would look like, which didn't fit my ideas of what that looked like, which is, you know, having an Asian American Asian cast, having it be 75% Mandarin. Because as an American, that's my experience going back to my home country. They're speaking this language that I don't know very well. And I often, it's both familiar and foreign at the same time. And that is my experience of being an American. But I wasn't allowed to say that that was the experience, right? Because the

producers would say, well, what if we just change the language? What if we change the cast? And so then I thought, okay, well, let me try the other way then. And I pitched a couple of Chinese investors. And then they would say, you know, can totally see this for a Chinese audience. It's very funny setup. Obviously, we relate. But the main character can't be Billy. She's too American. Her values, her point of view is too American. And she can't be the protagonist because the Chinese audience isn't going to resonate with her.

So we have to create a Chinese character. And you can still have Billy. But it's really going to be about their relationship and dynamic and friendship. And ultimately, she comes to see things from his point of view. I thought, well, I don't know how to write that because I don't know that character and I don't know that point of view well enough. And so that's why I did this American life. I set the project aside, figured I was never going to make it as a film. And I started, you know, writing other things, but really I was having this career crisis. I had made one film already. I knew what it took to make a film at

that point. And I also knew it wasn't worth it to go through that experience unless it was a story that felt true to me. So I didn't know what to do. And I made a short film in that interim period. I love that film. Touch. Yeah. Oh, thank you. It was supported by Film Independence Project Involve, and they gave us some in-kind donations and a very, very, very small budget to make it. But I wanted to kind of see if I could tell a story with less money in a much more limited scale because there's less risk involved as well, right? It feels like a test case for the nuance that you're describing too. That there's a kind of a story and the concept of something being lost

or misunderstood is central to that film. And then it almost, I don't know if it did help you understand how to make the farewell in a more clear way. Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, I was trying to tell a story that captures the nuances and the gray areas. And I also wanted to play with sense of humor in a very dark subject with that film. I think if I was to remake that film today

and didn't have the time constraints that we had at the time, it would be a lot funnier. I would fight harder to just make certain shots longer. And yeah, and just, there's no reason why that story couldn't be funny. But I think that in America, we tend to want to put things into boxes. Maybe that's a human instinct, but to say, this is a drama, this is a serious story. So, you know, people shouldn't be laughing in it, or this is a comedy, you know? So people have to laugh constantly through the

whole film. If it's a comedy, we got to have jokes. And if there's a stretch of time where it's not funny, then, oh no, maybe it's not a comedy. And especially if you cast Awkwafina as your lead, there's an expectation. Exactly, exactly. And so Touch was the first place where I thought, well, can I do a little of both? Can I talk about something serious and emotional, but still put some humor into it? And then I did This American Life because this producer, Neil Drumming, he is also a filmmaker. Yeah, Neil was a former journalist, right? Yes, yes.

Yes, I neil's work yeah uh he is so wonderful because he was about to start at this american life and he was at a film festival where touch was playing and uh came up to me after and said i really love the film love the story love your voice what other stories do you have are there stories that you're just burning to tell that uh you know even as a filmmaker maybe that no one's letting you tell come to me you know he really felt like he had a responsibility as one of the few people of color at this american life to find voices that were underrepresented on the show and you know i don't think you know he's given enough credit and i want to continue to talk about how important neil is to this entire process into

this movie because um ira glass and i are not in the same circles he wouldn't necessarily have gone to this small film festival in New York, right? And my producers at Big Beach and Depth of Field, none of them would have found me. And I wouldn't have gotten to them if it wasn't for Neil, who just said, what are your stories? Please come and tell me and let's continue the conversation. And so I said, well, there is this film that I wanted to make and nobody wants to make it the way I want to tell it. So I wrote it down as a short story. Here's the first draft. It's probably crappy because I haven't edited, you know, I just scribbled it, but take a look. So he read that and pitched it and, you know, got immediately

greenlit on the show and took about a month, a month and a half to do the interviews, to write it, to narrate it. And then it was on the air. The night that I was recording it, I remember so distinctly because we decided to do it after hours once everybody was gone. Neil felt like, you know, that might be a more emotional and less chaotic environment. And so I came in and while he was setting up, I went into Ira Glass's secret bookshelf office. You pull back the fundamentals of radio and opens into a little room and there's whiskey and a leather chair and had a a glass of whiskey. Then I went in and we basically just did one take. It was like this. It was just me and Neil in this room

recording. And it was such a powerful experience. I thought, oh my gosh, I've been trying to make this film for years. And then here, it was so fast and so seamless. And it came from a place of curiosity and investigation and asking questions rather than immediately saying, well, who's the market and can we change this? And what about this? And what about that? And, um, I went to dinner with a friend the night that the story aired, and we were sitting at the sushi bar in the East Village in New York. And I just started crying, and he was like, why are you crying? This is amazing. You know, you finally get to tell the story.

And I said, you know, the experience I had on This American Life is unlike anything I've ever had before and never thought I could even have. And it reminded me of why I became a storyteller. And I don't think I'm ever going to have that experience in the film industry. And I've been like working for, you know, seven years at that point to be a filmmaker, but I think I chose the wrong career and I got to quit. And this American life, I talked to them, they said they might be hiring, or maybe I could do an internship with them for a little bit. Wow. So you almost didn't do this.

Yeah. My manager, I mean, he reminds me all the time. He's like, remember when you said you were going to quit filmmaking and go into radio? What you're doing is better. Take it from me. It's somebody in front of a microphone. But, you know, I was really admired the number of stories they told and the approach, the process to storytelling and sort of the immediacy as well. It felt more honest to me and, you know, taking out all of the BS in the middle, like all of these other factors. And because it doesn't require so much, so many resources, you're able to take more risks. And to me, that's freedom, right? And that's the only way to push boundaries is if you take those risks. But it felt like the stakes were too high, particularly, you know, as an Asian woman, when there's so few of us to ask people to take that kind of risk and to, you know, shoulder all of the responsibility for it being representative of all films, you know, made by people like me.

Are they successful or are they not? It just was too much. So, you know, of course, the story aired. And 48 hours later, I got all of these calls from producers and emails and Chris Weitz tweeted at me. And we met for lunch. And I said to every producer that I met, because I was so ready to quit, I had nothing to lose. I said, I'm not going to make this film if I can't make it in an uncompromised way. And that means it's an American film, first and foremost, which, you know, they saw that they're American producers. So I said, great, but it's got to have

100% Asian, Asian American cast. And it's got to be in whatever the authentic language that feels natural for the characters would be and that means it's going to be have some subtitles and um it it was so great you know because and empowering because i was now in a position where i was interviewing producers and i could say no as opposed to knocking on doors and trying to pitch people and people saying, well, will you change this? And me kind of just being defensive and going, well, can I? I mean, sure, sure. Will that get you to say yes?

You know, and I think that kind of desperation when you have so few opportunities, you want to make compromises so you can at least get your foot in the door and get the story told and make it and however you can, right? But here I was able to just go. I am not budging like this is how I want to make the film. And I'm just not going to do it if we can't if you don't agree to that. And so, you know, obviously, Chris was so supportive. Chris Weitz, Peter Seraf at Big Beach, Danny Emilia, Andrew Miano. I'm just naming all my producers now. No, but it's amazing what positive feedback and success, how it can regenerate confidence, you know, and it puts you in a position of power as opposed to having to go hat in hand, which is probably helps you to make a better film too, I would imagine, rather than being worried about having to make some sort of compromise knowing that you're in the driver's seat. Yes.

Must have been unique. One of the things I like about the film, especially having heard the episode of This American Life, is there are a handful of moments that are recreated almost beat for beat. I think Ellen singing, the dog singing, is such a great moment of the episode and it's such a great moment in the movie. What is it like to try to think about authenticating your life in a narrative fiction film? You know, how important is it to really nail certain details versus I'm just trying to tell the best story? I think that it's a very tricky balance because on one hand, authenticity adds texture, right? And it's all in the details, you know, from production design to color palette to the lighting, you know, we had fluorescent lighting. But am I being authentic or, you know, am I staying true to the facts just for the sake

of, you know, authenticity for the sake of authenticity? What does that even mean? And when do you, when you stray away from factual accuracy in pursuit of an even greater truth, in pursuit of the essence of whatever I'm trying to express? And obviously with actors, it's never going to be accurate or factual because they are not that person, right? And so how do you distill, you know, whatever the essence of whated away from the facts, it made for a better story. It made for a better film. And better meaning more truthful, right? And so I had to learn that. Because in the screenwriting process, as we were developing the script, sometimes I was too stuck on how things actually happened as opposed to just trying to tell the best story.

And you got there by being more honest, do you think? I got there by, you know, just kind of looking at the thing and then turning it over and turning it over again and trying to distill like what it is that I was trying to say, as opposed to capturing every single detail and making everything precise. It was about grief, you know, it was about emotional truth, right? And so, you know, I knew that I couldn't only reveal a certain limited amount of information about each character. And so what was what was I going to reveal when these people are based on my family? There's so much stuff I could go into detail about on each of them. But ultimately, it was about what does the audience need to know about the individuals of this family to understand their

relationship to the grief they feel, their relationship to the impending loss of the matriarch. And whether that was their own guilt because they had left the country, or if it was, you know, perhaps that they don't actually have a good relationship with the matriarch. So it was important to paint that throughout. Because even when you have a troubled relationship with someone, the thought of losing them can still be incredibly emotional because it means you're losing the opportunity maybe to amend whatever you thought one day you could fix. magic, you know, kismet. Because when we were location scouting, I obviously told Ana Franqueza Solano, who's my DP, let's not stick to the facts. Let's pick what is best for the movie. We're shooting in my grandmother's hometown, but we don't have to stick to how I see it. I wanted her perception as well.

And so let's just do what, let's pick locations that are most cinematic. That is what's important for a film. And so we would scout lots of different locations for the banquet hall, for the cemetery. And those were two of the locations that by coincidence, we also chose the real location. So we actually shot in my grandfather's cemetery. We shot at his grave because we picked the cemetery because it's the most cinematic and visually interesting. And that's how I felt, you know, living the experience. But once you're location scouting, who knows, right? You could find a better cemetery. But that was truly the

most interesting, visually interesting cemetery. And it just made practical sense to shoot at his grave because we couldn't get permission to shoot anyone else's anyway. And then the banquet hall was the banquet hall where my cousin actually got married. And we looked at maybe like 20 something banquet halls and pick that one. That's where the magic comes in, right? You know, where, you know, I'm on set shooting, you know, at my grandfather's grave. And I just think to myself, how did I get here? It's amazing. Why and how Awkwafina?

I'm sure you've gotten this one a lot, but it's an unlikely choice. And she obviously brings a surprising amount of dramatic range. Did you guys know each other beforehand? How did she become your star? I was a huge fan of her music. But my producer was the one who said, have you thought about Awkwafina for this role? And I sort of scoffed at first. I was like, love her.

Girl who did my badge. Oh, my God. Amazing. You know, she's hilarious. First of all, isn't she korean korean-american um and also does she act like at that time i knew she'd done some comedies but it was just a very unlikely suggestion for the lead of a dramatic film and also you know you know we always joke that we're casting somebody to play some version of me right and i was like is that how you see me i mean you know there's a rapper from queens um so

my producer said you know why don't you just meet with her because um i believe she said that she was you know half chinese and half korean but anyway, she read the script. I said, does she even speak Chinese? So just meet with her. She really loved the script and see what you think. So we had coffee and Nora, her alum, she told me about her upbringing and how she was raised by her Chinese grandmother because her mother was Korean. Her mother passed away when she was four. And she was very emotional about her connection to the script because of her own relationship with her grandmother and the thought of losing her and just said, I have to do this movie. And she said, you know,

you're probably wondering if I can act and I'm going to send you an audition tape and we'll see. So she sent me this, you know, self-taped audition and blew me away. I mean, just her presence on screen in silence, not saying a word, you just saw all of these emotions on her face and you could see her processing things. You could see the conflict and I took a bunch of screenshots and I was like, Oh my God, this is her, you know, and it's not who I would have imagined. She and I are very, very different. Um, her level of Chinese wasn't, you know, the same level of my Chinese. So I had to change the script to adapt to her language abilities. But as soon as I saw the audition, I just knew that she was Billie. What about the actors who play your parents?

So is it Zima? Taima. Taima. So Taima, I've seen all over the place. He's in a lot of American films. Very interesting performer. I feel like this is one of the most interesting performances he's ever given. But Diana Lin, I'd never seen before.

And she's amazing in the movie. Where did you find her? How did you go about casting the rest of this family? Well, you know, yeah, you talk about Ty. I've also known of his work for a long time and he was a very easy one. I immediately knew it's got to be Ty just because he is so funny so dry um and and also his face is so familiar in in the

american culture that he's like everyone's dad you know he's that quintessential dad that tells dad jokes and diana we found her through our chinese casting director who discovered her in Australia. So our Chinese casting director had put out, I guess, this wide search for certain roles. And I think Diana at the time maybe had a Chinese agent as well, but she lives in Australia and she submitted a tape. And similarly, when I saw the tape, it was just immediate. I just knew. And with all of these actresses or actors, I should say, as I was searching, I didn't know what I was necessarily searching for. And so sometimes the casting director would say, you know, you're not going to find your family. Like,

you're just never going to find it. And I was like, I know, you're not going to find your family. Like, you're just never gonna find it. And I was like, I know that. I would just cast my family if I needed it to be my family. I know that. But I don't know what I'm necessarily looking for. It's hard to describe, but it's an essence. And when I see it, I'll see it. Which is a very frustrating thing to tell your producers when you're like two weeks from the start of production you're just like i just i'll know when i know and they're like but we can't even help you if you can't you know communicate and i was like she's just not funny enough or she's just not you know warm enough or whatever it was and when i saw diana i just thought she is all of these things she's strong she's funny she's smart um she's tough but in a way that really you understand where

she's coming from communicating vulnerability while being a bit tense is a real skill as an actor she's really great at that yes um is that your great aunt in the film as well yes little nai nai she plays herself as does ellen oh interesting so that that part of it is pretty great uh another thing i really like about the movie, just showing the interior life of elderly people. You just never see that. You never see what... I love your grandmother's character's relationship

with her sort of boyfriend. Mr. Lee. Yeah, Mr. Lee. That's really evocative. How much is your family giving you feedback on who you've cast to play them, the way that they're portrayed? Do they have a lot of strong feelings and do they feel like they can be critical of this thing that you've made? Yeah, but I sort of put a stop to it pretty early in the process.

I involve my parents to a degree and obviously involve my great aunt. My parents, I would say, are the more critical ones. But pretty early, I just said, you know, this is my film. I really want your help and need your help and appreciate your help. And I will come to you with questions. But please don't feel that you have to criticize or tell me things unless I ask, because they will constantly. That's a nice way of saying don't talk shit to me. Yeah, basically, you know, and it's hard though because I'm sympathetic to them because it's got to be hard to have your daughter represent you on screen and not have any control

over how and what. But I think that they've. The first time they saw it. My parents saw it was at Sundance. And that was a conscious choice. I wanted them to see it for the first time with an audience. So that they weren't just coming at it from their own perspective. And with their own judgments. That they could actually see how it was resonating with an audience. And now they've seen it three times with an audience. So last night was the

third time at the Ace Hotel with like, I don't know, 1600, whatever number of people was in there. And I just think now they're really, really proud, you know, because despite whatever they're self-conscious about, you know, me putting on screen, they see that it resonates with people. You got a rapturous response at Sundance. That must have been fascinating for your parents to observe. What was it like for you? Were you blown away? Surprised? You knew it was coming? I was cynical about it, to be honest. Really? Yeah, well, because... Because of the festival high you've experienced it before? No, no, because I didn't know if—I was hoping that people would receive it well at Sundance at the very least, and of course I was nervous about it.

But also, sometimes festivals can be a bubble. The people at Sundance are so warm. They love films like this. You know, they're primed for it. They are the perfect audience for it. And also, you know, my parents, my mother especially, has this belief when things are going well, you have to be careful. I can relate to that. So, you know, and when things are going terrible, she's like, it's great because, you know, when you hit rock bottom, there's only one place to go, which is up.

But when things are going really, really well, you know, karma's a bitch. You know, you got to be careful and danger's right around the corner. And so the whole time, you know, every time something well um after the release of the film and even now i'm constantly like looking around the corner and waiting for the the bad thing right so i think that i was just cynical because i didn't know if the rest of the world outside of sundance would connect to it or if it was gonna just be this moment in a bubble and then and then dissipate so I guess that kind of raises the question of then what is quote-unquote success for this movie you know are you seeing it as I'd like this many people to see it it has to get this kind of a

review to feel I don't not validated but at least feel like it is doing something beyond succeeding at Sundance. Yeah. You know, I think that I see success on a couple of different levels. For me personally, I already achieved it once I finished the film, because I think that this film is the most uncompromised thing I have made to date on film, at least. And the film is a miracle. You know, the fact that this film exists is miraculous because it took so many steps to get here and step things that were not within my control. The fact that Neil Drumming found me and asked me to bring him stories. And I can't even get into how many times, how many millions of choices I could have made that would have made the film go a different direction. And so at the end, when I looked at it, and I'll

put it this way, I went to dinner with that same friend who I was crying with after This American Life. The night that I found out that the film got into Sundance, he came out to celebrate and we went out to dinner at the same restaurant. And he said, do you remember? It was, you know, really just a year or two years ago, a year and a half ago, he said, when we were just sitting here, because the story had come out, and you were crying, because you were getting ready to quit the film industry. And you said it was the most pure experience you'd ever had. And he said, now that you've made the film, and it's in Sundance, how do you feel? Do you still feel like you want to quit the industry or do you feel like

it was a really pure experience? And I really thought about it and I got really emotional because I did have a very pure experience. I was able to replicate in making this film the same kind of experience that I had making This American Life, a very pure and honest experience. And so to me, that is the success for me personally. But, you know, success, I think also, I think about it in the context of the community and of this country and of the world of what this film means for people to recognize this film as an American film for all of the Asian Americans who feel American and, you know, I'm first generation, they're second generation, third generation, are they seen as American in this country, you know, so for them for this film

to be released widely and seen by audiences of all different backgrounds, I think that means a lot. For the film to have financial success, whatever all of those external factors that deem something to be a success, it isn't about me. It's about what the film's success would represent, that stories like ours can be universal, that we've grown up our whole lives having to see ourselves in people and families that don't look like us, and that it can work the other way around. So just a couple more questions for you. You've been telling some form of this story now for three plus years. So what are you doing next? Sleeping. I wish you luck in that. You have an idea for what are you doing next? Sleeping. I wish you luck in that. You have an idea for what film you want to make?

Yeah. I mean, there's a project that I have been wanting to make since I was working on The Farewell. It's based on a short story. It's called Children of the New World. It's by Alexander Weinstein. And it continues to explore the evolving dynamics of family in a modern world. And it happens to be set in the near future. It involves VR. So that's very exciting. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to it. It's a new challenge. It's working in a genre that I haven't worked in before. Going up a level in budget, I assume. Yes. It's a bigger scale.

But my hope is that I can still explore questions that I have and maybe other people have and that I can make it intimate, you know, that it's still about ultimately people and family and relationships. I'm also working on a TV series based on my brother i do have a brother i cut him out of the movie because he okay with that um yeah i mean i think so because he was working at the time and he didn't come to china i would have had a very different experience if he came to the wedding. And so I made Billion Only Child, but now I am doing a TV series called Family Meal based around him as a chef. What it's like to be the child of first generation immigrants dropping out of college at 19 to cook. Lulu, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they have seen. I don't know if you've had a chance to see any movies that are not your own lately. You see anything good?

I know that I'm very late to the game, but I recently saw Hannah Gadsby's Nanette. Yeah. What'd you like about it? Blew me away. What I liked about it? I feel like watching Nanette, you know, that it redefines what stand-up can be. And there's a lot of comedians that are, you know, redefining stand-up into a storytelling format. Her show was just so honest in a way. And the terms were, you know, the way that she transitions from humor into this raw honesty and then back into humor was so seamless, even though it's so extreme. And what I really love, too, is her message that even though she is justified to be angry, she didn't want to spread that anger to the world.

That's not what we need more of, that we don't need more division and more anger and I think that I come from a similar place in storytelling that I like to explore opposing views I like to explore different sides different perspectives but I don't want to put judgment out into the world. There's enough of that in the news today. And for me, it's about exploring the grays, the nuances, and figuring out a way that we can respect our differences and just have more of a sense of grace in the world. Lulu, I enjoyed this. Thanks for doing it. Thank you for having me. Thank you again to Lulu Wong

and of course to Amanda Dobbins. Please tune in later this week where we will experience the entire circle of life as we talk about The Lion King.