The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jon M. Chu on “In the Heights”

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

It’s easy to see why the director Jon M. Chu was adamant that the release of “In the Heights” wait until this summer, when more people could see it in theatres: it’s big, it’s colorful, the dance sequences are complex—it’s a spectacle in the best sense of the term. “In the Heights,” based on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit stage musical, is a love letter to the largely Latino community in Washington Heights, in upper Manhattan. The characters are dreaming big and wrestling with what happens when those dreams start to pull them away from the neighborhood. For Chu, who directed the enormous hit “Crazy Rich Asians,” directing the film was a risk—it’s said that Miranda teased him by writing “Don’t fuck this up” on his copy of the script. As an Asian-American from California, Chu “was already one step removed from this neighborhood,” he tells David Remnick. “How do you make sure you don’t miss a detail? The director is probably the only person on set who can stop everything and say, ‘Let’s discuss this.’ . . . That’s what made me nervous, making sure I was always present to hear those things.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Summer is the season of blockbusters normally, and nothing beats the heat like a dark, icy, cold movie theater. Blasks of air conditioning. A great movie. But last summer, the studios delayed most of the big releases, and we had to sweat it out, watching TV from our increasingly dusty couches. but now the movies are back.

Hey y'all, good morning. Ice cold, pira, palcha, china, cherry, strawberry, and just for today, I got my mate. In The Heights is based on Lynn Manuel Miranda's 2008 Tony winning musical. I am Usnavia, you probably never heard my name

reports of fame are greatly exaggerated. And it's easy to see why the director, John M. Chu, was absolutely adamant that this movie wait until we could see it in theaters. It's big, it's colorful, it's noisy, it's joyful. The dance sequences are complex, a spectacle in the very best sense. In The Heights is a love letter to the largely Latino community in Washington Heights in northern

Manhattan, and the characters are dreaming big and wrestling with what happens when those dreams start to pull them farther and farther away from the old neighborhood. John Chu was also the director of 2018's Crazy Rich Asians, the highest grossing romantic comedy of the past decade. I reached him in Los Angeles. Can you play that guitar behind you? I used to when I was younger. Because I was going to say, we could blow off the interview

and the two of us can play together. The reality is it's blocking a plug. You know what? Home decoration is home decoration. John, I want to start by asking you about location. You're from the Bay Area. And, of course, in the Heights was filmed on location in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. Tell me about the first time you visited the neighborhood

and I guess in a sense, scouted it out and got a feel for it. Yeah, I was meeting with Lynn for the first time. And he said, come, just meet Washington Heights. And he took me in. He showed me where he lives, where Keara lives, who wrote the original book and the screenplay. and they showed me where the best cafe con lece is.

They showed me where the Piedagua guy on the corner that they buy from. They showed me the bodegas that they like to frequent. They showed me where the best handball game was that I didn't even know fully what handball was. So to me. They don't have handball in the Bay Area? I mean, they do, but I didn't, you know, I'm not around that a lot. So it was interesting to see how integrated everything was in their lives. And, you know, I've probably drove through Washington Heights.

not really paying attention. But this time I got to see where Lynn shot his home videos in this 191st Street tunnel. I was like, this place is blowing my mind. Kiara was like, oh, that's where we go swimming every summer. So we went in there. It was not scripted. We went in there and were like, this is the most crazy pool I've ever seen.

We have to do something here. It's incredible that there is a Busby Berkeley musical scene right there in Washington Heights. It's something glorious. And they don't match their cost. They're all different skin colors, all different shapes and sizes, all different ages from 5 to 81. Their towels don't match. And it's the most beautiful, exuberant thing. They could have been in those movies back then and just weren't there, weren't allowed to.

And I'm so glad that we died on film. You grew up with movies and movies and movies and have seen hundreds of them. Were any films important to you to get the look and feel for In The Heights as you and your colleagues try to imagine it? Yeah, I mean, I grew up with musicals, both on stage and in movies. I mean, me and St. Louis was something that is about home that has, I don't know if that was Lynn's thing, but for me, things like Royal Wedding, of course, spinning of the room, everyone tries to copy that, but we had an idea of doing it outside and having the building become a ballroom, even music videos, even like Michael Jackson videos, even stuff that

influenced my growing up and seeing music in different. ways. Now, Crazy Rich Asians was the first major Hollywood film with an all Asian cast in a very long time, nearly 25 years. And now, within the heights, you've made a film that's got an entirely Latino cast. How do you approach making a film about a community that you are not a part of? You listen a lot. Well, you have a real conversation with Lynn and QR and say, am I the right person? I signed on to this before Crazy Rich Asian. So at that point, I didn't even think twice about it. But after Crazy Rich A's, after experiencing that whole, that thing, I realized the power that this movie could have. And I wanted to make sure that they knew that they had an out if they didn't

think I was the right person to do it. And I sat down with them. And in the end of it, they were like, John, you're our guy. You have the vision. Also, we're going to be there. So calm down. We're going to be right there with you, John, to make sure you do it right. I read that before the shooting started, he wrote, don't fuck this up on a corner of your script. That's That one was a joke, I imagine. But there's got to be a lot of pressure directing a movie like this, especially after the huge success that you had with Crazy Rich Asians. Were those external pressures and, you know, the weight on your shoulder

the same as the ones that you placed on yourself in the prior movie? Yeah, even more so, actually. I was already one step removed from this neighborhood, and I knew the power, and I knew how do you translate? How do you make sure you don't miss a detail? And the director is probably the only person on set who can stop everything and say, let's discuss this. And oh, that sauce is wrong.

Okay, take 30 minutes, go get the right one and get back here. I'm the only one who can say that. And so I made room for that. And I was very hyper aware all the time that, oh, her hair is going to get in her way, but those are her natural curls. Don't clip it back. Move the light. Move the camera.

And so those little things, I think, I just was, that was what made me nervous, making sure I was always present to hear those things. Were there points of connection that you felt to the story from your own life? For sure. I remember seeing it on Broadway for the first time. And I didn't know who Lin-Manuel Miranda was at that time. But he expressed everything that I felt about growing up in an immigrant community my own, on the other side of the country, in a Chinese restaurant.

I knew what it felt like to have aunts and uncles raised me. I knew what the weight of their stories put on your shoulders, the youngest of five kids. You're a chef, right? My dad's a chef, working hard, someone who worked hard and believed very deeply that he represented the community to a community that was outside of us. And that was our responsibility. By the way, the restaurant's still there, 51 years later. Give the restaurant a plug nationally, right now.

Chef Chews, Chef Chews in Los Altos, California, 51 years. We're there. Okay. And so that, to me, I 100% understood the universality of this. this show, this story. And so that's where we connected mostly. If I won the lotto tomorrow, well, I know I wouldn't bother going

on no spin this spree. I pick a business school and pay the entrance fee. And maybe if you're lucky, you'll stay friends. I'm talking with John M. Chu, who directed In the Heights, which is just down. More in a moment. My money's making money. I'm going from Podomodo.

Keep the bling. I want the brass ring like Proto. It goes Mr. Ragadochi. Let's go back a little bit in time around 2015, 2016, before crazy rich Asians, before you're a rocket ship off into outer space in Hollywood. And you were coming off your film, Gem and the holograms, which was not a box office explosion. And you've described this period as a moment of real reevaluation for yourself. What were you trying to figure out? Where were you?

What was going on? By the way, I love Gemma and the Hogg. I'm very proud of that movie. Critics didn't like it and people didn't show up for it. However, I'd still really love it. That said, when I first got into the business, I won the lottery. I literally Steven Spielig saw my short film. I got right in, I didn't have to PA on any movie before.

I got a studio film. And I was directing movies for big movie studios, never an independent movie. And so when you win the lottery, the problem is you don't know how you won. You just accept the prize and then you have to keep going. And so you're faking it. And so it took me many, many movies to feel like, do I even deserve to be here? Am I doing this right? Oh, that's what coverage is.

Oh, that's how I work with a studio. Oh, this is how marketing works. Okay. Took me many movies to finally get to a point where I realize that I know what I'm doing and I deserve to be here, even if I caught a lucky break. It was at that point that a jam happened. and when your box office is the determining factor and then you don't land on it and it makes you empty, I had to think about why am I doing this again?

Is it because of the box office? And if it was, then why was I doing it when I was nine years old? Why did I want to do it back then? And so it was this point that I started looking for something that spoke to me, something that only I could make, only with the skill set that I had that I could make. What did you turn down? What was the struggle like? I had, I mean, I was supposed to do a,

another G.I. Joe, which was a big movie with The Rock. I was supposed to do another, Now You See Me, with that amazing cast, who I love dearly. And I had other things coming my way. The problem was like, that wasn't me. It wasn't me. I just felt like the right time to do something that scared me. Crazy Rich Asians made a huge splash, not only because it was so entertaining and fun, but obviously because of the breakthrough that it represented. Have things changed much since then for Asian American directors, performers? And what hasn't? Yeah, I mean, I think progress has been made.

I think this last year it shows that it hasn't been made fast enough. By the time I came out of crazy rich Asians, I think the box office proved that people were ready for something like this. Do you think Hollywood learned a lesson? I'm not sure they learned a lesson. I think they had no choice. Like, things were changing all the way around them. So it was coming, whether they wanted to or not.

And I had a little bit of power now after Crazy Rich Asians. And Lynn had a lot of power because he had just done Hamilton. So I think commerce still is the thing that drove the power to make this stuff happen. Like, I don't paint over that. That's a reality. But there's a bigger urgency because when rhetoric of othering Asians, especially Asian Americans right now, that causes a lot of problems and creates violence as well. And I think we've been screaming it from the top of our lungs for a while,

but when it becomes very, very real for us, when our grandmothers or our friends or our families can't go on a walk or are very scared of that stuff, it just shows that, like, it makes you confuse. You don't know how to stop this. You don't know how, what to do. But as storytellers, the only thing we can do is just share who we are, just share, share, share, and believe, at least on my,

side that when people see it, they will see a human being and we'll hopefully have more empathy in the same way my dad having the restaurant. When people would treat him poorly at the rest, I would watch this and he would and I would get mad for him. He'd like, John, we are ambassadors here. We started in 1969. There were no Asian Chinese restaurants here. When they come in here, we're their first Chinese family and we're going to treat, we're going to fill their bellies and fill their hearts. And when they walk out of here, I don't care how they treat me. When they walk out of if they see another Chinese family, I want them to respect them and think that they're going to fill their hearts as well.

Yeah. There's been a lot of attention paid to anti-Asian violence and abuse, and they certainly have seen it in my city in New York. And I wonder if you've experienced this or people you know have experienced this. I mean, I've experienced it in my life. I wouldn't say I experienced it in the last year because I haven't been out. But I've definitely been more cautious, and especially with my own kids. going out.

We're definitely, I'm definitely on my eye looking. But I remember in college, I was with my girlfriend at the time and we were going to like a Ralph's. And some guys started yelling at me from the street. Go home, go back to your country,

saying all this stuff. I just ignored it because that's what I do. I didn't even think twice about it. I was just going to my car. So I just kept doing that. And my girlfriend, who was white was like, what?

She got mad at him, got in his face. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was like, I was like, what are you doing? She's like, how can you, he just said all that stuff. I was like, oh, he did.

I was like, I don't even, I just don't give any energy to that. Like, if I gave energy to that, that person gets it and I don't want it. So someone says that, you're not worth my time. I'm moving forward. That was the first time I realized, like, have I been doing that my whole life? That's crazy. That is crazy. Now, we mentioned your dad and his restaurant and your family.

And have they seen the film? They've seen the film. How they react? They stayed in the early version and they loved it. However, I would say the last time they just watched it in the theater across the street from the restaurant. And my dad called me crying. And I haven't heard him cry over a movie, not even Crazy Rich Asians, that he's like, this is very, very special. And he's not from Washingtonites.

I felt like I could have gotten the best reaction from Crazy Rich Asians, which I got a great reaction for them. there was the first time I felt like they were proud. But this one, there was something he was truly proud. There was something different. John, you've got two kids, and your son was born during the production of this movie, and his middle name is Heights. Yeah, we call him Heights. Tell me about the decision to name him Heights, or at least his middle name.

Yeah, part of the process of shooting this movie was being in Washington Heights and learning about the community. and they were so warm, so beautiful. Yeld at us, of course, if we were in their parking spot. We would eat their food, listen to their music, and I just loved this idea of people dreaming. I related to that. So I wanted to say the word heights every day of my life,

and I wanted my son to hear those words every day of his life. Amazing. The film is in the Heights and the director is John M. Chu. John, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, good, sir. That's our program for today. Thanks for listening.

great week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garvis of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.