Director of 'Crazy Rich Asians' Jon Chu on his new memoir

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

When the movie "Crazy Rich Asians" came out in 2018, I, like almost every Asian I knew, rushed to the theater to see the first Hollywood movie in decades starring an all-Asian cast.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CRAZY RICH ASIANS")

LISA LU: (As Ah Ma, non-English language spoken).

HENRY GOLDING: (As Nick Young) Ah Ma.

MICHELLE YEOH: (As Eleanor Young) I'm sorry to tell you, but Rachel has been lying to us about her family and her mother.

CONSTANCE WU: (As Rachel Chu) What are you talking about?

YEOH: (As Eleanor Young) I hired a private...

CHANG: Now, at the time, I didn't know much about the director, Jon Chu. But what I did know, long before I ever read his new memoir, "Viewfinder," is that he and I grew up in the same town in Silicon Valley.

I have been dying to tell you, Jon, I grew up in Los Altos as well. Basically...

JON CHU: What?

CHANG: Yes - at the same time you did, basically. I graduated high school in 1994, so I think I'm...

CHU: Yes.

CHANG: ...A few years older than you, right?

CHU: But not much. Right there. Yes.

CHANG: And I grew up going to Chef Chu's as a kid.

CHU: Oh, my...

CHANG: I swear to God.

CHU: Oh, my gosh, that's crazy.

CHANG: It is crazy.

CHU: How'd I not know that?

CHANG: To be honest, Chef Chu's was, like, the fancy Chinese restaurant for us growing up.

CHU: (Laughter) That's funny.

CHANG: Chef Chu's is the Chinese restaurant that Jon Chu's parents have owned for 52 years. Even though it's known for great Chinese cuisine, Chu says what his parents most wanted was to radiate Americanness - to assimilate. They sent their kids to the San Francisco Opera in matching suits and to a comfortable private school called Pinewood.

CHU: You know, my parents came from Taiwan and China, and they didn't speak a lot of English when they first got here. And I think that was really hard for both of them - my mom specifically. And so I'm the youngest of five kids, and she really wanted us to fit in. She wanted us to feel like we belonged the way she didn't at first. And so she put us in etiquette classes and dance class, music classes and really encouraged us to be as, quote-unquote, "American" as possible. And in a weird way, it worked for us. And going to Pinewood was one of those things. It's very idealistic.

CHANG: Yeah, safe.

CHU: And you learned songs. You learned Carden, and it's very, very safe, for sure.

CHANG: Did it ever feel performative to you, growing up, what your parents asked of you - like, where you felt like sometimes you were being asked to basically act white?

CHU: It honestly never felt performative, maybe because I grew up in it. And my parents - you know, when you are the owners of a Chinese restaurant, they felt like they were ambassadors - that our family were ambassadors to people who had never met Chinese families before.

CHANG: Yeah.

CHU: And so they instilled it in us that, you know, no matter what people said, no matter how people treated us at first, that we were to not just fill their belly when they come into the restaurant but fill their hearts. So next time, when they see a Chinese family, they'll know that they are worthy as we would be, and we could prove to them right there. So there was a lot of proving ourselves.

CHANG: It's so interesting listening to you describe that pressure on your parents to be ambassadors because, at the same time, growing up Asian in Silicon Valley can be confusing...

CHU: Yeah.

CHANG: ...Because there are so many Asians in that area. You can forget sometimes how different you are compared to the rest of this country. It's harder to feel like a minority when there are so many of you everywhere, right?

CHU: Definitely. And there wasn't really the term Asian American...

CHANG: Yeah.

CHU: ...Not that I remember.

CHANG: Yeah, totally.

CHU: It was just like, oh, you're Chinese. Basically, no matter what you - if you look Asian, you're Chinese. And there was no differentiation if you...

CHANG: Except the occasional sayonara. I'm like...

CHU: Yeah (laughter).

CHANG: ...No, I'm not Japanese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I get it.

CHU: A lot of bowing.

CHANG: (Laughter) Yes.

CHU: A lot of different random things that would happen to you - calling me Jackie Chan wherever I went.

CHANG: God.

CHU: But you just sort of went along with it because you had no other choice. And there was also the Asians that literally just got there and didn't speak English.

CHANG: Right.

CHU: And so we felt that, like, oh, we're not them either. We couldn't define it because we didn't have a term. And so it was very confusing sometimes. So you had to make a choice. And I didn't realize that until much later in my life - that, subconsciously, we did make a choice.

CHANG: There are so many parallels between your family and mine, like how your parents first reacted to your passion for filmmaking. Like, they first thought of it as just playing around. But eventually, they did support you, just like my parents finally got over me quitting the law...

CHU: Yeah.

CHANG: ...To become a journalist. What do you think allowed your parents to embrace your unconventional career way before you even got famous? Because, for them, so much of Chef Chu's was just about survival.

CHU: Yeah. I don't know exactly what was going on in their heads...

CHANG: (Laughter).

CHU: ...Because when their child is running around with a video camera, running around downtown Los Altos, running through traffic, trying to get fun shots, I don't think they exactly knew what I was doing. The only time that I knew it was when I would convince my teachers that I could make a video instead of write papers.

And I remember one night, it was, like, 3 in the morning, and I'm editing. And my mom comes in and is like, you can't be editing. You have to be studying. You have to be reading.

CHANG: Right.

CHU: You have conned your school.

CHANG: (Laughter).

CHU: And she unplugged my computer...

CHANG: Yeah.

CHU: And, you know, at that time, everything would be lost.

CHANG: Right.

CHU: And I was just devastated. And I went to her the next - that night and said, this is what I love. You always said that this is America, the greatest place in the world. You could do whatever you want if you love it. And the next day, she came to school, and she had a pile of filmmaking books and said, if you're going to do this, you have to study it like a craft. And from then on, they were right there next to me.

CHANG: I love that.

CHU: They must have seen it in my eyes. I don't know exactly.

CHANG: Well, as you wrote about your decision to eventually make "Crazy Rich Asians," you said, quote, "I'd turned 35 without knowing who I was because I'd ignored the sleeping dragon in me." What was that sleeping dragon inside you, and how did that dragon lead to "Crazy Rich Asians"?

CHU: I think the sleeping dragon was the kid that was folding napkins at the bar at the restaurant. I think that kid was fiercely close with his grandma - my Boo Boo (ph). We'd fold wontons at lunchtime for dinner meals with the whole family. I think that kid is the one who went to Taiwan and looked around for the first time and was like, I feel like family is here. And they're treating me differently here. As I got older, seeing this identity of the Asian American rise from Wong Fu to - so many - Jabbawockeez and all these people...

CHANG: Yeah.

CHU: ...That were amazing and confident and fully who they were. And I think it was this community rising that gave me the right bed, I guess, to rise out of and fire me up and say, Jon, you have a responsibility, too, in this and for your children as you look into your adulthood. And I think that that was the dragon - was this new force that I didn't realize I had.

CHANG: Well, let me ask you, finally, as someone who is knowing himself better, who sees himself as an ambassador, in a way, for other Asians, who's a different kind of storyteller now, how does your biggest project yet, "Wicked," fit into all of that for you?

CHU: Well, I think that was a big reason for the book - that I wanted to look at my life going into "Wicked," going into having children and solidify the lessons that I had learned. And this is sort of a way for me to get to "Wicked" through my own story. How does the most American fairytale, maybe other than "Star Wars"...

CHANG: (Laughter).

CHU: ..."The Wizard Of Oz" - how do you flip it to see it from a new view of a person of color - a person of green...

CHANG: Yes.

CHU: ...Who is looked at is so different that everyone thinks they're wicked? And what happens to that person who believed in the yellow brick road, who believes in the wizard, who's supposed to give them what their hearts desire, when maybe - maybe there is no wizard at the other end. Maybe the yellow brick road is not meant for you. Maybe you have to actually take to the skies and do it yourself. And I love the story of Elphaba because that's what she has to figure out how to do - to let it all go and find and write her own story.

CHANG: Filmmaker Jon Chu's new memoir is called "Viewfinder: A Memoir Of Seeing And Being Seen." Thank you so much, Jon, for spending this time with me. I so appreciated it.

CHU: Thank you. I love spending any time with a person from Los Altos.

CHANG: Woo-hoo (ph).

(SOUNDBITE OF KRISTIN CHENOWETH AND IDINA MENZEL SONG, "FINALE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.