‘Wicked’ Director Jon M. Chu on ‘What Makes Art Beautiful’ in the AI Era

Manisha Krishnan: Ok. So it sounds like you’re potentially open. You’re not basically closing the door to working with AI?

John Chu: I don’t know.

Manisha Krishnan: Ok. This is appropriate. I want to talk a little about it crazy rich asian Because I love that movie, but I also wonder if you were worried about being typecast doing an Asian project? That film meant a lot for representation. When you took up that project, did you also feel a lot of responsibility?

John Chu: Yes. I mean, one of the reasons I did it was because I was so afraid to talk about being Asian American. Because one, as soon as you label yourself, “Oh, you’re an Asian American director,” and I’m like, “Oh, they’re just going to just, ‘Send him all the Asian scripts.'” And I was scared of that. I just wanted to be seen as a director and I didn’t have all the answers about my cultural identity crisis.

And so in that moment, no matter what year it was, I was now you see me 2I’d been making movies for a decade and I was working with these big actors, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, And I realized I was like, “Oh, I can live with these people, Oh, I think I deserve to be here now after doing this for a decade,” And then I looked around and I thought, “Oh, anyone can make this movie,” And I had to go back to my student self, “Okay, what do I want to say with this thing that I now know how to use?”

And it was about my cultural identity crisis that I thought about a lot while at Chef Chu’s in the restaurant. My parents, when I would see people come in and they treat the servers the way you want to treat them, but they treated my parents badly, sometimes, not all the customers, but sometimes I saw that. And I get really angry at my dad, “Take them out, buddy. What are you doing?” And my parents sat me down and they said, “Listen, we’re ambassadors here. We’re the first Chinese family that maybe this family has ever seen. And so they think we’re a certain way and they treat us a certain way. But one, we’re taking their money…”