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

Manisha Krishnan: ALL RIGHT. So it sounds like you’re potentially open. Basically, you are not closing the door to working with AI?

Jon Chu: I don’t know.

Manisha Krishnan: ALL RIGHT. That’s right. I want to talk a little about Rich and crazy Asians because I love this film, but I also wonder if you were afraid of being typecast for doing Asian projects? This film meant so much to representation. Did you also feel a lot of responsibility when you took on this project?

Jon Chu: Yeah. I mean, there’s a reason why I did it because I was so afraid to talk about being an Asian American. Because first of all, as soon as you’re like, “Oh, you’re the Asian American director,” and I feel like, “Oh, they just go, ‘Send him all the Asian scripts.’ » » And I was afraid of that. I just wanted to be seen as a director and I don’t have all the answers to my cultural identity crisis either.

And so at that point, whatever year it was, I was doing Now you see me 2. I had spent a decade making films and I was working with these great actors, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson. And I realized I was like, “Oh, I get to hang out with these people. Oh, I think I deserve to be here now after a decade of doing this.” And then I looked around and I was like, “Oh, anyone can make this movie.” And I had to go back to my student self and say, “Well, what do I mean with this thing that I now know how to use?”

And it was about my cultural identity crisis, something I thought about a lot while at Chef Chu’s restaurant. My parents, when I saw people come in and 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 it. And I’m really mad at my dad and I’m like, “Fire them, man.” What are you doing ? And my parents sat me down and they said, “Look, we’re ambassadors here. We are the first Chinese family this family has perhaps ever seen. And so they think we are a certain way and they treat us a certain way. But first, we take their money…”