00:00I fell in love with making films when I was a kid.
00:04I got the camcorder in my hand.
00:07Looking through that lens, people looked at me differently.
00:20I showed my parents the video that I made of our vacation,
00:23and they started to cry watching it.
00:25And for the first time I felt heard,
00:27the first time I felt like I could express myself,
00:30that that stuck with me.
00:31And from then on, I was all in,
00:33doing wedding videos, bar mitzvah videos, you name it.
00:35As soon as I got out of film school,
00:37I got into the business.
00:38My short film got a lot of attention in the town.
00:41I was Pear Play on Bye Bye Birdie at Sony,
00:44and so I got involved in the business very young.
00:47But I didn't make my first movie until five years after that.
00:49So during that five-year period, it was really hard.
00:51I'm on the bench of an NBA team.
00:53I need two minutes to go prove myself.
00:55And my managers, who are still my managers today,
00:58sent me a bunch of stuff.
00:59And they said, hey, this is a sequel to a dance movie,
01:01but it's direct-to-DVD.
01:03And I was like, oh, I don't do direct-to-DVD, guys.
01:05I'm a studio filmmaker, remember?
01:07That's how I got into this.
01:08And I called my mom, and she said, well,
01:10when did you become a snob?
01:11If you're a true storyteller, you can tell it in any medium.
01:14And that advice changed the rest of my life.
01:16I said, okay, I'm going to make the best damn direct-to-DVD
01:18dance movie sequel of all time.
01:20It's the new style!
01:26Break!
01:34Break!
01:39Break!
01:40Going into a subculture, learning about that,
01:56when people think, oh, you're a dancer,
01:58because I did the Step Up movies.
01:59I love that, because I'm not a dancer.
02:01But I became that for that moment.
02:04I'm going to become a Justin fan.
02:05I want to find out how they've discovered him.
02:07And, um, and so I, then, then, uh,
02:10you have to talk to one person to get the job.
02:12I was like, oh, who?
02:13Oh, Scooter Braun.
02:14So I had my conversation with Scooter,
02:16and he was like, okay, you ready to do this?
02:18I was like, I think this is a Rocky story.
02:20I think this is, this is the first time that, um,
02:23teenagers got to choose their idols from being online.
02:26You could see their first comment on his very first video.
02:28You could watch it grow, digital fingerprints.
02:31So we can make a story that's not just a concert film.
02:34It's a story about a generation of people choosing their idol
02:37and the person at the middle of this.
02:39I've been a fan of him from when he posted his first video,
02:41and I'll be his fan since he posted his last video.
02:49You hear these stories how tough it is for adults.
02:51He's 16, and he's doing it all on his own.
02:54The first time we met, he almost passed me by.
02:59Security's early.
03:06They're all dead.
03:07Only one man could authorize a strike like that.
03:10And I voted for him.
03:14You're insane.
03:15It started to itch at me, like,
03:17when am I going to do my own thing?
03:19What is something that I need to make for myself
03:21that scares the hell out of me?
03:23And what scared me the most was my own cultural identity crisis
03:28of exploring what it means to be Asian American.
03:30And I had gotten this book, Crazy Rich Asians.
03:32I saw the opportunity because every character in that
03:35was someone I could pinpoint in the world,
03:37whether it was Gemma Chan or Ronnie Chang or Jimmy O. Yang
03:40or Michelle Yeoh or Constance.
03:43We could define what's beautiful in our culture.
03:46We could define what it means to be split between cultures.
03:49And this Asian American character, Rachel Chu,
03:51in the middle of this was going to Asia for the first time.
03:54And to me, that was my experience of going to Asia for the first time
03:58and feeling like, oh, is this my homeland?
04:01And maybe being convinced of it for, like, two days
04:04and then realizing, oh, they see me as a foreigner, too.
04:06Didn't think anyone was ever going to see this movie.
04:09And luckily, people did.
04:10A highly anticipated new movie that has Hollywood buzz in.
04:13And everyone else, too.
04:14Crazy Rich Asians.
04:16Crazy Rich Asians is breaking records.
04:18Crazy Rich Asians had big expectations when it opened last week.
04:22It did even better.
04:241.2 million.
04:26That's what I want.
04:27The Nick you're dating is Nick Young.
04:28Yeah, you guys know them or something?
04:30Hells, yeah.
04:31They're just the biggest developers in all of Singapore.
04:33That's what I want.
04:34Damn, Rachel.
04:35It's like the Asian Bachelor.
04:41They're talking about kicking out all the dreamers.
04:44It's time to make some noise.
04:47We had to assert our dignity in small ways.
04:52Shh.
04:53Just listen.
04:54I'm a huge fan of Wicked,
04:55so I come from the perspective of a fan.
04:57I know the areas that I need to protect.
04:59So I had no...
05:00I didn't have to translate anything between me and the fans.
05:03Like, I knew.
05:04The hardest part was, what do I wish was there?
05:07Daily Zooms, three or four hours a day,
05:09where we would go through every line of the script,
05:12of the Broadway script, and the current movie script,
05:16which wasn't quite there yet.
05:18But...
05:19And we would read every line.
05:21And they would tell me why he wrote the lyric this way.
05:25Or how did the number end up this way?
05:27What were the past things they've tried?
05:28And so we'd put these little divot points.
05:30And the amount of numbers you have to cut to get the story in
05:33is just not...
05:34It's just not plausible.
05:35It's just not...
05:36You want all the songs.
05:37So let's split it into two.
05:38Commit to that.
05:39We have to make sure that that movie is emotionally fulfilling
05:42so it doesn't feel like we're stopping in the middle of a story.
05:45She came in as Ariana Grande, which has its own aura.
05:49And I think she had a higher mountain to climb.
05:51Wicked is too big to have Ariana Grande, who's really big,
05:55to then sit on top of it.
05:56It's just like too many competing things.
05:59And does she really want to commit to a Galinda?
06:02This is a very difficult role.
06:04You have to be funny.
06:05You have to be a great actor.
06:07You have to be obviously able to sing.
06:09She can handle those parts.
06:10But can she be intimate and let us in?
06:12Also, you have this amazing, iconic Galinda in Kristen Chenoweth.
06:18So you can't do an imitation, but it has to be the Galinda
06:21that was sort of built.
06:22But you have to have your own...
06:23I mean, this is skilled, high craft stuff
06:29that takes a lot of experience to do.
06:31There was no way Ariana Grande, who had never led a movie,
06:35could do this.
06:36And when she came in, she committed.
06:40Okay.
06:41But she has all her Ariana Grande makeup on.
06:44Let's see if she'll come in with no makeup.
06:45Next time she came in, all makeup gone.
06:49And she was in it.
06:50She's so funny and she's so interesting.
06:52She's from another planet.
06:54And she's doing Galinda, but not imitating.
06:57Then we kept bringing her back the next time.
06:59Again, she's the most interesting person in the room.
07:01And the next time, every time, you're just like,
07:04the only Galinda you want to see is her.
07:06And is she really winning this role?
07:08So by the end, it was very, very clear.
07:10But when she showed up on day one, she was Galinda.
07:12Her voice was different.
07:14The way she walked was different.
07:15When she put on the blonde wig, she was different.
07:18When she put on the dress, it was different.
07:20She inhabited this character.
07:22I have never seen anyone change like that.
07:25Elphaba.
07:26You can room with Miss Galinda.
07:28Popular.
07:29I know about popular.
07:32Oh, I saved you some space, by the way.
07:34Do you really think this is fair?
07:35I do not.
07:36I was promised a private suite.
07:38But thanks for asking.
07:40The great thing about Hollywood in the past has been that it's run by mavericks.
07:46Artists who are rebels and troublemakers.
07:49And they're willing to say things and release things that are controversial and that cause dialogue.
07:56And through that comes some sort of new perspective on something that we didn't know we needed to hear or maybe even wanted to hear.
08:05So I miss those days of that.
08:08I hope to just keep going and telling stories that bring joy and optimism.
08:15Not naivete, but re-explore beauty.
08:19Re-explore the American dream.
08:21Re-explore ambition.
08:23Re-explore what a hero can look like.
08:25What a villain can look like.
08:26So that we have new perspectives on these classic things that are part of our human experience.
08:35To be continued.
08:37To be continued...
08:38To be continued...
08:43To be continued...
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