Jon M. Chu on Creating 'Wicked,' Casting Ariana Grande as Glinda & More | THR Video - video Dailymotion

Hollywood Journal

Jon M. Chu sat down with The Hollywood Reporter and walks us through his journey as a director. From creating 'Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,' 'Crazy Rich Asians,' 'Wicked' and many more, he tells THR the advice from his mom that changed his life about filmmaking, casting Ariana Grande as Glinda and more.

Transcript

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...

Jon M. Chu on Creating 'Wicked,' Casting Ariana Grande as Glinda & More | THR Video

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