A hero that doesn't look like you makes you want to be something else.
— Jon M. Chu
Stephen Chow is one of my favorite filmmakers, and so groundbreaking.
Things happen in weird, serendipitous ways.
When you're the only Asian in the room, the last thing you want to do is to point out you're Asian. And be the Asian dude.
Hollywood listens to money and to controversy.
I always told myself after 'Jem,' I don't want fear to change my choices.
It's time for storytellers to tell the stories that have not had the privilege of being shown to the world, and the audience will be there.
I think a lot of people, even if you're not Asian, you go to your place of origin where your family comes from, and you get this sense of, 'Wow - people look like me and talk like me and treat me like their son in the stores and like a cousin in the restaurants.'
I don't want to be the Asian filmmaker; I just want to be a filmmaker. I want to be Spielberg. I want to be Tim Burton.
I took tap classes growing up.
Once you see dance as a weapon - and everyone has a different weapon - it makes dance really interesting.
I loved 'The Social Network.' I think it's one of those movies that will stand the test of time.
When you are young, coming into this business, you're told how the business works, and you feel very lucky to be here and want to stick around, so you believe the data, and you believe the conversations you're having where they say, 'You can't have that kind of lead because they don't travel here,' or, 'People will think it's not for them.'
Representation means having characters with layers, showing them as human beings, so we can relate or have mixed emotions for that character.
I get a lot of emotion from my family and my friends. I think it's just communicated in a different way. When my family feeds me, they're saying they love me. They pick me apart to show that they care. One look from my mother says so much.
I've gotten scholarships from the Asian-American Directors Guild of America society and things like that, and those things helped me, even if I didn't realize how much.
When I was finishing 'Now You See Me 2,' I remember thinking about exploring the Asian-American identity side of my brain.
I had to see if I'm a real filmmaker. I mean, I have proven myself in movies and franchises, but am I an artist? Can I contribute something to a medium that I love so much?
'Black Panther' is a phenomenon - it is all right in its own thing.
My parents came to San Francisco when they were probably 19 or 20, in the mid-'60s.
Everyone who shoots dance sequences does it in a different way. Everyone who shoots fight sequences does it in a different way.
I like to dance, but I'm not a dancer.
I don't understand why we're all connected wirelessly via a little machine that goes in our pocket, to everybody in the world, and you have to have reels for a movie.
I love 3-D, and for certain movies it can be really great, and for certain movies it can be poison.
I love Chinese movies.
I think that true love, fairy tales, the positive messages of positive stories - I don't think those ever die. Sometimes we like to hide them in sarcasm or irony, but they are still there, and they still move us.
I remember going to Taiwan for the first time and... I didn't realize that everyone looked like me here and what that'd feel like.
When I was growing up, Asians weren't known for dancing. I knew all my older aunts and uncles did, like, ballroom dancing and stuff. And then you saw all those dance crews, like Quest and Jabbawockeez, and now they're, like, known for dance.
Fear is a destruction of creativity.
It's called 'Crazy Rich Asians,' but it's really not about crazy rich Asians. It's about Rachel Chu finding her identity and finding her self-worth through this journey back into her culture. Which, for me as a filmmaker, exploring my cultural identity is the scariest thing.
The American culture is pursue your own happiness, follow your dreams. The Chinese side is sacrifice everything for your family; it's all about the group. Those conflicting ideas were always a battle in my head.
Maybe I'm not the right person to do it... but I've learned that I have some power to help stories be told the way they naturally need to be told.
I just feel so lucky to tell stories and make up stories and share them with people.
Each dancer has a different dialect that they speak.
It's weird because movie-making, and especially movie theaters, have always been so old-school, and it wasn't until 3-D that a lot of them were forced to have digital projectors and even digital distribution.
I love 'Dr Strangelove.'
