YouSaid · the spoken record

Jon M. Chu

lines on the record: 76
first: 2024-11-18
most recent: 2024-11-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think that eyeballs and views don't equate to attention. I have to think about where the audience's position is whenever they're watching a movie or whatever they're watching if we're doing something for TV. I have to understand where they are so I can meet them there and bring them in to my world. And I often think that in Netflix, yes, the movies, the TV shows are high quality, great storytellers, serial storytelling, amazing. Those are like novels you can get dive into. And that's its own medium. And they have some great cultural shifting series, but that's because of their series and you live with them for a while in terms of a movie and a two-hour movie. I think a two-hour movie and a streaming service is like nothing. It's like you're microwaving your popcorn. Yeah, exactly.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just think movies are a value. There was someone I saw on the internet where they're like, hey, you know when an envelope comes in and you just think it's junk mail, you toss it. But when a FedEx envelope is in the room, that's never left unopened because the packaging is some sort of value that you know something valuable is inside. So you pay more attention to it. I really do think that movies have a framework that people pay more attention to and bring it into their lives. No.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, all the lawyers on that phone call were like, because we had 15 minutes to decide because everyone put down their offers at the same time. And Warner Brothers had actually put less down than they did in their offer than they did the week before because I don't know. They were being assholes. But that was hard to swallow. That was really hard to swallow because I was like, they're going to win off of trying to slight us. But I need that thing. And we need to do this. This is why we're here.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a weird way, reviewers and pundits could always determine, oh, this movie's good, this movie's bad, and it's going to work. But what an audience can do that no other thing is they just show up and their vote is in the money. So movies, like even Oppenheimer, you're like, did you think Oppenheimer was going to be a billion dollar movie? No, but audiences showed up and proved that that could be. I mean, that's a giant version of that. But like, and there's plenty of other movies that you just don't think and the audience changes it. So I knew that in the real purpose of Crazy Witchens was to change the habits of the world a little bit and see it differently. And so we took less money and chose that we were in very privileged places in our lives where we could do that. And the way we saw that as the sign that we had to do that.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's movies, though, are in this, it's like a museum, and people pay money to go see the museum. It's the best of the best. And you go there and you get people's attention and then deal with the audience is different. The value is different. They're going to pay you money to sit in the dark and let you take them on a ride. And they cannot leave. And that takes, and someone's going to pay hundreds of millions of dollars or millions of dollars to market these things to get you to go in. That's part of the story beyond the movie. And that's what we were looking for always is like, when is a giant company going to market movie stars as looking like this, heroes looking like this? And in a streaming platform. Again, this is at that time and maybe shifting, but it couldn't change culture. It couldn't.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's where the fault line hit for me is that decision. Because had you asked me then and is the argument of Netflix, which by the way, I love Netflix. I watch Netflix. It's great. It's a different medium, though, than I think movies are. They approached it was. I think I really thought about what their idea was you want everyone to see Asian as lead actors and beautiful, then you have to have as many eyeballs as possible. And we are worldwide and we're day in day and everyone will see on the same day and get it for free or get it for their subscription. That is what your purpose is. And we fulfill that purpose. And I think what hit me was yes, but, and I talked about this with Kevin Kwan, the author, was”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And sitting in the dark and not having the control to skip forward. And so that's where it started to change for me because everyone's mentality was different about what stories should be told or where the money was going to be told because money speaks so much that it just everything shifted.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honestly, I do believe that that is still true. I think it's more when the Silicon Valley mentality came to Hollywood. I was all for it. It's digital. When I went there, it was film, film, film. Nothing will replace film. I was like, you guys are idiots. It'll change. So you could see it coming. And every time Silicon Valley was right. And I guess I got more skeptical only more recently when it shifted from inspiration to data. Hollywood used to be run by mavericks and artists, and yes, it's a business, but it was like you roll the dice to bet on culture that they were going to discover something new. And when it became about data, it was like run over by this idea of using stories to just collect your clicks and your attention. And art and stories aren't about your attention. There is a patience to going to a theater.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I remember the day Steve passed as well. I was shooting G.I. Joe and I was working with some actors and it was a hard day. And my assistant came and whispered to me that he had passed. Everything went away that day. Excuse myself, went to the bathroom and I just wept on the floor. I met that guy once, but his effect on me was so deep because I think even his ideas, he gave all the employees when he was changing the campaign to think different. He gave them all this book that had these poems of each of his heroes. And he said in that in the intro of like that it's about your purpose and about the soul of a company, not just selling computers. Of course, they'll do the fastest computers, but like it's about what you're doing it for. And that's the philosophy that I grew up in. That's the philosophy that I loved.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it gave me a leg up on all the people that, and I was young, I was like 10, 12 years old. And so I already understood the power of technology or the accessibility that it gave me and the advantage it gave me. Even in school, I convinced my teachers to not write papers, but to make videos and watching people react to what I was doing felt like I could be heard for the first time. And so those two things were never separate. And I learned a lot of lessons doing that by the time I went to USC. They were not fully digital. I got to learn film. I got to do 16 millimeters on a flatbed with splicing. And I finally understood like, oh, a real bin is like a place where you put the frames of the thing that you actually spliced, that you actually cut something. And so I was sort of on that edge of the digital takeover. And through my years of film school, by the end, it was all digital.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think technology, it just was a lifestyle. Like growing up, that was what you did. And there was new things all the time. And change was just normal. And in fact, it was encouraged. And so for me, it always opened up a new window. And so there's always discovery. And with the camera itself, that technology was changing so fast because I did not have access to all this stuff. So a film developing Super8 film was, you had to pay money. You had to get the thing. I had to have lights. And that was just not accessible. But the people at the restaurant would give me these cameras, these digital cameras that were 320 by 240, 640 by 480 was like the big thing.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was the most amazing time. He shook my hand. He said, Thank you, John. That means so much. And Bob Eiger comes around and he goes, Steve, this is John. He directed our step up movies. You heard of the step-up movies? And Steve Jobs was like, no. But Lorene came over and she's like, our daughters love those movies. And I was like, yes. And then I left him alone.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he just keeps leaning in every time I stop, like I'm going to stop. And I do the whole thing. And by the end, he's saying it with me.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. And he's like, oh, I know Chef Chews. I was like, Yeah, great. And he's like, I was like, you know, these tools really gave me a voice. I didn't know what I was going to do. But it's the computers that allowed me. And now I'm making movies in Hollywood. And he's like, that's so great. And I said, you know, even your commercial, it's a mantra that I say every day. And I memorized it. And he sort of leaned in. And I was like, oh, oh, okay, here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the trouble. And I started doing it.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know. And my buddy who was in a bunch of iPod commercials, like, I don't care. So he went over and talked to him. And as he's talking, he grabs my arm and pulls me over and says, hey, Steve, this is John. He really wanted to meet you. And I'm like, hi, I'm from Los Al Saltos, and my family has his restaurant. And I really love your stuff. And you really gave me the tools. And he's like, that's great. He's like, you're from Los Altas. Like, we're neighbors. I was like,”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I've watched all your interviews. I've watched all your interviews. I know everything. I've seen everything. I was very lucky. Well, I was at the Academy Awards and not because of anything other than our dance company that I had was performing it. So I was there early and he rolls in with Bob Eiger into the VIP bar area. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's Steve Jobs. That's Steve Jobs. I can't talk to him. I don't want to talk to my hair. I know that he probably wouldn't want to talk to me. I can't, I wouldn't be able to live with him looking at me like he doesn't want me to be there. So I'm just going to avoid it.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The tools that I actually finally did get my hands on because of customers at Chef Choose, they would hear my dad's story and give us computers, beta computers, it was sort of the dawn of digital video editing. It was video cards and things were coming into play. And so I got this stuff very early and I saw the power. I felt the power of what that was doing for me. And so I just looked to him as somebody who...”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had every poster, I had all the think different posters wallpapered on my thing. But even before the think different, it was one, he was our hometown hero. He was the guy who dreamed big and we lived in a neighborhood that dreamed big and valued engineers first. And he was the great storyteller of that. He could connect it. I watched every Mac world keynote. I would sneak out of school and go to San Francisco. We flew to New York to go see it. We rarely got actual tickets, but we get close enough. And I just love the way he talked about. The tools and creativity, and almost like he was just letting you in on a secret, he was never selling anything. And I was really drawn to that connection.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I have some heroes, one of which is Steve Jobs One of which is Steven Spielberg, one of which is Stevie Wonder, Stevie Nicks, and maybe even a little Steven Schwartz on this round. So my wife said she was born on your premiere day. You get your name. And I was like, well, you have to be okay with this. And I was fine with it. My mom did say, that doesn't sound like a president of the United States. President Stevie. And I said, she's going to be a rock star mom.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was crazy, so I've been working three years on. Of all days, of all my. And so we just left our suits there, left our clothes, and went to the hospital. And my family went on the red carpet, which was very scary for me because I'm usually the one managing how they talk to Jeff Goldblum or Ariana Grande. So they were off on their own. And while the movie was playing, the baby was born.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I didn't. And not because of anything other than I think my parents were always like, you're doing other things, including my mom, who wanted us to be president of the United States. They thought we were the Asian Kennedys. They would like to dress us up the same. We'd go to etiquette classes. We'd go to dance classes. We'd go to musical operas, ballet in the city. We had season tickets. And so they really wanted to immerse us in American culture. They did not want us to feel, I mean, I'm named after a television show. Jennifer and Jonathan, me and my sister, Jennifer and Jonathan from heart to heart. Crazy, yeah. So media stories, what the American dream was, that's what they wanted to achieve and everything that they did. And they put that on us in not a bad way. It was just that was the dream. And they lived it every day for us.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and even working with the chefs and the bus boys in the back and everybody, it was chaos. It was a pirate ship in my eyes. And he had to maneuver and get to the vision of what he wanted to do. And it was very rarely glamorous. And I would sit there at the bar doing my homework. And so he always included us. He always included us in the work itself, telling us what he was doing.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His dishes, his new dishes on a napkin. So I would watch him draw these dishes and then he would go make them and get sweaty and then go into the front of the house and wipe himself off. And my mom would be there and they'd be greeting the customers and they'd be the hosts of the night and watching that charm, watching them tell stories. It was literally a house of stories there. And I always watch them go back and forth. And what I realized is what I was really drawn to was the guy in the kitchen. To me, that's where he's like, this is where the work actually happens.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I learned a ton from watching him just his work ethic. And that's not just him, him and my mom. From nothing Is when they started it. And that's tough. The restaurant business is tough. And I've watched him work really hard in the kitchen. If a chef was down, he would get in there and he would get greasy and he loved it. It was like playing music to him back then. And he would draw.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, of course. I know. I know. I grew up in that. But I will always actually be Chef Chusa. Everywhere I go, LA, San Francisco, it doesn't matter. I'm Chef Chu's son.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra.”
2024-11-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT