Chu takes his inspiration from his dad, a Chinese immigrant who worked both the front room and the kitchen of their family-run restaurant: 'The guy that in the back of the kitchen, that was my hero.'
Filmmaker Jon M. Chu says one his most enduring childhood memories is of his father, a Chinese immigrant, bustling about the family-run restaurant in California. One moment, Chu's dad would be in the dining area, suavely greeting guests and making jokes. The next, he'd be"greasy in the back of the kitchen, sweating," Chu remembers.
Growing up in Silicon Valley at the dawn of the start-up era, Chu was surrounded by technology. Apple founder Steve Jobs was a regular at the family restaurant and George Lucas was in the city filming his special-effects heavy"Technology for me has been such a game changer," he says."It literally gave me the voice that I didn't know I had. Without a camera, without editing equipment, I wouldn't know that I had this storytelling bug in me.
And so I told my agent and my managers and my whole team,"I don't know what's happening with me, but I need to get off of any movie I'm doing right now. And I need to start fresh with something that scares me the most." So I went on a search for something that felt like it was going to deal with the scariest thing in my life, which was my cultural identity crisis. And that's when my sister and my mom sent meMy mom and dad came from Taiwan and China.
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