From Toy Stories to Blockbusters: Jon Chu's Journey into Filmmaking | Jon Chu EP 605

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11Do you think that you'd be where you're at now if you didn't have that opportunity with Spielberg then? It definitely was the catalyst to get me into the studio world. I don't doubt that I wouldn't be making movies. Maybe it wouldn't be movie movies. Maybe it would be TV shows. Maybe it would be wedding videos. Maybe it would be whatever. But since I was in third grade, I've always made movies on my own. yeah um and that i know for a fact whether getting paid for it or not i would always do that and i will always do that in the future yeah my movies may all bomb and i may never get another movie in hollywood ever again but i know i'll still be making stuff right um that's just in my nature and what i think i read online that you're you grew up in uh san francisco area right yeah palo alto and your parents would give you the camera to like film going on vacation or whatever but you decided to like make movies instead of filming like the moments that you're supposed to film right Yes.

1:04Yeah, I mean, when you give a kid a camera, what are you supposed to do? I'm just bored on these vacations. They were so great. They came from China. My mom came from Taiwan into the Bay Area. They didn't know a word of English. Wow. And they wanted to give everything to the kids. So they met in the Bay Area, but they started a little restaurant. It's been there for 46 years now. It's like a famous restaurant now, right? Yeah, it's been there for so long. What's it called? It's called Chef Chew's. It's in Los Altos, which is next to Stanford. And so at the center of the Silicon Valley before it was called the Silicon Valley, and they grew with the neighborhood.

1:37And we got the benefit of growing with that neighborhood as well, being in that environment where the engineer was celebrated. Nobody was rich and famous. It was just about like, what are you making and how is that changing the world or how is that affecting how we live? And they were crazy ideas from people riding around in electric cars in the 90s to people bringing in software. where you could see them working at lunch, right, at their desk. And, you know, they would find out, oh, Chef Chu's son likes to make these home videos. You know, we have this computer that we're working on now that can do, like, dissolves and interesting things with video.

2:15And so they would bring in their beta computers. And Adobe would bring in their software, all, like, testing mode, all beta mode with no manuals. And they would give it to my dad to give to me. And you'd be, like, editing videos on there. Literally, I would just have to sit there and be like, how do I do this? and figure it out. So I was ahead by a lot in those times. And that was, you know, you're sort of grown by your community. That was definitely something that was very rare and weird. And looking back, I just was very lucky to be in that environment at the time. My parents were always giving to the kids.

2:47I'm the youngest of five kids. They never let us work at the restaurant. They didn't want us to get used to fast cash. They were like, do everything we couldn't do first. Like go after the things that you won't be able to do later one day possibly just like explore and so they put us in music classes dance classes we went to i did animation school i did theater i did um we did sports camps we traveled so every year we would travel as well and uh and that's where my that's where sort of where i got the video camera at first and then would make little mini movies with my brothers and sisters who didn't really want to be movies we're doing this yeah and i had a lot of toys so i i'm convinced that my toy collection.

3:28I'd get passed down all the toys from my brothers and sisters, and I would figure out ways to convince my parents to get me that extra special toy, and I'd have week-long adventures in my backyard. And I'm convinced that that's where I actually learned filmmaking and storytelling. Amazing. What is it about film that you love the most? Is it the idea creation of, I've got this idea for a great story. Is it the actual filming? Is it working with the cast and the crew? Is it the post-production is it when it's finally out there and you get the reaction of the 13 year old girls who are watching Justin Bieber movies screaming and crying next to you in the movie theater you're like how did I create something where people are crying their eyes out you know yes before you answer that I watched the never say never movie like three or four times and every time I cried man during the grandparents section I was like this is unbelievable what this kid has gone through you should have seen me behind the camera I was also crying shaking Yeah, luckily I wasn't holding the camera.

4:26But no, those moments are really genuine in that. It's amazing. And I genuinely grew to love the kid because I did not – I can't call him the kid anymore. Right. The man, Justin Bieber, because I didn't know too much going into that movie. But I wanted to make the movie about someone who didn't know anything about him and learning step by step who this person is. You see this person on YouTube and they come across, oh, there's just a pop star. But then when you actually go back, you see he's a boy that has extreme talent. And you recognize that boy as someone that either you know or that you were.

5:02And you follow him on his journey. And I think that was the inspirational part for me. It's a fairy tale in a way. And it's actually happening in real time. It was unbelievable. I mean, the storytelling. I mean, I guess you weren't really telling the story. You were just sharing the story of it. It was just incredible. I mean, the way you put that. That movie must have had some big records too, right? It did sell extremely well. Yeah, it did super well. Made$100 million worldwide. And for something that was supposed to be just a concert movie, we were like, well, let's make a real documentary about this kid's life.

5:32Let's make a biography. But the music, not just be concert songs, but actually be a musical documentary. So when words aren't enough, the music helps tell that story. We recontextualize his music that sounds like, oh, that's just about first love. it's actually about him you know falling in love with the business at that time when he came into LA or or that's about the deal that he made with whatever so that was really fun to flip his music and say let's make how would you use that in a musical about his life thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the daily motivation and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.

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7:00Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show. Thank you.