Recapping this year's Sundance Film Festival, and a chat with the co-director of "Meru," which won the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary; actor Randall Park goes from the fire ("The Interview") to the frying pan ("Fresh Off the Boat," pictured).
Sundance 2015: Cheating death and finding love while making the documentary 'Meru'
In 2008, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk set out to climb the Shark's Fin of Mount Meru in the Himalayas, a route that peaks at 20,700 feet. No one had ever made it to the top. After 19 days of climbing, they fell short of the summit by a mere 100 meters. In 2011, they tried it again.
Chin — an accomplished National Geographic photographer — had filmed both attempts, but was having trouble editing it all together, so he reached out to an acquaintance who had directed a couple of movies. That acquaintance was Chai Vasarhelyi and together they took the raw footage from the climb and turned it into a movie that won the
AUDIENCE AWARD - US DOCUMENTARY presented by @Acura: “Meru” - Directors Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi. #Sundance pic.twitter.com/TZY1m0Q1QW
— SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) February 1, 2015
at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
When Chin and Vasarhelyi spoke with The Frame at Sundance, they spoke about the challenges of filming while hanging from the side of a mountain, and the emotional elements of the story that brought the whole thing together. Oh, and how they ended up being married.
Interview Highlights:
Jimmy, explain how you're able to film and climb at the same time. What are the technical challenges of doing both jobs at once?
Shooting and climbing have evolved together for me. I filmed with Renan Ozturk, who's the cinematographer on the trip as well, but there are some basic rules:
- Shoot when you can.
- Don't hold up the climb.
- Don't drop the camera.
And that's pretty much all you're going by. [laughs]
There are a couple climbs that are prominent in this film. You're going without guides, you're having to lug your own gear. Especially on the initial climb where the weight of the gear is certainly a factor, is the gear for the shoot actually a problem? Are you lugging even more stuff than you need at this point?
Yes, we are. We even cut off the labels on our jackets to save weight. Every ounce counts on a climb like this, so even a camera and a lens can add up. [laughs] We had two cameras, which were small, but still, those were probably equivalent to two days' worth of food.
And batteries?
Yeah, because you can't charge batteries up there, and you're not downloading your cards at the end of the day. So you have to carry all the cards and all the batteries, which adds up. It does figure into the calculations of planning.
So, as you're climbing, does it get to a point where you're asking yourself, Are we making a movie or are we climbing a mountain?
There are different types of productions that I work on, and this one was certainly more focused on the climbing. We shot what we could, and while I always think about shots that I missed, overall I'm really happy with what we captured.
Without giving anything away, there's a moment in the movie where somebody that you're climbing with has an accident, and there's incredible footage of this person in the hospital. As a friend of your colleague and as a filmmaker, how do you balance the need to look after your friend while still getting this incredible footage of him in the hospital?
I remember I was actually crying and holding his hand, because I thought he was going to die. Despite the fact that he had a very serious head injury, he had this strange coherency to him; he was speaking very normally, even though I wasn't, and he said, "You should film this."
I was really conflicted about it at first, but he was adamant about it. There was no sense of where this footage would ever go; I wasn't thinking about making this film. But I grabbed the camera and just started filming, and in a way it was a bit of a shield. It actually helped calm me down quite a bit.
Chai, when you first saw Jimmy's footage, how long ago was it, what kind of shape was it in, and what was the story you saw that you thought might be able to reach a wider audience?
It was in 2012, and I had met this incredibly charismatic guy, Jimmy, and I was struck by how personable and interesting he was. And then he shared this film with me, and he wasn't in it. I mean, he appeared, but his heart wasn't in it.
It was hard to understand the emotional reasons and satisfaction that these guys get from climbing while living with all the risks, so I felt like there needed to be emotional work on the film.
It sounds like you were trying to answer for the audience the questions that you yourself had about the guy you'd just met.
Absolutely, I was. I'm not a climber, but I felt like there was a real emotional connection that the audience could make with these guys, because what they do is inspiring and it's very moving. The story elements were there, but the structure and how they were speaking about their own experiences needed to be looked at.
So you met as creative collaborators, not as a couple? What's the chicken-and-egg here?
Chai: I'll let Jimmy answer that.
Jimmy: [laughs] Yeah, I learned that she was a filmmaker. I had been working on this film, so I shared it with her to get some feedback. She hadn't shown very much interest in me until after I shared the film with her, and then of course I realized that she was really interested in the film. Eventually she became interested in me. [laughs]
So it wasn't that you had a great personality? You had great footage?
Pretty much. [laughs]
So much of the movie is about the collaborative nature of climbing, and the reliance that each climber has on the person next to him. You've now taken that connection into the filmmaking world where you're working with Chai. Are there similarities or differences between those different types of collaboration?
Yeah. [laughs] I mean, there are so many parallels between expedition climbing and filmmaking, like financing the trip and trying to convince somebody to help you chase this objective with all these unknowns — you don't know where it's going to go, you don't know how it's going to go. You just have to have faith in yourself and you need to be inspired and work hard.
But that trust between climbing partners is very, very key: we hold each other's lives in our hands, and there are a lot of life-and-death decisions to be made constantly. You have to trust each other all the time.
In the filmmaking with Chai, it's challenging when you have two directors with two ideas, but we came from such different places. And honestly, when I saw the finished film and saw it screened here [at Sundance] and saw how all the decisions have come together, it's the first time I've really appreciated what she brought to the table. I mean, I knew on the way, but it's been really incredible. That's how great partnerships happen, when people come together with really different skill sets, but really strong strengths.
Randall Park throws Asian-American stereotypes overboard in 'Fresh Off the Boat'
Actor Randall Park was not a household name a few months ago, but then his last film almost brought Sony down, and even got the President's attention. Park played North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in "The Interview," which sent the media into a frenzy and helped put him on the map.
Park grew up in Los Angeles, but didn't get his acting career started until he was in his late 20s. It took years before he went from playing various unnamed roles to guest starring in television shows such as "The Mindy Project" and HBO's "Veep."
The actor now has a starring role in the new ABC sitcom, “Fresh Off the Boat.” The television show is based on a memoir by Eddie Huang and it’s the first network series to feature an Asian-American family in 20 years. Park plays Eddie’s father in the show.
The Frame's Darby Maloney spoke with Park about playing "Asian-specific" characters early on in his career, his role in "Fresh Off the Boat," and how Eddie Huang's memoir related to him on a personal level.
Interview Highlights:
What was it about "Fresh Off the Boat" that you identified with?
I identified with so many parts of it, even specific experiences like when he goes to school and his mom has packed him lunch. He opens up his lunch, and it's Taiwanese food, and all the kids around him in the cafeteria see him with this food that's completely foreign to them; they think it's disgusting, and young Eddie feels embarrassed.
And that's something that I definitely experienced as a kid, but for me it was Korean food. And I remember going to my mom and wanting her to make me something more similar to what the other kids were eating.
The chances of an Asian-American family sitcom making it to pilot was not in my realm of possibility, because it had been so long since that had happened — 20 years, to be exact, when Margaret Cho's "All-American Girl" was on the air.
But this show, based on a book like this, really felt like a long shot. And then I found out it got picked up, and I was just excited the whole time. It was so fun to actually be a part of something so special, to actually go to work and see a family that looked like mine was really cool.
Eddie Huang, who wrote the memoir the show is based on, is an outspoken person in general ...
Yeah, he is, and that's what I love about him.
And he created a bit of a ripple effect when he criticized the show.
Yeah, yeah, he wrote an article, and he was being honest about his experiences in turning his memoir, his life story, into a network TV sitcom, and all the changes that were forced upon his story to make commercial TV out of it.
He had a really hard time with that, and I was with him for the whole process, and I understood where he was coming from. It's tough to see things about your life being changed to make it more palatable for a bigger audience.
While shooting, did you have any of your own concerns? Eddie used certain phrases, and I might be misquoting here, but were there ever moments of, Wait, are we "whitening" it up?
Yeah, for sure. As an actor you read so many scripts and parts written for Asian-specific characters, and you see a lot of stereotypes and a lot of one-note characters, especially in comedy. You run into a lot of issues there, and that was a definite concern of mine going into the project: Who's going to be the butt of the joke here? Is it going to be our family?
Our characters are immigrant characters, and so often when you see immigrant characters on TV, they're portrayed as jokes. And so I did have those concerns going in. I was pleased to discover that everyone had those thoughts going in, and everyone was mindful of making sure that we weren't the butt of the joke, that the show wouldn't be one stereotype after another.
We've talked about how there haven't been a lot of feature film scripts floating around town or TV shows in the works that feature Asian-American family members or a majority Asian-American cast. If we talked to you a year ago, two years ago, what were the kinds of scripts you were being offered?
The most common things I would go out for would be like "The Lab Technician" on a crime procedural, usually an expert in either a medical or a computer-oriented field [laughs]. And I guess you could say that at the root of that is the "Asian nerd" stereotype.
At the same time, I got some great roles a few years ago. Danny Chung in "Veep" is a really unique, very anti-stereotypical role for an Asian-American actor, and being able to play that has been super fun. But the majority of guest spots or recurring parts would be along the lines of the I.T. guy.
So your two most recent big projects — "Fresh Off the Boat," obviously, and "The Interview" — sparked different kinds of cultural conversations, but are there any concerns on your end about the controversies overshadowing the works themselves?
When you're the first network television sitcom to feature an Asian-American cast, there's bound to be that conversation. I completely understand it, especially the trepidation within the community of whether or not this show is going to make fun of us or be smart.
I understand the controversy and the conversation, and I encourage them. But I do hope that eventually we could just be a great show, and also that we could have more shows with diverse leads so that all the pressure isn't just on this one show.
Does it feel like an extra degree of pressure because, if it doesn't succeed, that it might be like, Oh, no, well, let's wait another 20 years?
[laughs] I know, that's the worry, huh? I don't know. It's so out of our control at this point, but I think we have a great show, and I'm happy with that whether it succeeds or fails. It would be great if it succeeds, but yeah, you're right, it is very difficult for any show to succeed nowadays. If we do, that would be remarkable. And if we don't, it's fine, but I am proud of the show either way.
"Fresh Off the Boat" premieres on ABC on Feb. 4.