Alison Stewart: This is All Of It live from the WNYC studios in SoHo, I'm Alison Stewart. Thank you for spending your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, we'll hold an exit interview with New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells, who just announced that for his health, he is saying goodbye to the job that sometimes required him to eat up to 36 dishes per review. We'll also continue our tongue-in-cheek series, Women Behaving Badly. Constitutional lawyer and crime historian Alex Hortis will talk about his new book, The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice.

Plus, another conversation with one of the winners of our Public Song Project, the husband-and-wife duo Moontripp. We'll talk about their cover of Irving Berlin's What'll I Do? And we'll hear from another Public Song contest judge, Isabel Kim from Joe's Pub. That is the plan. So let's get this show started with a little trip back to 2008.

[MUSIC - Hellogoodbye: Here (In Your Arms)]

Alison Stewart: Okay, we're in Fremont, California, and Chris Wang is having a transition summer just before high school. He's getting new rubber bands for his braces, spending evenings chatting with his crush on AOL Messenger and trying to fit in somewhere. Chris, whose friends call him Wang Wang, is a bit awkward. The guys he surrounds himself with are more social, sporty, outgoing than he is. At home, he feels a bit stifled. His mom, sister and grandma all have trouble reaching him, and he makes some unfortunate choices.

That's because Chris is focused on more important things, like trying to figure out how to impress his crush, Madi, and the new group of skater bros who take interest in his amateur filmmaking skills. He's really into this thing. It's called YouTube. The film is called Didi. Wang Wang's stumble through adolescents made a huge splash at Sundance earlier this year. The film won two audience awards. You can catch Didi in theater starting July 26.

With us in studio is first time feature director Sean Wang, or I should say Academy Award nominated director. His documentary short about his grandmas was nominated earlier this year. So nice to see you.

Sean Wang: Thank you for having me, Alison. That Hellogoodbye needle drop just now is so triggering, and thank you for that lovely intro. It's such an honor to be here.

Alison Stewart: The movie really captures awkward teenage boy years. What was it about this phase that interested you that you hadn't seen before?

Sean Wang: I mean, I think it was two things. One, that period of my life that the movie captures, this sort of cusp of middle school to high school, I think was just so formative for me. My friends and I describe it as like this time in your life where you're the worst version of yourself having the best time of your life. You're still impressionable, but you have no sense of identity. You're really figuring things out.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Sean Wang: And it just really felt like in all the movies that I loved about that period of adolescence, Stand By Me, Ratcatcher, 400 Blows. I love those movies. And I love how they'd really treated adolescent boyhood with as much emotional maturity as I think boyhood really is. It's crass and irreverent, but it's also very scary and confusing and sad and lonely. In all of the movies that I loved about that period, that kind of movie, I never saw a kid that looked or talked or felt like me and my friends, not just me.

In thinking about the specifics of my childhood and my upbringing, it felt like there was stuff to mind there that wasn't just like a self-aggrandizing, "Let's put my story on screen," but in a way that I was like, I think there's stuff here for an entire generation of kids who grew up in the late 2000s that will be universal and relatable, but let's get at it through a very specific point of view and try to put a Taiwanese-American portrait on screen and see what that does to the movie.

Alison Stewart: Let's dive into the protagonist, Chris. We meet him at the tail end of 8th grade. Where is he in his life, all 13 years of it? What's important to him?

Sean Wang: I think his friends are important to him, and I think being cool, being accepted. I think my producer and I talked a lot about what does he want? I was like, I think he wants to be cool. And that's so much for a 13-year-old boy, to just be accepted, to be seen as relevant, and to feel like he belongs in the spaces that he wants to be in. I think that's so much of what the movie is. It's him thinking he has to be a different version of himself in all of these different spaces. Then he tries to be that version and then fumbles the ball.

I think it is this period in his life where the friends that he has in the movie and the friends I think you have at that age, they're all friends by proximity, right? It's the people you grow up with and then only later do you start creating friends because of shared interests. I think that's where he finds himself in his life. He's starting to be interested in skating and filming and all these different interests that his friends don't share, so they don't relate to him in that side of things. I think he's trying to figure out what that looks like for him as he moves forward in life.

Alison Stewart: If things could go right for Chris that summer, what would it be? What would go right for him?

Sean Wang: He'd win Sundance, get nominated for an-- no, that's not it.

[laughter]

Sean Wang: No, I think--

Alison Stewart: Like for a 13-year-old boy, Chris, what would go right for him?

Sean Wang: Probably, he would-- everything he thinks, like when he tells the dead squirrel story, he'd probably want everyone to laugh and be like, "Wow, you're really good. You're really funny. You're really cool." But so much of what I think we were trying to do with the movie is like let's continue to twist the knife on him and make him feel more out of place and more out of place, because I think that's what it feels like every time you try to-- you know, I've been there. I've tried to say something to fit in and be cool and then people are like, "What?" So yes.

Alison Stewart: He gets in all kinds of trouble. He lies about who he is. He curses under his breath. He makes rash decisions with lotion. That's all I'm going to say.

Sean Wang: Sounds weird.

Alison Stewart: What explains the bad decisions that he makes? What is behind him making these rash, rash decisions?

Sean Wang: I think a deep insecurity and a deep desire to, again, feel accepted and feel a sense of belonging. Right? I really do think that at that age, you just really want to-- he's trying so desperately to fit in that he stands out. I think it is that like every relationship that is seen in the movie, every friendship, every crush, every older kid that he wants to be, you know, to fit in with, he thinks he has to be this different version of himself to be liked or accepted. All of those different versions of himself actually is the reason they turn him away, because they're like, "You're, like, clearly a little whack."

Alison Stewart: Yeah.

Sean Wang: Then the only time and the only relationship in the movie that is unconditional is the one between him and his mom, and it's the one where he's actually not trying to put on and be a different version of himself. It's just with that relationship, he's the worst version of himself, but she loves him, warts and all, and I think that's kind of the heartbeat of the movie.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Didi. My guest is director Sean Wang. It's his debut feature film. It'll be in theaters on July 26. In a 2008 atmosphere, you got the flip phone, you got AOL Messenger, you've got Myspace. What was it like getting your cast members, your teenage cast members, to understand the technology of that time?

Sean Wang: It was really funny. Luckily, all the Myspace stuff, the Facebook, the AIM, that was all created in post-production so I didn't have to walk them through what a Myspace Top Eight was, all this kind of stuff. But the flip phones and the T9 texting was stuff that they actually had to make sure we sold it accurately. And so before production started, we sent them all flip phones and they did not practice. We got to set and I remember the first scene we filmed with Izaac, who plays Chris with a flip phone. He was opening it with two hands and typing. I was like, "Oh, God, we got some practice to do. They got there, but it was definitely that was the biggest learning curve, the T9 texting. Everything else actually came pretty easy.

Alison Stewart: What music did you know you needed?

Sean Wang: I knew I needed stuff that was very personal and reminiscent of the era for me, but that hadn't been heard in movies of that time. We deliberately try to stay away from things like Paper Planes and MGMT. I love that those tracks and those bands, don't get me wrong, but they defined what the sound was for an entire culture. I think what we wanted to do was try to figure out a more personal way in. A lot of the music that I curated for the movie with our music supervisor, Toko Nagata, was kind of culled from a lot of skate culture and a lot of things that really meant something to me and the warped tour, pop punk emo culture.

So, like, yeah, Hellogoodbye, Motion City Soundtrack, Atmosphere, which was not a warped tour band, but that world of hip hop, but also, yeah, skate culture like music from skate videos that I really loved and shaped me, like Jerry Hsu's part. All of that comes from a very personal place and a deep place of love.

Alison Stewart: Chris goes by many names. There's Didi, which is what his family calls him. He goes by Wang Wang, his friends. What do the different names signify, Chris, Wang Wang and Didi?

Sean Wang: I mean, it's interesting. I think almost when I was describing the movie, before we made it, it was like, this is a movie about this kid. It's who he is with his friends, it's who he is with the people he wants to be his friends, and then it's who he is with his family. In a way, it's those three things, right? It's who he is with his friends, and when he's with his friends, he's Wang Wang. When he's with the people he wants to be his friends, he's Chris. Then when he's with his family, he's Didi.

Then I think by the end of the movie, that was kind of a thing we wanted to come back to, it was like-- that was a question that was asked of me when we were developing the script. It was like, by the end of the movie, when the movie cuts to black, is he Wang Wang, is he Chris, or is he Didi? I think that's, you know, I have an answer for that, but it's something I'm curious what other people will think too.

Alison Stewart: Well, let's listen to a clip from Didi. This is where Chris is talking to some girls at a party. One of them is Madi, his crush. Let's listen in. We could talk about it on the other side. This is from Didi.

Speaker 4: You want to try?

Chris: Sure.

Speaker 4: So do you know each other?

Speaker 5: Yes, you look familiar. You go to Horner, right?

Chris: Yeah, but not anymore. I just graduated, so, you know, thank God. Yes, Horner kind of, like, sucks [bleep], you know?

Speaker 5: I liked Horner.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought Horner was fun.

Speaker 5: What was your name again?

Chris: I'm Chris, but all my friends just call me Wang Wang.

Speaker 5: What should I call you?

Chris: You can just call me Wang Wang.

Speaker 5: Wang Wang? Isn’t that like the sound a duck makes, you know, like wang wang?

Alison Stewart: Madi is so much cooler than he is.

Sean Wang: I love that scene so much.

Alison Stewart: Why does he let her call him Wang Wang?

Sean Wang: Well, I think it's in that moment that he realizes, "Oh, Wang Wang, the thing that my friends call me is not like-

Alison Stewart: The greatest thing.

Sean Wang: ,-the greatest name. And so that moment, the theme of it gets played a couple times throughout the movie, where the next time someone asks, "Oh, what's your name?" He takes a beat to think, and he goes, "No, it's Chris." So, yes, I think in that moment, he learns this thing where it's like, "Oh, this nickname I have, I don't know if it's as endearing as my friends think it is."

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the film Didi, about a coming-of-age story about a Taiwanese-American teenager. My guest is director Sean Wang. It doesn't work unless the casting is right, the casting of Chris, Izaac Wang. What were you looking for generally, when you were looking to cast Chris, and then what sold you on Izaac?

Sean Wang: Yes, well, I think the ethos of the movie in terms of, especially the kids, is, again, being inspired by movies like Stand By Me and 400 Blows. When I think about those movies, the boys feel so real. They don't feel like movie kids. I was really looking for a kid that, again, like, felt like a real teenage boy and didn't necessarily have the feeling of like a trained, polished actor. All of the kids, with the exception of Izaac, they're all basically first time non-actors who had never even considered being in a movie before.

I think-- we did look at trained actors too, but it kind of dawned on me. I was like, "I think the kids who are right for this movie, these young kids of color who have probably never even considered acting, their parents are not necessarily signing them up for acting classes. It's like an industry that is so far removed for a lot of them." Izaac, though, was sort of the exception and he comes from an acting background. He's been in movies like Good Boys and Ryan the Last Dragon, and these sort of more like children's movies.

I think what we were trying to do is something different. It's a movie about kids, but not for kids. We actually found him at a time where I think he was kind of maybe a little, maybe considering taking a step away from acting because he wanted to spend his summer being a kid. He wanted to bike with his friends, and he wanted to go and hang out with his friends and not be on a movie set with a bunch of adults. Again, he wanted that lived experience of being a teenage kid.

I think when our movie kind of found him, he was sort of like-- we were basically asking him to completely shed all of the previous experiences that he had as an actor and bring that real irreverent teenage boy energy into it. Izaac, I mean, this in the most complimentary way, is both an extremely professional actor and understands what he needs to carry an emotional arc in a character, but he's also a real punk. He's a teenage boy and you can feel that sort of irreverence, which is something-- it's what the character needed and it's what I wanted. It was the best experience getting to work with him.

Alison Stewart: What was it like for you to have to wrangle all those teenagers?

Sean Wang: It was fun and also, again, that was the hope of the movie, was we get all these kids, and we gave them an environment to play. It was really, really, really important to me that whether this movie is good or bad, succeeds or fails, we're asking all of these kids to spend a formative year of their summer. Those summers between 13 and high school are the summers that really define your childhood and we're asking them to spend a month of their lives with us filming this movie. Again, they've never been on a film set before. They walk on a set, and there's a bunch of trucks and lights.

It's like me when I enter a skate shop when I was young. It's an intimidating situation to be in. It was really, really important to me, our producers, our whole team, that whether or not the movie was good or bad, that these kids walked away with a very, very special experience, that they could look back on this experience 10 years later and be like, "Wow, even if I never act again, that was such a unique and special time, and I'm so glad it happened."

We really went out of our way to make sure the experience was catered to them, but also, selfishly, I knew that if the kids are having fun, I think the performances are going feel so alive and electricity and something that isn't faked. We made sure that the chaos of the kids was sort of-- production was working around that, as opposed to the kids working around us. Sometimes we'd be in between takes, I'd be like, "All right, let's go again," we'd be like, "Where are they?" They'd be like in a field just so far away and it'd be like, "All right, guys, get back here." It was stuff like that where it was like, "You know what? Don't try to keep them here. If they want to go run around and play tag, let them be. We'll figure it out."

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about being a teenager in the 2020s that was so different from when you were that age after hanging around with these kids?

Sean Wang: They definitely have a different vernacular of speaking. The slang is a bit different, but I think the bet that I took with the movie that I do believe, is that even though the cultural context around being a teenager is constantly changing, again, like the Myspace and the Facebook and all the AIM stuff, but I do truly believe that the emotional weight of being 13 doesn't. You still feel embarrassed by your parents. You still are wanting to fit in with your friends. Again, the context changes, but the bet that I took with the movie was that those emotions and the irreverence and the chaos of boyhood doesn't.

It's why I can watch Stand By Me and 400 Blows and all these movies that take place and were filmed decades ago, but I'm like I see myself in those characters in that movie. I think these kids have never-- I wasn't trying to tell them like, "Be a teenager in 2008." What I told them was, "No, you know, what it's like to be a teenager more than I remember, what it's like to be a teenager, so bring your whole self into it." A lot of the work for me was actually like we did a lot of improv, and they would do a take, and they'd be like, "All right, bet." I'd be like, "Okay, that take was great, but don't say bet."

Alison Stewart: Can't say bet.

Sean Wang: Because that wasn't-- we weren't saying that back then. Otherwise, that energy, that irreverence, that's all them. That's all their real selves.

Alison Stewart: So you let them banter back and forth?

Sean Wang: Yes, so much.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Sean Wang. His film is called Didi. It's about a coming-of-age story about a Taiwanese-American teenager. It will be in theaters on July 26. Chris is at home with his mom, his sister, older sister, I have to say, and his grandmother. There's a lot of female energy in the household. How do you think gender plays into the dynamic of Chris, Chris and a house full of women?

Sean Wang: That's a very good question. I don't know. I hope the movie speaks for itself in that sense, what it's like to be raised in a house full of women and then all of a sudden walk out into the world and be thrust into this world of adolescent pubescent boyhood and what they're saying and the way they treat women as like social currency, the way that they talk about-- It's boyhood, but it's also the cultural standard at the time and the different ways that-- I really see this movie as a movie about shame and the different ways that shame can manifest itself in a young boy's life.

I think in our movie, it's personal shame and that personal shame, I think, has to do with that, his inexperience with certain things, whether it's-- I don't know if I could say this out right, like drinking or something when he's at an older party or with his friends and he's lying about his experience with girls and then cultural shame and societal shame. But I think all three of those come into play together. I think part of the first part of it is being raised in a household of women and not having that male figure to be like, "Okay, this is how the world works," type of thing and so he's kind of searching for that.

Again, his version of it is its older sister, and I think our version of the trope is normally the younger brother goes to his older brother's closet and tries on his clothes, but in our movie, he goes to his sister's room and tries on her tight skinny jeans. He's wearing her dress, and it's kind of like, "Okay, interesting." And see, I don't know if that answered the question, but--

Alison Stewart: No, that was great. I mean, also, because the father's missing in the story, we don't really-- his absence means something to Chris. What does it mean to him?

Sean Wang: I mean, we really looked at that as the creative challenge was can we create this character who has never seen or heard but always felt, who was sort of like a phantom? That was the way we kind of described it. And yes, I think, again, hopefully it manifests itself in the movie, what that absence does to a boy or something, and just sort of like the different ways that he looks to find, not even a male figure, but just a figure. He's always looking upwards and he's always searching for something, whether it's from his older sister or the older kids or wanting to fit in more with his friend group. I don't think that is the sole reason, but I think it's part of the whole experience of boyhood.

Alison Stewart: Your actual grandmother is in the film. She plays Nai Nai. It's not the first time you've worked with her. You worked with her on the Oscar nominated short earlier. How did you broach that conversation to have her in this film? What was her reaction?

Sean Wang: It was a conversation that was years long. It was just like for a couple years, I would just kind of joke with her. I'd be like, "Hey, you're going play the grandma in the movie, right?" and she'd be like, "No, I'm not an actor. We can do the short and the documentary, but I'm not an actor." Every once in a while, I would just be like, "No, but you're going do it," and she's like, "No, no," but she's like, "No," like, "You should do it." Then eventually, when we actually started to prep the movie, and we did consider other people, but it got to this point where I was like, "Well, no, I really think you might be great for this. You should do it." She was like, "Well, if you're that confident in me, if you believe in me that much to do it, and you think, I'll do a good job, I'll do it." Then we casted her and she did a great job.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Sean Wang. The name of the film is Didi. It's a coming-of-age story. Okay, so Chris meets a new group of older guys, they're skater bros. They take him under his wing because of his filmmaking skills. He really, really wants to impress them. Let's listen to a scene from Didi. This is Chris at a party, and he teaches a friend smoking a joint the right way to get high. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 6: Man, won't that [bleep] go out?

Chris: You should Wu Tang it.

Speaker 6: Wu Tang [bleep], like the clan?

Chris: Yeah, it's not [unintelligible 00:22:47].

Speaker 7: Yeah, you got that.

Alison Stewart: That's All Of It. My guest is Sean Wang. His debut feature film is Didi. So we're listening to that clip, and he really, really wants them to like him. Why? I know it's a silly question, but why?

Sean Wang: Isn't that what you were maybe like when you were at that age? Like your own--

Alison Stewart: I was studying.

Sean Wang: You were studying. I think you just do dumb things to not stand out. Then it's what I said before, it was like every time he goes out on a limb to do something that will give him a little bit more currency within a friend group or something, it ends up being completely out of left field. Again, that was something he does with his friends, right? You see it earlier in the movie. They made a video and it's like smoking a sticky note and his friends are like, "Oh, Wu Tang it." He does and they're like, "Yeah." Then he's like, "Oh, I know what to do in this situation to get a laugh, a cheer." He does it and everyone's like, "What the heck?"

Again, it's like you're just trying to figure out how to navigate certain spaces. I was not quite that self-- not self-conscious, but aloof, I guess, but Chris is. I think to me, it's very endearing because it comes from a place of deep insecurity, and I get that, but yes, it's hard to watch.

Alison Stewart: It's hard. There's hard parts of the film, hard parts with his mom, hard parts with his sister. I don't want to give anything away, if you had to [unintelligible 00:24:40] Chris is 13 in 2008, where would he be now in 2024?

Sean Wang: I guess the easiest answer is here at WNYC, but I don't know. I think I was very fortunate to have realized that the thing I discovered when I was in 7th and 8th grade is the thing that I just want to do for the rest of my life, different forms of it, whether it's storytelling, filmmaking. I still skate today. Those things that I discovered that were, for lack of a better word, passions, they still give me that same buzz today. I know that's not common for a lot of kids because for whatever reason, what you do for your hobby is not something you can always pivot into a career.

I would hope that Chris, whatever he's doing, that I think for every kid out there, everyone who grows up, the thing that you like to do doesn't have to be your career all the time. I hope that whatever he grows up into, he can hopefully be happy and be a well-adjusted human being.

Alison Stewart: Didi will be in theaters on July 26. My guest has been director Sean Wang. Thank you so much coming to the studio.

Sean Wang: Thank you for having me, Alison. This is really, really lovely. I really appreciate it.

 

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