How can we harness the power of story and narratives for good?

- Hello everyone. I am Chris Hyams, CEO of Indeed. My pronouns are he and him. And welcome to the next episode of Here To Help. For accessibility, I'll offer a quick visual description. I'm a middle-aged man with dark rimmed glasses. I'm wearing a gray T-shirt and a black pullover. And behind me is the North Austin skyline. At Indeed, our mission is to help people get jobs. This is what gets us out of bed in the morning and what keeps us going all day. And what powers that mission is people. Here to help is a look at how experience, strength, and hope inspires people to want to help others. At Indeed, we believe that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. And in 2021, we launched a new program called Rising Voices in partnership with Emmy award-winning writer, producer, and actor, Lena Waithe. Rising Voices started with a very simple idea. Instead of spending a million dollars on a big TV ad, what if instead we invested a million dollars for 10 underrepresented filmmakers to produce their own short films about the meaning of work? Next month, we are very proud to be launching season three of Rising Voices at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. And today, I'm very excited to introduce you all to one of the rising voices from our very first season. Johnson Cheng is a writer and director from the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles. His films have screened in competition at international festivals such as Tribeca, AFI Fest, and Toronto. Johnson is a recipient of the HBO APA Visionaries Award, the Princess Grace Award, and fellowships such as Film Independent's Project Involve. I got to know Johnson as he was chosen for the very first class of Indeed's Rising Voices. His extraordinary short, "Only the Moon Stands Still" is an incredibly moving film about the complexities of intergenerational families and work. It's a story of three generations of Chinese women confronting the realities of having to shut down their families' ballroom dance studio and bid farewell to a life that has defined them for so long. I'm also excited to share that as a direct result of his participation in Rising Voices, Johnson was invited to direct an episode of the first season of American Born Chinese on Disney Plus, which will debut on May 24th. This conversation was a perfect representation of the Johnson I have gotten to know over the past couple of years. He's extremely humble and deeply devoted to his community in the San Gabriel Valley. He has a clear understanding of the significant opportunities he has earned and is intentional about how he can put those opportunities to the greatest use for others. Johnson, thank you so much for joining me today.

- Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Chris. Such a kind and wonderful introduction.

- Well, let's start where we always start these conversations by asking how are you doing right now?

- Yeah, it's really nice to ask. I'm doing well. I think this has been a really busy week. I think the show is coming out soon, so we've been promoting it a little bit and we have the premiere, but grateful to be busy and excited for the show to come out.

- Fantastic. So we're going to dive in and talk about American Born Chinese, but let's start by talking a bit about Rising Voices. For the folks who haven't heard about it, can you tell us how you first got to be involved in the program and what it meant to you?

- Yeah, I think Rising Voices was, I think for me, it kicked off so many things in my life. It was an opportunity to make a short film that I had been wanting to make for such a long time. And from that short film, I ended up getting to direct a couple episodes of television. So I got my first opportunities directing professionally from there. Looking back now, it's been like two, three years, and all of us still keep in touch. So I also got like a really good community and family of filmmakers that we still support each other to this day.

- I'd like to congratulate you once again on American Born Chinese. It's an incredibly exciting opportunity and one that's directly tied to your experience on Rising Voices, and we'll get to that in a second. But before we dive in, let's play the trailer.

- You know, people love this. It's good for you.

- Right, this one looks like it's giving me the thumbs up.

- So, do you have a lab partner yet?

- Is there a Jin Wang here?

- Wong.

- This is Wayne Chun.

- Wei-Chen.

- He's a new student and he's Chinese like you. He's going to tag along to all of your classes.

- I found seats for us! Come on.

- Except math. He's way ahead of you in math.

- I just want to be a regular guy who does regular stuff.

- You made a new friend.

- I just thought this year was going to be different.

- I may be able to help.

- What's going on?

- I'm not from this world. I need your help with my quest to stop the uprising. The gate between earth and heaven is opening.

- Oh, okay.

- You must stop it or everyone will perish. The fate of your world hangs in the balance.

- I don't really see how I fit into this whole thing.

- You're my guide.

- Can we come up with something a little bit cooler than guide?

- Servant?

- Yeah, no, you're right, guide's better.

- It will be difficult and dangerous. Be the hero.

- What if I'm not though?

- Fate is not decided up there, but down here.

- So freaking unbelievable!

- Everything is more connected than you think.

- Huh.

- Yay.

- So just taking a minute to soak that in. That is a pretty amazing thing to be a part of. And I'd love to just talk about how this opportunity came about in this context. So Destin Daniel Cretton, who is the lead director on the show, was your mentor for Rising Voices. Can you talk about your relationship with Destin and how it developed during Rising Voices?

- Yeah, it's really amazing, I think. And he's been doing Rising Voices for the following seasons too while he's in the middle of preparing like two big Marvel movies, one of the Avengers movies, I think. He just has infinite time to help people and it really inspires me to want to do that in the future as well. At first, I had just wanted to shadow. Like I had asked him, I was like, I'd really love to shadow you on American Born Chinese. Like, I read about it and I think it's really cool. And he kind of one upped it a little bit and he was like, "Well, why not direct an episode?" And at that point, I'd only done short films and to do a season one show of a show like this is really, it's a really big leap and I think it took someone like him to trust that I would be able to do it to kind of give me that opportunity. When I got to set, I was really intimidated by just like the number of people, like definitely like there's like five times the amount of people on set, all of this equipment everywhere. And I was just like, I don't even know what to use a crane for. And he would just give me advice. Like he would say like, "Just focus on what's in this little rectangle in front of you." And I ended up getting to shadow him for the first episode too just to kind of see how he just operated on set. And it was just really cool to see like someone like him who just has such a like mellow and kind personality still driving a set and being a leader in that way.

- That's amazing. Well, the show itself, I'm among many other people super excited to see when it launches on May 24th. It's got a lot going for it. It stars the incredible Michelle Yeoh who's coming off of the success of "Everything Everywhere All at Once." And it seems like there's been a lot of momentum and maybe it's premature to declare success in representation for Asian Americans in film. There clearly has been a lot of new opportunity. And I'm wondering if you have thoughts on why some of these more interesting and complex Asian American stories are finally now getting the funding they deserve and the awareness and success that they deserve.

- Yeah, I think the proof is in the audience. I think we've been hungry for these kinds of stories for so long. And little by little as we get another opportunity and another project, the studios and everybody sees people want to see these stories, and they want more complex and more sophisticated stories. And I feel like I'm very lucky to kind of be at this point where I think all of these opportunities are coming at the point that my skill set's kind of developed right at this really special point 'cause I think any other time, those two things wouldn't have matched up. And then you sprinkle a little bit of people like Destin and having them give me that opportunity, it just all fuels it in a really exciting way.

- Well, it's really incredibly gratifying for us to see Rising Voices fulfill the sort of sub-mission. So the first mission was to really just tell a bunch of stories that help people connect in different ways to the meaning of work. But also, it was about, and this is what Lena Waithe and Rishi Rajani of Hillman Grad brought to it is really creating sustainable opportunities for the participants and not just, here's some money, go make a film, but giving you the mentorship, and the support, and the budget necessary that you could produce something that actually would lead to more work. And so you've had this opportunity with American Born Chinese. You also have had the opportunity to work for Lena and Rishi again and direct an episode of "The Chi," which as you pointed out when we were speaking last week, has seen the other Rising Voices filmmakers a part of. Can you talk a little bit about the experience of working on The Chi and what that was like?

- People like Lena, people like Rishi, they give us these opportunities and they're opportunities that take such a long time to get otherwise, you know? I think it can take like decades and you have to do a couple features before you get to do TV. And people like Lena and Rishi, they just tell us like, "We're going to give you these chances," and I think we trust that they trust that we'll excel in the way. It's just really special too. I think shows like The Chi because we're surrounded by people who we kind of came up with like Quincy and Deondray, they were the producing directors this season. So they had done an episode last season and then they got brought back this season to kind of be our leaders and to guide us. And they were in our Rising Voices class and I still remember the first time seeing them in person at the premiere of Rising Voices and just all of us giving each other a big hug 'cause that was during the pandemic and we hadn't seen each other in person. It was just all on Zoom. And then to just be sitting in those director's chairs like a couple years later and just being like, wow, like, here we are. We've come a long way in short time already. And then Boma, Stacy, I think there's just a really great family of people on that show. And because we had all gone through this and kind of grew up and came up together, we support each other and help each other out.

- One of the other sort of foundational ideas behind Rising Voices, and certainly from our perspective, the world of work is large and complex and it's as big as humanity as a whole, but a lot of the way that ideas and stories are presented tends to be through a similar lens. And one of the things that Lena said that really stuck with me was that it's really important to sort of see the world through everyone's eyes. And so can you talk a little bit about how you think about that in terms of the opportunity to tell stories that are meaningful to you personally?

- Yeah, I think telling stories like the ones that I like, especially in my short films, I think there's this element of proximity for those. I made all of those in places that I kind of was so familiar with growing up and I just wanted people to see what it was like to experience. I think these places that maybe they normally would never look at or to kind of go into. And I think for shows like American Born Chinese and The Chi that are so culturally specific, they let people into like these rooms, like kind of like let them in and let them see like how it is to walk in our shoes. And I think that's really special. It's a really special thing for us to be making those things too 'cause we can bring like a specificity to them and to kind of make it so that we're not just kind of like collecting shots. Like, we're kind of letting people see how our life is, letting people just like feel a little bit of how it is to be like in a restaurant that we shoot in or to kind of be celebrating a certain cultural tradition or ritual. And I think that's a really unique and special opportunity.

- So one of the themes of Here to Help is really about how individual experiences shape what people bring to to their lives and their work. And you grew up in San Gabriel Valley and grew up loving movies. Can you talk about how that place impacted your view of the world?

- Yeah, the San Gabriel Valley is a really interesting place. I grew up just around several different languages and I think all of us were always trying to figure out why we didn't see that represented on the screen in so many ways. It's kind of the place that I decided to just make my films and to be a filmmaker because it's a place that kind of nourished me for such a long time.

- So when you had this opportunity to then direct an episode of American Born Chinese, somehow you convinced the team there to let you film some of that in the same area as well. How did you go about doing that and what did that mean for the community? I mean, it's one thing for you to do a short, small film there. it's another thing for a big production like that to come into the valley.

- Yeah, that was a really interesting thing. I had read the script and I remember there was a scene that originally took place on set in the house for the family, and they were basically having a dinner and then there's a karaoke scene that's happening while there's a fight scene outside. And I just thought, well, I think if a family was taking someone out to have dinner or something, they would do it at like one of these big Chinese banquet restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. And had discussions about like where we would root this show. And I think in the end, I was like, well, if this is rooted in a place, I think they settled on Altadena, which is it's in the San Gabriel Valley. I was like, it kind of makes sense that they would drive a little bit south to go to one of these restaurants. We ended up shooting in a restaurant and it's a restaurant that I had gone to before as a kid. And there's all these like parts of the restaurant that I'd just been so familiar with. I was like, okay, well, there's got to be like a part of the story where they go through like this like underground thing in the restaurant and they go through this like back alley. And I was like, well, I know exactly what that would be and it's very specific and unique to that space. So it was really cool and I think again, it's like people like Destin and the showrunner Kelvin to just be like, yeah, that makes sense, let's shoot it there. And I think because I ended up shooting in that restaurant, a later episode, Destin had to come and shoot his episode there. And I was like, well, the decision to shoot here ended up causing this big Marvel director to come and shoot in the San Gabriel Valley, which is really special. And because we're shooting there, we get to cast locally too. We're also catering locally and this is a big Disney show. Like even though with the short films like we're bringing a lot of jobs and stuff and opportunities to the area, I think doing it on like a large scale for a show like this is really special. And I think once the show comes out and people see it, they're hopefully going to be like, oh, I wonder what that restaurant looks like in person and they're stocked to go and bring more business there too.

- For anyone that hasn't had a chance to see "Only the Moon Stands Still," I highly recommend you check it out. You can find it at indeed.com/RisingVoices. Go to season one there. But I'd love to hear in this context of bringing sort of the unique lens of your experience. What is different or what are some of the differences you think in the Chinese American experience of work in America?

- Yeah, I think specifically now, especially in the San Gabriel Valley, work is so unique. Like a lot of these places, like when I was shooting the short films here, work and life are so closely tied together. Like, the ballroom that I shot at, there was like a little area where they would go to sleep. And the restaurants too, there's like a little place nearby that everybody would go sleep after. And I remember a lot of the like most precious memories I had when I was young was just sleeping wherever my parents worked just because they would be working there for so long that I would find places to sleep. Like whether it was like they were at a barbecue restaurant, I would just take one of the stalls, like one of the little booths and sleep there. Or later when they worked in an office and they started selling like computer hardware, like I would find like an empty office and sleep there. I think here, you can work and I think just kind of get by with just speaking Mandarin or speaking Cantonese. That was my parents' experience. Like they never had to get completely fluent in English in a lot of ways I think. I think even though they were able to find ways to work that way, it was one of those really special things where here, you can kind of still maintain like a life just like speaking your native tongue and find work that way.

- This podcast originally started in April of 2020, very early on in the pandemic. And one of the things that was going on in actually, in some of the first episodes, we were talking about the incredible sort of rise of anti-Asian, Asian-American xenophobia in the US around, specifically around the sort of untruthful narratives around COVID. And one of the things that I think is interesting is sort of the power that storytelling has to counter those narratives. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you think about storytelling and its ability to sort of reverse maybe some of the perceptions that people have about people and communities that they know nothing about.

- Yeah, I think the hope is that when people see or just like hear about hear stories and like watch shows and movies and stuff that we're making that are coming from a very specific, and honest, and like earnest place, that they'll be able to see the characters and just see them as like these three dimensional people with hopes, and dreams, and fears. And hopefully that'll smash any kind of stereotype that they have. I think, I don't know how anybody can watch something that we're making that's specifically telling the stories of these people and not see them as like whole people. And I think that's the dream to be able to do that. And part of the reason I wanted to make stuff here, I think me making stuff in this place that I grew up in, the San Gabriel Valley, is inevitably going to be me making like Asian American stories just because that's kind of the experience of this area. And I think by doing it in a way that is very honest to the places that I'm shooting at and we're involving local people from the community and telling these like very complicated and nuanced stories about these characters, hopefully just, yeah, people will see them and then want to go there in person to see for themselves what it was like.

- I think we've done a great job of sort of digging into how rich this environment is. What I'd love to do is, before we get ready to wrap up here is just take a minute and for the folks who are watching to show the trailer for "Only the Moon Stands Still," so people can actually visually see what it is that you're talking about. So if we can pause and run that quickly.

- They're at the shoe repair. The green ones? Does she need them tonight? Okay, I'll be back by the next song. Can you take the light?

- I can't stress how much I love this movie and it's actually a really amazing trailer because you get a pretty good sense of the style of the storytelling itself. I think often with short films, because you have such a short time to tell the story, people feel like they have to cram a whole lot into it, but your story feels like it has a lot of space in it. In the trailer, you can even see there's no hurry really. There's these sort of generous long shots that are incredibly beautiful but actually bring you into the space a lot more than if you were seeing like a lot of quick cuts. And I'm just curious was that a hard thing to do to have these really long takes while you're trying to tell this story in a really short period of time?

- Yeah, definitely. It's tricky in the sense that if something goes wrong during the take, you have to redo it again. And so there's a lot of little technical things. I find that if I sit in a shot longer, I'm able to have more of a sense of real life in it. And within that shot, it's like a constant like challenge to see like how far can I take this and then how much can I put into it, and how much can I also leave out in a way? Like, if I only limit myself to like a pan in a certain direction, then what I'm not showing on the other side of that camera is as much of a part of the story as what's in the front of the camera. And then I think this one was an exercise in also just like letting the audience fill in the gaps too and creating like almost like a bit of a trance 'cause when I was in that space, I would just be in a trance when I was watching people just like dance. Or I'd see someone standing in front of a mirror looking at themself like trying a dance move and I would just want to look. So I think this was also like a challenge in like figuring out what the magic and power of like just looking is.

- Yeah. It's just really beautiful and powerful. So please, if you haven't seen it, go to indeed.com/RisingVoices season one and check out "Only the Moon Stands Still." Before we wrap up, I would love to hear, and I'm sure other people would like to know, what else are you working on? What's ahead for Johnson?

- Yeah, I think now, I've done short films and done TV and the next thing to do is feature films. I've had a couple features I've been slowly working on throughout the years, and I think at this point, I've found a couple that I'm really excited about. There's one specifically that's like an action, it's a bit of an action family drama. And having worked on American Born Chinese, now I can comfortably say that I can do stuff like that and know how to handle something that I think it's both exciting and then you have a bit of the family aspect of it as well where you have these characters that are complex but they're also doing these crazy fun martial arts things that are going to be really exciting for people to see. But yeah, I think mostly that and continuing to make films here in the San Gabriel Valley, I think I'll keep doing that as long as I can.

- Johnson, thank you so much for joining today and sharing your experience and your inspiration. And I'm super excited for the launch of American Born Chinese. Can you tell us which episode is your episode?

- Yeah, episode five. It's a really fun one. I'm super proud of it and you'll see, for people who watch the Rising Voices short film, you'll see a lot of connections between that and the episode even down to the song. There's a big karaoke song that is sung by the same singer in that scene in my Rising Voices short film song. And it's just one of those things that I kept trying to put as much as I could into the film. That also was an episode that we shot at a restaurant that was just a couple minutes away from the ballroom. So it's all connected and I hope you all enjoy it.

- Amazing. Well, season one, episode five of American Born Chinese, mark your calendars for May 24th. Johnson Cheng, thank you so much for joining me today and thank you for everything you do.

- Thank you so much for having me.