LEE ISAAC CHUNG

Published Mar 9, 2021, 12:30 PM

Fresh from winning a Golden Globe for his semi-autobiographical film, MINARI, Lee Isaac Chung is my very special guest on LOVE SOMEONE today. A soft-spoken and deeply insightful man, Isaac tells me how the story honors his grandmother, who he felt was largely invisible figure during the very formative years of his youth. Minari, a common plant grown abundantly in their native Korea, symbolizes the restorative influence his grandmother had on his family... But I don't want to get ahead of myself or give too much away about this beautiful, and brilliantly cast film.

Listen in, and then, when given the opportunity, watch Golden Globe winning, Minari! ~ Delilah

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Hi everyone, Hello, my friend, Hello, Hello, Hello, Welcome to springtime almost springtime. It's great to be back with another episode of Love Someone. I have an incredible guest today, and I know you're going to be super touched impressed with him. It's screen writer director Lee Isaac Chung. The media world has been buzzing about this gentleman. He wrote and directed the semi autobiographical film Manari that was based on his life his upbringing in rural Arkansas in the nineteen eighties after his family immigrated from South Korea. I watched the special screening of the movie with my older girls even before it was released in February, because that's one of the great perks of doing what I do on the radio, and we were all touched by it. It was one of those films that leave you thinking about the movie, thinking about the characters, thinking about the scenery, thinking about the connections within the family for days. I am excited to be able to spend time with Isaac talking about his work. This is a special privilege and I'm looking forward to sharing his story with you. We're going to do that just as soon as I tell you a little story about the sponsor that makes this podcast possible. Our podcast sponsored today is the Home Depot. They have been a part of my radio program and now this podcast for a very long moment. My favorite part of their store is, of course, the Garden Apartment. Have I spent a little money in there over the years, A little, Oh my gosh. I love the Garden Department. I love the Home Depot, And they have a new way for you to stay connected to them and the things you need for your home, and it's right on your phone. They've made their app super friendly and very easy to use. Download it for free and just for fun, take a picture of something in your house and let the app tell you how you might upgrade that item and all the options available to you. That's just one of a hundred ways they're making life convenient for you the Home Depot. How doers get more done? Hello, Lee, Isaac Chung, Welcome to Love Someone with Delilah. I'm so excited to get to talk to you because I got to actually see your film a couple of months ago. They sent me a screener to watch it, and I watched it with my teenage girls and we didn't stop talking about it for days. So that's that's a good sign when you got teenage girls twelve, sixteen, and sixteen asking questions and engaging in meaningful conversation. And there was no point in the movie that I felt like I had to say close your eyes, close your eyes, plug your ears. That pleases me to no end. When people are watching this together with family, especially young people, that that's just wonderful to hear from me. It was a sweet movie, and there's all these funny connections. My kids and I moved down to my husband's cattle ranch quinn covid Hit. We were living in a community, not a big community, but a community before we left, and then we moved out in the boondocks on a acre cattle ranch. And I think they all sort of had the same response to that move as the children the characters in your movie Minori had when the dad drove them out to their new home, their glorious new home in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas. Yeah, it's the shock of the senses to be kind of placed in the whole other world. I feel for us. My dad didn't really tell us that you were going to do that, so that's that was an added shock for all of us. I know it's sort of autobiographical. Did he really load you guys up in a station wagon in California and just add east to Arkansas? Well I kind of dramatized that a bit to heighten it, because we were just coming from around the little Rock area of Arkansaw and we loaded up in a moving truck and my dad said he had found this place. And we showed up and um, it was basically outside of the city limits of the town of about people and all we could see our tall grass and we couldn't see our neighbors, and um, yeah, and he said, this is home. So that part was true. And was the character that played the mother in the movie, was that truly Your mother's reaction was she like, no, ay, and hell, are you dragging us out here? We're going back to the city. You know. I heard a lot of conversations that my mom had that were along those minds, but as a kid, I it never really dawned on me till later how difficult that must have been for her, Like I really had to get married myself and understand the relationships and how, you know, decisions should be made and all these different things. Um, and just looking back I kind of have a better understanding of why she she was feeling that that way. When I was a kid, I loved showing up there on that farm and seeing a house on wheels. That thought that was the coolest thing. My family, my mother's side of the family, are all from Missouri and Arkansas, no kidding, They were farmers there. My grandparents migrated from being farmers in Arkansas to working in the forest in Oregon. So after World War Two, my grandpa packed up my grandma and my mom and my grandma's sister and her Emily, and moved them to the Oregon coast to work in the timber industry. But they had been farmers not that far from where your movie was set, so it kind of felt like a family connection there. Oh, that's that's so neat to hear. I think that farming was starting to get kind of difficult around the time that we moved over there. I wonder if that's what drove your family to head out west. My grandpa was in the military and he was stationed on the West coast, and he fell in love with the Douglas furs and the Sequoias, and so when the war was over, he went and packed up his family and kind of like the characters in your movie, He's just like, Okay, we're going west. And Grandma had no clue where they were going, how they were going to support themselves. Um, but they headed west and they made it work. Yeah, I mean, that's a that's amazing. I kind of feel like this film has immigrants from Asia in it, but I genuinely feel like this is really story about Americans. This this is something that happens to the families all over, you know, that sort of feeling of departure, moving and ultimately families trying to stay together. One of my best friends, Kim, is from Korea, and she was so excited when we started talking about the movie because she is intimately familiar with most of the actresses and actors in the movie. And she said, the woman that plays the grandma is quite famous in Korea. She said she is a dynamic woman that everybody respects because she doesn't take any guff. Is this true? Yeah, I'll put it this way. When some people in Korea found out that we were working with Junia John, they sent a message over to our production team to please be careful with her because she's our national treasure. That's the words, kim you. She said, she is a national treasure. When I told her I got to speak with you, she said, oh, please tell her how much we love her. We love her, We love her like uh, you know, like the kind of reverence you would give a mother, Teresa or something. She was just so thrilled that I got to talk to you, because you're connected with her. Yeah. You know what's so interesting about her is it's not just her acting, which is incredible, it's it's her whole personal narrative. She kind of started back her career in her forties as a single mom because she just wanted to support her kids, and that the way in which she she worked so hard and she sacrificed for a kid, and she got into acting and took whatever role she could get. Um, she ended up kind of symbolizing the spirit of a lot of these these mothers who are doing so much work in Korea. UM. So she's really a hero for lots of people. And according to my Kimmy, she also has done wonderful humanitarian things for people, especially moms who are downtrodden. So she just really applauds her. So thank you, Thank you. Thank you for everything, all the thought and all the love that went into your movie. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you. And I gotta thank you John for for being in this film to be honest, and the little boy that plays you. Yeah, that that boy was a miracle fine for us. Uh, he'd never acted before. We kind of had about three weeks to sign that guy. And we had this casting agent who was hanging out in front of Korean schools and churches and handing out flyers and and finally we stumbled upon this kid from a casting call we put out in San Francisco and he was just seven years old than we did this film. Um, he's a lot cuter than I am. Oh my gosh, he's adorable. And uh he played it so authentically, like you forgot within two seconds of watching the movie that you were watching a movie. Uh. He kept us all honest. Even Stephen Gunn, who plays the dad. He he would tell me, I can't lie in front of this kid. I have to be completely honest because this kid will call me on it because he just stays in his role. He stays true to being that kid. Um. It was so fun to work with him every day. On set. So I have a farm. Farming is damned hard work. How did your family make it? How did they how did they survive? Because it's really hard work. And when you have to decide between you know, water for your household or water for your plants. Yeah, you know, farmers are my favorite people. I just feel like, um, they're doing such incredible work, the feeding people and their business people that they've got the intelligent their scientists and they're completely down to earth. Um, we've been there. We we had that struggle with farming for a number of years when I was a kid, um and my dad transitioned into doing bo medicine and that's ultimately what we had to do to financially make it because farming itself proved to just be be too difficult. I think we had a hard time in the eighties with it. I think a lot of these smaller farms we were going away at that time. But to anyone who's like, spill out there farming, um, I mean, hats off, hats off, no kidding, we're doing it, but we, like I said, we don't depend upon it. We do it more as a hobby. Now, tell me about Minari. Where can I get some minari seeds kim He says it is delicious. I went on online. I can't find any minari seeds in America, and I've got a creek bed to plant them on. I don't know. I gotta get you in touch with my dad. Then somehow he he grew all the minari in our our film, So he actually grew all the nady that you see. Um. I don't know where he got the seeds for that, but you can come to l A even and find it in the supermarkets. But yeah, that's that's a good question. I don't know where to actually get it. You could go to Korea as well. I could invite you over there. I would love that. Kimmi goes every two years. Her brother still lives there. She has two brothers actually that lived there. So she goes every two years and spends a couple of months and she comes back with the most amazing red peppers for kimchi. We eat we kimchi every day. She makes me care Rabbi kimchi and pickle kimchi. And today we went and picked wild greens because we love to pick o sari. And so today she made kimchi out of last year's vegetables like broccoli and stuff that overwintered in the garden. So we went and picked all the leaves and today she made kimchi that for me. But she said there's no place to get manari here where we live. Yeah, it is kind of especialty item. Um, it's even I have trouble finding it here. I'll be I'll be completely honest with you. When I was a kid, I didn't like eating it. It's the name of the film, but I felt like it would tasted very strong. But but nowadays it's kind of like almost like cilantro or a bit of a more spicy, sharp flavor that you add two different dishes and it it takes really good. So for for my listeners who might be thinking about renting the movie finding the movie, uh, tell them why it's called minori and the significance of that plant and how it all kind of ties it together because it's so beautiful. Yeah, thank you for that. Um, it's it's honestly very personal. Um. My grandma when she came from Korea, she basically came with the sole purpose of just watching me and my sister because my parents both had to work and we had a farm, and my grandma decided she's going to plant this seed down by the creek bed where nothing really grows, and um, that was Menari and I just remember always going there with her and she would tend to it and pick it while I would sing songs and throw rocks at snakes. And that's something that you see in the film. And when the farm was ultimately struggling, we still found that what my grandma planted down there was the only thing that really took root and thrived. And I felt like it symbolized a lot of who she was as a woman. Um, the plant itself, you planted in places where the soil is dirty, and it will clean up the soil. And if if the water is dirty around it, if it's known for purifying the water too. And that's just kind of the presence I felt she had in our lives. Um. So, as I was writing the film, I just felt like, it's it's got to end with that image of that that boy and his dad picking me nutty together, because in my heart, that's kind of the way I want to be living life, if that makes any sense. I love that As a seed collector and a plant collector and somebody who every time I go to somebody's house, I like, can I have a start of that? Can I have some of those seeds? I was so touched when the grandma brought the seeds from her homeland, and just the relationship that developed between between you, the little boy that is you and your grandma. Silly, funny, beautiful, just beautiful. I appreciate that. I just felt like I wanted to Something that's been so special is that people are really talking about her and this role of Unya jong and Uh. I kind of wanted to make visible somebody who was largely invisible when she was with us. Um. So I've just been so pleased that she's being remembered in some way. Well, I love Manari. I hope. Well. I haven't tasted the actual Minari, but your film Manari? How do you say it? How's the proper pronunciation? Um? You know, if you say Minari, that's a lot of people on set say that, and that's that's and is Korean? We said, nay, almost there are is almost like a d Manati. Okay, Manati, your Dad's got to get me some of the seeds. And I want all of our listeners especially. It seems so appropriate right now as we're going through these challenges with COVID, as we're trying to adjust to a new normal, whatever the hell that is. And this film, like I said, I watched it with my girls and it just it resonated with us for so many different reasons. When we first when COVID first hit, I took my in laws, who are actually my outlaws because they're my ex husband's parents, but I care for them. We took them with us, and there were nine of us in a twelve hundred foot house for six months, because they're elderly and most of my children nor medically fragile, so I wanted to get them away from, you know, a populated area where they would be safer and we wouldn't have to be pair annoyed all the time. And I saw the same sort of beautiful relationships developing between my children and Healed and Miguel, who are immigrants from Costa Rica, and that same sort of generational you know, the obstacles because we live in such different worlds, but the way that our family jelled during that time was such a precious gift from God. And I think that's why it resonated with the girls and I so much. That's so wonderful to hear. I was hearing this person commenting on what's happening with COVID that in some ways we're in a new land. All of us were in a new place together. We're so journing and in that way, I feel like that's the immigrant story, and we're all living out that story where we're with our families and trying to navigate this new place. Um. So yeah, bless you in that. It's so great to hear that the story resonated with you. Well, thank you for Manati. I encourage everyone to watch it, especially if you've got sons and daughters still at home, teenagers, young people. It's a beautiful, beautiful movie, and I promise you will talk about it for days to come, like we did. Appreciate that. And I want some of that kimchi that your friend that sounds really good. Oh my gosh. Yesterday for breakfast, I had a little bit of rice, two eggs with the yolk nice and running, and three kinds of kim chee in my blow, almost like bab im pop, but just kim chi. Kimchi, kimchi Kimchi. I was in heaven. It's so good. Yeah, all right, you have a great day. Thank you so much. All right, thank you so great talking with you. Alright. God bless you, Bube bye, God bless you. As I mentioned when I was introducing my wonderful guest today, the writer and director of the semi autobiographical movie Minati, I was able to preview it with a special screening link some weeks back, a couple of months ago. The girls and I, my teenage girls and I fell in love with it, and we obviously weren't the only ones because it just won a Golden Globe award. I don't know the criteria needed for such an honor, but I can tell you why we loved it. As I mentioned just now in my conversation with Isaac, when coronavirus restrictions were first enacted early last year, my family and I relocated to a really rural area. We took off and we went to my husband's organic beef ranch. We had to find our footing and finding our way, especially for my kids, has been really, really challenging. That was an experience that was very relatable to the Ye family. The family pictured in the movie who moved from California to a farming community in Arkansas to try to make a better life for them. Elves I also found myself musing over the hardships the Ye family faced as farmers and the Ozarks, and wondering what the similarities and differences between their experiences and my ancestors who farmed there for generations before my grandparents migrated to the Pacific Northwest in the nineteen fifties, what the similarities might have been. We talked about having to choose between water for personal use like cooking or drinking or bathing, or water for crop irrigation because there wasn't enough water for both. That, for example, is probably something they might have had in common. Feeling like outsiders in a tight knit old timer's community is something they would not have had in common. But what we really loved about the film we love the incredibly rich and nuanced relationships between the characters, between the husband and the between the sister and the brother, especially between the grandchild and grandmother. That for me, that was my favorite part of the movie. The way they illustrated the tensions, the tenderness, the tenacity, the complexity of love and the power it has over our lives. The casting in this movie absolutely brilliant. I normally don't ever quote or even read from promotional statements that I've been sent, but the one for Manati is so spot on I'm making an exception. It reads. Manati is a film that touches the heart in so many places. The film has its fair share of adversity, but its message throughout remains to always bear in mind the importance of family, love, humility, and staying optimistic when times are rough. As Philippians four six tells us, don't we're about anything. Instead, pray about everything, tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. I couldn't have said it better myself. Manati is in select theaters now and available on demand everywhere. You don't want to miss it, and you don't want to miss any of my podcast either. Join me next time on Love Someone with the line up

LOVE SOMEONE with Delilah

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