The following is an auto-generated transcript of the Brazn Azn podcast Episode 25. It also includes affiliate links that do not affect the price you pay, but allows me to recoup some of our costs. Please excuse any mistakes or misspellings as we do not have the time nor bandwidth to edit.
Show notes
In this episode of Brazn Azn, hosts Stella and Virginia welcome rising Korean American actor Ezra Justin Lee, who shares his transformative journey from growing up as a pastor’s kid to finding his authentic self in Hollywood. They discuss the challenges and triumphs of reconciling cultural heritage, family expectations, and personal ambition in the entertainment industry.
- Short film “Pastor’s Kid”
- Not demonizing our fathers
- Authentic Asian representation in media
- Differing beauty standards
- Self-love and self-acceptance
Follow Ezra on Instagram.
Watch the trailer for “Pastor’s Kid” here:
Listen to Brazn Azn Ep 25
Transcripts
Stella: [00:00:00] Hi Brazen Nation, this is the Brazn Azn podcast. I’m your co host Stella.
Virginia: And I’m your co host Virginia Duan, also known as Mandarin Mama. I’m the entertainment editor for Mochi Magazine, which is the longest running online Asian American women’s magazine. I’m a freelance writer as well as an author.
I have two books out, “Illusive” and “Weightless.” if you like very messy, messy people angst, found families, stories about recovering from trauma, sexy times, all set in a K-pop background, these are the books for you.
Stella: Today we have an awesome guest with us. We have Ezra Justin Lee joining us today. Say hi, Ezra! Hey!
Ezra: Hi! Hey, what’s up? It’s funny when you do auditions You usually have to say your name and then your height, so I almost did that. I was gonna be like, hi, my name is Ezra Justin Lee, six feet tall, non union, SAG eligible, located in Los Angeles, [00:01:00] California.
That almost came out, but I stopped at Ezra Justin Lee.
Stella: So just to give you some background on our guest today, Ezra Justin Lee is an actor who was born in and currently resides in Los Angeles. He’s been acting since 2020 and has performed in roles ranging widely from goofy comedic relief to anxious nerd to self reflective lead and beyond. He’s trained at UCB for improv and he has a non visible visual disability.
In past lives, he’s worked in Michelin starred kitchens and restaurants and as an Indie folk rock musician.
Ezra: Thank you so much for having me on the show. I am not a long time listener, but I am a medium time listener. And so far I’ve really enjoyed it. Something that I wanted to do was call out the audience.
Thank you for listening. I don’t know who you are, but I love you. And thank you for being here. And then for you two. Thank you for having me. Something that I noticed that you do is each episode is kind of like this love letter to different Asian American creatives [00:02:00] and I think that’s so beautiful.
So I’m so honored to be here.
Stella: Yay! Virginia’s gonna cry, look at her.
Ezra: That’s my goal. I’m just gonna keep saying like really nice things until you cry.
Virginia: Ah, don’t do it, I’ll run away.
Stella: So, Ezra, you have a short film premiering at the Disorient Film Fest in March, yes?
Ezra: Yes, that’s correct. So I
Stella: Yes.
Ezra: Oh, yeah.
Do you have anything else to say?
Virginia: Oh, no, no, no. Please promote yourself.
Ezra: Okay, here we go. My name is Ezra Justin Lee. I’m six feet tall, located in Los Angeles. I am an actor. You can’t see me, so you don’t know, like, my phenotype and stuff. But I’m Asian American. I’m Korean. Heritage. I made a film recently with some friends. It’s called Pastor’s Kid. But don’t worry, it’s not fucking boring. I, mwah, I’m biased. But we got into this film festival called Disorient, which is an Asian American film festival in Oregon.
And they’re gonna stream it. So if you’re on the West Coast, you can [00:03:00] stream it. And Hawaii starting March 10th. Until, like, basically the end of the month, March 23rd. So there you have it. Oh, we’re also in Minnesota Film Festival, which is exciting. So if you’re in Duluth, Minnesota on March 21st, you can watch it in person.
And there’s another film fest coming up, but it’s not public yet. But when it’s time, I will announce it. So it’s very exciting.
Virginia: Where can people follow you?
Ezra: Oh, people can follow me on Instagram. My Instagram is @EzraJustin.
Virginia: So the blurb for your short film, Pastor’s Kid, is when Joseph returns to his recently sold childhood home, one last time to gather the remainder of his belongings, he is faced with a decade old traumatic memory and must persevere to rediscover joy and heal.
You both starred in and executive produced this short film. What drew you to this project?
Ezra: So there was like this YouTube video that I was like, kind of sort of obsessed with. It was Margot Robbie playing the role of, who’s the fucking crazy ice skater, Nancy Kerrigan, or Nancy, oh no no no, Tanya, [00:04:00] Tanya Harding.
Tanya Harding, Tanya
Stella: Harding. For that film, I
Ezra: think it was a trailer, I don’t even know if it was actually in the movie, but it was just a trailer. And she just like stares at herself in the mirror, and you just watch her putting on makeup, and eventually like you see her like falling apart, and it’s, it was just so moving.
I watched that trailer like, I think, 15 times. And I decided I, I want to do that. I think it’ll be so hard and it’ll be so challenging and so fun. So that’s where I started and I worked backwards. What that also meant was that I had to mine the traumas of my life for stories to identify some context where it would make sense for me to cry like that and to maybe even put up makeup.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to go very far. I have a pastor father, so I have plenty of traumas and fucked up shit. My friend also has a pastor father, and so it is actually based on a pastiche of our real life experiences and pains. But, I think the [00:05:00] other part of it was like, we didn’t want to be too self indulgent either.
Like, it can’t just be trauma, and shitty shit, and look at us. It has to be entertaining, it has to be fun, there has to be a little bit of joy and lightness. So there’s a lot of things, but maybe we can get to this at the end also. Is there was this other dimension of, like, I’m not queer. My, my director is queer.
But I’m not queer. And so I felt very conflicted, like, oh, I also don’t want to co opt this, this trans or queer kind of story about cross dressing, and then, being traumatized. But then I realized, wait, but that’s my story. How am I co opting this? So we ended up making it.
Becca wrote the story, my company helped finance it. I think that answers your question, right?
Virginia: Okay. So the director, Becca, wrote the screenplay based on both of your.
Ezra: Yeah, I made a very, very shitty first draft with my friend, Grace, [00:06:00] who’s an associate producer.
And thereafter, Becca was like, Oh, let me massage it. And she rewrote it 16 times. At that point, we decided it made more sense to make her the writer. Because when you write it 16 times, it’s like you basically wrote it now. And as a result of those rewrites, she also incorporated her own experiences because she’s queer, she’s a pastor’s kid, she’s also Korean American.
And so it’s like an intermixture of the compendium of our experiences with our Korean American pastor father. But, another thing we just wanted to be very careful about was not demonizing our fathers. We didn’t want to make it a demon fest, like, Oh, fuck this guy, fuck yeah, we hate him. Cause it’s like, no, it’s not about that.
We actually care about our fathers very much. Even though we disagree on 99 percent of things. So, we, we tried to strike this balance. At the end of the day though, we had to pick a side for certain things and we did. But, yeah, we tried to think [00:07:00] about things as much as possible. And try not to get cancelled along the way.
So, I don’t know. Yeah, good luck on that, we don’t know.
Stella: Life goal.
Ezra: Yeah. Jury’s still out.
Stella: So Virginia and I watched the screener for this. We were so excited to see it. And for me, I think one of the most striking things about it was how tender it was in it’s treatment of all the characters.
I loved every dancing scene. Incredible. So fun. So much joy. But I was really, I mean, when you go into it, knowing that it’s going to be about like a Korean American or Korean Americans and pastor fathers as a fellow Korean American who grew up in the church, like that’s a very, it’s a really singular experience, right?
Like, there are just some things about, I think, being a PK and about growing up in the church as a Korean American that a lot of people can relate to. And so I went into it with this mentality like, Oh, that’s probably going to be really upsetting.
Ezra: Yeah. You’re not wrong.
Stella: But it was really tender and it was so [00:08:00] compassionate in a lot of ways.
So I really enjoyed just not having to brace myself for the trauma. Because that’s not what’s happening.
Ezra: That’s good. Did you feel like your body tightened up? And then release. Was that the kind of experience that was part of it too?
Stella: You know, I think I just went into it like, okay, we’re going to see what’s happening.
And I really enjoyed the way it was shot. So like, shout out to the crew and the director, your director of photography. I was like, oh, this is lovely. I’m really enjoying how this is moving. Because that’s something that I really enjoy looking at in films is basically like how did they construct the shot?
What were they thinking? What are they trying to convey here? Yeah, because it’s such a visual medium right like
Ezra: or like how do they want the camera not to show up in the mirror? And stuff like that, right?
Stella: Yeah, it’s fascinating.
Virginia: What?
Stella: Yeah. And so, in the beginning, I was kind of more looking at where the piece is gonna land.
And as the story went, I was like, Oh, oh, okay. Like, you know, we’re digging into this mystery of what happened? The thing I love about short films is you’re [00:09:00] delving into this mystery because you have such a limited amount of time to reveal the story and it’s not always fun to have a story told straight through.
Ezra: Mm
Stella: hmm. So it’s always interesting to me how people construct the narrative.
Ezra: Yeah, especially as concision is a big point of it. Yeah.
Stella: Right, right. But it was so fun. Virginia, what did you think of it?
Virginia: I, I texted him right after I watched it because that’s what I do. And I was almost in tears at the ending.
I was really surprised at the ending. I don’t want to spoil it. But it felt both unresolved and resolved at the same time. It was a surprising ending and I liked it. That’s great. And I was glad you guys chose to end it in that way. It’s so vague. But you can’t, like, give away the ending.
Stella: We promise it’s worth it to watch for just the ending. Yeah, it’s about
Virginia: 20 [00:10:00] minutes long, I think, right? Like 17?
Ezra: Yeah, roughly, that’s right. And at the end of the day, especially when it comes to short films, a lot of the credit goes to the director because ultimately they do a lot of things. And that was especially true of this case.
It became Becca’s story, it became Becca’s baby, and so, yeah, hopefully she hears this. I can relay the good news to her.
Virginia: Yeah, shout out to Becca. Yeah, great job. One of my other favorite scenes was Joseph’s scenes with his sister.
Stella: Yes.
Virginia: It was, it was so, so Great. I hope that my children can be that way for each other, you know what I mean?
But yeah, I just really loved those scenes of them together. Like Stella was saying, it’s very joyful and very accepting and very sweet and
Stella: But also a very real sibling relationship, right? Yeah.
Virginia: The shit talking was great.
Ezra: Oh yeah, that’s it too.
Stella: Like, [00:11:00] oh yes, yes, that is really how a sister would respond.
Ezra: Exactly. For your audience, a little bit of context. So Joseph, he just, he’s present day, he’s older, he’s professional, he lost his mom. He goes back home to, like, collect his things, but as he’s going through his things, he’s remembering stuff, and one of the things he remembers is hanging out with his sister, and they have a dance scene, and they dance to K-pop.
So that’s what we’re referencing. Eventually, some shit happens, and I don’t want to say trauma, but it is kind of traumatic, and some conflict comes up with his dad, and that’s the crux of what gets explored through the meat of the story.
Virginia: Oh, oh, please tell us how you got Marshall.
Ezra: Oh yeah, you know Marshall.
Virginia: Marshall is I think one of the few out gay
Ezra: Yeah, he’s the first.
Maybe not the first gay, but like first openly gay K-pop star. And he’s a friend from childhood. We went to the same church for a short while. And so I actually just reached [00:12:00] out and I asked him like, Hey, we’re making this shitty movie. You wanna put your awesome music in it? Make it less shitty. And he was very kind and he let us use it. So, one of the songs that we use is his song. And the other song I actually wrote, which is my version of K-pop. Or like, old school K-pop. Yeah.
It’s actually a very sexy song. But it’s actually about communion but it just sounds sexy because K-pop’s sexy. But if you listen to it, you’ll see like, oh, I get it. Like, your body, yeah, sexy, but also Christ. You know, eating. Yeah, fuck. So.
Stella: Incredible.
Ezra: Yeah, so all the prudes would like it, all the weirdos maybe will like it. It’s like, it’s a good mix, you know? Just spray the target audience, yeah.
Virginia: I put your wafer on my tongue.
Ezra: Oh, God.
Stella: Deceased. That was good. That was
Virginia: good. Oh, no, but that’s so cool. Cause I think you had texted me. You’re like, [00:13:00] how do you know Marshall?
Ezra: That’s so funny.
Virginia: And I was like, and I was like, I don’t, I wouldn’t say I know him. Well, I just became acquaintances with him on Clubhouse. There’s that app again.
Stella’s always making fun of me for all my friends through Clubhouse. He’s the I think he’s A& R for Tiger JK’s company and what else yeah, he does a lot of the visual directions for Bibi’s MV and all their people on their label.
Ezra: I think he’s doing like some management too.
So I’m really happy for him. It seems like he’s making moves like in a good way. But,
Virginia: but it’s so cool that he, you know,
Ezra: it was very cool. I was very thankful. I guess on the topic of K-pop. It’s interesting because I realized like, Oh, I’ve asked Virginia in the past for K-pop tips, which is funny because she’s not Korean, I’m Korean American, and I’m asking this foreigner, hey, tell me my culture, but in the previous film that I made, it was actually just a horror film, it was just me running away from this [00:14:00] guy who’s fucking killing me, and it involved,
Virginia: No, it’s so good, the screenplay is so good.
Ezra: It involved K-pop though, and so that’s what I asked Virginia for help for. And I realized I didn’t actually ask Virginia for K-pop help. For this one, but it also ended up involving K-pop and K-pop was really important for my prep and stuff for both But yeah, so there you go. K-pop. Can’t get away
Stella: Speaking of K-pop.
Did you listen to K-pop growing up? Especially as like a Korean American in LA?
Ezra: Absolutely not. I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage, Alaska is pretty white and by pretty white I mean like very white not even like plurality white. It’s majority white and Wait, you didn’t know that? You didn’t know that?
Virginia: What?
Ezra: No, okay. You also probably didn’t know because I updated my IMDB. It doesn’t say I’m from Alaska anymore But I grew up in Alaska mostly white and it was interesting because when you grow up in a place like that you don’t just conform, you want to conform. Like you do it intentionally. And so there are parts of yourself that [00:15:00] internalize that subconsciously, but there are parts of it where you’re like, Oh, this is what I now desire.
I desire people who look like this. And I also desire a culture that is the opposite of mine, that smells not like mine, that doesn’t sound like the language I speak. And so, for a lot of those reasons, it influenced my aesthetic and my desires when it came to music taste. That’s a big part of it.
It’s also like, maybe the music just wasn’t as good. Now it’s amazing, I think, just subjectively. By other kind of dimensions. But at the time, there was a lot of shame involved with even trying to like K-pop. So, I didn’t like K-pop. And actually, can I share a really quick anecdote? So it was actually for the first film, not for this one, but the same kind of demons came up.
I was preparing for the role, and basically in the first film, my character was dating this white girl who had a K-pop fetish, and she wanted me to dress up [00:16:00] as Jungkook. And I’m like, who the fuck is Jungkook? Fine, I’ll dress up for you. And so, as part of that role, I had to listen to BTS a lot.
That’s why I was like asking for your help, obviously, you. So I, I was listening, but it was weird because I would be listening to Butter, and driving down in L. A., and like all these fuckboys and Kardashian lookalikes around me, and I’m like, bawling in my car listening to BTS and they’re like just like staring at me like what this fucking 30 something year old weirdo Who’s why is he crying?
That’s not cool. And so I was like, yeah, why am I crying? This is a very happy song. It required a lot of self reflection But once I did stop, once I did breathe and I connected some dots, I realized oh, it is a happy song. That’s not why I’m sad. I’m sad because this is what I used to believe. I used to believe, like when I was a kid, what my parents, what my aunties would say, that I was good looking.
That I was beautiful. That our food was [00:17:00] delicious. And that our music, it’s good. And so, listening to this music, by people who look like me, who sound like me, who speak like me, who eat the food I eat, Just like, wait, you’re beautiful? Are you fucking telling me this whole time, I was also beautiful?
Are you fucking kidding me? So all those guys, for like 30 fucking years, who were like, saying my face is flat and all this blah blah blah, they were fucking lying? This is like after my double eyelid surgery, so fuck you guys, you ruined my life, ruined my face. But, yeah, I realized that, and it was, it was a really important moment for me because I, I don’t know.
I want our audience to know that. I want you to know that. That we were always beautiful and cool. You like BTS and now you’re realizing that too. But we always knew that. I always knew that too. And actors are so self indulgent. We are so self serving and we’re so self important. We think [00:18:00] acting is so profound.
It’s not. But, one thing that’s really wonderful is self discovery, and that was a really important moment of self discovery for myself, but also for people who have been through that same kind of shit. So, thank you for listening.
Stella: I was going to say it’s like that viral post.
Are you ugly, or are you just a person of color surrounded by white people?
Ezra: Jesus Christ, is that a thing?
Virginia: I mean, I guess it is.
Ezra: Wow. Let’s take a moment to just grieve that and unclench our tight, tight assholes. Wow.
Stella: I was gonna say that I think there is this real process of grief for a lot of people who grew up in communities that ostracize them for being different, right?
Like there’s, there’s this realization that other people the people ostracizing you weren’t going through this. Yeah that some people got to just have people who looked like them and affirmed them.
Ezra: That’s right. That’s right. [00:19:00] And I Think a lot of people wonder how like the short films are created, but this is part of it When you learn these things about yourself and your culture it whether it’s intentional or not It just comes out because it’s inherently part of not just your phenotype the way you appear But, it’s part of your brain, it’s part of your life experiences, it’s part of your imagination.
And so these things are coming up in this Passer’s Kid short film. That, oh, my character realizes they’re also beautiful. And someone was telling them that they had to do something else to be beautiful, but they’re actually quite beautiful.
Virginia: There’s a scene where Joseph’s looking in the mirror and putting on makeup over a scar.
Ezra: Yeah.
Virginia: And I just, it felt very, I, I really hate symbolism in movies and books. I’m just like, Jesus, how pretentious. But, but it felt really symbolic.
Stella: Did you really just say [00:20:00] you hate symbolism in a visual medium?
Ezra: And then someone uses words like symbolic, like letters.
Virginia: No, I just mean like when people are like, when Okay, the example is Great Gatsby, because I hate the fucking Great Gatsby.
Stella: Are you thinking of the billboard with the eyes? Because that’s always my, like, that’s my go to example for people.
They’re like, how does symbolism work? I’m like, the billboard with eyes.
Virginia: No, the, the fucking green lantern. It’s
Stella: just the color, like, honestly, it’s the color. It’s the
Ezra: color.
Stella: Color green. Yeah. It’s Daisy’s eyes. It’s money. Yeah. Oh, that was good.
Ezra: Wow, profound. Okay.
Stella: And this is what Virginia hates. She’s like, no, I’m running into this shit. Tell me, tell me why you hate it.
Virginia: Because, because when I was younger, I was super into it.
Like, oh, let’s try to, make our writing as opaque as possible. Yes. At the time I was like, Oh, you can hide all these cool things in it and people can find it. And but as I got older, I was like, that’s just stupid. Just say what you mean.
Ezra: Yeah, [00:21:00] no, no, I think I kind of understand what you’re saying. But I guess to bring it like full circle and to also respond to your previous point, symbols help us make sense of what seems otherwise very arbitrary, right?
I’m just driving home, red light, who cares, I got home. Or maybe I’m driving home and I didn’t make it home and it was very scary, something happened and it changed my life. These symbols, these categories, which we have to construct for ourselves, they help us understand and process trauma and pain. I think that’s what it’s for and it can be, and maybe the colors are salient. Therefore there’s often a color qualifier to these kinds of memories and symbols. But when it’s artificial and inserted and just forced, it sucks. I get it. I see what you’re saying. Yeah.
Stella: It feels contrived, right? Yeah. Yes.
Virginia: So my friend is a film composer and he says how sometimes the actors are bad, so he has to provide emotional [00:22:00] heft through the music. Right? So like the director and the editor will cut it emotionally and make the best of it. But he has to provide emotions that the actor could not emote. Yeah, that’s
Ezra: right.
Virginia: So sometimes I say it like that.
Ezra: And you mean like functionally bad, not like morally bad, I think.
Yes. Oh,
Virginia: right.
Ezra: Yes. Yeah, that’s, that’s part of the art form too. You have to work with the level of your materials. Because I’m not a perfect actor. I’m not, even though it was based on parts of my life. It was very hard. I also admit, like, I wish I did and performed better in certain spots, but that’s also part of it.
Like, you have to fuck up to get better, and you have to accept that and be free and be okay with that, to have the self discovery that makes it worth it.
And then you’ll enjoy it
Virginia: do you, do you like watching your past work?
Ezra: No, actually, like, even listening to you talk about my work, I was like, where’s, it felt like I was stabbing [00:23:00] myself with a knife.
I was like, This is terrible. Just, and I was like smiling, acting like I was fine.
Virginia: See, you’re an actor, good job.
Stella: It’s the worst feeling. Sometimes when I listen back to our podcast, I’m like, Oh no, I can’t do this. Virginia, Virginia loves it though. She, Oh.
Virginia: I’m obsessed with myself. I don’t understand why you two don’t fuck with yourself as much.
Like, every time we listen to podcasts, I’m like, Oh my God, my voice is so great.
Stella: While I’m like, cringing, like, it’s an excruciating experience. I’m like, just kill me now.
Virginia: Never. No, no, we’re so stunning. I’ll be like hunting for quotes because I had to do social media for my whatever.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s something I wrote, like one of the novels or our podcast or whatever. I’m just like, and then I’ll just get pulled in by my sheer charisma and talent. And I’m like, 20 minutes later, I finished my book again. And I wrote [00:24:00] this book. Why am I reading this? Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with me?
Ezra: That’s beautiful.
Virginia: So, yeah. I think, I don’t know if it’s beautiful, but it’s something,
Stella: it’s something to aspire to.
Ezra: I aspire to that. Your level of self love and confidence. And I also understand Stella. I think I’m more team Stella at the moment, which is stab yourself with a knife because people are complimenting you and it feels terrible.
Virginia: Oh, I don’t like it when people compliment me. That I don’t enjoy, so like your nice words at the beginning, I enjoyed it, but also I wanted to
Stella: hide, die,
Virginia: disassociate.
Ezra: On that note, that note though, it, like the evaluative nature of art, it’s so tied with the consumeristic thing, the capitalism thing. I think Min Jin Lee, the author of Pachinko said this, where she was saying, That the generation above us, they were focused on survival.
So they’re so fixated on pragmatic stuff, making money, becoming a doctor, becoming a lawyer. But our [00:25:00] generation, we’ve had that one step above survival. So now we’re more interested in meaning and creativity. But, it’s really hard to divorce the two when you’re always thinking about money and what it means to survive.
Cause that’s still very much in our baseline thoughts.
Virginia: Yes. Oh, I had a question about executive producing. What does that mean? Oh,
Ezra: It’s a vanity title and it can mean as little or as much as you wish. For me, it meant doing a lot of project management work, which I didn’t want to do, signing checks, schedules, things like that. So clerical things, administrative things.
When shit breaks, ultimately the buck stops with you. So there were some things that happened on set where shit was figuratively exploding And while I wanted to be more in the moment and preparing for my role I had to go and fix things So that’s what an EP does [00:26:00] But it can really vary. It can be like Brad Pitt Like you just put your name on Minari and then watch other people work and get you an Oscar So it could be that So it could be fine I don’t know, but that’s my experience
Virginia: Dude, Minari was so good.
Ezra: It was good. It was good. I feel like Koreans have a monopoly on like Asian trauma stories. We’re very good and we’re very fucking sad. Like Minari, SAD, Parasite, again sad, capitalistic shit. Old Boy sad revenge, that’s not sad, it was funny! That’s
Stella: amazing! Actually, so speaking of Parasite though, it’s been five years since it swept the awards.
Do you think it’s made a change at all in how people perceive Asian American film and media?
Ezra: Maybe this kind of harkens back to the story I was sharing previously, which is, my dudes, we were always beautiful, thank you for realizing. And like, yeah, Korean barbecue always was good. You just Tried it a few years ago, and [00:27:00] you realize that too.
Congratulations. That’s partly how I felt, but I also feel torn because all these stories that are award winning and catching fire from Korea are about basically social inequity, about capitalism, and how it fucks over people in very real and painful ways. It’s about poor people, and it feels very exploitative that we’re using these poor people’s stories and their suffering to make rich people richer.
So it seems perverse. For example, I’m also thinking of Squid Game, right?
Stella: I was gonna say, yeah.
Ezra: It’s so part of the Korean ethos at the moment, and the experience of being Korean, like, being sad and wanting to leave, and it’s so hard. So maybe that’s me being more Korean, because now I love it, being Korean I hate it.
But I felt both things when I saw Parasite win. A lot of the Hollywood friends I have in Hollywood, the actors, [00:28:00] the Asians, we were also hoping that it would lead to far more acting roles for Asian people, far more Asian stories, and it helped for short term, but I think it was a slight bump and we’re seeing a regression towards the more traditional types of looks, which I don’t know.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s what’s happening.
Virginia: So one thing I do notice is that like, for instance, with the rise of K-pop, the Hallyu wave, for instance, like with Parasite or when BTS wins all these Billboard Awards or performs at the Grammys, all these things.
I’m like, that’s great. But they are Korean. They’re not Korean American. Right? Like, and I’m happy for Asian representation. And I would really like Asian Americans to sweep the awards, you know, to your point about thinking it should bring more Asian [00:29:00] roles, right?
But these movies were made in Korea. Right? Like, it’s still people who are in the majority making these stories. It’s not Asian Americans making things, you know? And again, I’m not saying one is better than the other, but they’re definitely different experiences.
Like Minari, Minari is an Asian American thing. But and you could feel it, right? You could feel it. So to your point, I don’t know how much Korean films or Asian films influence necessarily Asian American films. Like when Crouching Tiger was nominated for all those Oscars and stuff, that was cool because who doesn’t want to see wuxia stories on the screen?
Right? And well done, you know, but that was a very different feeling than when Everything Everywhere All At Once was sweeping.
Ezra: Yeah, that was beautiful. That’s a good point.
Stella: That’s one of the complicated things I feel about [00:30:00] Asian representation in mainstream media.
The perception of us as perpetual foreigners is deeply, deeply tied into the white American conscious. And so it’s much easier for them to accept Asians from Asia and celebrating pop culture or films or art from Asia in a way that they can’t with Asian Americans. Like they just kind of refuse to see us as Americans.
Sometimes they just refuse to see us as humans. Like, frankly,
Virginia: it’s true, though. I hate to bring it always to BTS. But so BTS fan fiction, right? I read a lot of it. I read a lot of it. But people would put BTS Would write them like a straight up Americans but set it in Seoul.
They’ll be like they’ll be frat boys But they’re in Seoul, but there are no fraternities in Seoul. They’ll be smoking weed. You’re not smoking weed in Seoul because that’s a federal fucking offense, you dumb shits. Like [00:31:00] what are you doing? Basically they just it was yellow face, right?
They took some white kids and then set them in Seoul. So there’s no accounting for culture, no accounting for different laws or whatever, because they couldn’t conceive of Asian Americans, because the stories they told were American stories, but just with BTS. My dudes, why can’t you just make them Korean American.
Stella: I mean, we’re here. We already exist. Yeah,
Ezra: that’s right.
Stella: And as Ezra said, we’ve always been beautiful.
Ezra: That’s true. And also your aunties and your moms have said that. I don’t know about your dads, but yeah, they’ve been saying it.
Virginia: I’m pretty sure none of my family ever said I was beautiful.
Oh! They were wrong, because they have, they’re highly vision impaired.
Ezra: Yes, they were exactly wrong. I will say this, you’re both beautiful. You bring up a really interesting point, and I think aesthetics like it touches on a few things. One is like the importance [00:32:00] of culture as it informs aesthetics.
It’s very different when it comes to aesthetic sensibilities in Korea for what’s beautiful, masculine, and or feminine. And then across the pond, in America or even in the west. Secondarily, I think another thing you’re getting at is this idea of fetishism, because where fetishism becomes problematic is when you start dislocating things from their culture and you just commodify things or use them and exploit it for your own purposes, and that’s what you’re talking about about these stories.
That’s that’s the problem. It’s not that you have this chow mein in Virginia called yaka mein that was then adopted by the black community and then mixed with Worcestershire sauce and all this stuff and now is part of the culture It’s just like them pulling it out of nowhere, moving all the Chinese bits, and then treating it like whatever the fuck they want as a commodity, and only that.
So that, I, I get that. I guess to like kind of return to the first point though, which is really interesting, and something that I [00:33:00] picked up talking to other actors in Hollywood who are Asian American, is that if you look at the ones that blow up, and who are on these big shows, a lot of the Asian women, they don’t have double eyelid.
They have single, like, monolid, especially the Korean ones. And when you look at that, it’s really interesting because a lot of the commentary I’ve been hearing from my Asian American actor friends is, oh, in Korea or in like Asia, they wouldn’t actually be considered beautiful, but they look exotic to white audiences and therefore they’re placed as Asian and then vice versa, you wouldn’t see that in Korean.
Centered media or Asia centered media. And so that’s like a microcosm of the way the aesthetics diverge and the way we think about what Asian ness is and how it manifests. It’s, it’s very confusing. And I think that’s what you’re saying. It’s very confusing and we want to see ourselves represented in a meaningful way.
There, there’s some like content that’s coming out more and more like American born Chinese, the brother’s son, girl’s trip, which is really cool. I love it. [00:34:00] Most of it.
Virginia: Deli Boys. Deli Boys. Everyone, go fucking watch Deli Boys.
Ezra: I’m excited about that.
Virginia: It is.
Ezra: Yes.
Virginia: It is. It is the best thing I’ve seen all year.
Ezra: Yes.
Virginia: Other than Ezra’s short.
Ezra: No, it’s okay. It’s
okay. The short is not really like, a ha ha, or like for fun. So,
I get it. No. Deli Boys.
Deli Boys.
Virginia: Deli Boys. Fucking fantastic. I loved it more than I loved the brothers one. Oh, wow. And I love the brothers one. Wow.
Ezra: I’ll have to check that out.
Is that on Amazon?
Virginia: It’s on Hulu. It just started today.
Ezra: Yeah, for sure. Excellent. Can’t wait.
But yeah, sorry, that was a long point. But the point is it’s very confusing. And I also hope we see more representation of people who are at the actual intersection and not just one end of the exotic kind of imagination of what Asian looks like.
Virginia: Did you take in any account the things that we just talked about while you were storyboarding or when you write or when you produce these [00:35:00] films that you’re in?
Ezra: Because for Pastor’s Kid, the story was a pastiche of our direct experiences and it had to do quite directly with The culture, Korean American culture, and K-pop, and being Korean in America, it was inherently part of our stories, and therefore that translated into the script quite naturally.
It wasn’t like an intentional insertion, it was just something that happened organically. Yeah.
Virginia: That’s what I love about For Us By Us.
Ezra: We wanted to add an extra scene at the end where they’re just eating quietly. Because that’s, I think, what would have happened. Yeah, you would have just ate and you wouldn’t need to talk.
And it’s like, not fine and it’s fine, but you’re just eating.
Stella: It’s the plate of cut fruit.
Virginia: Yes, I was just going to say it.
Ezra: It might be peeled, but maybe not because the mom’s not there anymore.
Stella: I was going to say, yeah, there’s no, there’s no mom to pass.
Ezra: Exactly. Exactly.
Stella: Korean pears to you.
Ezra: But the food, so [00:36:00] important.
Virginia: Oh. Oh, this leads us To one of my favorite questions that Stella always asks or not always, but we’re starting to, we’re going to do it. What are some of the best parts of being Asian American or Korean American?
Ezra: I think that’s really hard. Part of my self discovery that I’m learning through acting, through creating, through telling stories is to love myself. Again, I’m more team Stella. There’s a lot of self shaming and that inner parent kind of criticizing. But to learn to really love the fullness of who I am means accepting my otherness, my alterity, my Asian ness, the shape of my eyes, the shape of my face, so my phenotype, but also the way I smell and the way I move through space and relate to people.
One example is I had a hard time accepting compliments, and I realized it was a result of being [00:37:00] conditioned to be modest as part of my culture. But now, because I’m aware of it, I can accept that and know it’s not just me being a little bitch, or having low self esteem, which I do sometimes, but it’s also, now I can choose that, oh, I can accept this compliment.
And I also agree, I am wonderful. And I am beautiful. And so are you, so thank you, I see you as well. It’s a process. It’s hard. Koreans are so classist. So, we also think we’re the best Asian. Which is like, not necessarily untrue. But, it’s, it’s, it’s It’s like the first instinctual answer that I have when you’re saying what’s the best thing about being Asian and I think well Koreans have the best fucking blah blah blah blah blah, which is not true.
Like I actually don’t like Korean food that much but
Virginia: What? You know what? I agree though. Don’t cancel me. It’s it’s
Ezra: whatever. Yeah, I
Virginia: Also, jjajangmyeon should not be sweet.
Ezra: Yeah, I Agree, [00:38:00] I agree It’s public capitalism like corn fructose shit and extra sugar But I like Japanese food. Yeah,
Stella: oh, Japanese food is also really sweet.
Yeah,
Ezra: but they have a lot of salt.
Virginia: I also don’t like Japanese food.
Ezra: You don’t like it? It’s like objectively delicious, according to science.
Virginia: I hate teriyaki sauce. Okay. I hate it.
Stella: That’s not, I mean, they don’t use that a lot in most Japanese food.
I mean, I don’t mind sushi and I don’t mind things that are not.
Mm hmm.
This is probably because I grew up in an area with a lot of like Japanese restaurants that have like
Ezra: Where did you grow up?
Stella: I grew up in Torrance.
Ezra: Oh, that’s like the third little Japan town. Awesome. Very good in L. A. Yeah. Very good.
Stella: So many Koreans. So many Japanese Americans. I, it was, it was really neat to be able to grow up in that kind of environment.
Ezra: Yes. Okay.
Stella: So I, I grew up listening to K-pop and watching K dramas in the 90s. And then when I went to college, I was like, Oh [00:39:00] no, I’m done being Korean. I don’t want to do this anymore.
Ezra: Did you only have white friends and white boyfriends?
Stella: No, no, no. Chinese Americans. I’m not going to hang out with white people.
Ezra: I was going to say, oh my goodness.
Stella: In Southern California? No, no, no. So I hung out with other Asian Americans, but I didn’t go to like a Korean American fellowship and all of that. But all of the other Asians were obsessed with Korean media. Huh. And they would be like, you’re not into it. And I was just like, well, I was four years ago, but I’m done now.
That phase of my life is over.
Ezra: Wow. That’s so weird. You were weird.
Stella: So I listened to first wave K-pop like pre first wave K-pop because I’m like this is the 90s, right? Yes, so 92 to 97, maybe 98. We’re kind of the years where I watched more Korean dramas and listen to more Korean music.
Yeah, so and then I got back into K-pop partially because of Virginia and BTS.
Ezra: Cool.
Virginia: You’re welcome.
Stella: And so, like, everything in between though. People are like, oh my god, Big Bang is so amazing. I [00:40:00] missed all of that. I’m sorry. Girls Generation means nothing to me.
Ezra: Oh, so sad.
Stella: Right? But I’m just, but early K-pop?
Ah, that shits my jam.
Ezra: Oh, yeah. Like, is Rain early K-pop? Or is it more like G. O. D?
Stella: No, like, G. O. D. ‘s Hatteji there were a bunch of, like, 1TYM, there were a bunch of bands back then. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Alright, yeah. S. E. S.
Ezra: Wow. Oh my gosh. Old.
Stella: Old.
Ezra: I’m acting like I know. I’m like, oh my god, Deep Cut. Okay, but deep inside I’m like, what the fuck are these letters?
Stella: Which is fine, it’s a little before your time, you know? Yeah,
Ezra: yeah. But how do you feel about K-pop and K culture now, especially because it’s been popularized and like, you see that shit at Trader Joe’s now.
Stella: Yeah. I think it’s been really fascinating to watch the Hallyu Wave. We did an episode or two on this actually for the podcast.
Just, one of the weirdest things [00:41:00] about it is recognizing that a lot of the export of K-pop and Korean culture is an intentional choice by the government to try and raise Korea’s soft power, to make us palatable internationally. But also to spread the gospel of Koreans, right?
Ezra: The best!
Stella: Koreans, right? Koreans in Korea, they’re really obsessed with themselves. Exactly. And so, on the one hand, it’s like, cool, so many more people know about Korea, right? On the other hand, I feel like there’s this really mistaken understanding that Korean pop culture is the same as Korean American culture.
Virginia: Yes.
Stella: Right? And like, they’re, they’re vastly different. And the other thing is, Korean pop culture is not a great representation of Korean culture, either.
Ezra: Yeah.
Stella: Right? Like, if you were to watch films set in high schools in America, you might have the Misconception that that is what going to high school is like in America, and it’s not that that’s not that’s not how it works.
Ezra: Correct. Correct. Exactly. [00:42:00] But the conflation of Korean and Korean American
Stella: Yeah, so it it’s really cool and exciting. And on the other hand, I’m like, this is a commodification, and again, it’s intentional. This is an export created by the Korean government. That’s not to say the films are intentionally planned by the Korean government, because Parasite would not have gotten as big.
But, you know, it’s complicated.
Ezra: It is complicated. There’s always money. There’s always political power. There are weird forces at play that are exogenous to what we can see and know. So we don’t really know how the sausage is truly made, but we can try certain things. And maybe this ties back to your question previously, Virginia, about how PK, the film, is about being Korean and Korean American.
It wasn’t intentionally that way. The way we made the story is, we first asked a few questions, like, what’s a story? A story is usually a person realizing something. [00:43:00] And so we started from there. This main character, Joseph, realizes something through these experiences, and then we work backwards. So that’s how we made the story, but because, again, the inherency of his character and his cultural heritage, there’s conflict between his Korean American ness and his standards of his aesthetic sensibilities and so forth, and then his father’s generation, which is very focused on pragmatism, survival, propriety.
So there’s that collision. It wasn’t intentional. So it was hard to answer that question, but that does happen, and I hope it’s helpful for audiences to see that, because one of the points of the work is, like I want to be famous, right? I want to be rich. But I also know that can’t be the only thing, and I’m okay with that now.
I’m doing it, I want those things, and those are not the primaries. But the primary, what the primary thing is Is that when people see this, that they feel perceived. That your experience, [00:44:00] that it didn’t just happen, but that we recognize it. And that therefore, because we recognize it, it’s important.
It’s a thing. It has a name. It has a feeling. It has a texture. And therefore, I hope you can go and proceed from this pain, or this sadness, or this transformation and live more beautifully. That’s the kind of place we’re coming from. And sometimes it involves being Korean and Korean American. And unknowable, sometimes nefarious sources.
Exogenous, you know, hands. Whatever.
Stella: So I think this brings us to our last question, which is the question we’ve started asking all of our guests. So Virginia and I have talked on the podcast about how we’ve evolved and changed over the course of our lifetime and how we’re in the process of always becoming.
And so we kind of like to ask our guests, how do you feel about who you’ve become and who you are becoming?
Ezra: Part of how I prepared for the crying role, there’s a crying role in [00:45:00] Pastor’s Kid. Cause, you know, the inspiration was Margot Robbie crying in that mirror. How I prepared for it was, I would imagine my child version of myself. And I would be so mean to him. I would be so mean to him. Or, I wouldn’t even really try.
I would just spend time with him and find myself criticizing him by default. It was really sad and painful. It was part of what helped me get into that kind of art, the mood, so I could like be actually sad. But as I was feeling those feelings
Like in real time, I was also processing a lot of kind of painful things like, oh, why, why am I upset at this kid? He’s so cute. He’s so innocent and smushy and nice and he’s so smiley. He’s a good boy. He’s a good boy. He’s a good boy. Eventually I came to love him and I gave him a hug.
He really liked that but I realized It took me some [00:46:00] thinking to get to this place where I could hug him and not criticize him, where the anger I was feeling for that younger me was from a place of recognizing how oblivious he was His decisions that he would make or even things that he didn’t choose to be but he was It would cause me so much pain in the future, which is me.
So looking a certain way and therefore being perceived as sexually or just generally not formidable. And how that would play out in my life. What that would mean for my decisions and how it would be very painful. That’s just one dimension. But there are just a lot of permutations of that.
I’ve come to terms with the pain and the sadness. And I’ve accepted them because they’ve made me more reflective and more beautiful. And more extensible to other human beings, which is a different type of beauty. It comes back to this idea in theology. It’s called a theodicy. Theodicy is our attempts to answer the question of why a good god would allow suffering.
I think a lot of stories, a lot of art are an attempt to answer that because [00:47:00] without conflict stories are boring. And so we insert conflict or we have to have conflict and then we have to work through that. So as a result, we end up with these like little pieces of art that are kind of answers to that but also not.
And with this film, with this letter to my old self, I was also saying thank you, and I see you, you’re so strange and you’re so beautiful. You will also cause me so much pain for things you choose and for things that are just automatically a part of you. So thank you. It’s like all part of that.
Stella: So, Brazen Nation, if you’d like to check out this film, Pastor’s Kid, again, it’s premiering at Disorient in mid March, so take a look. I was your co host Stella.
Virginia: I was your co host Virginia.
Ezra: And I am still Ezra Justin Lee, six feet tall, located in Los Angeles.
Ezra Justin Lee headshot photo credit: Mark Daugherty
Behind the scenes movie stills photo credit: Harry Xingyu Chen
Comments are closed.