Justin Lin isn't a car guy. Although he grew up in SoCal during the `90s, he wasn't into tuning, never owned a Honda, and the only battle of the imports he knew of was as an Asian-American growing up on the basketball courts in working-class Buena Park. So how did this relatively unknown director manage to take a movie franchise, that the core audience took to as well as Hamas did Hanukkah, and turn it around? He knows he isn't a car guy.
Unlike the directors before him, who created films according to their notions of what the tuner world should be like, Justin understood he was an outsider and created a film to respect the people in it (i.e., you and me). And after the experience, for a non-car guy, Justin has a deeper, more profound knowledge of the subject than most. With the film's April 3rd release date looming, Justin spared an afternoon during the editing phase to sit down with 2NR to talk about his opinion of the first two films, how passing on Macaulay Culkin changed his career, why drifting is a metaphor for life, the reason behind all the domestics in the fourth film, and how he's going to take the original cast and make a film both you and I can enjoy. Hey, if he can make Lucas Black and Lil' Bow Wow look convincing in an import, anything is possible.
Growing up in SoCal, how familiar were you with the tuning scene?Not at all. I grew up in Buena Park, CA and I was broke all the time. You were lucky if you had a car, so I wasn't really into the car scene. I was first introduced to it back in 1998 as a grad student in film school at UCLA. I was teaching a documentary film class and three students came back with all this amazing footage of tuned cars racing out in the desert. It was fascinating--the idea of import cars racing against American muscle and how it tied into Asian-American pride--I thought it would make for a great film and two or three years later The Fast and the Furious came out and exposed the scene.
What did you think of the first film?
I remember going to see it and it was a packed, the showing was sold out and the crowd was going nuts. But the one thing that really bugged me afterwards was... here was a culture that was cultivated by Asian-Americans, and all of them were the bad guys. When I saw all the raw footage from the student documentary, it was a form of empowerment I'd never seen growing up in SoCal. I mean, when you think of "Asian-American", it's all the stereotypes: smart kids, gangsters, broken English, etc., but for the first time, it felt like they had something of their own from a scene they built, and it was awesome. I didn't see that in the first F&F.
That was what actually bothered me the most about the first film. Here was something that, for the most part, started as an Asian American sub-culture, yet we were portrayed as nothing more than villains.
It's interesting, because you could have totally used it and had an Asian American character who isn't completely evil. Instead, they had Asians portrayed as typical Asian villains. And not only as an Asian-American, but as a film viewer, I felt a little insulted.
The worse part was the majority of the audience had just been introduced to this scene in that light.
I love basketball and it would be equivalent to, let's say, a basketball movie where the evil guys are all the African-Americans... that would make no sense. When I decided to do Tokyo Drift, having been really involved in sports and really loving it, I wanted to respect the people who really love cars and the culture. I would really hate if someone made a movie about something I love and disregarded everything I love about it.
How did you get into directing?
I tried different things and was far away from film. I didn't know anybody in Hollywood, but I loved basketball and seeing Do the Right Thing really opened my eyes. It gave me a sense that you could do something different, and that got me excited to try film. I applied and was fortunate to get into UCLA's film program.
I remember my first short film cost $4K and it almost killed me. I worked three jobs--the A/V department, the hotel, and a theater box office--but I loved it. Filmmaking was like basketball; as the director, you're like the point guard and you have to work together with your team to get the same vision across. I got addicted. But after my first film I was like, "Oh shit, how do I make a living out of this?" By then, I felt like I had practiced the craft enough and that's when I cracked out the credit cards and went for it.
And this was for Better Luck Tomorrow?
Yeah, I did it for $250K and went into huge debt, but it was my one shot. And I knew the chances of it hitting were next to zero--it's an all Asian-American cast and there were no stars, but making the movie and the issues it explored was something I wanted to do. I thought, "If I go down, I'll go down with this one." So I got some friends and we wrote the script and it felt like every time there was an obstacle, somehow we stumbled on the right choice. I remember the first potential investor we met--an Asian-American--who loved the script and was like, "Change all the characters to Caucasian and we'll get Macaulay Culkin and a million dollars to make it." I remember asking myself, "Do I change it completely into another movie, or do I take a risk and make it according to my original vision?" It's very liberating when you have nothing to lose, so I decided to roll the dice... and it changed my life. And so the lesson learned was that you can say "no". Just because someone flaunts money doesn't mean you have to take it--it served me well. We got into Sundance, got picked up by Paramount/MTV Films, and from that point on, studio opportunities were offered to me, one of which was Tokyo Drift.
Did you want to do Tokyo Drift from the onset?
To be honest, at first, I was a little weary of the premise--the imperialistic view of the White man coming to Tokyo and dominating the culture that he was visiting.