Episode 69: Law Chen
Season 2 Episode 68 Christine Yoo
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If there's a more innovative, surprising, enjoyable, and fun documentary than STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF (2023), I haven't seen it this year. It's no surprise all those attributes could be used to describe my conversation with its director, Law Chen.
In this episode, we discuss:
how he got involved in filmmaking as a combination of growing up in China and the United States;
how life in China influenced him today;
how the intersection of filmmaking and advertising provides him a "cheat code" for making films people want to watch;
how he takes a sledgehammer to normal documentary with STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF (2023), a "genre-bending, docu-fiction about an ordinary immigrant dad retired in Florida who becomes a spy for the Chinese police";
if there were people who didn't get the concept -- he finds that it is especially loved by "filmmakers and actors";
if hybrid documentary and docu-fiction is the future of documentary;
his thoughts on international film and when we get to global cinema rather than categorized filmmaking;
what Chinese indie filmmaking is like and whether he feels a responsibility to tell these unique unheard stories;
and how the immigrant experiences speaks to what he wants to accomplish in film. We conclude by discussing how he determines a feature versus a short ("if it's scenario-based, it's more of a short") and what's next for this groundbreaking filmmaker.
Law's Indie Film Highlight: RAGING GRACE (2023) dir. by Paris Zarcilla
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