Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Hello, my friend, Hello, Hello, Hello, Welcome to
Speaker 1: springtime almost springtime. It's great to be back with another
Speaker 1: episode of Love Someone. I have an incredible guest today,
Speaker 1: and I know you're going to be super touched impressed
Speaker 1: with him. It's screen writer director Lee Isaac Chung. The
Speaker 1: media world has been buzzing about this gentleman. He wrote
Speaker 1: and directed the semi autobiographical film Manari that was based
Speaker 1: on his life his upbringing in rural Arkansas in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties after his family immigrated from South Korea. I
Speaker 1: watched the special screening of the movie with my older
Speaker 1: girls even before it was released in February, because that's
Speaker 1: one of the great perks of doing what I do
Speaker 1: on the radio, and we were all touched by it.
Speaker 1: It was one of those films that leave you thinking
Speaker 1: about the movie, thinking about the characters, thinking about the scenery,
Speaker 1: thinking about the connections within the family for days. I
Speaker 1: am excited to be able to spend time with Isaac
Speaker 1: talking about his work. This is a special privilege and
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to sharing his story with you. We're
Speaker 1: going to do that just as soon as I tell
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Speaker 1: the Home Depot. How doers get more done? Hello, Lee,
Speaker 1: Isaac Chung, Welcome to Love Someone with Delilah. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to get to talk to you because I got
Speaker 1: to actually see your film a couple of months ago.
Speaker 1: They sent me a screener to watch it, and I
Speaker 1: watched it with my teenage girls and we didn't stop
Speaker 1: talking about it for days. So that's that's a good
Speaker 1: sign when you got teenage girls twelve, sixteen, and sixteen
Speaker 1: asking questions and engaging in meaningful conversation. And there was
Speaker 1: no point in the movie that I felt like I
Speaker 1: had to say close your eyes, close your eyes, plug
Speaker 1: your ears. That pleases me to no end. When people
Speaker 1: are watching this together with family, especially young people, that
Speaker 1: that's just wonderful to hear from me. It was a
Speaker 1: sweet movie, and there's all these funny connections. My kids
Speaker 1: and I moved down to my husband's cattle ranch quinn
Speaker 1: covid Hit. We were living in a community, not a
Speaker 1: big community, but a community before we left, and then
Speaker 1: we moved out in the boondocks on a acre cattle ranch.
Speaker 1: And I think they all sort of had the same
Speaker 1: response to that move as the children the characters in
Speaker 1: your movie Minori had when the dad drove them out
Speaker 1: to their new home, their glorious new home in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere in Arkansas. Yeah, it's the shock of
Speaker 1: the senses to be kind of placed in the whole
Speaker 1: other world. I feel for us. My dad didn't really
Speaker 1: tell us that you were going to do that, so
Speaker 1: that's that was an added shock for all of us.
Speaker 1: I know it's sort of autobiographical. Did he really load
Speaker 1: you guys up in a station wagon in California and
Speaker 1: just add east to Arkansas? Well I kind of dramatized
Speaker 1: that a bit to heighten it, because we were just
Speaker 1: coming from around the little Rock area of Arkansaw and
Speaker 1: we loaded up in a moving truck and my dad
Speaker 1: said he had found this place. And we showed up
Speaker 1: and um, it was basically outside of the city limits
Speaker 1: of the town of about people and all we could
Speaker 1: see our tall grass and we couldn't see our neighbors,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, and he said, this is home. So
Speaker 1: that part was true. And was the character that played
Speaker 1: the mother in the movie, was that truly Your mother's
Speaker 1: reaction was she like, no, ay, and hell, are you
Speaker 1: dragging us out here? We're going back to the city.
Speaker 1: You know. I heard a lot of conversations that my
Speaker 1: mom had that were along those minds, but as a kid,
Speaker 1: I it never really dawned on me till later how
Speaker 1: difficult that must have been for her, Like I really
Speaker 1: had to get married myself and understand the relationships and how,
Speaker 1: you know, decisions should be made and all these different things. Um,
Speaker 1: and just looking back I kind of have a better
Speaker 1: understanding of why she she was feeling that that way.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I loved showing up there
Speaker 1: on that farm and seeing a house on wheels. That
Speaker 1: thought that was the coolest thing. My family, my mother's
Speaker 1: side of the family, are all from Missouri and Arkansas,
Speaker 1: no kidding, They were farmers there. My grandparents migrated from
Speaker 1: being farmers in Arkansas to working in the forest in Oregon.
Speaker 1: So after World War Two, my grandpa packed up my
Speaker 1: grandma and my mom and my grandma's sister and her Emily,
Speaker 1: and moved them to the Oregon coast to work in
Speaker 1: the timber industry. But they had been farmers not that
Speaker 1: far from where your movie was set, so it kind
Speaker 1: of felt like a family connection there. Oh, that's that's
Speaker 1: so neat to hear. I think that farming was starting
Speaker 1: to get kind of difficult around the time that we
Speaker 1: moved over there. I wonder if that's what drove your
Speaker 1: family to head out west. My grandpa was in the
Speaker 1: military and he was stationed on the West coast, and
Speaker 1: he fell in love with the Douglas furs and the Sequoias,
Speaker 1: and so when the war was over, he went and
Speaker 1: packed up his family and kind of like the characters
Speaker 1: in your movie, He's just like, Okay, we're going west.
Speaker 1: And Grandma had no clue where they were going, how
Speaker 1: they were going to support themselves. Um, but they headed
Speaker 1: west and they made it work. Yeah, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a that's amazing. I kind of feel like this film
Speaker 1: has immigrants from Asia in it, but I genuinely feel
Speaker 1: like this is really story about Americans. This this is
Speaker 1: something that happens to the families all over, you know,
Speaker 1: that sort of feeling of departure, moving and ultimately families
Speaker 1: trying to stay together. One of my best friends, Kim,
Speaker 1: is from Korea, and she was so excited when we
Speaker 1: started talking about the movie because she is intimately familiar
Speaker 1: with most of the actresses and actors in the movie.
Speaker 1: And she said, the woman that plays the grandma is
Speaker 1: quite famous in Korea. She said she is a dynamic
Speaker 1: woman that everybody respects because she doesn't take any guff.
Speaker 1: Is this true? Yeah, I'll put it this way. When
Speaker 1: some people in Korea found out that we were working
Speaker 1: with Junia John, they sent a message over to our
Speaker 1: production team to please be careful with her because she's
Speaker 1: our national treasure. That's the words, kim you. She said,
Speaker 1: she is a national treasure. When I told her I
Speaker 1: got to speak with you, she said, oh, please tell
Speaker 1: her how much we love her. We love her, We
Speaker 1: love her like uh, you know, like the kind of
Speaker 1: reverence you would give a mother, Teresa or something. She
Speaker 1: was just so thrilled that I got to talk to you,
Speaker 1: because you're connected with her. Yeah. You know what's so
Speaker 1: interesting about her is it's not just her acting, which
Speaker 1: is incredible, it's it's her whole personal narrative. She kind
Speaker 1: of started back her career in her forties as a
Speaker 1: single mom because she just wanted to support her kids,
Speaker 1: and that the way in which she she worked so
Speaker 1: hard and she sacrificed for a kid, and she got
Speaker 1: into acting and took whatever role she could get. Um,
Speaker 1: she ended up kind of symbolizing the spirit of a
Speaker 1: lot of these these mothers who are doing so much
Speaker 1: work in Korea. UM. So she's really a hero for
Speaker 1: lots of people. And according to my Kimmy, she also
Speaker 1: has done wonderful humanitarian things for people, especially moms who
Speaker 1: are downtrodden. So she just really applauds her. So thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you for everything, all the thought and
Speaker 1: all the love that went into your movie. Oh, I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. Thank you. And I gotta thank you John
Speaker 1: for for being in this film to be honest, and
Speaker 1: the little boy that plays you. Yeah, that that boy
Speaker 1: was a miracle fine for us. Uh, he'd never acted before.
Speaker 1: We kind of had about three weeks to sign that guy.
Speaker 1: And we had this casting agent who was hanging out
Speaker 1: in front of Korean schools and churches and handing out
Speaker 1: flyers and and finally we stumbled upon this kid from
Speaker 1: a casting call we put out in San Francisco and
Speaker 1: he was just seven years old than we did this film. Um,
Speaker 1: he's a lot cuter than I am. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: he's adorable. And uh he played it so authentically, like
Speaker 1: you forgot within two seconds of watching the movie that
Speaker 1: you were watching a movie. Uh. He kept us all honest.
Speaker 1: Even Stephen Gunn, who plays the dad. He he would
Speaker 1: tell me, I can't lie in front of this kid.
Speaker 1: I have to be completely honest because this kid will
Speaker 1: call me on it because he just stays in his role.
Speaker 1: He stays true to being that kid. Um. It was
Speaker 1: so fun to work with him every day. On set.
Speaker 1: So I have a farm. Farming is damned hard work.
Speaker 1: How did your family make it? How did they how
Speaker 1: did they survive? Because it's really hard work. And when
Speaker 1: you have to decide between you know, water for your
Speaker 1: household or water for your plants. Yeah, you know, farmers
Speaker 1: are my favorite people. I just feel like, um, they're
Speaker 1: doing such incredible work, the feeding people and their business
Speaker 1: people that they've got the intelligent their scientists and they're
Speaker 1: completely down to earth. Um, we've been there. We we
Speaker 1: had that struggle with farming for a number of years
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, um and my dad transitioned
Speaker 1: into doing bo medicine and that's ultimately what we had
Speaker 1: to do to financially make it because farming itself proved
Speaker 1: to just be be too difficult. I think we had
Speaker 1: a hard time in the eighties with it. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of these smaller farms we were going away
Speaker 1: at that time. But to anyone who's like, spill out
Speaker 1: there farming, um, I mean, hats off, hats off, no kidding,
Speaker 1: we're doing it, but we, like I said, we don't
Speaker 1: depend upon it. We do it more as a hobby. Now,
Speaker 1: tell me about Minari. Where can I get some minari
Speaker 1: seeds kim He says it is delicious. I went on online.
Speaker 1: I can't find any minari seeds in America, and I've
Speaker 1: got a creek bed to plant them on. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I gotta get you in touch with my dad. Then
Speaker 1: somehow he he grew all the minari in our our film,
Speaker 1: So he actually grew all the nady that you see. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know where he got the seeds for that,
Speaker 1: but you can come to l A even and find
Speaker 1: it in the supermarkets. But yeah, that's that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I don't know where to actually get it. You could
Speaker 1: go to Korea as well. I could invite you over there.
Speaker 1: I would love that. Kimmi goes every two years. Her
Speaker 1: brother still lives there. She has two brothers actually that
Speaker 1: lived there. So she goes every two years and spends
Speaker 1: a couple of months and she comes back with the
Speaker 1: most amazing red peppers for kimchi. We eat we kimchi
Speaker 1: every day. She makes me care Rabbi kimchi and pickle kimchi.
Speaker 1: And today we went and picked wild greens because we
Speaker 1: love to pick o sari. And so today she made
Speaker 1: kimchi out of last year's vegetables like broccoli and stuff
Speaker 1: that overwintered in the garden. So we went and picked
Speaker 1: all the leaves and today she made kimchi that for me.
Speaker 1: But she said there's no place to get manari here
Speaker 1: where we live. Yeah, it is kind of especialty item. Um,
Speaker 1: it's even I have trouble finding it here. I'll be
Speaker 1: I'll be completely honest with you. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I didn't like eating it. It's the name of the film,
Speaker 1: but I felt like it would tasted very strong. But
Speaker 1: but nowadays it's kind of like almost like cilantro or
Speaker 1: a bit of a more spicy, sharp flavor that you
Speaker 1: add two different dishes and it it takes really good.
Speaker 1: So for for my listeners who might be thinking about
Speaker 1: renting the movie finding the movie, uh, tell them why
Speaker 1: it's called minori and the significance of that plant and
Speaker 1: how it all kind of ties it together because it's
Speaker 1: so beautiful. Yeah, thank you for that. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: honestly very personal. Um. My grandma when she came from Korea,
Speaker 1: she basically came with the sole purpose of just watching
Speaker 1: me and my sister because my parents both had to
Speaker 1: work and we had a farm, and my grandma decided
Speaker 1: she's going to plant this seed down by the creek
Speaker 1: bed where nothing really grows, and um, that was Menari
Speaker 1: and I just remember always going there with her and
Speaker 1: she would tend to it and pick it while I
Speaker 1: would sing songs and throw rocks at snakes. And that's
Speaker 1: something that you see in the film. And when the
Speaker 1: farm was ultimately struggling, we still found that what my
Speaker 1: grandma planted down there was the only thing that really
Speaker 1: took root and thrived. And I felt like it symbolized
Speaker 1: a lot of who she was as a woman. Um,
Speaker 1: the plant itself, you planted in places where the soil
Speaker 1: is dirty, and it will clean up the soil. And
Speaker 1: if if the water is dirty around it, if it's
Speaker 1: known for purifying the water too. And that's just kind
Speaker 1: of the presence I felt she had in our lives. Um. So,
Speaker 1: as I was writing the film, I just felt like,
Speaker 1: it's it's got to end with that image of that
Speaker 1: that boy and his dad picking me nutty together, because
Speaker 1: in my heart, that's kind of the way I want
Speaker 1: to be living life, if that makes any sense. I
Speaker 1: love that As a seed collector and a plant collector
Speaker 1: and somebody who every time I go to somebody's house,
Speaker 1: I like, can I have a start of that? Can
Speaker 1: I have some of those seeds? I was so touched
Speaker 1: when the grandma brought the seeds from her homeland, and
Speaker 1: just the relationship that developed between between you, the little
Speaker 1: boy that is you and your grandma. Silly, funny, beautiful,
Speaker 1: just beautiful. I appreciate that. I just felt like I
Speaker 1: wanted to Something that's been so special is that people
Speaker 1: are really talking about her and this role of Unya
Speaker 1: jong and Uh. I kind of wanted to make visible
Speaker 1: somebody who was largely invisible when she was with us. Um.
Speaker 1: So I've just been so pleased that she's being remembered
Speaker 1: in some way. Well, I love Manari. I hope. Well.
Speaker 1: I haven't tasted the actual Minari, but your film Manari?
Speaker 1: How do you say it? How's the proper pronunciation? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, if you say Minari, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: people on set say that, and that's that's and is Korean?
Speaker 1: We said, nay, almost there are is almost like a
Speaker 1: d Manati. Okay, Manati, your Dad's got to get me
Speaker 1: some of the seeds. And I want all of our
Speaker 1: listeners especially. It seems so appropriate right now as we're
Speaker 1: going through these challenges with COVID, as we're trying to
Speaker 1: adjust to a new normal, whatever the hell that is.
Speaker 1: And this film, like I said, I watched it with
Speaker 1: my girls and it just it resonated with us for
Speaker 1: so many different reasons. When we first when COVID first hit,
Speaker 1: I took my in laws, who are actually my outlaws
Speaker 1: because they're my ex husband's parents, but I care for them.
Speaker 1: We took them with us, and there were nine of
Speaker 1: us in a twelve hundred foot house for six months,
Speaker 1: because they're elderly and most of my children nor medically fragile,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to get them away from, you know,
Speaker 1: a populated area where they would be safer and we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to be pair annoyed all the time. And
Speaker 1: I saw the same sort of beautiful relationships developing between
Speaker 1: my children and Healed and Miguel, who are immigrants from
Speaker 1: Costa Rica, and that same sort of generational you know,
Speaker 1: the obstacles because we live in such different worlds, but
Speaker 1: the way that our family jelled during that time was
Speaker 1: such a precious gift from God. And I think that's
Speaker 1: why it resonated with the girls and I so much.
Speaker 1: That's so wonderful to hear. I was hearing this person
Speaker 1: commenting on what's happening with COVID that in some ways
Speaker 1: we're in a new land. All of us were in
Speaker 1: a new place together. We're so journing and in that way,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the immigrant story, and we're all
Speaker 1: living out that story where we're with our families and
Speaker 1: trying to navigate this new place. Um. So yeah, bless
Speaker 1: you in that. It's so great to hear that the
Speaker 1: story resonated with you. Well, thank you for Manati. I
Speaker 1: encourage everyone to watch it, especially if you've got sons
Speaker 1: and daughters still at home, teenagers, young people. It's a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful movie, and I promise you will talk about it
Speaker 1: for days to come, like we did. Appreciate that. And
Speaker 1: I want some of that kimchi that your friend that
Speaker 1: sounds really good. Oh my gosh. Yesterday for breakfast, I
Speaker 1: had a little bit of rice, two eggs with the
Speaker 1: yolk nice and running, and three kinds of kim chee
Speaker 1: in my blow, almost like bab im pop, but just
Speaker 1: kim chi. Kimchi, kimchi Kimchi. I was in heaven. It's
Speaker 1: so good. Yeah, all right, you have a great day.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. All right, thank you so great
Speaker 1: talking with you. Alright. God bless you, Bube bye, God
Speaker 1: bless you. As I mentioned when I was introducing my
Speaker 1: wonderful guest today, the writer and director of the semi
Speaker 1: autobiographical movie Minati, I was able to preview it with
Speaker 1: a special screening link some weeks back, a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago. The girls and I, my teenage girls and
Speaker 1: I fell in love with it, and we obviously weren't
Speaker 1: the only ones because it just won a Golden Globe award.
Speaker 1: I don't know the criteria needed for such an honor,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you why we loved it. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned just now in my conversation with Isaac, when
Speaker 1: coronavirus restrictions were first enacted early last year, my family
Speaker 1: and I relocated to a really rural area. We took
Speaker 1: off and we went to my husband's organic beef ranch.
Speaker 1: We had to find our footing and finding our way,
Speaker 1: especially for my kids, has been really, really challenging. That
Speaker 1: was an experience that was very relatable to the Ye family.
Speaker 1: The family pictured in the movie who moved from California
Speaker 1: to a farming community in Arkansas to try to make
Speaker 1: a better life for them. Elves I also found myself
Speaker 1: musing over the hardships the Ye family faced as farmers
Speaker 1: and the Ozarks, and wondering what the similarities and differences
Speaker 1: between their experiences and my ancestors who farmed there for
Speaker 1: generations before my grandparents migrated to the Pacific Northwest in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, what the similarities might have been. We
Speaker 1: talked about having to choose between water for personal use
Speaker 1: like cooking or drinking or bathing, or water for crop
Speaker 1: irrigation because there wasn't enough water for both. That, for example,
Speaker 1: is probably something they might have had in common. Feeling
Speaker 1: like outsiders in a tight knit old timer's community is
Speaker 1: something they would not have had in common. But what
Speaker 1: we really loved about the film we love the incredibly
Speaker 1: rich and nuanced relationships between the characters, between the husband
Speaker 1: and the between the sister and the brother, especially between
Speaker 1: the grandchild and grandmother. That for me, that was my
Speaker 1: favorite part of the movie. The way they illustrated the tensions,
Speaker 1: the tenderness, the tenacity, the complexity of love and the
Speaker 1: power it has over our lives. The casting in this
Speaker 1: movie absolutely brilliant. I normally don't ever quote or even
Speaker 1: read from promotional statements that I've been sent, but the
Speaker 1: one for Manati is so spot on I'm making an exception.
Speaker 1: It reads. Manati is a film that touches the heart
Speaker 1: in so many places. The film has its fair share
Speaker 1: of adversity, but its message throughout remains to always bear
Speaker 1: in mind the importance of family, love, humility, and staying
Speaker 1: optimistic when times are rough. As Philippians four six tells us,
Speaker 1: don't we're about anything. Instead, pray about everything, tell God
Speaker 1: what you need, and thank him for all he has done.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have said it better myself. Manati is in
Speaker 1: select theaters now and available on demand everywhere. You don't
Speaker 1: want to miss it, and you don't want to miss
Speaker 1: any of my podcast either. Join me next time on
Speaker 1: Love Someone with the line up