MPA Creator Award Winner Jon M. Chu on the Mad, Joyous Rush of Finishing “Wicked: For Good” – Part 1
As director Jon M. Chu puts the finishing touches on Wicked: For Good, he’ll be swinging through Washington, D.C. to receive the Motion Picture Association’s Creator Award on Monday, September 8. It’s a heady time for Chu, who, when we spoke, was en route to LAX to fly to New York (for one night) while shepherding his highly anticipated sequel through a final flurry of crucial post-production. That included recording extra score in London, working with visual effects artists worldwide on For Good‘s wizardry and witchery, and polishing the edit with his team in Los Angeles.
As the world awaits the final part of his blockbuster musical adaptation, Chu took some time before boarding his flight to reflect on the moment he was in, poised to deliver on his ambitious two-part adaptation of a cultural phenomenon that itself has become a cultural phenomenon. Chu has built a career on movement, music, and joy—from his early work, such as Step Up 2: The Streets, to his world-conquering films like Crazy Rich Asians and last year’s Wicked, he’s the rare young filmmaker who can say he has created not one but two cultural watershed moments.
In this candid two-part conversation, Chu discusses the final stages of post-production on Wicked: For Good, his evolution as a filmmaker, and what it’s been like to work with superstars, both in front and behind the camera, and why that’s enabled them all to feel a sense of play, even while working on this massive, high-stakes production.
I know we can’t talk too much about it, but how are things going on For Good?
It’s going great. It’s the mad finishing rush now, but I’m really excited about it. Right now, I’m remote to London, remote to all our artists all around the world for VFX, and in LA for our editorial and our mix. We have so many elements—it’s not just the cut—once you start to see flying monkeys, once you start to hear what that score is doing, once you start to hear the flapping of the monkey’s wings or Elphaba’s [Cynthia Erivo] cape, it just keeps plussing each other. You’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s storytelling. The way her cape moves is storytelling, the way her cape sounds is storytelling, and the way Glinda’s [Ariana Grande] bubble pops is storytelling.’ When the bubble pops a certain way, every detail is a part of the sort of musical fabric. That’s been really fun. There’s no stone unturned. Every part of it is telling a story.
I was reading in the production notes this lovely story that you saw “Wicked” before it was on Broadway, at the Curran Theater in San Francisco. How does it feel now, where you’re just right on the doorstep of finishing For Good, having been that young person in the theater in San Francisco to becoming the person who brought this beloved musical to screens and pulled it off, not one, but two films?
It’s actually overwhelming when I think about it. I haven’t had a lot of chance to take it all in. Even after movie one, when people started to watch it and appreciate it, we had to focus on the master plan, the second story that actually completes it. We’ve always said that it’s our childhood dreams meeting the reality of our adult selves. And now, after finishing this movie, I look back on four-plus years of work, literally during the pandemic, which was three children ago [Chu and his wife Kristen have five kids now], and I didn’t know if we could figure it out. I didn’t know if I was capable, and I didn’t know if the audience would accept us. So, looking back, I’m really proud. I’m really proud that we stuck to our process, that we trusted in each other, that we gathered a group that cared about it as much as I do, as much as [composer Stephen] Schwartz does, as much as [producer Marc] Platt does, that we found these two women—well, we didn’t find them, but they fell from the heavens—and they could speak this story through their own personal lives and the transformations each of them were going through personally as well. I’m pulling on the thread now, as I look back, and it’s beautiful, and I feel proud and excited that audiences get to catch up with us and what we’ve experienced. Because I think that when they finish movie two, it will feel like one big journey instead of two separate journeys, and, I would say to that kid in high school, or even the kid in college who saw “Wicked” in San Francisco before it was on Broadway, who was in awe of this story, who thought, ‘Wow, someone’s going to make something great out of this, but I would never be capable of it: you’re capable and you can do it.’
You were working with so many insanely talented people — obviously, Cynthia and Ariana, but also people like costume designer Paul Tazewell, cinematographer Alice Brooks, and production designer Nathan Crowley. What is it like when you’ve got this level of talent, in front and behind the camera, on a Jon Chu set?
Alice Brooks, I’ve worked with her since college. We had never done a musical, but we did a short musical together. Chris Scott, our choreographer, was a dancer-actor in Step Up 2, my very first movie. He auditioned for us in Baltimore. He was like a kid with a beanie on, a backpack, and long hair. Eventually, we would become friends, and he would decide to switch into choreography. And after being a working dancer, that switch is tough. He became my roommate at one point because he had no place to live. You have to risk saying no to a lot of jobs, so watching him become who he’s become, and watching Alice find all these little independent movies and find her voice, and for us all to be able to meet up again…
And then to find Ariana, who obviously was already a star, but to have the dreams and hopes of something that no one thought she could do, myself included, to be honest — to have Cynthia, who is clearly a gift from God, who has a talent that is meant to be heard, to know that people around the world hadn’t heard her as much as they should, that was incredible to me.
When you’re working with such high stakes, you get access to more people. People like Nathan Crowley and Paul Tazewell. I met Paul Tazewell at an awards show for the Princess Grace Foundation, where I received a student award back in the day, which really helped me make my first short film. So to pair with him after he’d just done Hamilton, West Side Story, and to come together around Wicked…
Everyone has a different entry point to Oz, whether it’s the original book by L. Frank Baum, the original movie, or the “Wicked” musical itself. Everybody came to it revering this story that is bigger than any of us, and using the talents that we had grown over all these years to contribute to that story for another generation. It was a privilege and a responsibility we all felt — this is the story of our lives. This will live beyond ourselves, no matter how much stress it might cause or how difficult it might be on the day. When you have those people at the top of their game, what it actually allows you to do on set is to play. It allows you to trust the random thing that gets in the way, the obstacle, or the struggle to understand a line, or something that was coming organically from a character, whether it was Bowen Yang or Ari or Cynthia or Michelle [Yeoh] or the Wizard himself—Jeff [Goldblum], he was coming up with stuff all the time, because everyone was an expert at their job, we were able to go to those places and not be scared that we could make a mistake.
I can only imagine that you manage this giant operation with the same kind of enthusiasm and passion you’re showing right now. Because when you’re watching the movie, it feels like it was made with joy.
Honestly, it’s a selfish thing because I think you get the best work from people when they’re playing, when they aren’t thinking about ramifications. Personally, I love challenges and obstacles. I love it when people say no because that’s just the beginning of the yes. Joy on set isn’t about being happy on set — there were tough days. There were days when we were arguing with each other because we had different views on how a scene should play out. But, I find so much joy in making something that we don’t know the answer to. I find so much joy in the stress of working it out and relying on craft to get there. So, it’s not about happiness on set, and it’s not about ease of shooting. In fact, I think ease of shooting may be a bad thing. It is about the joy of the craft and the work that we’ve poured our whole lives into doing. This was the movie that tested every boundary — this wasn’t easy. This was going to define who we are, what we stood for, and what these properties that existed before us stood for.
Featured image: L to R: Cynthia Erivo (as Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (as Glinda) with Director Jon M. Chu on the set of WICKED.
