From what I’ve read, you’re very reverential of James Cameron.
So reverential. Some things need updating about it, but yeah.
What about his work inspires you?
His craft. He can get great performances, truthful performances, deep performances. He’s got such a great sense of rhythm in his spectacle. I say, a musical number just for the sake of a musical number is very boring, and I feel the same about action. I believe that every movement should earn its place other than just being cool or a technical challenge. When I look at James Cameron’s work, every single thing that happens isn’t just because it’s cool, it’s because it says the story, it says the logic, it says what the character is trying to do. It says how characters are bumping up against each other.
The asylum break sequence [in Terminator 2] still stands out as one of the greatest set-pieces of all time, just for me. Just him knowing how to do that and quite early in his career. In fact, I prefer early career Cameron. It’s funny, I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about this, but I recently had the privilege of interviewing him. This is film school rejects, but I did a film degree at university.
In Auckland, right?
At Auckland, yeah. James Cameron, who lives here now and was making Avatar, kindly came on to be the keynote speaker to celebrate twenty years of the film program at university. I was lucky enough to interview him for that. The way that he approached story…he was given a script of The Martian to read. He said, “Hey, the science of this doesn’t measure up, of course, but it’s very exciting. With the wind on Mars, the fact is the physics of the atmosphere is such that it wouldn’t even move a flag.”
Whoever he was talking to said, “Oh, my God, what do I do?” And James Cameron said, “Just keep it. Don’t change anything.” And this is James Cameron, the science dude. He’s the underwater version of Neil Armstrong. He’s been in the Mariana Trench in a little undersea vehicle that he designed himself and engineered himself. If he wasn’t a filmmaker, he’d be an engineer. And here he is telling the writer, “Forget the science; focus on the story.”
I loved hearing from him on when to flex and when not to. He’s like, “Well, I’m making a movie about flying blue things, blue things that fly on these things, and a cloud city and stuff. And so, people will go there with you if you have the competence and the good sense of when to break rules and when not to. When to break physics or not.”
Similar to Cameron, would you never want to make a straight shoot ’em up movie?
I like shoot ’em ups, I like movie violence. Now, I’m starting to lose my nerve. Actually, I don’t think I can make those movies anymore in good conscience.
So, more recently you’ve been wary of making that type of action movie?
I feel it’s become more relevant in the last year, especially with all the adversities upon adversities. You lose faith in humanity, and I think, that loving violence and loving action design ends. And those things haven’t changed for me, but at the same time, this is why I keep coming back to Terminator 2 as the perfect movie because it manages to both put amazing action spectacle and violence together. It’s cynical but it’s also not. Somehow it manages to say human life is valuable. When the Terminator says, “Why can’t I kill people?” John says, “You just can’t, okay? Just trust me on this.” And then by the end, the Terminator realizes, and self-destructs. It somehow manages to have all the spectacle of violence and still peddles this idea that humanity is valuable and worth something. That’s a magic trick that I would aspire to, and the themes of that movie are more relevant now than they were back then.
Since you always aspired to direct action movies, when you made Shadow in the Cloud, did you think, “It’s about time”?
Yes. I’ve had friends say that to me, finally, after all this time. When I was younger at film school, I wanted to be like Orson Welles and make Citizen Kane when I was twenty-five. Then you reach twenty-five, you realize you’ve done diddly-squat and you’re not the voice. You’re not interesting. And you’re like okay, well, maybe when I’m thirty.
Then at thirty, I knew I wanted to have children, right? I’d made a plan for myself, that no matter how old I was, whether I was attached to anyone or not at thirty, I’d start to have children. Thankfully, I had a partner and I started to have children. And then I realized when I was having children, that I couldn’t write. I literally could not raise a baby and write. I just couldn’t multitask that well.
The part of the brain where ideas came from and the part of the brain that looked after a baby was the same part, and only one slot was available. So then I took time out, I slowed down a bit and I had children. When my second child was born, I started making Flat3, which was this low-budget web series, where I was able to flex or learn more about my comedic chops.
I do have a point, which is, I still had that childlike sense of, I’m pinching myself. I can’t believe I’m here. Even at Sundance with Do No Harm, the very first day I was at Sundance, I signed with WMA. I remember thinking, “I’ve made it,” coming home from the airport in LAX, and wanting to spin around like I was Mary Tyler Moore listening to — I was obsessed with the La La Land soundtrack. I’m one of those people who likes La La Land.
Same here. It doesn’t have to be more substantial than it is.
Yeah, you can love Moonlight and La La Land. It’s possible. They should not be in the same discussion. I have the La La Land soundtrack on. I was thinking, “I fucking made it.” When I came back to the states again for South by Southwest and went to LA again to take meetings, I was like, “Everyone loves me. I’m the it girl.” Then, this writer told me, “Oh yeah, your phone’s ringing off the hook. Okay, well let me tell you in a few months, that’s going to stop. And the next thing that will come along, no one will care about you. And then, if you haven’t done anything in two years they’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, whatever happened to that person who did that movie?'” It was a downer, but I also really appreciate him saying it to me because it happened.
In the same way, when I was making Shadow in the Cloud, I was thinking, “Oh, my God. They’re going to find out…” I do suffer from imposter syndrome, but all the best creators do. I thought, “They got to find out that I don’t know what I’m talking about. They can find out that I fudged my way here, and I don’t know the first thing about this or that.” I can walk the walk, I can talk the talk. Sure, I can fake it ’till I make it. I’m used to that. But always there’s that little voice going, “You don’t know anything, and you’re just lucky to be here. So enjoy it.”
You’ve also said you can have white guy confidence. How does that gel with imposter syndrome?
It’s a suit I put on. When I walk into the room and I’m trying to win a job or something, I feel like I can. I don’t know if it’s exactly a code switch, but it’s the same confidence with which you walk into a club or something or it’s a confidence that you put on. That isn’t you, but that you know how to wield the older that you get. The more experience you have putting it on, the more it feels good.
Prior to Shadow in the Cloud, you depicted discrimination in Take 3, intimacy in My Wedding and Other Secrets, and action in Do No Harm, so did those story elements of Shadow in the Cloud feel like a culmination of all your previous work?
I didn’t think about it that way, but now that you mentioned that, it does make sense. There’s a sense of leaning into the uncomfortable, as you say. I want to be an actor’s director, but I also want to be an action director as well. And often, those two don’t come together. But when you look at James Cameron or you look at Ridley Scott, no offense to the people who are nailing it right now, and Chris Nolan, they’re often very masculine. The aesthetic, the technical side, the VFX, all of that is very well developed. But the typically feminine parts such as the emotional connection, I mean, the female characters are often panned.
Wouldn’t it be incredible if they had warmth, the warmth of Barry Jenkins or they had the warmth of Ryan Coogler’s drama? I aspire to be all those things, and I pick and choose from when I look to who I aspire to. To me, it doesn’t feel like I’m never going to get there. It feels like I’m on a path.
So yes, I think Shadow in the Cloud is a step up from everything we’ve ever done. I’ve just made another TV show, which is a post-apocalyptic comedy, which is like a very black comedy gender flip of The Handmaid’s Tale. It was really a micro-budget. Even that is another step. It is a step up from Shadow in the Cloud. If I’m not progressing, if I’m not building on everything that I’ve done to date, then I’m stagnating.
I never want to do that because I’ve seen it happen. It happens to my favorite directors. Some directors that I adored when I was at film school, their work doesn’t excite me anymore. It doesn’t feel vital. And I have to ask, is it me that’s changed or is it them?
Who do you think stayed vital?
Miyazaki, right? Kurosawa. That’s how I want to die. He died on set or something?
I believe so.
Actually, I’m not going to go on set, I’m going to be in the sound mix. I’m going to be eighty, so I’m going to be really old. I’ll put the last touches on the sound mix. And then I’ll die.
Just last week I heard another director say he wants to die on set. It’s such a funny, romanticized Hollywood ending.
It’s also incredibly egotistical. I’m going to change my story now. I have a family as well, so that makes me think, “Wow, I don’t care about my family or friends because I want to die on set?” Yeah.
Maybe you could all be there together in the sound mix, who knows?
Oh yeah. Yeah, they could all be there.
We went down a dark path.
[Laughs] Sorry.
No Problem. With the genre movies you want to keep making in the future, what questions do you want to keep asking? What do you want to say with spectacle?
It’s very old. It’s the same question. It’s, what is there of worth in humanity? Would it be better if we were wiped off? Is humanity a cancer? I’ve thought about that a lot, especially with respect to action movies. I want to get into the nitty-gritty of what sets us apart from animals if anything. And sometimes animals are more honorable. I think about this line from David Fincher’s Mindhunter, where they’re just looking at evidence and overcome by the horrors that are apparent. One of them says, “What people want to do to people. Ain’t nothing that people won’t do to each other.” It’s chilling.
When you look around this world, and you read the newspaper and you just open Twitter, you see evidence of people eating each other in different ways. And the pleasure we take from the pain and suffering of others. I mean, of course, I want to escape. I go to movies because of escape, but it’s also the most empathetic building delivery device of story and empathy known to humanity. I’ve never felt so seen or belong so much as when I’m in a cinema or watching TV.
What I watched growing up in New Zealand, I never felt part of New Zealand until I saw Freaks and Geeks. There are no Asian people in Freaks and Geeks, but I saw myself in it. Oh my God, I’ve had the chance to say this — this is amazing — to Paul Feig. I had the joy of speaking to him after he saw Do No Harm, actually. He was like, I’m a fan. I’m a fan and said, “Paul, you have no idea what Freaks and Geeks means to me.” I’m sure he’s had people say this to him ad nauseam. For a kid growing up in New Zealand who felt unseen and unheard, but to watch that show, he delivered that empathy without knowing me and without knowing who I was.
To me, that’s beautiful. If I can deliver empathy, if I can deliver understanding in that way through the work I make, I’m winning.
Shadow in the Cloud is now out on VOD.
Related Topics: Roseanne Liang, shadow in the cloud
