The director looks younger than his 44 years. I am envious of his voluminous head of hair. He is more soft-spoken than his older brother, more measured when he speaks. When he talks about his projects, he says “we” a lot. Is this the royal “we” of a boss who sees his underlings as extensions of himself? Is it the falsely modest “we” of someone who knows it’s a bad look to take all the credit? No, I decide that this “we” is a reflection of the collectivism that Asian immigrant parents—like mine, like his—hope to instill in their children when they come to the United States, out of fear their kids might acquiesce to American individualism. This is Michelle Yeoh’s character’s refrain in Crazy Rich Asians.
Chef Chu’s figures prominently in the director’s forthcoming memoir, Viewfinder. (No credit-hogging here, either: The name of Chu’s collaborator, Jeremy McCarter, is clearly attributed in the book.) Viewfinderchronicles Chu’s journey from tech-savvy Silicon Valley …