Lee Isaac Chung Quotes

Lee Isaac Chung

Profession : Director

Birth : October 19, 1978

My dad started to watch westerns at dollar cinemas in Seoul and felt like America was a miraculous place. His family had lost a lot of land during the Korean War and the Japanese occupation. That affected him a lot as a kid. He always felt like he needed to come to the U.S. and get land.

Lee Isaac Chung

I like the idea of all of us looking at the world with less of an emphasis on national borders and with more of an emphasis on shared humanity.

Lee Isaac Chung

I know, it's disturbing that gentle looking people have such violence, but I believe we all have a penchant for violence in us.

Lee Isaac Chung

I remember my roommate was watching 'Seven Samurai,' and I just couldn't fathom why anybody would watch it.

Lee Isaac Chung

I know a lot of people in my old town in Arkansas are big Trump supporters, and in a way I try to understand them. I try not to judge them for that.

Lee Isaac Chung

She died when I was 16 and I just think no history books, nothing is ever going to talk about my grandmother. She was kind of invisible. She couldn't speak English so didn't have many friends. I think of her any time I think of the word 'sacrifice.'

Lee Isaac Chung

My mom grew up without a father because he died in the Korean War. And my grandmother, her life was completely upended because of that.

Lee Isaac Chung

Because growing up as an Asian-American and growing up as someone who is not white, oftentimes in this country you can feel as though you're a foreigner, or you're reminded of being a foreigner, even though you're not. Even though inside, internally, you feel completely American.

Lee Isaac Chung

I don't diminish the idea of being American, but what I embrace is the idea of being human.

Lee Isaac Chung

I was just making movies to make movies. I was so full of anxiety about becoming a filmmaker that I kind of lost the idea of why I was doing it.

Lee Isaac Chung

My father came to America believing in the romantic dream of what he saw in films like 'Big Country' and 'Giant' - this fertile land able to yield so much promise.

Lee Isaac Chung

There's a constant level of risk in farming that so few movies let you feel. I wanted to show some of that, but also, by contrast, reflect on how nature so often offers grace.

Lee Isaac Chung

I thought about quitting filmmaking, just because it was becoming so difficult for me.

Lee Isaac Chung

But I kind of reframed my thinking, where I don't feel like filmmaking is what defines me anymore. Like, I feel like I'm much more defined by my family and other things in life that, that I feel are much deeper to me.

Lee Isaac Chung

When I look back now, as an adult, I'm able to see my mom and grandmother in a different way that I didn't understand as a kid.

Lee Isaac Chung

I was on this weird, wild goose chase where I thought I might try to adapt a Willa Cather book. And if you don't know Willa Cather, she was an author in the early 1900s. And for a while, she wrote these books about New York high society.

Lee Isaac Chung

After everything my parents were teaching us about Korean culture, about being respectful and all these things, you know, here came my grandmother, who is very crass and wanted to teach us how to gamble.

Lee Isaac Chung

I do care what my daughter thinks and what the future generation of whoever is down the line will think.

Lee Isaac Chung

I had some early success with my first film and since then it's been a grind. It's clearly a craft that I love, and a craft that I work on constantly, but after so many years, I didn't feel like I had much to show for that.

Lee Isaac Chung

What I noticed is that the lens from which people want to look at 'Minari' is just from that Asian-American angle. And I think that can end up being very frustrating. Because the craft of the film, and this film itself, is meant to embody a lot of different things.

Lee Isaac Chung