Lee Isaac Chung Quotes

Lee Isaac Chung

Profession : Director

Birth : October 19, 1978

For a struggling filmmaker running low on ideas, public domain is all we have for adapting books.

Lee Isaac Chung

Insecurities and missteps can plague writers and artists who come from rural places. We worry that our provincial life experiences won't gain the approval of urban curators, so we assimilate ourselves to other, more sophisticated voices.

Lee Isaac Chung

I modeled my work after contemporary masters of art house cinema but felt my voice was missing.

Lee Isaac Chung

As an exercise, I devoted an afternoon to writing my memories of childhood. I remembered our family's arrival at a single-wide trailer on an Ozark meadow and my mother's shock at learning that this would be our new home.

Lee Isaac Chung

For many years, I was trying to catch up and fit in a little bit more with that New York artsy intellectual space.

Lee Isaac Chung

There's a lot of regret that I have about not showing my proper gratitude to my grandmother.

Lee Isaac Chung

I was so excited when 'Parasite' won the Oscar last year, and part of that was the shared Korean heritage and also it was just knowing that Bong Joon Ho made an incredible film and it didn't matter what language they were speaking, what country it was from, audiences all around the world responded to it.

Lee Isaac Chung

The attention and all the interviews and all that, it has been wild and something that I'm not used to.

Lee Isaac Chung

I've never felt completely American.

Lee Isaac Chung

Growing up where I was, there were no Asians, no minorities, and there was always something to remind me of what I'm not. And when I go to Korea it's the same thing. I'm constantly reminded that I'm not Korean.

Lee Isaac Chung

I wanted to make something that transcends borders and gets beyond this feeling of national identity.

Lee Isaac Chung

As a kid... there's a veil of separation between you and your dad, especially when you have a dad who's under a lot of stress.

Lee Isaac Chung

My daughter was five when I was writing 'Minari,' very much close to the age of David. And I was about to turn 40, which was the age my dad was when he decided he was going to start this farm in Arkansas.

Lee Isaac Chung

Early on... I did notice that a lot of people had the tendency to do their own story starting out. I felt like I was never interested in that, and I wanted to tell stories of people who are very different.

Lee Isaac Chung

If you're in the rural South, you don't get Korean TV, unless you can find a Korean grocery guy who has been taping Korean programs and then offering them.

Lee Isaac Chung

I was used to always having a stack of Korean television VHS tapes growing up.

Lee Isaac Chung

I began my filmmaking career by shooting a feature length documentary in China in 2004, the year I graduated from film school.

Lee Isaac Chung

I filmed my first narrative feature in 2006, a story set in Rwanda called 'Munyurangabo.'

Lee Isaac Chung

'Lucky Life' is my second narrative film. I worked on the idea for 'Lucky Life' while in Rwanda for my first film.

Lee Isaac Chung

After having struggled through some close friends' and family members' battles with cancer, I wanted to create an American drama about the experience of tragedy and memory.

Lee Isaac Chung