Interview (Part 3): Chris Wu

My interview with 2021 Black List writer for his script Mr. Benihana.

Chris Wu wrote the original screenplay “Mr. Benihana” which landed on the 2021 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Chris about his creative background, his script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to him.

Today in Part 3 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Chris talks about some of the key character in his Black List script Mr. Benihana.

Scott: Let’s talk a bit about your research. How did you go about diving into the life of this character? Audio, video, books, articles…

Chris: All of the above. Definitely a lot of articles written about him. There were many “Sports Illustrated” articles I found in the archives, especially with powerboat racing, surprisingly. There was a biography that was written about his life that I was able to dig up.

Also, video clips on YouTube. A few of them were Benihana commercials that he starred in.

He was everywhere. I was able to get a good composite of who he was.

Scott: Back to the unreliable narrator. If you’re watching “Forrest Gump,” we have no reason to believe that he’s not telling the truth. But in “Mr. Benihana,” there are moments where, for example, he says, “So how did he fit into all this? Shit man, my memory is not what it was. Give me a second. Go get some more popcorn.”

[laughter]

The decision to embrace the concept of an unreliable narrator, how did that evolve in your approach in terms of writing his voice?

Chris: It came organically as I was writing. I found that he liked to embellish a lot. As an entertainer, he exaggerates. He likes to make things as entertaining as possible, even if he’s stretching the truth.

The example that comes to mind, Rocky’s talking about this amazing studio apartment that he has in Manhattan, like imagine that. Meanwhile we see it’s the size of a closet [laughs] where the bed’s touching all three walls. That’s his personality. He likes to make things sound as great as possible and tell the best story out there. I really leaned into that.

Scott: It’s intriguing that in some of his voiceover narration, we get into his rationale for why he does what he does. For example, he says, “Yes, I had a mistress. Of course, I had to have a mistress. Show me a successful man who doesn’t have a mistress and I’ll show you a lying sack of sea urchin.”

That extends that idea of the unreliable narrative even further. That this is a guy who stretches the truth in terms of his own sense of morality.

Chris: Yeah, for me, Rocky is probably not aware of why he does things. He’s not really an introspective or a thinking kind of man. The justification that he gives, I feel like he does believe it, to some extent.

And there are cultural aspects. Also, the period when this took place. This was back in the ’60s. It’s something that he tells people to feel better about himself.

Scott: There’s a couple of other narrative choices you made. For example, while the story is told largely in chronological order, you begin in the present, then go back in time. Like how “Sunset Boulevard” begins…

Chris: Sunset Boulevard, yes. Exactly. The body in the pool.

Scott: In this case, the script begins with Rocky having this horrific boating accident. You’re hearing the voiceover. For all intents and purposes, we think he may very well be dead at the beginning. Was that an homage to Billy Wilder in “Sunset Boulevard” or was that just an interesting way you thought of starting the story, and wanting to go back and then catch up to the present?

Chris: It definitely was an homage to “Sunset Boulevard,” in my mind. I will say that that boating incident, which I found in many different articles, was so wild and crazy that it felt like a great way to start a movie. And to show who this character is.

Scott: You have a couple of other things where you’re finagling time. Of course, dropping in the way he does, that’s one of the advantages of voiceover narration. You can pick and choose the things. There are some times where he goes back in time. For example, where he realizes, “Wait a minute, my brother and my dad have been manipulating things.” It’s almost like “The Sixth Sense,” where Malcolm Crowe realizes, “Uh oh, I’m dead.”

Chris: Exactly.

Scott: Then there’s another one that’s actually quite interesting toward the very end, in Act Three, where we go back to a bombing incident in 1944, World War II. Could you talk about the choice of having that flashback at that point in the story?

Chris: Another homage. That was the Rosebud moment for me. To me, the childhood memory Rocky has and the story that his family has told him about where Benihana came from, it was in the rubble of bombed out Tokyo, where his family had lost everything. His father had found this one red flower. The name of that flower was Benihana.

That felt like an origin story for not only the restaurant, but also, for Rocky, his family, and this whole legacy of where he comes from. That, to me, felt like the ultimate vulnerable spot of who he was at his core. What he tries so hard to mask and cover up and not let anyone else see.

That was important for me to have in the movie. It felt like in the third act when he’s at his lowest. We’re allowed as the audience to see this special moment that he probably has not told many people at all.

Scott: You plant a seed earlier. At some point doesn’t he say there’s a name? He says Red Flower, or he’s talking with someone about naming something, right?

Chris: Yeah. Naming the horse. [laughs]

Scott: The horse. He was going to name him Benihana, and they said, “You can’t name him Benihana.” Was it Red Flower?

Chris: It was Red Flower. That’s right.

Scott: I was quite struck, too, by the way you wrote it. I tell my students all the time, movies are primarily a visual medium, so you need to write visually. And yet, we try to avoid using camera shots. In your script “Mr. Benihana,” you have an interesting way with visuals. For example, here’s a paragraph of scene description:

“Click clack, spatulas dance, shrimps somersault like acrobats, chefs in red costumes crack jokes. Customers seated around the grill top, ooh and uh, applauding like it’s the circus. Tourists from Arkansas take photos with their iPhones. Rocky sits at a grill top wearing an immaculate white tuxedo. He holds a golden cigar in one hand, a phone in his other hand where he texts someone a GIF of a dramatic gopher.”

It’s like each one of those suggests a camera shot, but you’re not using any camera language. It’s very cinematic. I’m guessing that’s an intentional thing on your part.

Chris: That’s correct. I agree with you, I don’t like to write specific camera direction. That’s the director’s turf. But it’s still important for me to show how I’m seeing the scene. That’s why by the descriptions, you’re able to fill in the gaps of where the camera should be.

Scott: That’s also part of our task as screenwriters. We’re trying to get the movie we see in our head into the minds of the reader.

Chris: Absolutely. Find the most concise way to describe things. Because ideally, you want the reader to see the movie as they’re reading.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Chris discusses some of the decisions he made to transform a real-life story into a movie.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Chris is repped by John Zaozirny at Bellevue Productions.

Twitter: @wu_stein.

For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.