Interview (Part 4): 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 4 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Chris discusses some of the decisions he made to transform a real-life story into a movie.

Scott: I want to talk about some of the other characters in the story. There’s Rocky’s wife, Chizuru. He loves her and their longstanding relationship for many, many years throughout Rocky’s emerging lavish lifestyle. There’s a little moment there, where Rocky first takes the family to his mansion, with twenty-nine bedrooms.

He tells the kids, “Go look, find them all.” Then he says to Chizuru, “Can you believe it? I always dreamed of having a mansion.” Then she says, “That’s not the dream, Rocky. The dream is the family inside the mansion.” Now, is that an actual line of dialogue or is that something that came up in your head? It does feel like it’s almost a prophecy in relation to Rocky’s journey.

Chris: Absolutely. That whole scene, I created. And for me, it was important to have Chizuru point to the different path that Rocky could have taken. Chizuru as a character is his foil. By having her verbalize what’s truly important to her, we see what Rocky is sacrificing in this whole process.

And this can be extrapolated even further. What Rocky has done, he’s bought into this American dream. The question is, what has he given up in the process? At what expense? His identity? His family, his heritage?

Scott: It’s interesting now thinking about because I did, like you, I was thinking of movie associations and stories. Protagonists who basically live out these grandiose lives, where they in effect are seeking external validation through the stuff they accumulate. The things they do and the money they grab, like Jordan Belfort in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network.” Tony Montana in “Scarface,” Charles Foster Kane in “Citizen Kane.”

Each one of them has a girlfriend or a lover or a wife who represents an authentic path, an authentic emotional existence, as opposed to this other path. Does that seem relevant here and resonate with you in terms of what Chizuru was with regard to Rocky?

Chris: You hit the nail on the head.

Scott: You’ve got the Big Story, which is all the stuff that goes on. The rise of Benihana and all of that, and yet, there’s the Small Story, too, of the father-son relationship, Papa-San. They have a troubled relationship. In some respects the father is more traditional. He’s more Japanese, Rocky more American.

At one point, the father tells Rocky, “Your lists of failures is as long as your ego.” Then there’s a big blow-up in the end where Papa-San says, “You are done. You are not my chonan. You are not my son.” I think chonan means “elder son.”

Could you talk a bit about the relationship between Rocky and his father? How much of that derives from your research and how much of that is embellished for the story?

Chris: That’s a good question. In my research, they didn’t have the strongest relationship. There was definitely some friction. But I ran with that. I decided to make Papa-san the main antagonist for Rocky in this film.

But I also wanted to be careful to not make him this cliché of the traditional Asian dad who’s a tiger parent and doesn’t allow his kids to have fun or do what they want. There’s a lot to his character to round out. For example, he was a vaudevillian. He tap-danced and wanted to be like Fred Astaire. There’s something that’s fascinating about that.

What defines him is his pride in Japan and his pride in certain traditions that he holds important for the family. The role of the firstborn son being extremely important, Rocky completely throws that all out of the window. That’s where a lot of the central conflict comes in for the two of them. There are layers of jealousy involved where Rocky’s able to do what his dad was never able to achieve career-wise or financially.

More so, at the end of the day, it’s about holding onto tradition and family. Your roots. That’s what the main conflict is between the two of them.

Scott: Doesn’t that speak a bit to the, I don’t want to say dilemma necessarily, but the tension of the immigrant story where that first generation comes in and often either the parents saying, “We want you to Americanize,” or the younger person just, “I want to distance myself. I want to fit in”? Does that speak a little bit to that, what was going on with Rocky?

Chris: I drew a lot from my own experience. I’m second-generation American. My parents were immigrants. I had conflict with my dad about identity. My dad was very much Chinese Pride. Like the Chinese did this! They were the first to invent that! Meanwhile, I was struggling to find my American identity. There was conflict, times where we butted heads. I used a lot of that with Rocky and Papa-san.

Scott: The tension plays out… I don’t want to give away the Act Three turn, but there’s a moment there in the denouement right at the very end where Rocky’s with his son, Kevin.

They have an agreement where Kevin wants to work in the business. There’s this exchange that was interesting. You mentioned earlier that Rocky tries to avoid feelings. Kevin says, “If I do this, I don’t want you to just be my business partner. I still want you as my dad, OK?”

Then, in the scene description, Rocky’s eyes widen in realization. Then, in voiceover:

“Holy shit. That’s what I wanted to tell Papa-san, my whole life. Fuck, I’ve become my own Papa-san.” It’s like, in a way, he’s running away from those feelings. Does that feel accurate?

Chris: I feel like Rocky’s been trying to run away from his feelings his whole life. All of the daredevil sort of crazy, death-defying sports that he engaged in. That’s his avoidance technique. That’s how he’s able to escape feeling the pain that this fissure with his father and his family has caused him.

Scott: Yeah, it’s like a void that exists and he’s trying to fill it. Of course, he’s got this guy Kessler. You’ve got his wife who represents to Rocky, “You can go this path, which is the authentic life.” Then you got this guy Kessler who’s a business adviser, but essentially a trickster figure who, “Let’s go have fun.” He facilitates that whole slippery slope down on. He even turns against him.

Chris: He even sells him down the river.

Scott: I’m fascinated with character archetypes in storytelling. You can see even in a biopic that there are these characters that have these narrative functions. For example, Carl Jung and his concept of the shadow. Boy, Rocky’s got that going on big time, those darker impulses, the negative impulses, the influence of his shadow.

Chris: For sure. I think that’s why I go back to that powerboat racing scene that opens the film. I think, in some ways, you can see it as slightly suicidal, what he’s doing. I think that’s Rocky’s shadow, where he’s taunting death in many ways. I think you’re right.

Tomorrow in Part 5, Chris reveals why he decided to approach Mr. Benihana as a “snapshot bio” as opposed to a “cradle to grave biopic.”

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Part 3, 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.