8. Chatting with Dinh Thai, Writer and Director — Part 1

Hey there! Welcome to another episode of Chatting with Asians. In this episode, I’m joined by writer and director Dinh Thai. His short film called Monday is a 50-time award winning film and, personally, one of my favorites. This is another two-part episode, you guys! So in this first part, we talk about his upbringing as his family fled from the war in Vietnam, hustled in France, and then settled into America. He also reaches out to those who are suffering from depression or grief and shares his experiences on how art has alleviated his pain. So here’s my chat with Dinh Thai.

Angie: Hey Dinh! Thanks for being on the show today.

Dinh: Hi Angie, thanks for having me!

Yeah of course. I’m really glad to have you on the show. You know, I would love to get started on this episode by talking a little bit about your experiences growing up first. I understand that you moved around a little bit before settling into St. Gabriel, is that right?

Yeah. Let’s see, where do I start? We — our family was born in Vietnam. I was born just towards the end of the war and so we fled to France for about five years and eventually my uncle, who lives in Pasadena, sponsored us. And so we ended up in Arcadia in the San Gabriel Valley. And then a few months after that, we settled into Temple City and that’s where I grew up. I spent most of my education there from 1st grade to 12th grade and that was an interesting experience because I didn’t know what — I didn’t — obviously I was not the motivator in moving because I was so young but what I really got lucky with is the friends that I made in that sort of safe suburban city/town that was surrounded by a lot of ethnicity and a lot of culture and a lot of history. My first — my best friend growing up, his name was Carlos. He and his family are Mexican, Hispanic. And every — almost when I look back at the class photographs, I realized how colorful everyone was and I didn’t feel that growing up there and I realized what it was. It was the institution itself. It was the educate — the educators, the police officers, the firemen, the commerce that surrounded us that was predominantly white. And so it felt like a very white neighborhood. But the kids growing up, we got to experience everything, you know. Carlos ate Chinese food when he came over and I ate Mexican food and I went over to his place and that story just ripples into my Puerto Rican friends, my Cuban friends, my black friends, my Asian friends. So it was a very lucky moment for me growing up with so many different types of people.

Yeah and I think that’s kind of like a more real picture of like an American growing-up story, right? Because even for me I — even though I was born in San Francisco, I spent a good amount of my childhood in central California. So I also had a lot of exposure to, you know, going over to people’s places where they come from Hispanic families or white families or sometimes Asian families but if it was then maybe it was Korean families or Thai families. So I think that’s kind of like a typical, like, situation for a kid growing up especially from an immigrant family coming to America.

Yeah it’s a beautiful experience and sometimes you sort of — I’ve — when I reflect back on how I was raised and who I got to hang out with, it was very serendipitous. You know, my parents worked all day. My siblings were a little bit older than me and so at some point they started to working or they were in college or they were going to school. And that sort of gave me a lot of freedom to be by myself and to explore and to make mistakes because I think I only remember one or two years where my mom would either walk me to school or pick me up from school, we’d walk home, and after that it was just me on my bike with my friends. And you think about that. I was, from 7 to 18, I was going to school mostly by myself or coming home from school by myself. And that doesn’t really happen these days. My nephew, who’s about to turn 16, I asked, “How do I get…” I was driving him yesterday, I asked, “How do I get back to your to your house?” And he — his reaction was, “He doesn’t know how to drive. He doesn’t know where he’s going.” And that’s just — it’s not a jab at him but that’s a reflection of our society and how we’ve grown up and the differences that he is experiencing compared to someone such as myself. I’m in my 40s, and so those times were different for us and that allowed me to make friends, all types of friends that my parents didn’t have a say in, you know.

Yeah, yeah that’s so true because even for myself growing up in central California, my mom went back to school and my dad was working a full time job. So, like, I didn’t really spend that much time with my parents at least on a day-to-day basis. You know, I didn’t have the luxury like other kids did to have their parents drop them off at school. You know, I always had to depend on other friends and their parents to pick me up or, you know, for me to just kind of like learn how to be around other families. You know, my mom was busy studying or, you know, my dad was busy working. And so I think I understood that kind of sacrifice of time that my parents had to put in an order like invest in a better future and, you know, yada yada. But yeah, I feel like it’s such — it’s a very American thing to have grown up with.

Yeah and I think it’s beautiful that even though — if we — if we reflect back on the times you spent away from your parents, of them sacrificing the time to go to work instead of taking you to school and then you have to rely on your friends parents to take you to school or any sort of other — any other duties, I think subconsciously, you learn something very special: how to get along with friends, how to appreciate these things. Even at its most minimal appreciation, just a simple thank you really. Enough — enough of those moments build your character and I think that you become a different person as opposed to, you know, some people, I wouldn’t even say children, but some people in this world have a much more privileged and easy upbringing in that, you know, that creates a different type of character.

Yeah, no, I definitely agree. Kind of speaking about kind of different, you know, growing up environments, what was it like for you to grow up, you know, in not just like in separate cities but really separate continents, right? You’ve grown up in Asia and Europe and America. How was it like for you and your family adjusting to such different environments?

Oh that’s — I mean that’s at the surface that’s a very simple question. I’ve had time to think about what our family has become since leaving Vietnam and what I realized was that the war displaced us, it displaced many Vietnamese, Chinese Vietnamese families or just Vietnamese people in general. And that moved us to a different country and what it sort of created with my parents is this drive to survive. Just to get food on the table, just to eat, just to breathe, just to wear clothes, and just to be alive. So that was a very interesting part of our lives because I wasn’t conscious enough to appreciate that. So then we moved to America and that was chasing the American dream, that’s coming to America. I mean I don’t have to paint that picture. You come to America and you chase the dream and whatever that dream is: a better home, a better financial situation, more stuff to buy. Whatever it is. Happiness, education. And what I realized was that many of us in our family suffered from some traumatic stress of fleeing a country, leaving your culture, leaving your country, arriving to a new country, a new culture, adapting, learning a new language or not learning the new language and then moving again and coming to America. And that at its core, I think, gave all of us, meaning, me, my siblings and my two parents, a very different experience of life. Everyone was looking at life differently. We didn’t all grow up in the same house, we didn’t all grow up with one car, we didn’t all grow up with this one dog, everything. Our experiences are all scattered because we’re all different ages looking at life differently from different con — at different points of the world and different cultures and continents and countries. So now I — what I see is that our family is broken because we chased that American dream so hard that we forgot what we wanted. And some of those sacrifices that we had made, we’ve been making has affected us all in a very negative way. And so from a personal standpoint, to really be frank, I would — my dad constantly says when we refer back to our times in France, he always says that was the happiest times of our lives. So it’s crazy to think that we, our family, chase the American dream, arrive to America, and then that’s what ultimately broke us all apart. Half my family at some point moved back to Asia and settled into Hong Kong and Taiwan to continue chasing the dream, which doesn’t make any sense at all, you know. But that’s where business was and that’s where their minds were and that’s how things evolved for them and for us. And so — so ultimately in a — to sort of recap that thought, it is to say that I think everyone goes through things and to be a family who are refugees immigrants coming to America, they bring a lot of trauma and stress with them. Especially people that don’t have money. You know, it’s not really a decision to move. It’s more like, “We have to move,” because of for whatever reasons, war or just to chase that American dream and I think that is very stressful and you can see that with a lot of immigrant families. With how fathers and mothers and couples, families and how they interact with each other because there’s so much — there’s so much subtext in their conversations, you know.

Yeah. And I — you know, when I started this podcast, at least from my background, you know, my family came over from Hong Kong but, you know, it wasn’t as like a refugee situation, right? They just came here because they thought job opportunities were better here. And, you know, it was just easier to buy a house if you wanted to buy a house. So I never really grew up with, you know, the kind of survival mode that I think I’ve come to realize when I started talking to not just podcast guests, you know, here but also to classmates or, you know, to co-workers whose families, you know, really had to flee from something so violent or traumatic or, you know, like you said it’s not it’s not really a choice, you just have to just go for, you know, what seems to be the better life.

And that changes people and that changes the way they interact. That changes the way they raise their kids. It changes everything. I remember getting arrested at 17 for some really stupid stuff but it was — but it was a big deal. It was a big deal for the American kids. The Caucasian kids that I hung out with that got arrested. It was a huge deal for them. And I remember my friend’s parents, I won’t name any names but this is a very dear friend of mine, his parents were the ones to pick me up from the — from jail and they drove me home and they knocked on the door and it was late at night and my dad comes down to the — he comes to the front door. He opens the front door, he just looks at me. He hears what my friend’s parents say and he says, “OK. Go inside.” And that was it. It was like no big deal. Right? And — but that was a huge lesson for me. What I realized there was that getting arrested at 17 for — I’m going to just be very black-and-white with this, getting arrested at 17 for a white American family is a huge deal. Because why? They didn’t ever escape Vietnam. They never worked two or three jobs in France to get by. They never had to hustle their in-law to sponsor them to come into America and then finally settle into America. You know? Compare that to getting arrested at 17. That’s nothing.

Right, right.

So perspective for my dad was very — it was a very experienced perspective. And so we went to court and we were eventually found guilty and we had to do community service. And, you know, so I paid my dues if you — if that’s the right thing to say. But it’s perspective and that’s what either is — that’s either a negative or positive thing, obviously.

Because you have so much life experience already, I mean just like through your family stories and through your own stories, is — like was that kind of the reason why you decided to pursue filmmaking or was it like a multitude of reasons?

Yeah I think that’s a long story that there are a lot of direct and indirect factors into for me to pursue filmmaking. Obviously, I stand on the shoulders of all the incredible things my family has and is doing to support me. I’m the youngest of six. And so you can just see all the work they put in to keep me alive, to keep food on the table, and to keep clothes on me. And then I was very lucky I didn’t have to put in the grind to make that money because my family put in the grind to make that money. And then at some point, when I was in my early 20s, I was hanging out with some of my best friends and they’re all musicians and they had a lot of sort of creative freedom and there was a couple of years where we smoked a lot of weed and watched a lot of movies. I was going through a very big heartbreak. And so my focus was my friends, the weed, and the movies. And at some point, that cloud of angst and pain and being high sort of made me feel like I can tell these stories that I kept watching on the screen. So that sort of, as a very short way of putting it, is what drove me to try to become a filmmaker. The heartbreak. The weed. And obviously the freedom that came from the support of my family.

Was your family really supportive of that decision?

I don’t think they really cared at that point. My dad had already moved to Hong Kong along with two of my brothers. My sisters who were, I think they’re ten or twelve years older than me, already had their families, they’re in their careers, they’re already moved out of the house. And so I was really lucky in making a decision like that. I can’t say that I experienced that conventional story of my parents disagreeing with my choices. I was pretty much, as I — the way I grew up as a latchkey kid, I kind of also went into adulthood as a latchkey kid.

And I think it’s so interesting that your, like, your background allowed you to pursue something creative and not feel like a lot of judgment from that. I think — right, the typical Asian-American story is that, you know, kids would, you know, get criticism from their parents or I’ve had guests where they they’ve said, you know, their parents were generally supportive. But I think you’re kind of hitting it right on the spot in terms of your own experience where, you know, your family had to flee from the — from war. Right? And just had to survive. So any other, you know, quote unquote issues that came up didn’t really seem like issues.

And so to just sort of go back to your question, my sisters had to deal with the pressure of my parents when they made a career choice because they were the adults. They were much closer to that lineage of having to become successful because they were older and they had lived longer and they were sort of more aware and present of all the things, all the challenges my parents had gone through. But by the time they got to me, you know, a lot of those issues that we dealt with coming to America, those first struggling survival issues, those things started to sort of dissolve as I got older because they became more successful. Everyone sort of got their roots growing into their — with their careers and their families. And so when the focus came back to me, there wasn’t really much of a focus there. There were a lot of things that occurred that split our family apart, you know? Emotionally and physically. And those things were — actually helped me grow and be able to make — have more of a freedom to make decisions about what I wanted to do. But I do not take away the support they gave that allowed me to to have that freedom.

For sure. Yeah. So, you know, kind of talking about your film career so far and filmmaking experiences. Obviously your short film, “Monday”, that’s like a tremendous accomplishment. Right? Yeah, yeah I really enjoy watching the short film. And I know you’ve mentioned elsewhere that it was originally intended to kind of be like I would assume like a comedy kind of film, but that you ended up changing the script so that it was also channeling kind of micro aggressions that you experienced as an Asian guy growing up in America. So what really inspired you to flip the script so to speak? Right because like you could have stuck with just the comedy aspect of it. What made it so important for you to bring a little bit more realism into it?

I’m not quite sure if it was a very conscious decision. It was sort of — the original idea was just a very straightforward outline for a spec commercial that I would probably never shoot. But you know, you could imagine a commercial for a beer company in which this one Asian guy has a six pack and when he shows up to his friend’s house, who are Hispanic, who are Black Americans, who are Caucasian, he sort of transforms into those people. And then when he leaves that house, he transforms back to being Asian. And when he arrives to the next house, he transforms into that culture of people as well. And so that was the original idea. It was just a funny little slapstick thing. And when that idea popped back into my head to write a script about it, I was going through some emotional things with love and just a general broad stroke of I’m not quite happy with how Asian men are treated. And so all that stuff, all those emotions and all those issues just found its way back into the script. A lot of the jokes that are written are based on experiences I’ve had with my friends. We make fun of each other from a cultural level and we make fun of each other on a physical level. So there’s just all this banter that happens but that’s our friendship. That’s where — that’s where we live. It keeps us sharp and to sort of ground the story and give it reason, it was something that I experienced as a viewer. I watch things that never fulfill me as an audience member. And so I tried to hit those notes with this story and I think that’s — those are the reasons that sort of helped evolve this little slapstick concept into something that could be and mean a little bit more to whoever’s watching it.

Yeah, no. I felt like the film resonated with me. Strangely, I didn’t expect it to I think because, you know, I see myself as an Asian-American woman. And, you know, this is about a guy who is going to different houses, you know, dealing whatever the they want, right, from him. And I — it’s funny when I was watching the short film, it did make me realize how much I would kind of, you know, change my mannerisms or speak differently depending on where I was going, who I was hanging out with.

Yeah, you’re code-switching.

Yeah. So that was really interesting. I think if it resonated with me, you know, I’m sure it must have resonated with a lot of people. Like, you know, to kind of put a plug for your film here, like it’s a 50-time award-winning short, right? And it won first place in an HBO competition. I think it’s APA Visionaries. So yeah. So how did it feel for this short film to be recognized kind of very widely when it was so loose — like loosely based on your personal life experiences? Like it must have been surreal.

Yeah! Of course, it is one of those moments in life where I put a lot of time and effort into the script and into the production and of course as someone who makes something, any of us, we want a good reception. We want people to say some nice things about it. And in starting the creative process, it was fun. I didn’t think it was great. I just thought it was a good exercise. And then we were getting really close to finishing the edit in post-production. And so we were watching these rough cuts and we were getting a really good vibe from it. But of course never thinking that it could win anything and go on to do anything bigger than what we imagined. And and when we heard back from HBO and they told us we placed first, that was an incredible moment of, “What did we do? How did we do it? And and what does that mean to me as an artist? How do I tell stories? How does it make people feel? Were all the ideas in my head and all those little micro choices in trying to tell a story, are they real? Can they work? Are people receiving that stuff?” Because you know when you watch things, ultimately the most important person in a story is the person watching it. Because if no one’s watching it then you didn’t say anything. And if people are watching it and they don’t appreciate it then you’re still — I still didn’t say anything. And so it was a great feeling to be recognized by HBO. The short has gone on to done some great things at the NBCU Shorts Festival as well. Kevin David Lin, who’s the star of Monday, that was his first real project. And so it’s a great accomplishment for him to have received the Outstanding Actor Award from NBCU. And it’s just all this stuff. You know, selfishly, I have to say I’m not making art just to make the art. There’s a purpose to it. There’s — I have to keep a roof over my head and food on the table and my livelihood healthy and happy and the people around me healthy and happy. And so if filmmaking is the path to that success then I have to keep looking at filmmaking and going, “OK, this is where my happiness comes from. This is where I get to make money and then eat and live and hopefully change the small world around me and help the people around me.” So receiving that recognition really helps support that journey and that struggle to try to become something in this industry and tell more stories.

Yeah. You know I really appreciate you kind of bringing a more realistic approach to filmmaking. You know it would be very nice to say, “Oh I do it for art’s sake and, you know, I’m so artsy” or whatever but like you said in real life, at the end of the day you have to have a roof over your head. You have to maintain relationships whether it’s family or friends or otherwise. You bring food to the table. I had a really good conversation with someone over lunch about this very idealized image that’s happening like especially on Instagram and social media where you know people are either dedicating 110% of their day job or if they hate their day job you know 110% to their to their side hustle or their passion project and it’s all in or nothing. But you know for, at least in my opinion, that’s totally not feasible for a majority of people. Right? Like you know for me I just I know I need a day job. Like or else like I don’t know how else I’m going to survive especially in San Francisco. So I know I need a day job and maybe I do enjoy aspects of that day job but it’s not my entire life. Right? I’m not defined by that. So you know having a podcast like this as an outlet for me to do something more creative is just as much of a fulfillment for me as having a day job. But that’s just my own personal life.

I think that as as we live in this world, there are the cogs that make the world go round and then there are the others who get to pursue something very selfish and sort of self-absorbed passion of ours and not everyone can do that. But at the same token not everyone who wants to be an artist can be a cog. It’s it’s detrimental to my — to my mental health, to my physical health, and what I’m slowly realizing that is that I’m really lucky to have this creative exhaust because any sort of drama and depression and pain and suffering that I feel I know I have an outlet for it. And so I guess ultimately if someone were listening and hearing us talk about this, if they’re suffering from something that brings them grief and pain they — I I my release is through my art. And if I were to be working at a desk for 40 hours a week, that wouldn’t help me alleviate any of my pain. That would just put me more into the darkness. And I’ve been there. You know, I’ve suffered from things and and I still suffer from emotional emotional issues and and that type of trauma. But I have an exhaust for it. I know where I can put it and I know where it comes back out and having that — having that outlet really helps my mental health.

Yeah. I think as as creatives, right? It really depends on each person right? There has to be a balance. And it’s it’s up to each person to figure out what that balance is right? You know, I think especially for high schoolers or even college kids who are still debating whether or not to to pursue more creative careers or creative projects, you know, there’s not there’s not a right way to go about it. Right? For some people they can really dedicate everything to it, for others maybe not so much. So it’s just kind of like to go through different experiences, try different things and figuring out like to yourself like how do you check in with yourself, how do you check in for a more balanced career, lifestyle, whatever.

I mean I’m not I’m not so sure that we have a real answer to any of that but — it’s some people they’re raised the different way. They live in a different socio-economic lifestyle that there’s just things that some some people are born with huge obstacles around them and others are given the world. And so it’s it’s challenging to to solve everyone’s issues one by one. But it is it is fair to to look at that those problems our problems and go OK I understand where you’re coming from I understand what you’re going through and maybe treat each other fairly and maybe treating each other more fairly sort of helps others survive a little bit easier.

Thanks for checking out part 1 of this conversation! The next episode is the second part and it’s already out now so check it out!

Website: https://www.dinhthai.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mondayashortfilm/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mondayashortfilm/

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