Bing Liu’s quiet confidence and powerful vision have led him to the Oscars’ front door
This interview was originally published in the January 17, 2019 issue of The Slant, a weekly newsletter featuring Asian American news, media and culture. Want more features like this? Subscribe today for free.
If you don’t know the name Bing Liu yet, get ready — because this is his year. Since debuting his film Minding the Gap at Sundance in 2018, he’s already collected 28 awards, including the festival’s “Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking.”
Growing up in the small town of Rockford, IL, Liu began filming his childhood friends doing what they loved most — skateboarding. Over the years, he captured some of their most painful and intimate moments, melding them into a breathtaking and powerful narrative on race, class, and what it means to be a man in today’s America. On the horizon now? The Oscars. While official nominations will not be released until January 22nd, Minding the Gap has made it onto the shortlist of films competing for Best Documentary Feature.
Bing Liu and The Slant were also recently honored as part of award-winning filmmaker Leah Nichols’ list of 100 Most Influential Asian Americans to look out for in 2019. We connected over Instagram and caught up with Liu over the phone.
I had a chance to watch Minding the Gap and, admittedly, I thought this was going to be a documentary about skateboarding. But I was really blown away by how beautifully and thoughtfully created this film was from beginning to end, and how it [commented] on so many pressing issues facing society today.
Let’s start with the title “Minding the Gap” — I anticipate that this phrase has multiple meanings but I’d love to hear why you chose this as the title for the film. Is this related to skating at all?
It’s actually not a skating term, but I was on a skate blog when I saw a sticker that had the byline, “Mind the Gap.” That was actually the first time I had ever heard that phrase. I’d never been to London or ridden the Tube. At the time, I was about a year into the project which I had called “Ennui and Amour,” and I began noticing patterns of people struggling to grow from childhood to adulthood. And the term “Minding the Gap” came back to me and just made a lot of sense as the title of the film.
Throughout the film, you’re often referred to as quiet or introverted by others, and in interviews you’ve talked about how strange it’s been coming out from behind the camera and into the spotlight… especially now that you’re on the shortlist for the Oscars. Congrats by the way!
Thank you!
I really resonate with that because I too can be introverted, especially if I’m in a group of really extroverted, audacious people. Sometimes I worry that if I’m more of a listener than a talker, that people might feel like it’s hard to get to know me or feel that they can be close to me.
Taking this into consideration, I have a two-part question for you: How do you go about finding and making friends with groups of people who are so drastically different from you on the outside, and how do you build enough trust with them to answer such direct and personal questions with such vulnerability?
I think, one, I was lucky enough to grow up in a really diverse community and two, because I began skateboarding at an early age, I was able to get outside of those defined spaces for interaction when you grow up as an adolescent—like the classroom, after school club, soccer team, or whatever — I was out on the streets. I was running into people in the neighborhood, and people came from all walks of life.
And through [skating], which wasn’t that popular at the time, we were able to form a bond. Today’s media tries to talk about and analyze skateboarding, but I think the more you try to talk about and analyze it, the less that image stays? It’s sort of ethereal in that way.
And in terms of getting at the really vulnerable, emotional spaces… to me, introverted doesn’t equate to being shy. It just means that I’m more intuitive and introspective. And I have a lower capacity for social interaction.
I get that.
I do really enjoy talking to people though. Part of the film is about what it means to have sensitivity and emotion in your life, but no outlet to utilize it or let it blossom. Exercise it in a way. That’s what I felt like I experienced in my everyday life. So whenever I had a chance to try to have conversations that made me feel emotionally engaged, it was nice. So over the years, I’ve just found ways to get people into those spaces, and to feel safe talking about things with me.
So when I started following Zach and Kiere around for this film, it was just like any other conversation we had growing up, but now it was just behind a camera.
You asked some pretty hard-hitting questions to your friends and your family. To Zach, a very young father, “Do you ever worry that your son is gonna grow up messed up?” And to your mother, “Do you remember the first time you were hit?” Are you ever afraid to ask these questions or worried about how they will affect your relationships?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I didn’t plan on being in the film. I think later on, I was asking harder-hitting questions, because I had decided to be in it, in response to this really difficult private revelation when Nina revealed that Zach was being abusive with her. I think I was most worried about whether this was a film I could even keep doing. Like, how could I ethically move forward?
Eventually the solution ended up being to let the audience understand [my] history, background, and relationship to this community, as well as [my] connection to this situation that Nina and Zach were facing, given what was happening at home with my mom. Later when I showed them the film, they could see that, “hey, Bing went through this too, he’s not just drafting it and then blindly asking these questions.” I was aware that the audience might feel [my] nervousness asking those questions in a way, so that was in the back of my head.
It’s difficult to put yourself in your own film, because the filmmaker has all the control, but vulnerability is about lack of control.
That scene with your mother is incredibly powerful, and it must have been a mutual form of therapy for the two of you to relive some really dark times. Were you always this open with each other? Do you feel like this film has helped to change your relationship for the better?
(laughs) You know, actually, I always initiate these conversations about dark times, not even just with my mom. So I had broached these topics before. Everything was just sort of happening all at once during this tumultuous time. She had finally moved out of my stepfather’s house, after all those terrible years, and gotten her own place. She was really trying to make this divorce happen. He was dragging it out, but then he got sick and died.
This was all happening while I was following Zach and Kiere around for the film. [My mom and I] had lost touch — we had really become estranged in my adolescence, and then I moved to Chicago and we didn’t really keep in touch. But then she started living at her own place, and I tried to spend time with her to try to reconnect, but anytime I brought up the past, things just got so upsetting and hard that we never really talked for more than 15 minutes without one of us changing the subject or walking out of the room.
So you know that conversation that you’re referring to, because of the camera and purpose of the film, we were able to have a conversation for 1–2 hours. I think it’s helped us understand each other more. It’s a start, I think. I’m hoping. It’s still fresh.
In a recent interview, you also talk about how when you and your mother moved to America, you tried to blot out your Asian identity to really try to assimilate, but as you’ve gotten older it’s made you wonder what you lost in the process in order to do that. You’ve said that you’ve landed on something new, and you’re not fully Asian but you’re not fully American either. This is a sentiment shared by so many of the people we’ve interviewed, and something we discuss frequently amongst our own Slant team. Being “Asian American” is a very confusing place to be. So what does this mean to you exactly — to be Asian American?
I think about it in terms of stories about the Asian American experience. I think the ones that work for me don’t try to carve out the Asian American experience in a vacuum. It can only exist in relation to other cultures and other races. Movies like Columbus really speak to me — this is more true to my experience of being Asian American rather than someone growing up in the enclave of a Chinatown.
So yeah, I think it’s become part of the building of Asian American adolescence. You try to blot out that part of your identity, being Asian. Then you come to realize that it doesn’t matter how much I try to blot it out, the world is still going to respond and react to me in a certain way.
This has been such a big year for the Asian community in media and entertainment, riding the wave of Crazy Rich Asians. There seems to be an openness and curiosity about this group that has never been seen before — do you think you’ll ever explore anything about what it means to be Asian American in any of your work?
Yeah, I’m excited about it too. Despite how much I’m glad that we were able to pull off so many experiences and scenes in Minding the Gap, there was so much more I wanted to cram in… but there’s only so much room in a 90-minute film!
I think I’m going to have to use the rest of my career to work on some of those other things, including what it means to be Asian American. Really it’s learning more about some of the complexities that I experienced growing up, and I’m still not completely satisfied with some of the stories that are out there.
I’m very much driven by creating something that the younger version of myself would find fulfilling and heard.
In a recent interview you also mentioned that you are currently working on something that will talk about intimacy, or lack thereof, in today’s society. Can you share anything about this new project with us?
I’m currently in talks with some producers about making a film that discusses millennial love/intimacy, looking at how my generation defines, enacts, and searches for it. What drove me to make Minding the Gap was trying to find ways to grow older and wiser, and learn without having had a model that I was satisfied with. It reminded me a lot more about my feelings and trauma associated with personal models, and how I want something to look towards than run away from.
When I was making Minding the Gap I found myself talking to everyone, even when I wasn’t in the film, about violence in the home, pain, and these quiet lies of desperation. I’m excited to be talking about love and how people feel connected. I’d really like to do that for a few years.
You’ve got an impressive list of work that you’ve been affiliated with, including Divergent, Transcendence, Jupiter Ascending, Sense8, and one of my favorite shows of all-time: Shameless! Selfish curiosity — how was it working on set?
Shameless mainly shoots in L.A., but they come to Chicago to shoot their exteriors. They pack in an entire season’s worth of material in these really crazy week-long series. It doesn’t feel like other TV shows that I’ve been on where we shoot the whole thing with an all-Chicago crew. I don’t know, I mean TV… it just eats you up.
In a way, it can be good because it helps you acclimate to production and really get good at the craft, but after a while it really grinded me down. The cast was super nice though, no primadonnas or anything, they were all really normal and say hi to you!
Last question: I moved to Chicago in 2017 and am still exploring the area — do you have any recommendations on favorite local spots to check out?
So there’s this really cool underground comedy show called “Paper Machete” that happens every Saturday at 3:00 PM at the Green Mill. It’s one of my favorite things in Chicago.
Bing Liu also asked that we thank his crew and cast for all their work, dedication, and energy poured into this film. He couldn’t have done it without them.
Minding the Gap is now streaming on Hulu. You can also catch the film live on its world tour — if you’re lucky, you might even catch Liu in-person. On Monday, January 21st, he will be celebrating the anniversary of his Sundance debut at a special screening in Chicago at the Music Box Theatre. Tickets are now available.
