I was thinking about this a lot at the GRAMM News. I don't have any industry connections. There are all things that I've built of just like being an industrious person.
I guess hello and welcome back to Midnight Chats, a podcast of informal interviews with musicians that we love, posted weekly at midnight to suit these rather informal conversations. This week's episode is hosted by me Stuart Stubbs, editor of Loud and Quiet magazine, and tonight's episode is a conversation that I had earlier this year, in April twenty twenty two,
with Michelle Zora aka Japanese Breakfast. We spoke just after Michelle had been at the Grammys, where she was nominated for two awards, Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album. Those took place in Vegas for the first time this year, but when I spoke to Michelle, she had relocated to upstate New York for a bit of downtime before heading back to California for Coachella. We speak about both of those things, the Grammys, Coachella, and also her album Jubilee,
which she released last year. Is her third album, and as you're hearing me say to Michelle. I think it's a record that only gets better with time. I still is into it a hell of a lot. And back last year when it was released, we put Japanese Breakfast on the cover of our magazine Loud and Quiet. I have linked to that interview with Michelle in the show notes of this podcast. There's also a few other bits and pieces down there. What else can I tell you?
We also talk a little bit about Michelle's memoir, which she released at the same time as she released Jubilee. It is a very personal book. Obviously it's a memoir, but it's also largely about the death of Michelle's mother, which is also what her last two albums have focused on in one way or another. And that book, Crying in h Mart, has now been picked up for a movie deal. It's going to be made into a movie.
And the book came about after Michelle had a couple of essays published, one in Glamour magazine and then a second essay of hers was published in The New Yorker, and that essentially led to her book deal. If you have not heard Michelle's music yet, or the music of Japanese Breakfast, then Jubilee I think is a perfect starting point. She has a couple of albums before that, Psychopomp also great, but for me, Jubilee really is her best work. Yeah,
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Physical magazine. We will post that out to you and hopefully you'll like it enough to stick around. That's all on loudon Quiet dot com. But first here is Michelle's Una Japanese breakfast on midnight Chats. Have you managed to decompress from the Grammys last week?
I think I'm in my final day of decompressing. I had to do a couple of college readings right afterwards, So for that whole week it was a real whirlwind, Like my entire body needed to recover from the like vanity trauma I inflicted upon it. Like I had these really long nails that needed to be shaved off, and so my nail beds are very thin underneath, and my hair was like matted with wax for three days. So it was a real physical recovery after the Grammy.
Wow, so it's physical as well as mental. I mean, how did you how did you find it? Did you like?
How?
How was your first Grammy experience?
People kept asking me if I was nervous, and I really wasn't. I'm a pretty high strung person, but I felt very relaxed at the Grammys because I didn't have.
To do anything.
If I had to perform or something, I would have been a wreck. But I just had to go there and look hot and chat with people, which you know, I paid people to help me with it essentially, And so yeah, I just went in having a good time.
I had no expectations.
I had a feeling we were probably gonna lose both Grammys, but you know, it's it's such a delight to be nominated. All of my favorite artists have never won Grammys, so I feel an incredibly good company as a Grammy loser. Honestly, I mean, be Yor has lost fifteen nominations, so I'm in very good company.
She's never won a Grammy.
I don't think she has ever won a Grammy.
I was thinking about it and like, yeah, I think she's been nominated like fifteen times. She's probably been in the Best Alternative category at least five and has never taken one because she doesn't want to play that game, because why was she you know? So, Yeah, I'm totally into just being in the conversation and I'm totally okay with it, and I just had a really great time.
I went there to just celebrate this.
Album with the team and the label and the band and Vegas, and yeah, I had a great time.
Your nominations were for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album, right, Yes, I mean that's like congratulations, that's like, it's amazing to thank you. Did you have many preconceived notions of what it was going to be like before you went and what was what was it like? How was it different to what you thought maybe was in store for you?
I thought it was gonna be less fun, honestly. I heard that like you don't get water or like.
Drink, and that there's no food, and I just thought it was gonna be really long and boring. But once we got in there, uh, because we were up for a major category, we actually got like a little table on the floor, so we were like in a.
Really good spot. I was surprised like how close our table was.
And they had like champagne service, so we at least got to have like champagne.
And there was water.
Uh, and half of the ceremony is really just performances, so it got it's really fun and like it's I would say, it's like fifty percent major category awards and fifty percent just like huge pop performance.
And so I thought it was gonna be.
Like really boring awards all the time, but it felt like quite fun just because you get to see these like stadium pop bands put on like this huge production show back to back to back. You could see Billie Eilish, BTS, Lady Gaga, justin Bieber, like all these people.
I would never you know, pay like five.
Hundred dollars to go see a show and to be able to like watch that back to back and have these like huge artists actually you know, put on this like enormous production was really fun. So I thought it was gonna be kind of like a drag once we were in the actual award ceremony, but it was.
It was actually really fun to watch.
Did you not even feel nervous as your categories were coming out, not in the sense of like, oh, I might not win, but I feel like I'd be more nervous thinking what if I win and I've now got I've got to get up there in a second.
I mean, I feel like no one can judge you like you win granty. You know. I knew that there was just absolutely no way that we were gonna win Best New Artists. I knew one hundred percent. I think everyone else did that. Olivia Rodrigue was going to take it, and I think that she deserved it. For Best Alternative, I thought we had a fighting chance.
But uh, I who thought that one? It was Saint Vincent, you know, which is also well deserved. But I thought maybe we had a chance. But I didn't feel too nervous.
I was just gonna basically think everyone that helped me work on the record, So I don't really I didn't really feel like I had to make any kind of statement because it's also untelevised, so it's, uh, it's like less.
Pressure, right, Yeah, this was the first year it was untelevised, right, it normally is.
No. I don't know, I don't know.
I don't think it is ever televised, there's always it not. Yeah, there's a sect. There's one ceremony with a bunch of other awards that are not as yeah, which includes best Alternative.
That's not televisied.
Got yeah, Okay, I don't know.
I've never really paid attention to this compo.
So it's this was but this was? Was this the first one that was in Vegas for some reason? But no, it's normally in LA, but this year was in Vegas due to a COVID delay. I think have you been to Vegas before then? Or was that your first Vegas trip.
I've been to Vegas a couple of times. My members of Vegas I have. I have one.
I went in my childhood with my parents and I remember they I actually write about this in my book, but they left me in the hotel to go gamble and I was an only child and I missed them, and so I cleaned the entire hotel room, hoping that when they came back that they would be very proud of me, not realizing that you know, there's you know, room service, housekeeping. But yeah, my mom was like a real neat freak, and so I thought if I cleaned the hotel room, and they came back that they would be.
Sad that they looked. And then the other memory I have is I played a show one of.
Our first like DIY shows as Japanese Breakfast in like twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen, I booked a show. Shamir actually helped me book a show at like a crepe restaurant and it was like in a strip mall in Las Vegas. There were maybe like ten people there that was probably largely there for the crapes, and they kept telling us to turn our amps down, and I was like, if I turned my amp down any quieter, it.
Will just be off.
Like it's at like two five, Like if you turn it any lower, it just shuts off.
And it was not really conducive to a gig.
But yeah, I've been to I've been to Last Vegas a couple of times. I actually was like legally married in Las Vegas.
So right, okay, yeah there a few times. So the so that time when you went and cleaned the hotel room, I mean, did it work?
Did your parents They were like embarrassed. I feel like they've just felt bad.
It was like such a needy only child and like they left for like two hours and I couldn't handle it.
Wow, how old were we? How would how old would you have been them?
I like eight or something?
Okay, right, and so when, so when you were there this time for Grammy's time? Did you? I mean, do you like that? Are you a fan of Vegas as a place. I've never been myself, but I've heard all the cliches about it being a really fun place to go for a short period of time.
I hate Las Vegas.
I feel like there are maybe kids from Las Vegas that will tell me that I feel.
Now, I feel hesitant to say that I hate Las Vegas.
I hate like the center of Las Vegas or whatever. I'm sure that there's like a real I don't know, maybe there's like another culture outside of like the downtown, like Strip or whatever.
I mean.
I feel like I would be pissed off if someone said, like I hate Philadelphia and they were like talking about like center city, like just like chain restaurant downtown.
So maybe that's like unfair of me to say about Las Vegas. But that type of Las Vegas.
I'm not like a big gambler, and I'm also get lost very easily of a really poor sense of direction. So I was like, honestly so overwhelmed about getting lost in the casino that I tried not to leave my room. Like at one point, I ordered a breakfast room service that was like two eggs and like hash browns and toasts were like twenty seven dollars, and I ordered room service because I was so afraid of leaving the room and getting lost that I just.
Stayed my room.
I've never thought it, thought of it as the sort of place where you would get lost, but I just say I've never been. It's obviously huge. How do you find like when you come to like a place like London, Like, do you tend to get lost everywhere?
I do. I tend to have like a some kind of guardian with me. But I love London. I don't feel that way about London at all.
It's just because you know, we're so like your cities are so grid like hmmm, because they're built for cars, you know, Like it's quite easy to be like, Okay, I'm I'm twenty blocks. I need to go up that way. The numbers are going up.
I need to feel like in London, like I'll be okay getting lost because it's so lovely everywhere, and then okay, don't want biggest if I get lost, It's.
Like just hell, so did you after the Grammys? Did you go to any of the There must have been parties galore in Vegas.
I don't know.
I mean, I I heard a rumor that Olivia Rodrigo was having a party, but there was a cover charge, so I was like, I'm not going to that. And then I didn't really hear about Like Jack Antonov invited me to like a small gathering, but I was honestly like just so wrecked.
I was like so tired.
I had kind of celebrated the night before and I was just really hungry and wanted to go to bed. So I kind of celebrated just like with my band and my label and team, and I didn't really do much. Maybe I like ruined my Grammy's experience by doing that, but I had a fun time. I didn't really go into any after parties. I would like to believe there weren't as many because it's in Las Vegas, but maybe I'm just like not cool enough to know what they are.
I can't believe I didn't realize some of them charged that seems that doesn't seem right.
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they had to like pay for Paris Hilton's DJ set.
Right. Well, congratulations on Tubilee. It's such a great record, and I think it just gets better over time the more I was listening to it again yesterday ahead of this, having like hammered it when it came out last year, and I think it just kind of gets better. Like do you how do you feel about it now with a little bit of distance from it coming out and obviously like the Grammys kind of may maybe makes you reconnect with it a bit.
Oh, I'm so proud of it, you know.
I mean when you when you make something, I feel like you always have this feeling that it's like the best thing that you've made. But I really felt that way, and it's really validating to have it be, you know, my most successful record. I'm I feel like I'm in this new place now where I've just been. It's been so charmed. This musical project has only gone up and up, and so I think I'm I'm sort of been in this sphere of like when is this plateau gonna come? Like?
When am I going to make a record that causes the Descent, But.
Yeah, I mean, I was just talking to my husband about this, about how you know, when you first put out a record, you're just so nervous to put on the live show, and there's so much pressure because it feels like you up into the very moment that you go on tour, it's up.
To you to like build it up the way that it needs to be.
And now that it's been almost a year, it's not even almost a year, I guess it's almost a year that the record's been out. It feels like I can finally just relax and enjoy the album and like.
The show just is what the show is.
You know, We've built this like machine that operates really well and I can just go back to hopefully enjoying these performances because I was such a ball of nerves in the fall hoping that we could. You know, we just scaled up so tremendously, Like we scaled up to six piece band and we brought on, you know, two more crew members, and it just scaled up.
The show is so much And now I feel like we've finally.
Risen to the occasion and I can just enjoy myself again because it was so nerve wracking for the first year, at.
Least that's my hope.
But going into Coachella and these big festivals, like, I just feel really ready and I'd like to just relax and enjoy the ride at this point because last year was so stressful.
Have you done Coachella before, either as a fan or as an artist?
I played as an artist. I think in twenty eighteen.
You're kind of going into that knowing what you're what you're getting into.
Yeah. I love Coachella. Honestly, I had a blast when we played there.
I went like years and years. I went in two thousand and five. It's any time I've been well. Back then it was only two days, it was only one weekend, and it wasn't really a thing. It wasn't really much of a big thing. It didn't feel like that. It was depeche Mode and Tall but in the in the day Tool played Yeah, Yeah, Tall and depeche Mode. But in the day, like Kanye played. In the day Madonna played. I think it's her only festival set.
Wait, Madonna didn't headline no Mode Madonna.
That's crazy.
She played in the middle of the day in ten That's wild and for a really short set. She probably only played for about twenty minutes in the end because she was really late coming on.
Oh wow.
She didn't seem to have a good time because she as well, like.
Why am I not headlining? I like my I think she is like the highest paid tour before, like touring artist.
Yeah, I can imagine that. Yeah, fully, I think it's the only festival she's ever done. I don't think she's done one since. I don't think she's done one before because she was like, why is tool tool playing above me? But it was kind of weird because you know, Madonna doing a festival set. I was like, well, this is
just going to be incredible. But she kind of only played, you know, she only played I'd say maybe six or seven songs if I remember correctly, and a lot of them were like real deep cuts off of new records. And then she was like fuck you all, yeah, yeah, exactly, and she kind of did it with just to I don't think she had a band. I think it was to backing. It was almost like she was a special secret guest, but she wasn't. She was on the bill like she It was kind of weird, but like this
was cool. Yeah, it was cool. It was cool to see it. It was like the tent was rammed and it was a thousand degrees in there. It was really uncomfortable. It was kind of weird. I remember when I got to La and I told I met some I saw some people, like we bumped into some people and they were asking why we were in town, and we said, oh, we're going to Coachella. They didn't really know what it
was that. They were like, oh, what is that? They thought they thought we were talking about a book festival.
I think that the La Times Book Festival was around the same.
Time, right, and maybe it was that.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the catering. Coachella was like, weirdly.
One of our first festivals that we ever played, and they definitely treat their artists like super well, and I thought that all festivals.
Were going to be like that moving forward.
And really Coachella that has like ten different types of spa water and like PoCA stage and like all these desserts, so I just like really enjoy like eating my fill there.
How do you find the British festivals be honest food wise?
Oh? I do not want to get in trouble over there. I've gotten in trouble before for criticizing.
Food in the UK, but I do like some food in the UK that I've had. But I had so many people like attack me.
I like tweeted something about it because I just like it wasn't necessarily that I was talking about the UK food as a whole, just like the food that I happened to eat for the past week had been a string of bad decisions, I guess, and then I got I got so many people that were very upset, So now I'm I'm terrible.
You've got to be careful commenting. One thing I love about the Japanese Breakfast is kind of how hands on you are with it and how like the DIY ethic of it, like the videos, the fact that you direct more or less all the videos and you get your friends in them, but there's also such a huge attention to detail within those things. When did you first get into that sort of DIY culture that is kind of at the heart of the band.
I mean, that's how I got into music from the beginning.
You know, when people ask like what inspired me to get involved with music? You know, I was going to shows at like fifteen sixteen, but it didn't ever feel accessible until I saw like a DIY show that some upperclassmen at my high school were throwing at a coffee shop, and that was the first time I was like, oh, I know these people, what they're making is not necessarily
like exceptional, but it's charming. They all have something to say, and they all have their own unique style, and that's something that I could do, especially as someone that you know, learned how to play the guitar pretty late. Later I guess, you know, sixteen is not too late, but at the time, it felt like I was kind of starting late. And you know, I never was very confident about my voice,
but I wanted. I had so many ideas and stories I wanted to tell, and I just loved songwriting very quickly. And I loved, yeah, just that whole DIY ethic, like of just you know, you book your own shows, you promote your own shows, you you know, reach out to the city paper to write about your album, and I just I.
Loved doing that.
It made me feel like I was, I guess, you know, in charge of my own destiny.
In some ways, and so yeah, that was just really how I got my start.
And then as we grew, it made me really able to appreciate what other people could bring to the project. But that was just always it felt like artists like Mount Eerie and you know, all the K Records bands, and that's like what they did, and that was the art that I loved. And even just like doing your own like cutout collage, album design and stuff like that.
That was sort of how I started.
And then as we became bigger, having loftier ideas and getting more professional people involved to make the.
Project bigger was like such a fun part of it for me.
So at what point did you do the June Project, which was a Tumblr project where you wrote and recorded a new song every day throughout the whole of June, thirty songs in thirty days and uploaded them to Tumbler.
I think that was like twenty thirteen or yeah, maybe late twenty thirteen.
Did you find that that easy to like bash these songs out? Like, have you always found it easy to write songs?
Yeah? I do think that writing songs for the most part has come pretty easily to me.
But I think at that time, you know, you have periods where you get a little stuck and you start to overthink things, and so that was my way of kind of creating this project or like this little game to get me out of that slump. And I was working like three jobs at the time, so it was tough to find time to do. But it was just a way of just like, even if you only have ten minutes, you have to write and record something. And at the end, like I really only hated two songs.
I only find like two songs completely like wretched, but a lot of them are just what ended up being really wonderful raw source material for It's kind of like a rough draft for something that you edit into something that's that's good later on. Like I think there was a lot of songs that came off of that project that ended up on Soft Sounds and Psychopomp, and I still really like and think about revisiting today.
So I always think about doing that again because it was so.
Helpful for me, and you know, no one was listening at that time, so it really didn't matter.
I guess it also teaches you to be less precious about the thing, because I think when you're creating anything, whether it's a song or a painting or writing, that you can be crippled by the overwhelming sense of starting something because you think you might start down the wrong road or and then you end up just not actually doing anything because you're just sat there thinking, well, what
if this isn't brilliant? You know, and you can if you can get to that point where you're you do a project like that where it's about you set yourself the challenge and it doesn't matter if it's necessarily brilliant. It's just about the exercise doing something. It lets you you let go of that a little bit, that preciousness that comes with creating.
I mean, that's very much how I try to do all my work now, in a way to just show up and do it.
When I wrote my book, similarly, I was like, you have to just write a thousand words every day until you hit eighty thousand words. And you know, a lot of it was garbage. But when you go back, like you have, you come up. Even if you just like delete the entire every single thing except for a sentence, sometimes that sentence really unlocks things that something really great. I did that again for my screenplay, where I was just like, I'm gonna write five pages every day until I hit it.
And so that tends to be.
It was a that project really unlocked something for me creatively. I think that that's just what I need as an artist to get through things.
How was writing your memoir, which is called Crying in h.
Mot Yeah, I mean at the time, it was like, I've never felt.
Like a stupid or person.
I took that, but I think in a way I had this like false confidence because I was like, oh, I've written, you know, a number of records before, I've overseen these large creative projects. I can if I can do that, I can, I can probably do this. But it was it's such a long time. I was actually just talking to my husband about this, and I was like, we have a mutual friend whose ex used to do these like really long.
Trails like which I just I'm not like a hi. My husband and I are not hikers, even though we like the woods.
I like just sitting inside in the list or sitting outside. I'm not a big hiker. I hate I hate it, but I don't. I don't get a lot of joy from walking and hiking, and a lot of my friends think that that's weird.
But I have other.
Friends too that like we'll go on these like huge trails for like months and lose like twenty pounds and have like swollen feed and I'm just like I don't get that at all. I was saying, you know, writing a book is kind.
Of like a mental everest.
You know, it's like climbing like the the highest mountain mentally because and and that's like the kind of hiking I enjoy, if that makes sense. It's like I like to take on like these giant projects like in my mind, and that's like, I guess, like kind of the closest I get to what other people find joy and like
long hikes or something. So yeah, lately I've been I've been really wanting to do it again because it is just like it's such a lofty project, but it's so fun to kind of torture yourself over for years and years.
Yeah, It's it's quite a masochistic thing, isn't it. Writing It's really rewarding, but it can be brutally painful when you're just staring at at a blank page. How long did it take you to write the book on and off?
Probably like to four to five years.
That was running alongside you writing records and everything else.
I preciate.
Yeah, I feel like I started probably in like I wrote the first essay that it was based on, I think in like early in like twenty in twenty fifteen, maybe late twenty fifteen, and so a lot of those like ended up being like repurposed into the book. And then I feel like there was probably two or three more concentrated years, but probably like four to six loose years.
That first essay which was published in The New Yorker.
There was actually an essay before that that was in Glamour magazine. But the thing, the essay called Crying in h Mart was the second essay I wrote, and it was actually I.
Had already started writing the book by then. I had written like the first five chapters that ended up you know, being edited down, and you know.
Like a couple of the chapters ended up not being in the book. But yeah, I actually I cleaned up the first chapter and that's what I sent into The New Yorker.
Throughout all of that process, where you did you have like a book deal? Did you know where this was going or were you writing this ad that went early doors were you just writing for yourself and thinking I'm going to write a book and then we're deal with getting it out there later once it's done.
Yeah.
So I I had some encouragement from this Glamor essay that won the contest in twenty sixteen, and one of the things I won was like it was published.
In the magazine.
I had a meeting with a literary agent and I won like five thousand dollars.
So I left my job because.
My music career was also kind of like starting to bubble up. So I was like, Okay, I have this like landing money in case it doesn't go well, and I'm starting to get these offers and so I'll give it a try again. But the once that Glamor I Say was published, I started getting contacted by a few
literary agents. But I wasn't ready to really think about it yet because like Psycho Bomp had just came out, and Psycho Bomb was getting this attention that I had never gotten before as a musician, and I was like, okay, this is finally my chance. I was offered like a five week North American tour with Mitzki, and I was like, Okay, this is my focus right now.
I can't think about writing a book.
So then I went on tour for like a year and then or like maybe a year and a half or two years, and then in twenty seventeen or eight maybe December of twenty seventeen or eighteen, I can't remember,
but I started. I went, We've toured Asia, and my husband and I stayed in Seoul for like six weeks afterwards, because it was like December January we were off, and I was like, I've been wanting to like start writing what I think could be this book, and so I wrote Crying in h one, which was the first chapter, and five more really messy chapters and started it. And then in twenty eighteen, I got connected to the New Yorker and they were like, send us some writing, and
so I sent them the first chapter. And then when it was published in the New Yorker, that's when like my sort of literary profile like blew open. Then I was getting like a ton of emails from literary agents and publishers about turning it into a book.
And the same literary agents.
That I had won the contest with also happened to be my college professor's agent. So I really trusted her and really liked her, and she ended up getting me a book deal. I think in twenty and maybe February of twenty nineteen, or yeah, twenty eighteen.
Or sorry, I'm not really great with it.
And then I had a book deal and then it was like, Okay, you got a bunch of money. Now you have to actually write the book. So I wrote a lot of the book on tours and stuff like that, and then every time we would have a few weeks off, I would kind of hunker down and write some more. But yeah, from like twenty nineteen, that was when I was like really writing very seriously.
In terms of, you know, putting having an essay published in the New Yorker and then suddenly being inundated with agents. Is that a typical response to somebody putting out an essay in the New Yorker? Or is that a testament to the strength of that essay? Do you have any kind of idea of this? Is that the norm? Or is this like quite a rarefied thing.
I really have no idea, but I think that, you know, it helped that the response to it was so large, like people like shared that essay a lot and really related to it. And the only other thing that I can think of is there was a short story in the New Yorker called like.
Cat person or something, and that also kind of like went viral, and that that person also got a book deal, So I think it has to do.
I mean, it's obviously like such an honor in a rep all presidious thing to be published in New Yorker period, but it also really helps when it kind of takes off with readers.
Sure, and that was that getting shared. Did you have a conscious effort to were you promoting that or was it just did it just naturally have those legs and got shared around from people reading it.
I mean I was a much smaller artist at that time, and certainly I wasn't like this is going to blow me up.
I was just like, I'm really proud of this thing that I wrote and here it is. But I wasn't like there was no like marketing campaign behind it.
I definitely did not expect the response that it got, but I think it was, you know, not.
As common of a thing to write about. At the time.
It felt like a very niche topic in my mind, and then I didn't realize that there were just a bunch of people who also felt that way and had never gotten to read anything about it.
Yeah, it must be like, you must be really proud of the fact that your two endeavors, one in music and one in writing. I've kind of got these two lives of their own. And of course, now as you become a better known musician and writer, they kind of play off each other and they help each other a bit.
But it does feel like those two things for you happened kind of independently on the strength of the thing itself, rather than, oh, you're going to get a book deal because you're a known musician, which which you know does happen. Like that must feel like extra Does that feel extra rewarding that you kind of just got them both on the strength of the of the work itself.
Yeah, totally.
I mean I feel like, in a way, when the last year started in twenty I guess when twenty one started, I was like, one of these things is going to fail, you know, I mean, but at least I like I'm putting to like rolling two dice here and in a way and also sorry makes like metapor, but like it feels like I planted a bunch of seeds expecting them to die and they're both like just took off, you know, in this way that I didn't really anticipate, and I'm really relieved that they did.
But you know, I'm from Oregon. My dad was a truck broker.
I don't have any I was thinking about this a lot at the Grammys, where I don't have any industry connections. They're all things that I've built of just like being an industri's person, I guess. And you know, when the thing about the Grammys is that, like you know, people always.
It's a lot of like rubbing elbows or whatever.
But it was kind of like one I thought about it in context of like I wonder who this secret society of Grammy voters are, and then I think about how did.
I even get nominated?
And for the past five years it's been like, oh, well, when you played a KXP session and you were like nice and kept in touch with Cheryl Waters, maybe Cheryl
Waters the DJ voted for you. Or every time you agreed to do like a local paper, you know, in the choir or an interview, maybe Dan de Luca, the writer who looked you know, voted for you, or like maybe this person from NPR, like all the people in your life that you're like just nice to and get to know over the past six years of touring and putting in the work and doing the interview, Like, it's kind of a nice thing to look back on and just be like those are like that's completely something that
you created on your own of just like being a good person, I hope you know, and like working hard, and so it feels really special that that happened because I have no connections to the literary world. I have no connections to the music world there. It's all stuff that I built on my own, like coming from a small town with like you know, I didn't grow up in like La or New York or anything. So yeah, it feels like especially validating that that happened the way that it.
Did, I guess and crying Hma is being made into a film now as wow, I mean, congratuations on that. That's amazing.
If you.
Like, are you are you allowed to talk about that yet? Is it too soon? What can you tell me about where where it's where you are in the process and what your involvement is in it?
Yeah, I mean it's still really early stages. I'm actually adapting the screenplay. I've written the first draft and I'm in the revision process right now. I'm actually that's what I'm going to be doing after this podcast is I'm like looking at a highlighted notated revision right now.
But yeah, it's still very early stages. I'm not sure what will happen.
But my producers really like the screenplay and so I'm just cleaning it up now to get to the studio, hopefully by the end of the month.
Is it public not? This might be public knowledge and maybe I should have just done some better research here. But is it do you have? Do you know where it's going to be available? Is it for a for a network? Is it for a streaming platform?
Is it? So? It's going to be a feature through MGMs Orian Pictures, So.
I think that their hope. I think the hope is that it's theatrical.
Like that they'll it'll be in theaters and then I don't I don't know how that stuff works. I don't even know if it will get made. You know, these types of things, they don't get made a lot. But it feels like the studio and the producers are really enthusiastic about it and it has a good chance of getting made.
I think it will get made. I don't know how exactly. I supposed to talk about it, but uh, yeah.
It seems just like you know, it's movies are like so much money, and it seems like a lot of times things just die in production.
But I feel I have a good feeling that this will be made. And I feel like that's that makes it sound like it's not going to be made. But I think that people don't realize that.
Like you get movie deal, you can get like option deals like this all the time, and a lot of times they'll fall through.
Yeah, let's be positive though. I think it's gonna get made.
Like I do, actually think that it will get made. You know, there is no indic indicate so far that it won't get made.
You know, and it's it's relatively I mean, there's not going to be huge explosions in it, right, it's going to be it's not going to be a huge break the bank budget. It's not a Marvel film.
I think I've written it as a Marvel film.
You've written as a Marvel kid. That's the way to succeed these days.
There's like a huge like car chase scene where I'm like making kimchi in the backseat of the car.
I'm guessing you're going to be as hands on as you possibly can be throughout the whole thing, right, I don't know.
I mean.
I say that I don't want to be, but I knowing myself, I probably will want to be in the end. I already have so many like ideas that I'm realizing is probably over the line of what I'm supposed to be doing. But I would love to be like involved and then not involved at all in a way, yeah, if that makes sense.
I'm just too close to the story.
And I've like, you know, written an entire book about and two records and you know, now a screenplay that I don't really want to be involved, and I think it's just so close to me, Like there's a part, there's a sick part of me that's like, why don't you just direct this?
Why don't you just push to that?
But then I'm like, oh god, that sounds awful, because you know, why would I want to relive this story anymore than I already have?
And I think in.
Any ways, like it needs to be interpreted by someone who wasn't involved in this experience at all, and I need to like let go of it being you know, I think that no matter what happens, like there will be parts of it that are cringey for me just because it's so close.
It's my life, you know.
But yeah, I would love to like be involved in the decision making of like the director that takes it over and you know, the I have some ideas for the actors, not mine part well, I have an idea of like what the vibe of who should play me should be. I don't know people asking all the time, who do you want to play you? And it's like, can you name a single half Korean actor? And then I'm surprised by how many people are like, oh, that's important to you, And it's like, yeah, that's important to me.
That's not important to me that she has to be half Korean. Like the actors have to be Korean. I think that they not only need to be they cannot be Korean American. I think it's really important that the other actors that play like my mom and my aunt and k are like actual Korean people, not Korean American people, because the accents are really important. And I think that that so much of this story is about what gets like kind of lost in translation and that frustration of
that cultural divide that. I think that that needs to be like an authentic thing that's in the players involved.
Yeah, it sounds like you need to be on it, right, But I suppose when you're as you progress on, I mean, hey, I'm talking to someone has no idea about making films. I should say that right now. But I guess as it goes along, as the project goes along, you'll be able to be as involved as you need to be. Or do you want to be like, say, well, you know these things are imports me.
I'm sure. I mean, we'll see.
Certainly I have ideas, but almost I don't. I would like to believe I won't be devastated if they aren't. Like, I'm going into this knowing that this world is scary and tough, so I think I would be open to it letting it go.
Also, yeah, yeah, sure, but knowing me, probably not.
It's not going to happen, is it. You can pretend it's going to happen to yourself, but it's Yeah, it's probably gonna be a hard thing to let go. Because you studied creative writing at college. Does that was writing just period? Was that your Is that your first love?
Yeah? I think so.
I think even when I started writing songs, it was like I wasn't.
Like so in love with any instrument in particular. I just love writing songs. It was a beauticul for writing.
And because so much of your published work is non fiction and your a lot of your songs are so autobiographical, where does the creative writing course, where does that come into it? It was there loads of things tricks that you learned there that goes into even the nonfiction things.
Oh yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know, I don't think that nonfiction and fiction are too dissimilar.
Yeah, I mean like.
I had a professor, Daniel Tordeu, who was like a real mentor to me and is still a good friend, and I feel like I learned everything about reading and writing.
From him and just like what moves you?
And you know, even I forget how exactly he said this, but I remember, you know, like good writing doesn't have like a reveal or secrets, and like the best thing to do is just put it all out there in the first line. And so I remember taking from that lesson ever since my mom died, I cried in h mar, like that's the entire story right there. There's no I'm not revealing that my mom dies like one hundred pages in the book, like you know right away that that's
what the story is. It ruins nothing and it tells you exactly what's going to happen right there in for a sentence.
Lessons like that definitely made its.
Way in or just you know, I mean everything in the book it comes from my courses in college.
I think I am the writer that I am because of my studies.
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Anyway, good night