Pushkin. All right, y'all, So it's twenty twenty three and we should probably finally act like it is on this show. Obviously, one of the most ubiquitous ways to make it from the bottom these days is to become an influencer. Freddy Wong, my guest on today's show, is an early version of that. A YouTuber. He started his channel, Freddy w and six, back when YouTube was still a fledgling video sharing website.
That YouTube channel eventually became a real production company, Rocket Jump. Today, rocket Jump has over one point six billion views on YouTube and nine million subscribers. His YouTube journey, sparked by an early love of film, led to a production deal with Lionsgate to create a Hulu show a handful of years ago. Since then, he stopped regularly uploading videos online, has dabbled in podcast, and is generally just plotting what
his next move's gonna be. On today's episode, we check in with one of the original stars of YouTube and explore the ups and downs of internet fame and creation. This is started from the bottom, harder and success stories from people like us pretty long. Man, Thanks for doing this, appreciate.
You, Thanks for having me on.
Man So I want to I want to get into all things YouTube and filmmaking. I want to talk filmmaking. But I'm just curious where there's not like a ton of info about your early life out and about in public. What where did your love of storytelling developed?
Probably when I spent that stint in prison. No no, no, no, I honestly, you know what it was was growing up there were two Blockbuster videos that was like the close one and then the bigger, nicer one. My dad loves movies, loves American movies, and he would show us like just so much. So like pretty much every weekend we'd be at the Blockbuster just renting movies. So like Friday we'd
see something, Saturday night, we see something Sunday afternoon. I would have, you know, a third movie sometimes, Like it was just a lot of time in video stores, honestly. And also my dad, who like just has such a like I remember, I remember when I was like I must have been like eleven or twelve. He was like, Yo, you have to see this guy, Dustin Hoffman. He's one of the greatest American actors. And so he rented the Graduate.
I'm like, I kind of think I okay, I don't quite get what's going on with him in this, like mom, but like it seems kind of you know, definitely didn't quite get it. Like I still remember watching the ending and feeling a certain way be like what the interesting ending? And then like the next week he was like, you
think that was crazy, here's his next movie? And then he rented Midnight Cowboy Wow, which like which is like you'd rather get very famous, like almost X ray, right, or I think at the time even extra I remember being like as a kid being like, I'm too young for this, but that was the that was the approach.
So your dad was, would you say outside of movies? Your dad was conservative in his approach to raise.
Both of my parents.
Like, you know, I get this a lot because I think a lot of people have the shared experience in terms of the Asian American like typical Asian American experience. Right. The reason why there's a lot of similarity on it is because at least speaking to East Asian specifically Chinese immigrants China.
So I'm full Chinese, so you kind.
Of have to essentially historically you kind of have like these waves of immigration and migration, right, if you're in California and you're like Japanese or Chinese, Like there's a chance that your family goes.
Back, like back to like railroad times, right.
But the Pacific Northwest a lot of the Asian population there in my case, right escaping from the Cultural Revolution in China. You have a lot of Southeast Asians post Vietnam War, right, And so like there's a reason why when you think about like the typical East Asian experience, a lot of them, you know, like it's because it's like it's fresh immigrant families hitting this sort of specific generation. So there's a lot of commonality, is there, Like a
lot the sort of touchstones were the same. Take school seriously, right, Like, But I think I do acknowledge that it was different for me because I think my parents just had a different approach to it. You know, at least for myself and my brother, we had a lot more freedom because you know, like sophomore year in high school, like I want to make a movie with a friend of mine, and they're like, as long as your grades are fine, do whatever you want, right, Like that was the sort
of feeling on that. I think part of it also is because my mom, she was a professional dancer in China, and so has this kind of artistic bend and has the sort of appreciation for the stuff that isn't going to make you six figures all the time, you know. Like so I think that like that combination kind of output, my brother.
And so you dab puts you onto movie making or to your love of film. And then you are lucky enough to live near a Blockbuster.
I mean, it's when I think about this, I think about luck a lot, and I think that there's a lot of things that fall in place here. Right, So consider that I'm lucky enough to have be alive in an era when you have Blockbuster Video, and you have video rental, and you have DVDs and VHS tapes, and you have the access to a library, right huge and especially in the pre broadband internet days, that's a big deal.
Right On top of that, we have the iMac that came out the first real kind of accessible consumer computer that let you take high eight or digital eight or mini DV footage and like edit it. Because I remember like taking vacation videos and kind of messing with them, and like you know, on the computer at home, being able to do that already, like.
That's like camera like Jamie yeah, like.
Like yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah, like a little sony thing got Like it was that era of camera where they were like, yo, we got night vision mode. Yeah yeah, yeah, you know night vision mode. Like they stop that. Yeah, Like no, but no cameras come with night vision. But that was a moment where it was like, Yo, this camera soons three, it was so cool and how does
this work? Like I remember growing up and like doing like making a little spe effects videos with my brother, Like we would take these pool cues and like do those choreographed sword fights, and then I would go back into the computer and like put lightsaber effects on it. Because you know, that's the pinnacle of filmmaking at the time, was doing cool Star Wars lightsaber.
So there's a certain amount of luck involved and we're
doing what you do, and I mean you happened. You're growing up in the heyday of in a early nineties would be another high water mark for movie making, you know, and you're being able to rent movies and to fill to rent movies and also like again right, like you remember that that early nineties coincides with this indie movie revolution, right, You're talking about guys like Aronofsky coming out, you're talking about Quintartino, and then people being like, ooh, indie film,
what's going on here? And on top of that, there was a demand for it because people were building so many screens. There are so many flights, they just need to fill fill them up with screens. So you had companies that were willing to take a shot on like the Sofia Coppolas of the world, or the people who were like, hey, they just had a Sun Dance film
and that's it. The dominant mythology growing up for a filmmaker was like, oh, you got to make an indie and go to a festival and do all that stuff, which I think has you know, changed quite a bit in the year. So you've been growing up formative years being spent in that indie filmmaking boom loving cinema. Did that make you feel like you could be a filmmaker?
One hundred percent yes, one hundred percent. Yes. It's like, oh, you can tell these stories and you can do it cheap.
As long as you do it cheap, and you know, I mean like it was a total it's just a totally different context. So now so then that you know, in that hunt, in that search for trying to find ways to make movies anyway we could, we got onto online. Another four tu of this development, right, that you could put things online and people could see it and you could potentially generate an audience from it. That was just starting when I was in college. People were like, ooh.
The idea of like a popular YouTuber meaning anything was completely foreign to everybody, even in film school.
I remember after I graduated, I was.
Like, oh, hey, I'm gonna do doing this YouTube challenge and think everyone's response for the film school. So I was always just like what why, Like what is what's the point? You know, like even that even just the idea of like making a video, putting it somewhere, getting
someone to even find it. Yeah, sometimes you didn't want the video to go viral because you have to pay for it, because your bandwidth costs would spike up that week because all of a sudden people are sharing it on emails and now I gotta pay a thousand bucks at the end of the month because people were watching it.
So you mentioned you went to film school. I mean you're born and raised in Seattle in Washington, Yes, correct, correct, come down to USC for film school. Yeah, you're twenty in two thousand and five, which I would say is probably the year that YouTube really plants itself in the mainstream consciousness. You know, yeah, but you have Hollywood dream I mean, you have dreams to break into Hollywood to
some extent. You moved down. Now you're in film school at USC where George Lucas went, and you know, like everyone went right, and it's like you at some point decide to go to make stuff for YouTube rather than try to necessarily break into film the more traditional route.
So for a little bit we were doing that. We were doing direct to DVD movies. I was working on direct to DVD movies, and like in film school, I met this guy named Brandon Loatch who was my partner for a base all the YouTube era, and we were watching YouTube and we were seeing these guys like build audiences and we had no idea what it really meant.
But I do very distinctly remember being like, you know, like Kevin Smith can make movies whatever, he can kind of do whatever he wants because he's got this group of audience who likes his movies and they like him as a person who makes movies. So he kind of has this weird built in audience, and like I remember at the time being I feel like if you could build up an audience first, maybe you get more freedom later. And that was like literally the depth of the thinking.
So Brandon and I were like, well, let's do a YouTube channel, let's try stuff, let's try making stuff. In college, we were making like little videos, and we were seeing some of them pop off. Like one of my early videos was this guitar Hero video or it's just me playing Guitar Hero or a very ridiculous way, but like that popped off and it was one of those weird formative moments where we were watching it and we're like, yo, it's gonna get a million views, and they're like, wow,
that's crazy. And then it hit a million views and kept going. We're like, oh, it doesn't just stop. It just keeps going like this isn't like it hits a million and then no one ever sees again, Like these
keep going for a while. So like we got into this feeling of like, oh, it's so cool to try and like make something and try and have it be something that people react to and respond to emotionally, and maybe they want to share it, try to just pump those numbers as opposed to I think a lot of times a way think about artists like they they close themselves off and they do their great works and then they present it to the adoring public, where whereas in
this case it was more about for us like Trama's populous approach of like, well, let's see what whether people want to see.
It change your aim. It kind of did change your dream in a sense.
To an extent, because I think fundamentally anybody who gets into film, especially coming at it from like a popular film standpoint, Ie, you didn't grow up watching like the experimental films of like a guy like Stan Bracket or something, and you got into movies because you saw Jurassic Park and you want to like, there is a certain and that's why to me, film is such a fascinating artistic medium.
There's a certain acknowledgment of commerciality with film. There's a certain acknowledgement that this stuff costs money to make and that people need to pay money to see it in order to justify the cost. And how do you get people to see it? You need to be populist to some extent, right, And it's really interesting because that's like this inconsistency at the core of this art form because it's not pure art, but it's also not pure populist
mass drivel either. It finds this balance in between, and film I think has always had that tension inside of it.
So when you go back to twenty year old you, who's starting to upload stuff to YouTube, Yeah, what at that point, like if you could have been like in twenty years my dream film is to make X, Like what would you have compared it to? Would it have been in Dressing Park?
I mean, like for me, it was the two things that it was the two things that I loved growing up, which was I love comedy, I love action, and to me, action comedy is one of the hardest genres that to do well because I also I grew up with like actually movies like The Matrix, And I remember a formative experience watching The Matrix in theaters was like when Neo starts blocking Agent Smith at the end with one hand,
he turns into it as one hand. I remember standing up in the theater do it up, and my parents like, what are you doing?
Like sit down?
Like no, Like what I'm seeing here is so big and so important to me that like I can't remain
seated anymore. I have to like and like I remember me like what I can't that what I didn't know what to do with myself for that, So like stuff like The Matrix was high up there, like you know, I think everybody after they saw that movie, especially of our generation of filmmakers, was like yo, slow mo diving you know, which then you know, took me down the path of you know, of course the Hong Kong Blood operas and all that, and being familiar with you know,
John woodswork before The Matrix to be like, wow, finally there's like an American movie that's doing this stuff that I love in these Hong Kong movies, so like just big action movies and just like the fun of it right, Like to me, humor is like such a I loved like the melt Brooks and the Naked Gun movies and like all those the Socker Brothers movies.
Like I thought that maybe like a.
Dio die Hard would have been like a dream movie doing something like that.
A funnier though, like it's not even funnier than that, like okay, okay, like definitely funnier because I even goofy and at the end of the day, I just I love I love film comedy too.
So it's like if you could blend like Hong Kong action movies.
And humor and also as a visualfects nerd, right like I love doing like the Star Wars lightsabers and doing all the cool stuff that you can do with.
Computers because I was a big nerd growing up too. Somewhere in there, somewhere in there, it.
Was kind of the tree well, you know, and having painted that dream, that's not too far off from what you started uploading to YouTube and YouTube, I could see where you're thinking would be that would be a good platform for it. Because an action comedy film, of course needs some sort of exposition. You need a plot, you need narrative movement.
But but it could be gags. It could be gased like you don't.
Need to have like a you don't need to have like a a pulp fiction.
Style humanity story.
Yeah, it could just be like here's a cool I mean, like right, like here's it. And how many movies get summed up by like the best kung fu fights from this movie and people just sit there on YouTube and watch the fights only you know what I mean, Like, so action has that has that almost purity of like almost like dance, right, almost like choreography. Here's just the thing on its own, here's the self contained universe, here's
gags within it. But yeah, that honestly, you know, YouTube gave us the freedom to do that, so we really, we really took it and felt like we took good advantage of that.
We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back. Freddie tells me about his first taste of viral success. What was your first big kind of hit on YouTube?
So in twenty ten is when we started, And at the end of twenty ten, we did this video called Future first person Shooter where we took a GoPro two at the time, taped it to the side of my head and did like this sort of riff which became this visual motif that shows up throughout our work at that time. But like it was a riff on like what first person shooters looked like the perspective of the
video games. Yeah, but the novelty of it was I think it was that it was real, right, and I think that for people who were really into playing video games at that time, you're just like, oh, this is an interesting imagining of like what perhaps in the future when graphics are photo realistic, maybe this is what looks like.
And we were taking little jokes from multiplayer games and stuff like Call of Duty and stuff like that, and we did a little pyrotechnics illegal pyrotechnics on it, and so it had like a visual pop to it, but also just kind of looked different and also, let's tell a little story, let's get some jokes, and then let's
do some stuff that looks cool. And that was around Christmas of twenty ten, I believe, and I remember it went out and then like because there was just like no content around Christmas, all of these blogs just picked it up and we just saw like in the morning everyone opened their presence and then like everyone got bored by about like twelve o'clock and then like all these video game blogs were like check it out, like this is what it looks like in the future first and
it just sort of went and it went in a way in a speed that we had never seen before, like whoa, everyone's covering this and that I remember really opening my eyes being like WHOA, how quickly stuff can go and how like quickly stuff can spread.
That was like my first experience with it at this point. Do you view that as your career?
Yeah, so, I mean, like career is such a weird one because I feel like I've spent my whole life just kind of like going from things that I think are interesting. And I've been fortunate in that the things I find interesting also have some overlap with my ability to sort of make some money from it and sustain myself in the other ways you need.
To with life. Does that make me a little basic? Probably?
Probably it does. You know, I'm not gonna that's fine, That's fine, you know. But so like at the time, I remember we were again, here's another fortunate thing. At that time, we myself, these guys Sam and Nico, like, we were all living in this loft in downtown Los Angeles and it was I think our rent. Each We paid two hundred bucks a month, like two hundred two and and fifty bucks a month, and we were all
sharing this giant, crazy cool former paint factory space. There are no walls, so we all slept in like one room but just different corners of the same room.
Was cold.
We'd like turn on the oven and like heat our hands up by the oven. But we were able to pursue YouTube because it was like, Bro, you know, I
just quit my job. I was working at twice century Fox doing video game stuff, and I was like I'm done with this, and I was, you know, talking to brand or like we could do this for a year and be fine, Like because our rent is so low, we can just take that risk, right, you know, Like it was good that stuff popped out very early for us comparatively, but like we were ready to just be like, yeah, let's just do this for a year.
See what happens.
You know, when when your stuff starts popping off in twenty ten, you're starting to get like, you know, get big numbers on videos, like we really starting to like make money like how to lead your circumstances.
A little bit.
And when you when we talk about the eras of YouTube, right, that really started to take off in the second and third years of doing things, because at that point then you start to get like brand attention. There was like companies, video game companies, what have you that were starting to be like, oh, maybe we can use YouTube business alternative advertising platform, and they weren't paying as much as like TV commercials, even though anything that we did was getting
more exposure for them than a teeny commercial Everwood. But but like again the context right, like nobody Madison Avenue didn't respect it in that way. So once things start to like really in terms of being like, oh this is like can be like a real like money maker for us was one you start to be like, oh, I guess we could do like a little video promoting
a game. But there was that window about to your window where it was like you start to be like brand deals started to show up, and then people could start to like, oh, shoot, I can we can shoot this for this much and here's how much it's coming in, and we almost were like a little mini ad agency. It started to change things because you know, we're like, oh, okay,
we can buy like a nice camera. Now, oh wait, hey we can maybe buy this light or like buy this green screen pop up thing, you know, and then they're not like crazy expensive stuff. But it started to be like, oh, this is allowing us to keep doing what we like doing. And also I think we very quickly realized that it was just great practice every week forcing yourself to make something, finish it, see it through put it up and then next week you're just doing
something completely different. That process where you're forced to just take something to completion over and over and over again. I think it's a valuable craft, and I think that we realized very quickly. We're like, this is great because we get to practice visual effects, we get practice doing movies. We can make mistakes, but it's fine because next week we'll do.
Another video, you know, and it doesn't matter.
What was what set us apart at that time was that we really took it seriously. Like I think a lot of people, especially once money started rolling in, they're like, what's the minimum amount of work I can do to get a YouTube video up and get views. I don't think we ever had that mindset. It was always about trying to do it better and trying to improve our craft as filmmakers. We'd shoot it, we'd edit it, we'd send the edit to sound design, where I would do
sound design. Brandon would then do additional vfxs. I would help out VFX. He would do the color of it. We'd do a color pass, we'd mix it in pro tools, do a fo like we were doing it like it was a full movie and we're doing one every week, So like I fucked my sleep up. But you know, like that was but that was the like the grind.
No no, I.
Mean like no, I mean honestly, at a certain point, like we were brand and I were doing like an all nighter every week for like two years, Like that was just the energy of the time.
Yeah. Yeah, at this era when you are twenty five, you're pulling all nighters, you're making money on YouTube, you're in LA again, mid twenties, like having some level of success, How did you manage to keep focused, to have the drive to keep to pull on nighters once a week every night for two years rather than just go blow money like and you know.
I mean, I think a big part of it was seeing numbers go up and being like, wow, more people are seeing this and we're reaching more people sort of on a week by week basis, which was really just exciting to just note that alone puts a lot of gas in the engine, so to speak, because it's just fun, right and at the end of the day, we got to do whatever we want to do every week, and there was a certain creative freedom to that challenge of being like, all right, well we're gonna do this week
how we're gonna top ourselves. And it required a lot of energy, required a love of effort, required your full life dedication towards it. But I think the difference was the end goal was always I want to make things that people see. And how they do that. Is it in a dark theater that they pay fifteen bucks for or is it on their phone right before classes start in school.
To me, that's immaterial.
I don't care about that as much comparatively, right, Like, I know a lot of filmmakers in my generation talking about the cinematic experience and you got to see it on the big screen, And to me, I'm like, listen, if I get that luxury, great, But right now where I'm at, like, yo, if anybody just sees it, I'm happy, Like I don't care. If I'm not gonna put any restrictions on it. I'm already nobody's I'm already in nobody, you know what I mean. Like, I can't afford to
be like you can only see myself. I'm like, anywhere anyhow you can find that you can see it, Like, I'm happy. I don't care so to that to that extent. Right if you said, listen, I'm gonna give you a choice. Would you rather have a theatrical release that does okay? Or would you rather have like a home video iTunes only streaming only thing, but a lot of more.
People see it.
At the end of the day, I think that I got into film because I like entertaining people and I like entertaining myself. Right, I think I find a lot of stuff we do very funny too, and I get a kick out of it. Right, So if that becomes sort of higher on your list of priorities than other totally valid artistic sensibilities, right then I think that sort of shapes your worldview a little bit.
I think it might be interesting to answer those to tease those out a little bit more, Like, like, you picked the theatrical release, roup, what do you think then happens to your career theoretically?
So I think that in I think that in Hollywood and this industry specifically, there's a halo effect of having done things right. Like, only if you've done something in the exact context they're looking at, do they think you can do that thing in that context? So your constant I've felt, at least in my experience, I've always felt like I'm constantly needing to prove myself and prove I
can do something again and again and again. And what it does for your career if you get a film and it's you know, sort of the more atracial, theatical approach, and it allows you those opportunities that are more in that direction of things.
Right.
And by the way, I will note that this is sort of it's where a very weird time period because stuff is shifting. But like I would say, let's say a few years ago, that's the kind of thing that would say like, okay, cool, maybe you could you might be opened up now to a commercial directing gig or like a television episode. Now you get a couple television direction credits, or it makes it easier for like, hey, I want to raise money in the traditional routes for another theatrical feature film.
Oh, you've done it.
Once already and you've hear some numbers for it. Okay, you're a more trustworthy ncity. You're more likely to get that compared to someone who's like, I've never directed a future film before and I want some money for that. So it opens up the doors in that direction of the industry, right, And I think what's interesting is that those are different doors. It's not there's not a lot overlap. Because then let's take the other direction. Let's take a okay, cool,
you made a movie. It became huge on iTunes. Everyone downloaded on iTunes, incredible numbers on it did better than like commercial movies that week, like that sort of thing. A lot of people saw what that opens up potentially, like crowdfunding, for example, in that scenario becomes a little bit easier for you compared to like an indie movie
that someone's done that nobody's necessarily seen. I think you're more likely to access the direct to audience thing, and I think it's a much more DIY route in that direction. Right when'm talking about crowdfunding, I'm talking about that sort of stuff. But again, different doors, different directions.
So that really and that's really scenario released in iTunes. It's successful. It's taking you further away from the traditional route, opening you up though to an audience of people who might then you might be able to fund crowd source fund or maybe then do it the actual and then maybe created a.
Film that you could release potentially right like or or the other direction where it's like, oh maybe we just keep doing stuff online only I know, you know, there's some some folks I know who are like, yeah, they don't care about theatrial release, but they they aim everything around the iTunes release and how they digitally sort of monetize it.
Right, So like that's where we're at right now. We did this.
We started a podcast, a Dungeons and Dragons podcast called Dungeons and Daddies, which is not a BDSM podcast. It's a Dungeons and Dragons podcast, and it's like it's it's a story where it's like an improv comedy thing. We like myself and four friends we play Dungeons and Dragons and we play four dads, like human dads from our world sent into a fantasy world to like rescue their kids, and it's like dad humor and all that stuff, you know. We started a Patreon for it. The podcast has been
growing over the past couple of years. Matt and myself, my directing partner, we were like, all right, cool, this is our way of funding a movie. We're gonna use this and we fund the movie. So we shot the movie at the end of last year. We're in post production it now, and we're gonna go like the festival route for it, and like worst case scenario, we got good practice and we'll do another one. So you know, look, I think I think you can go in any direction
and you can find your way to it. What matters is do you want that? Do you want to actually make movies? Because in the course of my career, I've found a lot of people, and I've met a lot of people who are doing things because it was getting views. They're doing things because it was making them money, and like, I don't know a single one of them who managed
to keep it up. Like they all do it and they love it and they make up you know, some of them make boatloads of cash doing it, but then at certain point they're like, I gotta do something else. But like for me, I feel like very fortunate in that I've managed to find the thing I like to do early on. So this sort of exploring of like oh, let's get into like sort of longer form film. It was because you know, we were seeing YouTube change and we were like, yeah, I don't think we kind of
like we don't work here as well anymore. We don't have the stamina to keep up that kind of schedule that we were doing anymore. And you know, we felt like we said a lot in the world world of short film, and I want to be like, what can I say now in longer form formats? And what are the kind of stories I can tell in longer forms? So that was from YouTube to like the web series, to Do is a couple of shows for Hulu and now doing trying to do a movie. It's it's all
just sort of the same vein of artistic exploration. So it really just comes down to I think if you love filmmaking, you genuinely do love it, and you would do it no matter what. It doesn't matter if anyone's watching, it doesn't matter if you can make money off of it, you take a job and do it on the side. If that's how much you love it, that's I think what you need to be asking yourself because if it's not that fine, I think you have to find something that is that way for you.
Hey, stick around, because after the break started from the bottom. Producer David Jah joins me on Mike as we ask Freddie about the obstacles he faced in Hollywood as an Asian creator. David, I know you're a fan of Freddie. Anything you want to.
Ask, you know, Freddy, I will say, when I was grown up, YouTube did seem like a way for Asian filmmakers to sort of circumvent the institution of Hollywood. It was, and it was a breadth of fresh air to see a yellow face out there.
Yeah.
So I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on being an Asian creator.
So here's the way I feel about that, which is, when I think about myself as an American, I think myself as a human being, I don't ever want to feel like I'm constrained by anything. So for me, and there's Asian stories that I want to tell, but I feel like I don't want to be someone to be like and they only tell Asian stories, Right, I feel like that is in and of itself, its own cage that you get segmented into and can be discarded and ignored.
Right.
I would much rather be someone to be like who has the freedom that is implicit to white filmmakers, which is you can make something and cover any subject. So in that sense, I think that when I look at, you know, sort of the generations to come, I think the message that I would want to send is like, not one of like stick to the world that you know and only say that it's like no, no, no. I think art is about exploring and empathizing with other viewpoints.
And maybe I'll overreach, maybe I'll try and tell a story that I like, ooh, didn't get all the nuance on that.
That's the risk of art.
And I think that I just look around and I see so few, especially because you know there's a stereotype with with sort of Asian parenting and growing up. I see so few artistic Asian types. And then that bums me out because like it's devastating. It's devastating, it's a threat to us. So what do you make of this recent trend then, where Asian actors, Asian movie makers, Asian media is sort of being pushed towards this pigeonhole where we have to be Asian.
Yeah.
Yeah, like that's our thing now, Like that's our genre.
Now.
I was literally joking.
I was literally joking the other day where I'm like, I can't wait until we get past this era of movies where our parents apologize to us as like the plot point, like the.
Tropes, man, it's so bad, it's out of control. You know, a lot of Asian Americans don't like Asian American content.
Yeah, And so to me, at least, to me at least, what's interesting about it is like there's kind of two factors that play there, Right, There's there is a palatability towards a predominantly white dominated quote unquote mainstream culture.
Right.
What YouTube and online has opened up is that there are niche cultures that are huge, right, Like K pop is exploded because of online video. Right, So the question of mainstream possibility, to me, the only answer to when someone tries to pigeonhole you.
Is you must resist it as hard as you can.
You must go as hard as you can in the opposite direction in order to not be pigeonholed. I think that the obligation is not to be like, what is the most commercially viable thing that I can fit in to the white media landscape that will get us the sort of athletes?
Nah?
Fuck that That's why, honestly, that's why I think about Better Luck Tomorrow so much. Justin Lynn's film that you know he started his career off with, which depicted these very studious.
Group of Asians doing crimes.
You know, the very famous example in the film History where he played that at a festival he was sun Dance and like a critic stood up and I was like, you're depicting Asians in this like negative light, Like how can you do this as an Asian filmmaker? And Roger Ebert stood up and I was like, no, man, he should be able to say that.
Why not?
Hell yeah, we do crimes, do you know what I'm saying? Like, that's the kind of stuff where I want. I want to be like, listen, this stuff is out there. How we respond to it is within our control, you know. And I think that, like it's always going to be commercially viable to hw with white culture. There's gravity. The gravity is going to pull you towards what's the mainstream
pop culture accessibility? Right it's and I think it's up to us, as if you're a true artist, it's up to you to like fire the boost of rockets, be like no, hell no, we're going over here.
You know what I mean?
Yo, Freddy over nine million subscribers, one point six billion views. Man, by any measure of success, like your successful filmilmmaker, Like, I feel like in another era there's a war where you should be Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez if you wanted to be right, Like, if you wanted to have that, you should be Quentin Tarantino if you wanted to have that. Right Maybe, I mean, look, I mean been given the
same opportunities at least that these people were given. Right, But like it feels like the given the level of audience's been able to build the level of success you've been on the to have as a filmmaker, Like you should be given the opportunities that a lot of like indie filmmakers have been given over the years. Like is there do you feel like the predominant view of Asian involvement in cinema has been a factor in that?
Or I mean, I think there's always things in life that are some parts are in your hands, some parts are out of your hands, right, Like there's certain things that's just like I can't control what the taste is and like, hey, you know what, here's the book that was the Asian book that got popular and then you know, right like that a lot of the stuff in life I think is out of your hands and then other
stuff in my hands. I think I've always tried to stay as close to my sort of artistic principles, guiding principles as possible.
Those are the choices that you make.
And for me, I think that you know, there certainly must be some I think there's of course, externalizing factors that have influenced the path that I took.
Kind of bullshit like Kevin Smith can make a career out of clerks, Like why can't see it?
Might be like I'm happy though, I'll be able to.
Make some sort of commercial career out of in film, out of Rocket Jump.
Even you said earlier like you keep having to prove yourself, like like it's not good enough.
See, I love that, but I love that you like that.
I love being in a position where I feel like I have to prove myself.
But that's the thing I love that.
I don't know why I'm addicted to it because I think that, like I think that that place is where it's like, that's where it's all on the line, and to me, it's like it's your choice, right. You can either be like, dang, the system's unfair, or maybe this is an Asian thing. I grew up here the Ox. Everyone says Ye're the Ox. They just put their head down work. That's like that's how I feel. I just put my head down, like, all right, listen, the world is not rewarding me in the way or whatever.
I don't care.
I'm just gonna keep working on my stuff because I love doing this the way. I feel like as long as I can at least sustain my career, at least I can kind of like pay for my rent and like, you know, pay for my food. I'm gonna keep going kind of the direction, the direction that I go.
You know, it's funny. I feel like that's I feel like that's the primary way people of color become successful is just learning to put your head down and work. Because when you lift your head up and you start to realize, yeah, this a little depressing.
A little fit.
Yeah, it's so sad. We gotta just put our head down and ignore it. Shit, man, Freddie want thank you may Yeah, thank you so much. That was Freddy Wong, one of the og stars of YouTube and early influencers. Obviously, his career in media has taken some twists and turns, but it's incredible what.
He's managed to accomplish. All from a YouTube channel that he started to as the six called Freddy w startup from the Bottom is produced by David Jaw, edited by Keishaw Williams, engineered by Bent Holliday, Booked by Laura Morgan with production help from Lea Rose. The show is executive produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music's by Bent Holliday and David Jaw featuring Anthony Yaggs and Savanna Joe Lack.
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