Lulu Wang

1 sketch, 4 claims, and 3 fun items attributed to them. What was said about them.

Personality, episode by episode

Blank Check with Griffin & David: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with Lulu Wang (guest)

Reads Nausicaä through her own craft: she values simplicity, restraint and purity of form over plot machinery, and distrusts forced catharsis. She is watching Miyazaki in both dubbed and subtitled versions as a bilingual filmmaker and likes the 'all my films are hopeful' framing. A sucker for karaoke and Red Sorghum.

Stances

  • Film adaptations should keep the tone of the source rather than inflate the plot
  • Catharsis may be a Western demand; calls to continue thinking can be better
  • Final cut matters practically and symbolically
  • Dubs and subs give different experiences

Humor: Warm and dry, she plays along with the hosts' tangents and quietly turns them toward craft.

In their words

  • “I wonder if that's a very Western thing to desire catharsis to require it.” (0:45:04)
  • “I found a sort of purity of expression in this other media.” (0:40:53)
  • “the simplicity of it is what is so meaningful and it is what connects.” (0:42:21)

Their shows' recurring bits

Running bits, not opinions; a critic read aloud is cited, not present.

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Their claims

Showing 1–4 of 4 claims.

  1. craft (music): The Farewell → Harry Nilsson. The film's song 'Without You' was a cover recorded with Wang's friends because the Nilsson foreign-language version could not be cleared.
    “I wanted the, an Italian version of uh, without you.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with Lulu Wang · 0:13:58 · Lulu Wang (0.85 sure it was them)
  2. theme (personal link): The Farewell → Red Sorghum. Wang and her father sang a song from Red Sorghum a cappella at the real family wedding that inspired The Farewell.
    “the song that she's singing as she's walking away and it's like, there's subtitles.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with Lulu Wang · 0:17:05 · Lulu Wang (0.60 sure it was them)
  3. theme (creative parallel): Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind → The Farewell. Lulu Wang felt the same make-it-now pressure on her second film as Miyazaki did on his second film.
    “I felt that way about the farewell, which is my 2nd film as well.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with Lulu Wang · 0:40:20 · Lulu Wang (0.85 sure it was them)
  4. lineage (adaptation fidelity): The Farewell → Hayao Miyazaki. Like Miyazaki keeping the film identical to his manga, Wang wanted to carry the pure tone of her radio story into the feature without inflating the plot.
    “how do I maintain the spirit that's in the manga, the purity of it and transfer it to film, which is something that I thought a lot about with the farewell”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with Lulu Wang · 0:41:13 · Lulu Wang (0.80 sure it was them)

Their fun items

Showing 1–3 of 3 fun items.

  1. fun, about The Farewell: Wang negotiated final cut on her next, bigger film with Big Beach, and says a blank check is about freedom within the number, not the size of the number.
    “the blank check is less about the number that you put on it and more about the freedom you have within whatever that number is”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with Lulu Wang · 0:07:05 · Lulu Wang (0.85 sure it was them)
  2. fun, about The Farewell soundtrack: Wang wanted Nilsson's foreign-language 'Without You' but could not clear it because the translator owns the rights, so she recorded a tequila-fueled karaoke-style cover with friends.
    “let's just invite a bunch of my friends and drink a lot of tequila and do it with like a karaoke style a little bit”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with Lulu Wang · 0:15:08 · Lulu Wang (0.85 sure it was them)
  3. fun, about Red Sorghum: At the real family wedding behind The Farewell, Wang and her dad sang a Red Sorghum song a cappella because the karaoke machine did not have it; it was her dad's favorite lullaby before she knew the film.
    “my dad used to sing it to me as a as a little kid when I was young”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with Lulu Wang · 0:17:22 · Lulu Wang (0.85 sure it was them)