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| 'Searching's director Aneesh Chaganty and lead actor John Cho. |
ASAM NEWS
INDIAN AMERICAN director Aneesh Chaganty will make his big screen debut when the movie thriller Searching comes out Friday (Aug. 24).
Director/writer Chaganty and Armenian American producer/writer Sev Ohanian say they are excited to bring an Asian American face to the forefront of a Hollywood thriller. John Cho plays David Kim, whose daughter Margot (Michelle La) goes missing in a classic thriller story featuring a Korean American family. The story is told through computer screens in a unique shooting approach, as David searches through his daughter’s laptop in the hopes of finding clues before she disappears forever.
“For us, what’s so cool about it is that it’s a very classic thriller just told in a very unconventional way,” said Chaganty. “I feel like we took what is inherently a small screen device and turned it into a very big screen kind of experience.”
A USC film graduate, Chaganty became an internet sensation after he uploaded a short film titled Seeds shot entirely using Google Glass. It garnered more than 1 million YouTube views in 24 hours. He was then invited to work at the Google Creative Lab, where he developed, wrote, and directed Google commercials for two years.
n picking John Cho for the movie, Chaganty explained, “Because he’s a movie star. And he’s underutilized. He’s an incredible actor that should be more famous.”
“There’s no element of this film that tries to justify why there’s an Asian American family at the heart of this,” said Chaganty. “They’re specifically Korean American, but it is completely separate from the plot of the movie. To us, that was a victory for us, to make a movie that doesn’t justify this.”
He mentioned the Vanity Fair article that claimed Searching will be the first mainstream contemporary thriller ever to be headlined by an Asian American actor, which he thought was absurd, “because it’s 2018. For us, it was a big win.”
“The family became Korean specifically because of John, but we always wanted to cast an Asian American family,” said Chaganty.
“We want to see more diverse faces on screens, and there is a time and place for movies that are about diversity and representation, and I’ve made movies like that – my first movie was Fruitvale Station,” explained Ohanian. “This is not one of those movies. This is a regular film. It’s a thriller about a family. It’s a mystery. It’s a whodunit. So even more reason to have to normalize that. And it’s funny because John, who’s a movie star and has been in so many movies, he himself came down to tears at our premiere because he was like, he’s never seen himself in a movie with an Asian wife, with an Asian daughter.”
Debra Messing, star of Will & Grace, plays Rosemary Vick, the detective on Margot’s missing persons case. In recruiting Messing to the project, Chaganty wrote her a letter detailing why he wanted her for the role of Detective Rosemary Vick and what he thought she could bring to the film.
“When I got the script and opened it up, I literally, within a page, was like, ‘What am I reading? This isn’t a film,’” said Messing. “But I was fascinated, so I was like, alright, I’m gonna keep reading, and then the story began.”
Speaking of Chaganty, Messing explained, “And then when I read that it was a 23-year-old kid who had written it, and it was his first film, literally my head exploded. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And I realized that I was dealing with a visionary. Here is a filmmaker who is going to be incredibly important to the future of cinema.”
“I don’t know if this is going to work, but frankly, I don’t care,” said Messing. “I just want to support him and his vision, and I want to be a part of it.”
When asked about getting to play Detective Rosemary Vick, Messing said, “I loved it. I always look for female characters that are strong but also have something real and complex that they’re dealing with. So when this came my way, I was excited. I saw a character that didn’t have to be a woman. Because it was complex enough that I could see a man playing the role, and so often we see female roles being more two-dimensional, so that was exciting to me.”
“I am a single mother of a boy, so immediately I was able to put myself in her shoes,” said Messing. “John and I spoke about this because we’re both parents. The idea that your child goes missing: what could possibly be worse? And that’s why I was like, wow, every parent who sees this film is going to immediately identify. So there’s a universality to, ‘What does it mean being a parent?’ How much will you do, how far will you go to protect them? And how much do you really know them, and how much are you really supposed to know as they grow and become an adult? It’s a very complicated thing.”
Searching opens in select theaters August 24 and nationwide August 31.
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INDIAN AMERICAN director Aneesh Chaganty will make his big screen debut when the movie thriller Searching comes out Friday (Aug. 24).
Director/writer Chaganty and Armenian American producer/writer Sev Ohanian say they are excited to bring an Asian American face to the forefront of a Hollywood thriller. John Cho plays David Kim, whose daughter Margot (Michelle La) goes missing in a classic thriller story featuring a Korean American family. The story is told through computer screens in a unique shooting approach, as David searches through his daughter’s laptop in the hopes of finding clues before she disappears forever.
“For us, what’s so cool about it is that it’s a very classic thriller just told in a very unconventional way,” said Chaganty. “I feel like we took what is inherently a small screen device and turned it into a very big screen kind of experience.”
A USC film graduate, Chaganty became an internet sensation after he uploaded a short film titled Seeds shot entirely using Google Glass. It garnered more than 1 million YouTube views in 24 hours. He was then invited to work at the Google Creative Lab, where he developed, wrote, and directed Google commercials for two years.
n picking John Cho for the movie, Chaganty explained, “Because he’s a movie star. And he’s underutilized. He’s an incredible actor that should be more famous.”
“There’s no element of this film that tries to justify why there’s an Asian American family at the heart of this,” said Chaganty. “They’re specifically Korean American, but it is completely separate from the plot of the movie. To us, that was a victory for us, to make a movie that doesn’t justify this.”
He mentioned the Vanity Fair article that claimed Searching will be the first mainstream contemporary thriller ever to be headlined by an Asian American actor, which he thought was absurd, “because it’s 2018. For us, it was a big win.”
“The family became Korean specifically because of John, but we always wanted to cast an Asian American family,” said Chaganty.
“We want to see more diverse faces on screens, and there is a time and place for movies that are about diversity and representation, and I’ve made movies like that – my first movie was Fruitvale Station,” explained Ohanian. “This is not one of those movies. This is a regular film. It’s a thriller about a family. It’s a mystery. It’s a whodunit. So even more reason to have to normalize that. And it’s funny because John, who’s a movie star and has been in so many movies, he himself came down to tears at our premiere because he was like, he’s never seen himself in a movie with an Asian wife, with an Asian daughter.”
Debra Messing, star of Will & Grace, plays Rosemary Vick, the detective on Margot’s missing persons case. In recruiting Messing to the project, Chaganty wrote her a letter detailing why he wanted her for the role of Detective Rosemary Vick and what he thought she could bring to the film.
“When I got the script and opened it up, I literally, within a page, was like, ‘What am I reading? This isn’t a film,’” said Messing. “But I was fascinated, so I was like, alright, I’m gonna keep reading, and then the story began.”
Speaking of Chaganty, Messing explained, “And then when I read that it was a 23-year-old kid who had written it, and it was his first film, literally my head exploded. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And I realized that I was dealing with a visionary. Here is a filmmaker who is going to be incredibly important to the future of cinema.”
“I don’t know if this is going to work, but frankly, I don’t care,” said Messing. “I just want to support him and his vision, and I want to be a part of it.”
When asked about getting to play Detective Rosemary Vick, Messing said, “I loved it. I always look for female characters that are strong but also have something real and complex that they’re dealing with. So when this came my way, I was excited. I saw a character that didn’t have to be a woman. Because it was complex enough that I could see a man playing the role, and so often we see female roles being more two-dimensional, so that was exciting to me.”
“I am a single mother of a boy, so immediately I was able to put myself in her shoes,” said Messing. “John and I spoke about this because we’re both parents. The idea that your child goes missing: what could possibly be worse? And that’s why I was like, wow, every parent who sees this film is going to immediately identify. So there’s a universality to, ‘What does it mean being a parent?’ How much will you do, how far will you go to protect them? And how much do you really know them, and how much are you really supposed to know as they grow and become an adult? It’s a very complicated thing.”
Searching opens in select theaters August 24 and nationwide August 31.
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