The A.V. Club: In the movie, the central conflict between Krall, who thinks people thrive on conflict, and the Federation, which believes in unity, seriously resonates in this political climate. Have you guys been thinking or talking about that?

John Cho: Yes, we certainly have. When I read the script last year, it was relevant then but in particular now. We traveled to Sydney to begin this press tour, and then everything went bananas in the United States with the events in Dallas and all that stuff. It has been resonant. Obviously, coming up on this election cycle – this has been one of the strangest presidential races that I can remember – so we’ve been thinking about unity versus division, similarities versus differences. That has been on our minds as we talk about ｢Star Trek｣ and what it stands for, what the Starfleet stands for, and its place in culture.

AVC: Have you had any responses from people to that effect?

JC: The general audience hasn’t gotten to see the movie, but it has not escaped [journalists], and it has not escaped us. I think it does make the themes of the movie more resonant with us. Oddly, the tumult of this year reminds me of the late ’60s, when Roddenberry created ｢Star Trek｣. It was a similarly divisive time in America. There were assassinations at that time. I’m trying to think of – knock on wood – how young people would feel today if our president and our leaders were shot at. But... our young people are being killed at an astonishing rate, and times seem dark. Times seem similarly dark. The message of ｢Star Trek｣, if there is one, seems to be that we should try to live up to the very best that we’re capable of. ｢Star Trek｣ seems to be an appeal to our better nature, the side of ourselves that works toward peace and cooperation and understanding and knowledge and yearns to seek out knowledge rather than the side that wants to divide and control one another.

AVC: Could you walk people through how Simon [Pegg], Doug [Jung], and Justin [Lin] first told you that Sulu would have a husband? What was your reaction? How did you first learn it?

JC: I learned it first from Justin. Simon had pitched it. I heard from Justin early on in preproduction. I was concerned for a few reasons. I was concerned that George wouldn’t like it, and it turned out to be true. But I was actually concerned that he wouldn’t like it for a different reason. I thought that George would object because he’s a gay actor who was playing straight. I know that was difficult, that he couldn’t come out and that he had crafted a straight character. Then, now, because he’s an activist and he’s out of the closet – clearly, this is an homage a little bit to him – [I worried] he would object to us taking that from his life and say, “Hey, I was a gay actor who created a straight character, and now you’re making him gay because I’ve come out of the closet?,” that we were just seeing him for his sexual orientation. So I thought that would be where he would object. It turns out not to be his objection. But that’s what I was worried about.

And secondly, I was concerned that Asians and Asian Americans might see it as a sort of continuing feminization of Asian men. Asian American men, Asian men have been basically eunuchs in American cinema and television, and I thought maybe it would be seen as a continuation of that.

Thirdly, I was concerned that because this is the same genetic Sulu – although we’re in an alternate timeline – that we would be inadvertently implying that sexual orientation was a choice. So those were my areas of concern. Having said that, I was convinced that the message was pure and that it was coming from a really good place, and I thought that it was handled correctly. People would buy it. And I think we have handled it correctly, and I think people are not worrying about the issues that I was worried about.

AVC: Do you still maintain those concerns a little bit?

JC: Yes, I do. They’re not gone. But, on the other hand, I think, narratively, it’s really good. We’re executing Roddenberry’s intent, I think: infinite diversity in infinite combinations. It’s very much a part of the ethos of ｢Star Trek｣. I have to say, all things considered, it’s working great, and I’m proud of it. George was very important to me as a kid. Seeing his face on TV as an Asian American kid in Houston, Texas, in the early ’80s, was very impactful for me. Aside from it just being a great narrative device – which it is because it personalizes the stakes when Yorktown [a Starfleet base] is threatened by Krall, our villain – the best thing I can hope for is that it encourages some gay or lesbian viewer, who is young and doesn’t feel like he or she sees enough of themselves on the screen. So if there’s somebody out there who digs it and feels less afraid, then right on.

AVC: You mentioned the Yorktown moment, which was a really interesting thing. Oftentimes, when a place is threatened in a movie, we have the male hero and the girlfriend or the wife back home. That changes here.

JC: You know, I had requested that my husband be Asian.

AVC: Why was that?

JC: The reason was that I grew up with some gay Asian male friends. You don’t really see Asian men together very often. It’s very rare in life. I’ve always felt that there was some extra cultural shame to having two Asian men together, because it was so difficult to come out of the closet, so difficult to be gay and Asian, that they couldn’t really bring themselves... It’s easier to run away from people that look like your family. I wanted the future to be where it was completely normal and therefore, aside from the gender, they look like a traditional heterosexual couple. So that relationship, to me, the optics of it are that it looks very traditional on the one hand and very radical on the other.

AVC: Since the “Starring John Cho” meme, you’ve been at the center of a lot of these recent discussions about representation. How does that feel?

JC: It’s cool. Sometimes it’s exhausting. Sometimes I just feel like I’m not talking about acting or character. On the other hand, I’m fine with it. I’m happy to do it, because these are issues that are important to me personally. It’s just weird sometimes, because it’s not germane to my job as such. So it seems strange to be at the center of it. But I think it’s a very healthy discussion to have, and it’s necessary. They are ideas whose time has come, but really they are ideas whose time had come a long time ago, and the execution is lagging. And that’s why we’re having the discussion, because the execution is not forthcoming. So I’m happy to talk about it and happy to do something about it if needed, if I’m in the position to do it. I just happen to be the talking point or rather the impetus for the moment. In 20 minutes, it’ll be something else, but it’s my turn to talk about it, I suppose.

AVC: Regardless, gay or straight – in this instance, Sulu happens to be gay – but we’re learning more about his backstory. Even if we don’t get a long explanation for it, how did that affect your performance?

JC: For me, it shifts things, because the objective is not just to save the crew or just to get the ship up, but the superobjective is to get back home to the family and protect the family. So it does add a layer of meaning to everything that you’re doing. It sounds silly when you’re pushing fake buttons, but it’s true that it does motivate the fake pushing of buttons in a different way.

AVC: On a lighter note, there’s a really great scene that involves the Beastie Boys’ ｢Sabotage｣. Was filming that fun?

JC: We did pump the tune before we got into that section. It’s a badass tune, so we were just all bobbing heads for a minute and then had to stop bobbing heads. They were like, “Okay, okay, stop! Stop! Stop! Stop bobbing your head!”

AVC: It seems like you guys also had a blast doing the Dubsmashes.

JC: Yeah, we got a little out of hand with the Dubsmashes. It got out of hand, and then it got in hand, and now it’s out of hand again.

“From the beginning of writing that song, I envisioned myself in front of all the girls I had crushes on in high school,” she says. “I remember so well what it was like to idolize other people and look for validation from them. But then I grew up, and I realized: The only validation I need is from myself.”
— Hayley Kiyoko

After the last Academy Awards and the regular whitewashing of hollywood roles, i wrote this song and made this video to add my piece to the conversation. If you have any experiences or stories about this issue join the discussion at https://www.facebook.com/dumbfoundead/

Attitudes towards homosexuality in East Asia are comparatively silent, and characterised by invisibility.

One explanation is that Gay Pride events are not popular in East Asia because they are a cultural misfit.

One young Japanese student wrote “why should people have to say they’re gay? I’m straight but I’ve never made a declaration about it.”

Young people in East Asia feel an enormous pressure to pass on their family name, to keep the family legacy alive.

China and Japan existed for thousands of year as Buddhist countries that accepted homosexual acts as a natural element of life.

Homophobia in the east can be seen to some extent to be imported from the west.

Jezebel: I thought this movie was hot.

Andrew Ahn: Good, I’m glad.

That was part of the idea, right?

Yeah. I had made some shorts before that were very much about repressed Korean Americans and I kinda wanted to do something where I showed what being gay means, which a big part of that is wanting to have sex with men (laughs). I wanted to deal with that in a more explicit way.

Is that political for you?

It’s political in that I’m trying to force an audience to understand a human being and see a perspective on race and class and sexuality that a lot of people don’t often see. So in that kind of human way, it is. In terms of any specific agenda, I wouldn’t say it’s super overt.

Diverse representation within gay pop culture is dire, but even the strides that have been made typically don’t include Asian men. There’s [an upcoming show that I think I signed an NDA for so I’m not going to spill here] that includes a clearly self-consciously diverse cast of gay men. An Asian is not among them. Your movie is an antidote to that.

We saw it with ｢Looking｣, too. That was kind of shocking to the gay Asian community because there are so many gay Asian boys in San Francisco. How could there not be one character? I think a lot of it has to do with this stereotype of “No Asians” on all the apps. There was that drag queen on ｢RuPaul’s Drag Race｣, Kim Chi, who said, “No fats, no fems, no Asians,” is something he’s heard a lot. With ｢Spa Night｣, I wanted to show desire, that this character has sexual wants and is not just an asexual or a sexual object. He can objectify men. I think that’s an agency.

Have you dealt with that racism from other gay men?

In strange ways. I’ve kind of protected myself by surrounding myself with a group of gay Asian friends. There was a night in West Hollywood called GAMeBoi that was really big in the formation of my gay identity. It was every Friday night, 18-and-up gay Asian boys – that really was great. I really have been in situations where I’ve gone out on dates with white guys and I’m always wondering am I being fetishized. You look at their dating history and you find out they’ve only dated Asian men and you feel like you’re not being liked for who you are, you’re being liked because you’re Asian.

That’s a fine line to negotiate, though. As a white guy, I realize it’s easy for me to say this, and a dating situation is different, but in a hook-up situation, you better fetishize me. You better appreciate and worship what I have and am.

I think it goes back a little bit to what I was saying before: [｢Spa Night｣ protagonist] David can objectify men. He has the power to objectify men. There’s something about sex that for me in some ways... if you get to know a human being, sometimes it’s too complex to have sex with him. It’s overwhelming, it’s intimidating. There’s this thing about anonymous hook-ups that because this person means nothing to you that makes it sexier and hotter. In some ways, in ｢Spa Night｣, that’s the safety David has, this anonymity, this not having to know people that allows him to slowly but surely explore his sexuality.

It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that you show David’s dick and that it’s a nice dick, too. Was that a pointed refutation of the stereotype of the small Asian penis?

Kind of. For me, it was like, it’s this question of getting to know your body. There was this moment while we were shooting that scene where it was like, “You’re gonna take this picture, you’re fluffing yourself – you want to look good.” It’s sexy, but also kind of hilarious to me because he zooms in on it to check it out and make it bigger [on the screen]. It wasn’t specifically like, “We need to show the biggest cock on an Asian guy,” it was more like, “We’re gonna show a cock on an Asian guy.” Whether it’s huge or small, it’s this guy getting to know his body and feeling good about it.

It’s bizarre to me that those kind of stereotypes exist. They come from pure ignorance. Having sex with Asian guys is all it takes to refute those stereotypes, just like that.

It’s an unknowing. I think it’s also easy in the game of love and sex to put down other people to make yourself feel better. If one person starts saying it, and it feels OK to say, then other people will start saying it. To combat that, it’s really just about drowning out that kind of negativity, that kind of dehumanizing sentiment.

The movie is rife with male nudity otherwise, and it didn’t have to be. Was that a pointed statement on your part as well?

Whenever I wanted to show the spa as a cultural space, I wanted to see a lot. It didn’t make sense to have an artfully placed shampoo bottle. It would look so dumb. But then I told myself that as the scenes got more erotic, you’d see less and less and less and it was more about this feeling of sexual tension as opposed to showing it, which can be really difficult. I remember watching ｢Blue Is the Warmest Color｣ and ｢Stranger By the Lake｣, and you see these very explicit sex scenes and it kind of throws you out of the movie. I knew for this we had to be really in David’s head, so I wanted to find the right visual strategy for those scenes. It is really interesting, though to me. The reason I was fascinated by Korean spas is because in one instance it would feel really normal, and then it would very easily slip into something that’s very sexual. It would be such a quick transition.

In your own experience?

In my own experience. It was fascinating seeing how nudity is played with in spas. There are certain spas in Korea Town that are known for their cruisiness, and the guys are actually often wearing towels. If you’re totally naked, the game is up. You’ve got to use your nudity as a strategy, and then you see the Korean dudes who are just there to bathe themselves and they’re just naked and it doesn’t matter. I realized very quickly that there was this culture and this strategy in gay cruising that was beyond, “We both happen to be here.” It was about things people planned on and wanted and looked for. That’s when I was like, “Oh, it’s a culture.” It fascinated me and made me want to make the movie even more.

Given the space spas occupy in Korean culture, it seems daring of you to portray this side of them.

Korean spas are super traditional cultural spaces. It’s very family-oriented. You often go with kids. I went with my dad when I was a kid. We’d go every New Year’s to get clean for the upcoming year, so to find out that it’s being used as a space for gay cruising was totally shocking to me. But even in Korea, it’s something that I know happens. Whenever you get naked men together, there’s bound to be something. Korean spas are social spaces. It’s going to slip into the sexual very easily. There’s something about David in the film where he’s allowed to be in that space because he’s Korean but when he finds out this is happening, he can be close to it. It’s not like a gay bathhouse where if you go, people know why you’re there.

And you are admitting to yourself...

...Why you’re there. You have to. If you go to a spa, you can have the cover of, “I’m just here to relax,” or, “I’m just here to get a scrub.” It’s a great place for closetedness. In some ways that’s what makes it riskier and sexier for some men.

Have you gotten any pushback from Koreans, though?

I’m waiting for it. I’ll say that so far we’ve screened in festivals and festival audiences are pretty generous. They’re there because they want to see the movie. But I’m expecting it and I feel like I’m prepared for it. The film is made in a way that I feel like even people who are homophobic could watch it and feel some sort of sympathy for that character. I dare someone to judge David in this movie for feeling conflicted.

Was your coming out process at all like David’s? I mean, I guess he doesn’t actually come out.

The most he does in the film is come out to himself. There’s a transition he makes from gay desire to gay identity and it’s kind of a small thing, but for me, it’s kind of like when he asks that guy at the end, “Are you Korean?” and then tries to kiss him. It becomes more than a physical exploit. Yeah, the first couple of times I hooked up with guys, I still wouldn’t have said out loud, “I’m gay.” There’s this kind of catch up that your brain has to do to your body. Your body moves first and then you follow. In that way, I felt really in line with David. And then with his family, too, it’s like, I remember thinking after I came out to myself, the first people I wanted to tell were my parents. I felt like I owed it to them, and I was afraid they’d hear some other way. That’s a lot of what’s going through David’s head, this consideration of his family in his gay identity. It’s a lot of pressure. I ultimately went to a coming-out support group. I found a group of gay friends and you kind of find your chosen family and then that gives you the confidence and ability to tell your family. It was a long process for me. I didn’t come out until I was 25.

What do your parents think of the movie?

It’s weird. They knew what it was about. I remember telling them about the film when I was writing the screenplay. My mom was really silent and she was just like, “You know, for your next movie, you can make an action film or a comedy...” She didn’t stop me, which I took as a positive sign. They came to see the film at Sundance, and I think they were pleasantly surprised in that I bet their worst nightmare was that it was going to be like a gay porn. But instead it’s this very tender portrait of this Korean immigrant family that they could connect to a lot. I think that the applause at Sundance and the reception of the film was so great that they felt comforted. It was funny, after the movie, my mom came up to me and she was just like, “You’re so lucky you found [lead actor] Joe. He’s so great.” And then she would be like, “Your producers were wonderful.” “It looks wonderful,” but she never said anything about me (laughs). And that’s fine. That’s good enough.

Given its subject matter and explicitness, did you have trouble finding distribution for ｢Spa Night｣?

I think we were really lucky for our domestic market. Marcus Hu at Strand is amazing and a champion for gay voices, Asian-American voices. He’s a queer man of color, himself. I felt really fortunate there. Internationally, we’ve had some awkwardness. We were told that a German distributor really loved the movie, but that he couldn’t buy it because German men don’t think Asian men are sexy. (Laughing) Literally, that was the statement. I was kind of shocked and so annoyed with it that I just kind of had to forget about it. It was trying to hide racism within business. “It’s not good for this market.” I find that 1) often untrue, and 2) really reductive.

And how are we supposed to combat racism, if not with examples that refute it?

That’s the thing about film, it’s this awkward balance between art and commerce. And feeling like if you only make decisions based on business that you’re not doing any justice to the art of the films and what they’re doing and what they can accomplish.

You’re just pandering.

You’re just pandering. You’re just making what you think people want. And then what happens is you’re only reacting. You’re never pushing, you’re never gonna be first. I think that’s an attitude that causes social stagnation. Things will always be the status quo. So if you want film to be this vehicle for social change, you need distribution companies, you need production companies, you need studios to believe in that and to go for it and to take risks. I knew that with ｢Spa Night｣ it was going to be difficult, but it’s exceeded expectations in many ways.

Do you feel pressure, being one of the lone gay Asian voices in American culture, now?

I wouldn’t say there’s pressure, but there is responsibility. I have friends and I know of other filmmakers and actors of color that say, “I just want to be able to make my work.” And I agree, that’s something I strive for, but where we are in society now, if you don’t try and push society, if you don’t have some sort of responsibility to the communities that you’re a part of, then you’re kind of letting us down. In my bio, I say, “Andrew Ahn is a gay Korean-American filmmaker.” And people were like, “Oh, just take that out. Just say you’re a filmmaker.” And I was like, “No, I’m gonna keep saying these things until I don’t have to.” But for now, I think it’s really important. People say, “Your movie’s not just a gay movie.” I’m like, “But it is a gay movie.” I want that to be clear. I want it to be on Netflix under “gay films,” because 1) it’s how people can find it, and 2) it can push the genre to mean more.

If I have the privilege to be out and gay, then I’m gonna be really out and gay about it. It’s kind of wanting to help our community do the work.

“We are very proud to support and provide an inclusive work place with services and benefits that recognise same-sex partners,” said Akio Sugihara, managing executive.

“We can see the ripple effect among numerous additional Japanese companies”, says Ayumu Yasutomi, a professor of social ecology at Tokyo University’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Asia.

“The Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would probably try to get by without dealing with LGBT issues. Without outside pressure [the Olympics] things might not have gotten this far,” says Akiko Shimizu, associate professor of gender and sexual studies at Tokyo University. “But doing nothing looks bad.”