John Cho, TROUBLEMAKER
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[0:41]John Cho is the author of Troublemaker.
[0:44]He is most known as Harold from Harold and Kumar.
[0:48]He cara Sulu from JJ Abrams Star Trek, or as the star of the highly anticipated live-action
[0:54]Netflix series Cowboy Bebop, based on the worldwide cult, anime phenomenon news of which,
[1:00]quote, broke the internet to quote Vanity Fair.
[1:03]John is also a former seventh grade English teacher who grew up as a Korean immigrant kid
[1:07]in Texas and East L.A. among many other places.
[1:10]He is also now a proud father with his Japanese American wife, Carrie, of two beautiful
[1:14]children, a nine-year-old daughter, and an 11-year-old boy who books love to read.
[1:18]Welcome, John.
[1:19]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[1:21]I have time to read books to discuss troublemaker.
[1:24]Thank you.
[1:25]Thanks for having me.
[1:26]Oh, it's my pleasure.
[1:28]Would you mind describing your book a little bit for people who aren't familiar with it?
[1:31]I'm sorry to put you through this.
[1:32]I'm sure you can.
[1:33]I don't know.
[1:34]I could try to sum it up for you, but you can give it a go.
[1:37]The book follows a 12-year-old Jordan Park who is a bit of a troublemaker kid.
[1:42]He comes home suspended from school, and when he comes home, his parents are home unexpectedly
[1:48]because it's April 29, 1992.
[1:51]The day that the Rodney King verdict has been read, they're in a discussion about what
[1:56]they should do about their store in South Central L.A. the dad decides to go board it
[2:01]up in case there's unrest when he leaves.
[2:05]His family is watching the news and going increasingly worried about dad out there.
[2:10]And so Jordan makes the ill-advised decision to go into his father's closet, get his dad's
[2:16]son, and deliver it to him for protection, the first night of the L.A. riots.
[2:23]So that's what the book is.
[2:25]It's about a boy trying to get across L.A. on the worst night of their family's lives.
[2:31]I mean, it's hard to get across L.A. even when it's not the worst night.
[2:34]No, yeah.
[2:35]I mean, it's like always a challenge, get a aircraft.
[2:37]That's right.
[2:38]The riots make it, I don't mean to trivialize it, obviously.
[2:41]It was a record night, and I remember it while I was in New York, but anyway.
[2:45]So I've read all these different interviews that you've given, and you've alluded to
[2:49]your high school career and your younger days of rebel-ness or whatever, tell me about
[2:55]you growing up and what some of the most egregious things you did that you made, I know
[3:02]you have a 13 year old.
[3:03]What do you wish you had never done or what are you proud of doing it?
[3:06]I think I wasn't exactly, you know, Marlon Brando and the Wild Ones are anything, but
[3:12]you know, for me, the parallel to the gun in my life, because the gun for Jordan is this
[3:18]proxy for adulthood and responsibility and power and protection, and it's very symbolic for
[3:26]him and he doesn't understand what it does, which is to shoot bullets, you know?
[3:33]And at people, but for me, the thing was the car, and I remember when I was, I must have
[3:39]been 13 or 14, I just wanted to drive the car, and one night I, you know, put pillows
[3:46]in my bed and snuck out of the house, took the keys, and drove the car.
[3:52]It was a Lincoln, it was a Lincoln Continental, I think it was.
[3:57]No, Lincoln Mark 5, it was a huge boat, and I was just fairly looking over the steering
[4:05]wheel, and I got a few blocks before a cop arrested me, and, you know, so my parents had
[4:11]the, you know, we're woken up in the middle of the night by the police, so I feel very
[4:15]bad that I did that.
[4:17]But that was, that was, so Jordan, at that age, you're trying to figure out how to be
[4:25]an adult, and it's so tough, and you're grasping at dumb things, and, you know, there's
[4:32]a lot of things happening inside that body, at that age, and you're trying to grow up faster
[4:38]than, than his wise.
[4:40]I have to admit, which I never do, that I once took my parents' car also, but I didn't
[4:44]tell them until like my second wedding.
[4:47]But I was smart enough to have my girlfriend drive it.
[4:51]I just like sat in the passenger seat, and there's a much better driver than I was.
[4:55]Well, everyone's a much better driver than anyway, and we didn't get caught, but, you know,
[5:00]I was like, oh, thank you, thank you, I know I almost never wanted to tell them, but finally
[5:04]I came clean.
[5:05]Were you grounded?
[5:07]I mean, I wasn't worried, I'm like, I know I'm 40 years old, but, you know, I have to
[5:13]tell you what I did.
[5:15]Yeah, I got to wait with it, it turns out.
[5:19]Well, wanting to please your parents is sort of another thing, wanting to rebel against
[5:25]them, but at the same time desperately wanting their approval, and I feel like the, I mean,
[5:29]I'm scared during this book, really feels that way, and is, you know, really wants his
[5:34]dad to pay attention and be scared of the failure and a scared of confronting them.
[5:40]And yet, there are these diametrically opposed forces all the time with what you want from
[5:44]your parents, especially at that age.
[5:47]Tell me about that, the relationship with parents, how you can simultaneously want to
[5:51]please, and then also torture them with your behavior.
[5:57]Right, I mean, I guess, I think parents are gods to children, they're, they created you,
[6:05]they taught you everything, they fed you, and so you want to, you want to be like them,
[6:12]you want their approval, you desperately need them to bless you, and yet, at that age,
[6:18]you need to define who you are, and to be like them, you need to individualate, you
[6:24]know, eventually.
[6:25]So it's an awkward time when they still need care, but they want to, I'm now mixing
[6:33]up pronouns, I would, I would cry now, them, but I guess I'm, I'm being a parent, thinking
[6:42]about it as a parent, being a kid, but yeah, so boy, is it a difficult time.
[6:49]And I think also for, for Jordan, these things are exacerbated by, you know, being immigrants
[6:56]and trying to become, quote, American also, which is further individualating your parents
[7:03]and alienating them also.
[7:05]So it's a weird time.
[7:06]I love the image of the grandfather on the couch, you know, basically not moving and
[7:12]occasionally looking like he understands, but like being such a fixture and, you know,
[7:17]drama in the kitchen, and, you know, you painted the whole family dynamic just so spot
[7:22]on like you feel like you're really a part of all that and the older sister and the way
[7:27]she sits with her, what do you call it, like a shirt over her knees, like a little tent
[7:32]or whatever you called it.
[7:33]I also felt like the breaking glass in the kitchen at the mirror, sorry, on the cabinet
[7:39]at the beginning of the story.
[7:40]It was just such a, you know, foreshadowing, of course, of all the stuff to come, right?
[7:44]It was very little literary move of you there.
[7:47]Was that intentional?
[7:49]It was actually, it was and, but it also happened to me, even my parents, we, we moved
[7:56]around a lot and there were some very lean years and there were frequent fights about
[8:00]money and one time resulted in the sliding door coming off its hinges and it was a little
[8:06]bit of a mix in my, in my life, that it simply came off the hinges, but it kind of
[8:11]mixed to events.
[8:13]The police incident that's referred to in the book when they came, that was a BB gun
[8:20]that shattered our front sliding glass door and the police came in with their boots
[8:24]on and in the story.
[8:26]It's a robbery where we see how we see the George's parents relationship to police.
[8:33]But yeah, the image of things shattering was, you know, kind of in my head and thought
[8:38]it might be useful.
[8:39]We had our front glass shot by a BB gun once I woke up and there was like, oh, yeah,
[8:45]I guess I had a babysitter with a boyfriend with an issue.
[8:48]Really?
[8:49]Yeah.
[8:50]I was a kid.
[8:51]It was like we weren't, we were out of the city, we were out of the, yeah.
[8:56]That is drama.
[8:57]It was drama.
[8:58]Unwanted drama.
[8:59]I know.
[9:00]I know.
[9:01]Yeah, not sure.
[9:02]It was worth like her Nestle quick movie making, like after a fair mirror.
[9:09]Did you?
[9:10]So I know your main thing, right, is your acting career and, you know, that's been super
[9:14]successful all this time.
[9:16]So now you've delved into a whole new field.
[9:18]Like what were you at all nervous about this?
[9:20]Or were you just like, I know you had a co-writer and that's great.
[9:23]Were you at all worried about going into a new, you know, tackling the middle grade
[9:29]novel and trying to figure out what you like as a writer?
[9:33]Absolutely.
[9:34]And, you know, I don't think the co-writer idea came up when I changed course, because
[9:40]I was going to do something much lighter.
[9:43]And it was the events of 2020 that caused me to change course.
[9:47]And that was when I thought, well, I think I'm going to need someone to talk through
[9:51]things with ride this, the subject matter combined with the audience seemed very seem like
[10:00]We're gonna be a lot of landmines
[10:01]and I wanted to navigate that responsibly
[10:04]with someone who had written for that audience before.
[10:08]So yeah, I was tense,
[10:10]your question, I was very nervous.
[10:12]And again, I just wanted to do it truthfully
[10:16]but responsibly and we tried our best to make something
[10:21]that mirrored what I was going through in our house,
[10:25]which was to talk about these events plainly,
[10:29]but not to scare them
[10:31]because we didn't want them to feel like they couldn't,
[10:35]that their world was unsafe for them.
[10:37]We didn't want them to feel like
[10:39]they couldn't walk out of the house.
[10:41]And so it was a difficult balance
[10:44]and I wanted to kind of bring those same intentions
[10:48]to the book is that we were bringing to our own children.
[10:52]That's lovely.
[10:53]What do you feel like?
[10:54]How do you process all of the anti-Asian violence
[10:57]going on right now?
[10:58]Like how do you come to terms with that?
[10:59]How do you think about it?
[11:01]How do you touch your kids about it?
[11:02]You know, I don't know if I've come to terms
[11:04]with it very well, very successfully.
[11:07]Shock that I'm so naive,
[11:09]I had hoped that it would have been temporary,
[11:13]the onset of the pandemic when we heard,
[11:16]you know, Kung flew virus and all that stuff.
[11:19]And yet it's continuing, especially in New York,
[11:22]I'm particularly dismayed that they're attacking women
[11:25]and the elderly.
[11:26]It seems particularly dark and malicious, you know?
[11:29]But yeah, it does seem to be the cycle
[11:32]that's repeated itself in Asian American history,
[11:35]going from sort of the good ones to the scapegoats, you know?
[11:39]And we've seen that the most extreme version
[11:42]is into Japanese being interrogated during World War II
[11:46]and Germans being left alone.
[11:48]So that the German Americans being left alone rather.
[11:50]So it seems to be history repeating itself,
[11:53]but I would say this, it's hard to imagine
[11:58]even a political forces causing a man
[12:01]to attack a defenseless woman.
[12:03]It's really mind-boggling.
[12:04]I can barely, I don't know.
[12:08]I have trouble even accepting the data,
[12:14]the facts of the facts.
[12:15]It's almost seems mythological.
[12:20]Like I read the accounts in the paper
[12:23]and have to meet again,
[12:25]because it seems so improbable.
[12:27]And yet, you know, it's happening frequently.
[12:29]So it's very sad.
[12:31]I had a housekeeper for my whole life for 30 years.
[12:35]Like my mother's family and she was pushed in front
[12:37]of a subway and killed.
[12:39]She's Asian and it was awful.
[12:41]Oh my God, when?
[12:43]I know, this happened 2016, I think, 2016.
[12:46]Wow.
[12:47]But and I recently interviewed,
[12:49]I don't mean to be fliffed at it.
[12:50]It's obviously very upsetting,
[12:51]but I recently interviewed Cian Julie Wang
[12:54]who wrote Beautiful Country,
[12:55]which if you haven't read,
[12:55]is like amazing, it's amazing more.
[12:58]And I was talking to her about it
[13:00]because that comes up in her book and all that.
[13:02]And she said, you know,
[13:03]I don't think it's happening anymore now.
[13:05]I think it's just finally being reported by the media,
[13:07]which is even more upsetting.
[13:09]Right.
[13:10]Yeah.
[13:11]I think also that's the slipperiness
[13:13]of addressing this issue is being reported
[13:18]and how do we count hate crimes?
[13:21]And so it is, it's thorny.
[13:24]I don't even know how to start addressing it.
[13:27]How do you convince people not to do this darkest thing
[13:31]that you would never, that you can never conceive of?
[13:33]So it's baffling and exceptionally frustrating.
[13:37]Yeah.
[13:38]Well, I have to say one of the ways to combat
[13:40]some of these misperceptions or stereotype or whatever
[13:44]is being able to put yourself in people's shoes,
[13:47]which is what fiction does best, right?
[13:50]Being able to empathize and learn and see what it's like,
[13:53]you know, putting yourself in someone's living room,
[13:56]not that necessarily people are...
[13:58]That's one of the tools.
[14:00]I feel like that's one of the main tools
[14:02]of getting people on the same page
[14:05]is to write a fiction about it or memoir, whatever.
[14:07]So I feel like a book like yours is,
[14:10]helps people transcend everything, right?
[14:12]This is what it's like for this one child
[14:13]and this one experience and, you know,
[14:16]stop and pay attention.
[14:18]You know, this is this family in the, anyway.
[14:20]So I know that there are a lot of, you know,
[14:23]we set this book inside a really pivotal,
[14:27]political event, but at the heart of it,
[14:32]it's a love story between a father and a son
[14:35]and a portrait of a Korean American family.
[14:37]And I hope that people can empathize.
[14:39]I mean, I think we started from the image
[14:42]that everyone remembers from the LA riots.
[14:44]If you ask, if there's a single image
[14:47]from up Korean Americans from the LA riots,
[14:49]it's those men on the rooftops of their guns.
[14:52]And I think the attack for me was, you know,
[14:55]what if we followed that man home
[14:57]and what is his home life like
[14:59]and what are the dynamics there?
[15:00]And if people got a sense of who their neighbors might be,
[15:04]their Korean American neighbors through the book,
[15:06]that would really please me.
[15:07]And if they got, if they felt a kinship,
[15:10]that would really be amazing.
[15:12]Is this going to be a movie?
[15:15]Are you gonna be the dad?
[15:17]It might be a movie, we'll see.
[15:20]It could be.
[15:21]I think it could be.
[15:22]I think it should be.
[15:23]I think it should be.
[15:24]I think it's an important story to digest, personally.
[15:28]Well, I'm sure you agree with me because it's yours.
[15:30]Yeah, I think it would be a cool movie.
[15:34]And I am partial to sort of one night movies,
[15:37]incidentally, you know, I made one myself,
[15:40]Harold and Kumar go to White Castle,
[15:42]but that has always been a movie genre
[15:46]that I really like.
[15:47]So I think it might be a good one.
[15:50]And there are burgers in my book as well.
[15:53]My husband loathed your movie, by the way.
[15:57]Such a fan, he thought it was the coolest thing
[15:59]that I was interviewing him.
[16:00]And I was like, I'm not there, he did.
[16:01]So anyway, you have a loyal fan base, that's we know.
[16:07]In fact, I was reading it had just made people
[16:09]where that your last project ended.
[16:10]There were so many like, why did this end?
[16:12]What happened?
[16:13]You know, so anyway.
[16:15]Be too better.
[16:19]You're just like that stick of editing.
[16:21]Hey man, I'm almost, my mom was the other one.
[16:25]No search Google term, but by the start.
[16:28]So I read also that you like so many of us
[16:33]that had a lot of anxiety about many of the events today
[16:36]and George Floyd and all of the things
[16:38]and that one resulted in a panic attack.
[16:41]And I was wondering if that was accurate
[16:43]and if that was something you struggle with
[16:45]and if you have any tips for managing anxiety,
[16:48]which I would welcome so.
[16:50]I was gonna ask you for tips,
[16:52]but it did happen very recently to me.
[16:55]I was, I think it was also real.
[16:58]It was illustrative of how stressful the last few years
[17:02]have been and how sustained it's been.
[17:04]And one day at a time, I guess you can deal
[17:08]with it, but collectively,
[17:10]you start putting those years together
[17:11]and boys have been wearing on us.
[17:13]And I hadn't thought about that day.
[17:16]And you know, that I was listening to podcast about
[17:20]the day it was a Lafayette Park,
[17:22]Trump went out with the Bible
[17:24]and they cleaned out the protesters with tear gas and stuff.
[17:27]And it was a firsthand account of the man
[17:30]who had an apartment on that block
[17:32]and led in the protesters into his apartment.
[17:35]They were cleaning out, taken milk out of the fridge
[17:38]and cleaning out tear gas from the eyes.
[17:40]And it was just packed with protesters
[17:42]and it was this friendship that formed
[17:44]between the apartment owner and a protester.
[17:49]And I was just transported back to that day
[17:52]and that time and I don't know what it was.
[17:54]I can't really quite explain to it.
[17:56]It seemed like me finally looking back
[18:00]and letting kind of the last six years hit me in the chest.
[18:03]And I was exercising, it had to kind of stop.
[18:06]And I've had a couple of panic attacks,
[18:09]but it's not been something that's happened often to me.
[18:14]So it was really surprising.
[18:15]And I had to stop and just breathe for a while.
[18:19]That's tough.
[18:21]I was about that scene with Jack Nicholson.
[18:23]Did you see as good as it gets?
[18:25]I think that's the one where he has a panic attack
[18:27]goes to the hospital because he thinks it's having a heart attack.
[18:29]And that's our comment, right?
[18:30]People, it's all the same symptoms, our bodies.
[18:33]Yes.
[18:34]Trick us.
[18:36]Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[18:37]I mean, I guess we feel these things.
[18:39]It starts in the brain and goes through the body.
[18:41]And it's a moment of trauma, you know?
[18:44]And it's weird that you can have past trauma
[18:47]and it becomes present tense trauma.
[18:49]So as a body, the body in mind, I'm a serious, very mysterious.
[18:55]Yes, oh my gosh.
[18:56]Okay, any other plans for more books?
[18:59]Yes, you know, I don't know yet what it might be,
[19:02]but it's been, I gotta say the greatest thing
[19:05]about having written a book is knowing that you have written one
[19:10]and it's been such a gift to me because, you know,
[19:14]my day job being an actor, you come in for the middle part,
[19:18]you miss the preparation and then you come in for the,
[19:22]for the hot stuff in the middle and then you leave
[19:25]and then they finish the film and kind of taken it
[19:28]from beginning to end has been so gratifying.
[19:30]It has emboldened me and in many parts of my life
[19:34]and thinking, well, if I can do this,
[19:35]maybe I can do something else.
[19:37]So it's been one of the coolest things that I've ever done
[19:41]and it hasn't even come out yet, but you know,
[19:43]just having done it, it feels so great.
[19:46]And most of all, I look forward to kids reading it.
[19:48]I wanted to write a book just because I wanted, you know,
[19:51]I would like to have said it was for my kids,
[19:53]but really it was for me, for 12 year old me
[19:57]and I thought, wow, it would have been really cool
[19:59]for me.
[20:00]for told your old me to walk into a library.
[20:03]Cause we didn't go to bookstores and see this book
[20:06]and see that boy on the cover.
[20:08]And so I'm just really looking forward
[20:10]to seeing it on a shelf and seeing a kid grab it.
[20:14]Oh, that's great.
[20:15]I love that.
[20:16]You'll put like little secret cameras
[20:18]in all the stores.
[20:19]Yeah, I'll be lurking in the children's section
[20:25]of arts and noble.
[20:26]I know that sounds terrible.
[20:28]Yeah, so, oh my gosh, I look here on the corner.
[20:35]Yeah, I'm looking through the book.
[20:37]Yeah, I'm looking through.
[20:39]Oh, my gosh, too.
[20:40]All right, well, John, thank you so much.
[20:42]Thanks for coming on mom's time to have a treat book.
[20:44]Congratulations, it's a huge accomplishment
[20:47]and really powerful story, really, really well written
[20:50]and captivating and important and all the good things.
[20:54]So congratulations.
[20:55]Thank you.
[20:56]Thanks so much for having me.
[20:57]Appreciate it.
[20:57]Hi, pleasure.
[20:58]Take care.
[20:59]Hi.
[20:59]Bye-bye.
[21:01]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms
[21:03]don't have time to read books.
[21:04]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens
[21:07]and at moms don't have time to read books.
[21:10]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[21:12]and sign up for my virtual book club
[21:14]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[21:16]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[21:19]for the Sound Editing.
[21:20]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[21:22]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.