Cathy Yan: ​‘I love push­ing the bound­aries of genre’

Cathy Yan edit­ed her first fea­ture film in the liv­ing room of her New York apart­ment, and it launched her into the movie stratos­phere. Dead Pigs caught the eye of not only the jury at Sun­dance, where it picked up an award for ensem­ble act­ing, but also actor-pro­duc­er Mar­got Rob­bie, who played Harley Quinn in Sui­cide Squad. Just a short while lat­er, Yan was slat­ed to direct Birds of Prey, becom­ing the first Asian-Amer­i­can woman to direct a major super­hero movie in Hollywood.

That’s not it for Yan, who’s next projects include a sci-fi romance adap­ta­tion of Rachel Khong’s short sto­ry ​‘The Fresh­en­ing’, and Jen­ny Zhang’s short sto­ry col­lec­tion ​‘Sour Heart’, which will be dis­trib­uted by A24. It’s easy to spot the tal­ent when you watch the film that start­ed it all. Dead Pigs is a satir­i­cal dark com­e­dy about the real sto­ry of thou­sands of dead pigs sub­merged in the Huang­pu riv­er near Shang­hai. But more cru­cial­ly, it’s about the peo­ple impli­cat­ed in – and adja­cent to – the qui­et dis­as­ter, and their hon­est desires that con­tra­dict the chang­ing world around them.

LWLies: When Dead Pigs pre­miered at Sun­dance in 2018, you men­tioned that the Huang­pu riv­er sto­ry seemed like a metaphor for some themes you want­ed to explore. Do you mind shar­ing what that metaphor is?

Yan: It’s very sym­bol­ic of the reper­cus­sions of rapid change, and mod­erni­sa­tion and cap­i­tal­ism that you can have in a coun­try that is list­ing peo­ple out of pover­ty at the rate that Chi­na is, and all the good things that hap­pen with that, but at the same time, have some­thing like 16,000 dead pigs float down the riv­er. I was inter­est­ed in unpack­ing that and under­stand­ing how such a bizarre and pret­ty gross phe­nom­e­non hap­pened, and bet­ter under­stand­ing the actu­al peo­ple involved with it and what drove these farm­ers to do such a thing – to basi­cal­ly take a liveli­hood, their dead liveli­hood, and lit­er­al­ly dump it in the riv­er. That was the moti­va­tion, but I want­ed to move beyond the head­line. I want­ed to dive deeper.

You’re sort of doing the work that ends when you stop writ­ing the news brief, or the 1,000 word feature.

I do still think of myself as a jour­nal­ist. I enjoy the tools and craft of film­mak­ing, but my work very much stems from that curios­i­ty in the world around us, being inspired by real things. I tru­ly believe that fact is stranger than fiction.

In Dead Pigs, there’s a seem­ing­ly ran­dom musi­cal inter­lude that occurs at a tense moment – you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Why did you want to incor­po­rate music in this way?

I just love music. I used to be a dancer and a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er. I just love the pow­er and sym­bol­ism and the emo­tions you can get across with­out hav­ing to explain it, in move­ment and in music. With Dead Pigs, I real­ly can’t explain how I came to that con­clu­sion and moment. It just felt real­ly right. You know? When there’s noth­ing else to do, what can you do? I love lift­ing our­selves for one moment from the real­i­ty of life, and tran­scend­ing that.

Dead Pigs and Birds of Prey are both come­dies that have trau­mat­ic back­sto­ries. Have you always been drawn to this kind of tone bal­anc­ing act?

For me, there’s always humour in the dark­est moments. Embrac­ing that – and I think there is a sense of humour to life – was a big moment for me as a film­mak­er. Some of my ear­li­er shorts in film school didn’t have that sense of humour, and it didn’t feel like me, and it didn’t feel interesting.

Dead Pigs real­ly allowed me to explore that because of these ridicu­lous, extreme sit­u­a­tions that we find our char­ac­ters in. Whether it’s these large scale repli­cas of Euro­pean towns or build­ings, or recruit­ing a white guy just to play anoth­er white guy, all of these things actu­al­ly hap­pened and are real phe­nom­e­na in Chi­na. For me, the com­e­dy lies in the sit­u­a­tion of it as opposed to zingers or fun­ny peo­ple. None of these peo­ple are innate­ly fun­ny because they ful­ly believe and are com­plete­ly earnest in their desires and wants and the lives that they lead. Like the women cheer­ing and clap­ping for them­selves in front of a salon.

When I watched that part, I thought, ​‘I kind of wish we did that here’. I real­ly need the morn­ing motivation.

Exact­ly! We’re too cyn­i­cal in Amer­i­ca. The singing at the end alludes to this a lit­tle bit, but karaōke in Amer­i­ca is: You get drunk with your friends and you belt things out, and it’s kind of iron­ic. In Chi­na, karaōke is very earnest. Peo­ple get emo­tion­al and sing their hearts out with bal­lads. And I find that super com­pelling. I miss the sight of peo­ple being deeply earnest.

One of your upcom­ing projects is a film adap­ta­tion of the short sto­ry col­lec­tion ​‘Sour Heart’ by Jen­ny Zhang. What drew you to this novel?

I imme­di­ate­ly respond­ed to it because it’s super sim­i­lar to my own life. I was born in Chi­na and moved to the US when I was four. My father was an aca­d­e­m­ic at Prince­ton, and Jenny’s father was a grad stu­dent at NYU. I had grown up most­ly not know­ing many peo­ple that had my back­ground, so I felt very lone­ly hav­ing this life expe­ri­ence. It was such a weird and inti­mate and per­son­al expe­ri­ence to read that book and its very sim­i­lar life sto­ry. It’s just so spe­cif­ic, and I think I actu­al­ly said to A24, ​‘I’m not con­fi­dent about most things, but I’m pret­ty con­fi­dent that there’s no one else that can do this movie like I can.’ And that’s because of the shared life experience.

Do you see any com­mon themes aris­ing from your career, from jour­nal­ist, to inde­pen­dent film­mak­er, to com­ic book movie director?

I’m deeply fas­ci­nat­ed by com­pli­cat­ed char­ac­ters, espe­cial­ly women, espe­cial­ly peo­ple of colour. I love push­ing the bound­aries of genre and tone. I love a good chal­lenge, whether it’s insert­ing a ran­dom musi­cal into an inde­pen­dent film or a big blockbuster.

Dead Pigs is avail­able to stream on MUBI now.