Chris Wu Reveals the Untold Secrets Behind His Most Captivating Stories
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My interview with the 2021 Black List writer.
Chris Wu wrote the original screenplay “Mr. Benihana” which landed on the 2021 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Chris about his creative background, his script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to him.
Scott Myers: Congratulations on your script “Mr. Benihana” being selected to the 2021 Black List.
Chris Wu: Thank you. It’s exciting.
Scott: Let’s dig into your background a bit, how you got into the business of screenwriting. Where’d you grow up and how did you find your way into writing as an interest?
Chris: I was born and raised in a suburb of Dallas, called Plano. My parents were Taiwanese immigrants. I grew up with film, television, books, and comics as my main escape. I was always fascinated with stories. I ended up going to college at Yale. It was a complete one-eighty from my upbringing. I was able to discover a lot about myself. I came out of the closet, for one. I also found film and television as something I could potentially do as a career.
I was an econ major, mostly for my parents. That good old Asian guilt! But I took all these film studies classes, enough that I was able to double major in both. It was a good place to get a chance to write my own stuff. And direct shorts with other creative likeminded people there.
From there, I moved out to LA. I was still unsure of how I would break into the industry. At first, I thought I might do the business side of entertainment. I went to USC Business School to get my MBA. I thought maybe I could work at a studio. Marketing, corporate finance, something like that. So I got a summer internship at Disney in their corporate finance group. It was probably one of the most soul-sucking summers of my life. I knew very quickly it wasn’t for me. Even more so, I was constantly looking over the fence at all the creatives on the Disney lot. They were so close, it made it worse.
I knew I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t give it a shot. I decided to take the plunge. I had spoken to a few people about the best way to break into the industry. A lot of them had suggested working at an agency. After getting my MBA, I jumped into…
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