"I actually had the poster of Saving Face hanging in my room for a long time. It was the first Asian-American movie that I saw that really connected with me. I’ve seen some Asian-American indies, but that really kind of opened up my search for them. I didn’t even really know about the genre when I first saw it. It was written and directed by an Asian-American woman, Alice Wu, and it centers around, an Asian-American lesbian. It stars one of my favorite actresses ever – Lynn Chen – and Michelle Krusiec. This girl, she’s from Queens, and she takes the 7. It was the first time I’d ever seen a movie with an Asian American on a 7 train! I think that was the first time I really understood what representation was. But it hit closer to home because she was an Asian-American woman and because, you know, she is from Queens. And she went to Flushing all the time, and her mom [Joan Chen] was kind of this Flushing socialite who actually becomes pregnant. And she kind of has to go between both worlds of being the good Asian daughter and also coming to terms with her sexuality. It was one of those movies that I think explored a lot of layers about the Asian-American experience and the negotiation that come with it. And, so, I love that movie so much. I still have the poster somewhere."

"I hadn’t seen Sideways in a number of years, and recently saw it again, and sat down with it and was overwhelmed at how much more meaningful it had become in the years since I had seen it. I don’t know why – I guess it’s just really cheesy: Like wine, it had aged for me. (I’d take that out, that was so cheesy!). But it had matured for me as a story, or perhaps I had grownup to meet the story – it was so lyrical and so authentic in every moment. Stories about failure, to me, are more meaningful as I get older. That movie also swings big, and that’s another thing that I like about it. That monologue, Virginia Madsen’s monologue… it’s just achingly romantic. [And] the end, where he drives up, sort of mirroring The Graduate, but it’s Dustin Hoffman, the loser version, which is way closer to me than the heroic version in The Graduate. [The movie] just keeps curving into itself, and out of itself, and it’s just an incredibly satisfying, enjoyable, meditative movie. It’s got some incredible performances – everyone is a delight, everyone is just incredibly fun, and each scene has something interesting happening in it. [Sandra Oh] was another inspired bit of casting. Her mother, and the kid, and she’s amazing, and the motorcycle helmet rage was one of the most terrifying things I’ve seen on film – and a flopping penis, that’s always good."