Meet Marcus Chan | Film Editor, Film Director & Screenwriter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Marcus Chan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Marcus, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I was born and raised in Hong Kong and only moved to the US in my early thirties to go to the UCLA film school, after spending a decade as a corporate lawyer. Hong Kong is a very vibrant and dynamic city, and deeply connected with the rest of the region as well as the world. The fact that I have lived in these two completely different parts of the world as an adult is what shaped my worldview.

There are of course significant differences between Hong Kong and Los Angeles, but then there are also many, many similarities. It is this mixture of familiarity and strangeness that informs my work, which explores human nature and traits that to me feel for the most part universal.

I’ve crossed paths with so many characters in Los Angeles who remind me of people I know from home. The culture or social rituals may be different, but deep down people share a lot in common, and that is something that really fascinates me and gives me plenty of stories to tell.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
The “truth” matters so much to me as an artist, especially one’s “inner truth.” A lot of us go through life without completely knowing who we really are. That can be because of a lack of self-awareness, or mental gymnastics we perform to bridge the gap between reality and our ideals. This can be dangerous, and can lead to immense suffering and misery.

When people lie, do they know they are lying? Or do they believe in their own lies? To me there’s a big difference between the two. Some of us have the “fortune” to go through life without having to confront ourselves head-on, and for those of us who are less fortunate, when the moment of truth comes, we finally get to know our true self, and I’m constantly fascinated by this journey of self-discovery, which provides the crux of so many interesting stories and dramas I include in my work.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would definitely take my friend to Vidiots, which used to be in Santa Monica but has since moved to Eagle Rock. It used to be just a video store, but is now more like a cinematheque with its own theater screening an incredible slate that alternates between recent releases and old favorites and cult classics.

And to make the place even more amazing, there is a bar and you can sip on a cold draft beer as you watch Sigourney Weaver fight aliens in space.

I will spend the next few days showing my friend famous film locations in LA, from the Bradbury Building in DTLA that stood in for a dilapidated apartment complex in “Blade Runner,” to the Griffith Observatory featured in countless Hollywood films such as “Rebel Without a Cause” and “La La Land.”

We will spend the rest of the week on a short road trip to either Joshua Tree or San Diego, if just for my friend to experience some typical California desert weather and relive the kind of road trip that forms the basis of so many movies set on the West Coast!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
“Dream of the Red Chamber” is an 18th-century Chinese novel authored by Cao Xueqin, often considered to be one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. It was a challenging read for me, but the pay-off was tremendous. The novel tells the rise and fall of an affluent, powerful family, and touches upon everything from family and romance to history and politics. It opened up the world for me and greatly informed me of the techniques a writer can employ to convey ideas through plot and dialogues.

Website: https://www.marcuscwchan.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/freakymarcus

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscwchan

Image Credits
Marcus Chan (me)