5 Questions with Joyce Keokham ("WYA WYD")
Photo by Cindy Trinh
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I grew up without cable tv and was always hanging out at my friends homes. It was at their houses where I’d catch episodes of That’s So Raven and TRL, and finally understand what everyone else at school was talking about.
Without that immediate entertainment source at home, I made my own fun by going on less conventional adventures and through that, creating stories for myself. I was a real latchkey kid. Over time, I found TV characters I related to in Shawn Hunter from Boy Meets World and Hyde from That 70s Show. As a child, I really clung onto them. I felt like my experiences had been ignored and unacknowledged at large until I found them.
Fast forward 20 more years of content digesting and those characters are still some of the ones I feel like I relate to most. Me, a post-binary Asian-American with refugee ancestors and I feel best represented by two white boys? How could I resist filmmaking?
2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?
WYA WYD–Where You At? What You Doin? started from writing what I know. As a college student, I was doing sex work for survival while many of my peers never had to imagine such circumstances. I wanted to show them how society created this desperation in me and in some of my friends especially when we were just kids.
Unfortunately, it’s a common reality for society to capitalize on young adults during their formative years yet no one talks about it seriously. I put it all on paper in 2017 and didn’t bring it to life until 2019. In the interim, I was picking up small acting and producing jobs until one day I finally had the courage to pursue my own project.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?
The biggest challenge was owning the fact I wanted to make it. Remember not long ago, I was extremely preoccupied with my survival so devoting myself to a passion project was a freedom I had to adapt to––thinking and operating beyond survival.
The easiest part was writing it. I finished the first draft of the pilot in one go and had no idea how special that is. I initially thought the hardest part of filmmaking is production but since then I’ve learned that coming up with an idea, one that sustains passion and motivation, is rare to come by.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
La Monde Est Toi “The World is Yours” (2018). It’s a witty heist movie which follows Francois, the protagonist who is too soft to be respected in his field. Knowing this, he desperately wants to leave the scammer lifestyle but circumstances keep pulling him back in until he arrives at the ultimate extremes. The director, Romain Gavras, is also a genius music video maker, so the shots in his film are exceptionally stylized and heightened with exciting music which makes The World is Yours a great contemporary film and with lots of relevant cultural commentary. Like Uncut Gems but campier.
I also can’t help but mention how much I love people watching with John Wilson! I binged the whole season of How To With John Wilson twice in one sitting!
5) What’s next for you?
Currently I’m producing The Blessing, a mini-series written and directed by Liann Kaye. The show follows a midwestern white guy who wants to marry into a Chinese-American family based on Liann’s own experiences. We’re halfway through production and are all very excited about it. :)
I am also working on a few film adaptations of my poetry and writing my first feature ;)
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http://lilearthling.com; http://wyawyd.com | IG: @fuqr