Exclusive Interview: Filmmakers Ivan Leung and Harrison Xu Talk ‘Extremely Unique Dynamic’

Filmmakers Ivan Leung and Harrison Xu are emerging as two of the most captivating voices of their generation. With illustrious careers as actors under their belts, they’ve now stepped into the roles of writers and directors with their debut feature, Extremely Unique Dynamic.

In this (likely) first-ever and (possibly) award-winning meta-Asian-stoner-coming-of-age-bromantic dramedy, bottled-up secrets arise as two best friends decide to make a movie…about two guys making a movie… about two guys making a movie. More importantly, Extremely Unique Dynamic exemplifies the power of creatives taking their careers into their own hands, delivering a project that seamlessly combines laughter with heart-wrenching moments while creating characters they’ve longed to portray but haven’t had the opportunity to.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Ivan and Harrison about Extremely Unique Dynamic, their collaboration, and more.

PC: To kick us off, Harrison, you’ve got a new film making its way around the festival circuit. Tell us about Extremely Unique Dynamic, and then Ivan, give us the “real” logline.
Harrison: This film is a passion project that Ivan and I made together. We’re primarily actors. Last year, during the strikes, things were a bit slow. Ivan and I were eating Thai food on the floor. We were like, “What should we do? Let’s make a movie!” We brainstormed this idea about two guys making a movie, about two guys making a movie, about two guys making a movie. In life, I just moved to Canada a couple of months ago. The movie is about our characters grappling with the pending move.

Ivan: It’s about two Asian guys making a movie about two Asian guys making a movie about two Asian guys making a movie. We talk about feelings, things come up, sexuality stuff, feelings, co-dependency, things like that.

PC: Harrison, when you’re working on a stoner comedy, you’re really able to push the boundaries. But what you and Ivan have done so brilliantly with this is that you play to that while also keeping it grounded. Was that balance something you were mindful of during the making of this film? How did you manage to toe that line so seamlessly?
Harrison: I think we were able to toe that seamlessly because it’s just how we are in real life. Ivan’s kind of the unhinged one, and I’m the more professional, serious one.

Ivan: It’s really easy because the planning happens with Harrison, and I’m just playing myself. I don’t understand any of the meta stuff. So when I’m playing the character, I’m actually in the character’s skins.

Harrison: On set as we were doing the meta storyline, I realized as I was explaining to Ivan after as Harrison and Ivan what was going on, he actually didn’t understand what was going on. I was like, “Oh great. It works perfect for the character. We’ll continue with that.”

Ivan: I just had to stare at Harrison’s beautiful face and respond to him.

PC: It works really well in the film. Ivan, I love the ways in which you were both able to honor the Asian projects that have paved the way while also acknowledging the realities of being an Asian creative in this industry and how so often there’s typecasting and a scarcity of roles for our community, which is one of the reasons why the two of you created this project. How do you hope this project will inspire others to take their careers into their own hands, particularly the Asian community?
Ivan: I feel like right now, the Asian community is very black and white. They usually go on to the extreme right where they want these super character-y types to the other side where they’re all chiseled and beautiful, and we’re in the middle. We’re lovable average guys. Right now, we want to show that, “Hey, there is red. There is blue, but I’m also green. Green’s also great.”

PC: Film is also an editor’s medium. It’s really in that stage where things start to take form. Harrison, you’ve said in previous interviews that you and Ivan would do these long extended takes and scenes in various different ways. Did you go into this filming process with that approach, knowing that’s how you wanted to tackle the openness of this script? How much of that decision was influenced by your own experience as an actor and understanding the importance of having that variety?
Harrison: The script we wrote was a pretty strict scriptment. It was twenty to twenty-five pages where we had a very clear structure for each scene, outlining where we started, certain topics we wanted to potentially cover, and where it ended. Ivan and I, being long-time friends, felt very comfortable as actors with each other.

We definitely leaned into the improvisational elements of it. Off the bat, we knew that we wanted to do really long takes and riff on each other while both staying within the guidelines of each scene. We did like three to four takes that were eight minutes of each scene where we talked about different things.

If you gave the film to four different editors without any context, you’d probably have four different movies. There are definitely three other cuts of this movie somewhere that exist. But that was something that we planned off the bat to do. Our editor, who we brought on, bless his soul, is such a great guy and an amazing editor.

Ivan: Shout out to Michael Scotti Jr.

Harrison: Shout out to Michael Scotti Jr. He worked on PEN15, not too long before this. So he’s really strong with comedy. What’s so great about PEN15 is that even though it is hilarious, there’s a lot of heart to it as well. As he was watching our dailies and looking at our cuts, he realized that there was a lot of heart to the movie that he wanted to really pull out.

Then we really focused on a lot of the coming-of-age elements of the movie. We actually went back and did a lot of reshoots with the kids as well on camera to make that more a central part of the storyline. But by doing it the way that we did it, it left a lot of openness for interpretation of how we wanted to go with the storyline. We found a lot of that in the edit.

PC: Ivan, while this is an Asian-led and created project. It’s also a universal story about friendship, identity, and embracing change. Those emotional beats really hit home. As an actor, how did you create the space for yourself to tackle the vulnerability of your character’s arc throughout?
Ivan: I started acting because as a kid I always felt pretty invisible. I was always the quiet, shy kid most of my life. During my teen years, I started wanting to feel more seen, so I started trying to find outlets in dance, acting, and singing. I feel like my goal as an actor is to feel seen. I want people to see the shades of me that I’m too scared of showing in real life, which is interesting because it goes back to the movie and using it as a proxy to express how we really feel. I think that’s really beautiful.

PC: A testament to your talents as an artist and a storyteller. Harrison, throughout your career, you’ve been able to play with both the dramatic and comedic beats. For you as an actor, is one more challenging than the other? Is it different from the writer-director’s perspective as well?
Harrison: I personally love comedy. I feel like comedy is really hard to nail. What we tried to do with this film is talk about subject matter that isn’t often discussed and is serious, but in the vein of comedy because I feel like it’s digestible. What we wanted to do is make people laugh and then punch them in the gut and make them cry.

Personally, I love comedy. I feel like it’s extremely challenging in the way that it’s also technical. But in a perfect world, I’d love to continue to flex both the comedic and dramatic muscles in the same project.

Ivan: Making people laugh and punching them in the gut is exactly how I want to be in real life. Comedies are really difficult right now. I miss laughing out loud. I miss laughing with an audience. There hasn’t been a comedy for me personally since Bridesmaid where we’ve all been able to get together and laugh. I really hope that we can do that with our movie.

PC: You both accomplished that. I was laughing within the first five minutes. There’s a moment when your characters are worried that their humor will only be funny to themselves. As someone who has seen the film, I was laughing out loud. What was it like getting to experience that joy with a live audience and seeing that humor land?
Harrison: It was incredible. We’ve seen the movie so many times because we were editing it, and we were with our editor every night for six weeks while finishing up the film. Poor Ivan has had to see it like eight times while quality controlling it. Nothing beats watching a comedy in a theater with a crowd because you feel the energy, and the crowd thrives off it and builds off of it. You also have permission to laugh at that point because you’re like, they’re laughing at this joke. You’re like this is funny. Because there are certain things that we talk about that can be touchy at times. There’s a line where Ivan’s character says, “we look the same to White people.”

Ivan: Harrison!

Harrison: But it landed. It was super funny. Laughter is contagious. We felt that energy. We’re excited to continue our festival run and see how different audiences react to different jokes because there are certain jokes that we didn’t think were funny but people thought it was hilarious. There were points where people thought things were funny that we thought were more dramatic. It’s definitely a learning experience to see what plays well in a theater for the first time.

Ivan: We watched it so much that I didn’t know if it was funny anymore. Listening to the audience. I was shocked and surprised. I was like you really like it? You really enjoyed it? It was pretty awesome.

PC: This film is also such a love letter to cinema and filmmaking. What are the TV shows and movies that had the greatest influence on both of your journeys as storytellers?
Harrison: Some of the films that we mention in the movie. It’s kind of meta that we’re talking about it in an interview. It’s Fresh Off the Boat, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and all those projects that paved the way for Asian Americans.

This is less so inspiration for storytelling, but more so inspiration for why we made the film, but I work in filmmaking like my character does in the movie. I was brought on to work on this movie called Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which I called Ivan about and had him come on to the project. Both of us were basically the marketing behind this film. It was shot for less than $50,000. It grew a pretty big cult following because it’s Winnie the Pooh and it’s horror. But a lot of the sentiment for the film was that this movie sucks and that it was ruining people’s childhood. People were like, “Why are you making this film?”

Ivan and I personally took on the persona of Winnie the Pooh on our social media handles. We had a lot of fun with it. We were sh*t posting and responding to people in a way that was self-referential and kind of stupid. But we were like, “This is kind of fun.” In a way, we were creating this character of Winnie the Pooh that didn’t exist in the movie, but we created this persona that was fun and sassy.

We were like, “Wait, I think we can be funny together.” That was a big part of why we started the process of writing this movie because we were like, “We think we’re funny. They made a movie for really cheap. Let’s see if we can do that too. But do it in a way that we want to do it.” We wanted to create characters that we wanted to play that we’ve never gotten to play and we also wanted to be able to work together on a comedic project because that’s something that we’re both passionate about.

Ivan: I watch a lot of Asian dramas. I know that’s not the Asian-American experience, but I watch a lot of Asian dramas. I watch a lot of anime. I’m such a nerd. But it really inspired me to start acting because seeing Asian people just being themselves and not commenting on their Asianness and being real life people was super inspiring. Also with these Asian dramas, they go from happy, sad, scary, happy, sad, scary. It has so much freedom to it, even though I’m sure it’s some kind of machine. It really inspired me to want to do these types of film because I wanted to express myself in a way where we could be whatever or whoever. The worst thing that could happen is that it’s a sh*tty movie. We didn’t really have much fear heading into it. The only thing we would lose is a bit of our pride and a lot of money. That’s how we did it.

Harrison: This might be a controversial filmmaker answer, but a formative movie for me growing up was Click by Adam Sandler, mainly because I watched a lot of Adam Sandler comedies growing up like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, but Click was one of the first movies I remember crying in. There’s a scene where he’s running in the rain. This whole film is a comedy, but then I cried in it. I’ve always wanted to make a movie like that.

Ivan: Mine was Legally Blonde.

PC: You’re both first-time filmmakers. What was the most surprising part about this experience? How has the work that you’ve done directing now influenced how you approach your work as actors?
Ivan: Love the people that you work with. Make sure that everyone on set is heard. Never try to license music.

Harrison: Producing is a lot harder. It requires a lot more work than we thought. We had no idea. We kind of had an idea of what producers did until we produced this film ourselves.

Ivan: Before we started this movie, as an actor, producers would just smile at me and give me the thumbs up. They’d be like, “You want to ride in our cart to go back to the parking lot?” That’s it. So now knowing what a producer does, holy sh*t.

Harrison: It’s also more of an appreciation for the filmmaking process. We’ve been acting for over ten years. Oftentimes, you show up on set, you do your thing, and then you go home. You don’t ever have to worry about the process until the project comes out and you’re like, there I am.

Now that we’ve been basically working on this as our full-time job for the last year, we’ve really gained an understanding of every department and what goes into it, from sound editing to everything in between. I feel like it’s really helped me become more cognizant as an actor of everything that’s going on and understanding everything that goes into a project.

Ivan: There’s definitely a lot more appreciation for every single job. You realize how every single person on set and off set is so integral. Going back on set as an actor, you have a whole new appreciation for how things are made and how every single person is an integral part in making something like this.

Harrison: Yeah. The movie wouldn’t be what it is without the involvement of everyone. I feel like for us as first-time filmmakers, you have to put a lot of trust into the process because we’re working in post for the first time. We’re working with the sound mixer. We’re learning this for the first time, but we hired you because you’re really good at your job and we really liked your work.

We basically put all our trust into these people. What was interesting in talking to these different people is that on a lot of projects that they’ve worked on, they didn’t really have a lot of creative say. They were another cog in the machine. This was the first project where they felt like they were really involved. That’s definitely something that we want to take into our future projects and making sure that every single person on the production feels included.

Ivan: And that they’re actually having fun. That’s really important. Every single person should be having fun. Take the job seriously but have fun.

Make sure to follow Ivan (Instagram) and Harrison (Instagram). Learn more about Extremely Unique Dynamic.