Hollywood directors, actors tackle diversity in film and onstage at 2019 TED Talks

A couple of years ago, Hollywood director Jon M. Chu had a creative crisis.

Despite having directed and produced blockbuster hits like Jem and the Holograms and GI Joe: Retaliation, something just didn't feel right.

"I felt a little bit lost, creatively. The engine was sort of going down," Chu said onstage Thursday evening at the TED conference in Vancouver focusing on technology, entertainment and design 

It was around that time that Chu began to notice an increasing number of Asian actors complaining on Twitter about the lack of diversity in Hollywood. He agreed.

And then Chu realized that he IS Hollywood.

Representation on screen

Chu went on to direct Crazy Rich Asians, based on the bestselling book by Kevin Kwan. It was the first film with an all-Asian cast in Hollywood in 25 years.

He's one of a handful of filmmakers and actors at this year's TED conference speaking about diversity and representation on screen and on stage.

For some, like actor Rafael Casal, advocating for diversity has taken the form of starting campaigns on social media. For others, like Academy award-winning documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, it's about connecting with audiences.

"I think it's important to have representation on screen and it's important for us for our voices to be represented," Obaid Chinoy said Wednesday, after her TED Talk about how film can change minds and save lives.

Palo Alto upbringing

For Chu, his perspective came in part from growing up as the youngest of five children. His parents, immigrants from Taiwan, owned and operated a restaurant in Palo Alto, Calif.

During his TED Talk Chu said he made a lot of connections at the restaurant — including employees from the Silicone Valley giants who offered him the skills and equipment he used to develop his career.

Chu repeatedly credited his connections as contributors to his success. But he mostly thanked his parents for planting the seed of an idea in him more than 20 years ago.

His parents loved Hollywood, Chu said, and fanned the flames of his career. They also encouraged him to make movies about his Chinese heritage — to no avail.

"The last thing I wanted to talk about was my own cultural identity, my ethnicity," Chu said.

When Chu finally decided to make Crazy Rich Asians, the odds for success didn't look good. Surveys suggested no one would come; they could barely give tickets away to test screenings.

"But the internet is what told me ... there would be this whole army of people waiting for me," he said.

The film was a blockbuster success.

Hashtag activism

For actor Rafael Casal, co-director, writer and director of critically acclaimed independent film Blindspotting, diversity on stage meant supporting a black friend who was let go from the starring role on a Broadway show to make room for a white actor in 2017.

Casal was one of the instigators of the resulting outrage on social media. During his TED Talk, Casal said the debate was messy, but worth it.

Casal pointed out that other hashtags like #BlackLilvesMatter, #MeToo, #TimesUp and #OscarsSoWhite have had a real impact.

"The volume and frequency of these online movements have taken these long unheard issues to the centre stage of our society with a speed and impact we've never seen before," he said.

Connecting with audiences

For some filmmakers, connecting with audiences and offering different perspectives is their objective.

Pakistani-Canadian documentary director Obaid Chinoy has directed award-winning films about honour killings and women's inequality. When she won her first Academy Award for a short documentary in 2016, she was the only person of colour to win and one of few women to be nominated.

However, Obaid Chinoy said there is more diversity in documentary filmmaking, which has fewer barriers to entry.

"Would I have had the same luck if I was a fiction features director? Never," she said.