Key Takeaways from Don’t Kill the Messenger Podcast with Kevin Goetz

Jon’s foundation for storytelling began at Chef Chu’s, his family’s restaurant in Silicon Valley that has been operating for 56 years. As the youngest of five children, often overlooked, Jon absorbed something deeper than recipes:

“This is an intersection of people where they’re coming to release, to celebrate, to mourn, to have a date, the beginnings, the endings of things. And they’re telling these stories in there to my dad because my dad and my mom are present the whole time. And then my parents are sharing them the story of us and what are the kids doing. And that relationship is why the restaurant has lasted for 56 years.”

Growing up in Silicon Valley during the 1980s, Jon witnessed engineers dreaming of the future before anyone was rich or famous. Those customers became his benefactors:

“Those people would hear about me making these little movies and they would say, Hey, you know, we’re working on these digital video cards. If your son is working on VCRs, let me give you this beta card to put in and let me give you the computer to put it in. Let me give you Adobe. People were giving me software before any other kid could get this stuff. Tens of thousands of dollars. And I was getting it, no manuals.”

This generosity shaped Jon’s worldview profoundly. He arrived at USC Film School with more advanced digital tools than the graduate students. But more importantly, it instilled a responsibility he carries today:

“There was a community beyond that and no one knew me, but they were rooting for me and waiting for me. And I always felt that responsibility and I felt so grateful. Like even when a restaurant gave us pizza for the lunches of our crew, ’cause we begged so many restaurants, in my head I would always say like one day when I can give pizza to a crew, I’m gonna do it. If a student crew wants to shoot in my living room, I’m gonna do it because I know how hard it is.”

Jon’s breakthrough came through his USC thesis film, a musical short called When the Kids Are Away about a young Michael Jackson witnessing his mother’s life. With a 20-piece vocal choir, 30-piece orchestra, and 20 dancers, the $17,000 production was funded entirely through donations, including a Princess Grace Foundation grant.

His agent Rob Carlson orchestrated the launch strategy. Rather than distribute the film, they held exclusive screenings at studios, inviting producers in Jon’s realm. When assistants attended and told their bosses about the film, demand grew. Within weeks, the screenings were packed. Steven Spielberg was never on the invitation list, but somehow he saw it. One Friday night, Jon’s agent called with news that Spielberg might have seen the movie and wanted to meet. The following Monday, Jon drove his green VW Bug through the Jurassic Park gates to Dreamworks:

“I sat in a room. He came in just him and I for the first probably 20 minutes before I could say anything about how much I loved him. He wanted to know how I did it. He wanted to ask me about certain shots. He wanted to ask me about certain edits, how I gathered the thing, where I’m from. He couldn’t have been more kind. He couldn’t have been more giving. Talked about musicals. We sang Where Is Love because he loves Oliver.”

Jon’s film school friend Jason Russell had coached him on one critical strategy. It’s not about the meeting, it’s about the second meeting. By the end of their conversation, Jon mentioned he had another musical project he’d love to share. Spielberg said Thursday. Jon had three days. What followed is one of the most memorable pitches in Hollywood history. Jon and his friends brought a chest of costumes to the Dreamworks conference room with Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Adam Goodman, and Mike De Luca:

“We bring a chest of costumes, plop it on the thing, we start walking them through every beat of this story. And every time we create a beat, we have this piece of cardboard with drawing on it or a printout and we’re putting it on the table. We’re putting things on the wall. And we had songs made by Bear McCreary that were playing on the thing. So we’re acting this thing out, we’re putting on costumes. It’s like Moulin Rouge when they do that whole pitch. It is that. It is so crazy.”

Mike DeLuca told them they should teach a class about pitching. Though that project (Moxie) never got made after two years of development, the relationship launched Jon’s career.

When approaching Wicked, Jon knew the cardinal rule from 20 years of Broadway. It’s about the girls, stupid. Everything the movie did had to serve Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship. Jon initially resisted pursuing major stars, wanting to discover fresh talent. But the technical demands were too high:

“The problem is when you go find the best out there, amateur wise, they are not experienced. And this actually took a high level of skill in terms of you couldn’t just have a great voice. You had to know yourself so well that you could switch back and forth from the dialogue into it. You had to do so well that you could hit those big notes and not ruin your voice.”

They needed professionals. Everyone had to audition, no direct offers. Jon didn’t call Cynthia Erivo early because he questioned whether she’d want to take on such a defining role and whether she could find the vulnerable, yearning side of Elphaba. When they finally met, they discussed something crucial. How had this character never been played by a person of color?

“When you have that perspective and you read these words, they mean very different things. Elphaba is the ultimate person of color. And she’s literally in color. And maybe people can’t take it in as easily if you have a person of color because they’re scared of that. It brings in too much of society’s ideas. But maybe that’s what we had to challenge.”

When Cynthia auditioned, Jon was blown away not by her powerful voice, but by her vulnerability and willingness to show wounds. More importantly, Cynthia brought something Jon hadn’t expected:

“I think Cynthia brought the most that was surprising through the process of this, with this idea of dignity to Elphaba. She has self dignity, which means she’s not a joke. She’s not coming in a black frock with dirt in her hair. She doesn’t live in a hole. She wanted jewelry, she wanted proper hair and makeup that she would do as a young person to present herself. If she didn’t have self-respect, we wouldn’t have respect for her or we wouldn’t root for her self-respect to be seen by everybody else.”

That principle of dignity transformed every design choice, from costumes to production design to how Elphaba lives in the world. With Ariana Grande, Jon initially resisted. After discovering stars in Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights, did he really want a global icon taking up all that space? Then she auditioned:

“Every time she came in, she’s up against the biggest movie stars in the world. She was the most interesting person in the room. She was not doing Kristin Chenoweth, but she was Glinda.”

Jon asked Ariana to come back four times because he needed to be sure. Her humor didn’t come from jokes but from deep understanding of who Glinda is:

“In real life, Ari is like sort of that Buster Keaton thing. Like she’s a sane person in an insane world. She’s both a product of this insane world, but her real life is the sane person. So she cuts so deep and so fast and she knows so much that it really is hilarious.”

Then Jon reveals something stunning. He never did a chemistry read between Cynthia and Ariana. He paired each of them with different actors to understand age ranges and humor compatibility, but never together:

“We got really lucky. We rolled the dice. The reality is I know enough that I feel like I think it can work, but at the same time, the camera loves energy, good energy or bad energy. And they were either gonna create sparks because they love each other or create sparks because they hate each other. Either way, it was sparks and I could work with it.”

The gamble paid off. The chemistry between them is one of the film’s greatest strengths.

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Jon breaks down the intimate scene between Elphaba and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) that Kevin calls one of the most exquisite in recent memory. Every choice was intentional:

“In a fantasy that we are creating from the ground, we have to ask ourselves every single question. It’s not like we go to a location that feels like where she would live. We actually have to think, does she live in a dirt pile or does she live in the trees? No, she would live in the trees hidden away. She lives elevated. And then how well is she taking care of herself? She’s made a home for herself.”

When Fiyero enters and looks around, it’s not about sexual attraction:

“It’s about so much respect. She built a beautiful home for herself no matter what people said, how ugly this wicked witch is. Not ugly as in looks, but ugly as in spirit. She has this beautiful warm home and she’s self-sustainable in this. And then he goes over to her and he lifts the cape off of her. And you can feel the weight come off of her shoulders.”

The song “As Long as You’re Mine” transforms from a kiss-me-now ballad into something tender:

“It became a wishful sort of could they, would they sort of game. She wants that, but she doesn’t think he would ever want that. And then she observes him and then he looks at her and says, you’re beautiful. And she still doesn’t believe it… So it is a tenderness that becomes more sensual because of them coming together. They laugh and they play outside on the balcony and then they lift like a Warner Brothers cartoon when they’re in love because that’s her language.”

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The conversation concludes with Jon delivering a passionate defense of theatrical exhibition that moves Kevin deeply. In an age of streaming and algorithms, Jon argues that movie theaters represent something irreplaceable:

“You have to put your phone down, you have to sit in the dark with strangers and you have to live through someone else’s eyes for two hours. I don’t even spend that much time with the people I love most to sit and listen to them for two hours. And yet movies have that space and this is the most important space that we need to protect. It is the movie theater where people can actually listen. And that space is so sacred. It’s where culture can change. I’ve watched it, I’ve witnessed it. It’s where people can challenge people and it can really be one of the last places where there is no algorithm on the inside of it.”

Jon’s vision isn’t nostalgic. It’s urgent. In a world increasingly mediated by algorithms and personalization, the shared experience of sitting in darkness with strangers remains one of the last places culture can genuinely transform.

Despite the massive undertaking of Wicked, Jon feels energized rather than exhausted. His upcoming projects include Oh, The Places You’ll Go! (his first animated film with JJ Abrams), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the Britney Spears biopic based on The Woman in Me, and a live-action Hot Wheels movie. When asked what’s next, Jon’s answer is simple:

“I’m ready to work. I’m ready to go shoot. I’m energized. I do not feel exhausted by the Wicked experience. I feel more free and more creative than ever.”

Jon M. Chu’s journey demonstrates that Hollywood’s greatest artists are built on foundations of gratitude and generosity. Sometimes they start in a Silicon Valley restaurant where engineers gave a kid beta video cards. Sometimes they require rolling the dice on casting choices that defy conventional wisdom. And always, they demand fierce protection of the sacred spaces where strangers gather in darkness to transform culture together.

The full conversation between Jon M. Chu and Kevin Goetz on “Don’t Kill the Messenger” offers an even deeper dive into the director’s creative process, from storyboarding techniques to the power of fatherhood in shaping storytelling.