Dìdi, the feature-length directorial debut from Sean Wang, is full of AOL Instant Messenger chat rooms, MySpace profiles, and Warped Tour-era pop-punk music, making the coming-of-age film essentially the first great 2008 period piece.
Few movies thus far have portrayed the internet, namely what it was like growing up in the dawn of social media and texting on flip phones, with such acuity and love as this heartwarming slice-of-life movie set in Fremont, California, about 14-year-old Chris Wang (a.k.a. Wang Wang, a.k.a Dìdi) in the summer before high school. The aspiring skateboarder/filmmaker (played by Izaac Wang) navigates friendships, crushes, his Taiwanese-American identity, and his relationship with his mom, painting a vivid on-screen portrait of what many millennials and Gen Zers experienced in their own teen years.
Because Wang pulled a great deal from his youth to write the screenplay and execute the production, the film feels like scrolling through Facebook albums or browsing archived uploads on an old YouTube channel. A former Fremont skater himself, Wang mined his adolescence—paying homage to the communities and individuals who raised him—and even repurposed his childhood bedroom for the character of Chris. “It's just these things that have really shaped me and made me who I am,” the writer/director tells Marie Claire of the film’s nostalgia. “And I felt permission to make it a love letter to all those subcultures, too.”
In many ways, Dìdi feels like Wang’s mature reflection on what his mother meant to him at the time, and how much many of us could owe the women who raise us an apology for the terrors we become in middle school. Consider how Chris’ mom (Joan Chen) always supports him, even when he’s kicked off a friend’s MySpace “Top 8.” pulling on one’s heartstrings and elevating the time capsule of a movie into one that’s timeless.
With Dìdi out in theaters nationwide, Wang opened up to Marie Claire about revisiting his adolescence to make the dramedy, capturing an ephemeral moment in internet usage, and what ‘00s fashion trends were must-haves in the wardrobe.
The way the internet is portrayed in the movie feels unprecedented. AIM, MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube are all featured on screen, and it’s seen as this integral part of Chris’ life that really was true of adolescence at the time but is seldom seen in film. Was it important to represent the internet in a new way?
SW: That was one thing I was really excited about with this movie. I worked at Google for six years before we shot this movie, and I was learning a lot of the tools that I ended up translating over to Dìdi. I was like, ‘I think we can hold [the shot] on these screens for three minutes and it won't be boring. Hopefully, that will be a very unique visual language for our movie.’ I was always trying to integrate the internet because I think you hear a lot of filmmakers say, ‘The internet's not cinematic, the phones aren't cinematic.’
For me, I was like, ‘If we're going to do this movie and make it fresh and try to bring in a different language to it, we should lean as much into the internet as we possibly can because it was such a big part of our lives, but it wasn't our lives.’ So that was fun to try to take that bet and make it the most honest version of it without it feeling gimmicky. It's part of the story and this kid's world. It was always scripted to have all these scenes.
What was it like recreating the 2008-era MySpace and Facebook profiles and AIM chat rooms with the VFX team?
SW: It was really fun. The editor of our movie, Arielle [Zakowski], also edited the sequel to the movie Searching called Missing, which takes place entirely on computer screens. So she came in with a workflow that I trusted. It was fun to work with our amazing designers to be like, ‘We need to make this website look shitty.’ It was almost like designing each character's MySpace page was a really fun challenge to make it look like it fit their character, but it couldn't look too good. It had to look like it was HTML designed by a 14-year-old.
If we're going to do this movie and make it fresh and try to bring in a different language to it, we should lean as much into the internet as we possibly can.
MC: Texting on flip phones—and your friends’ stealing your phone—is also integral to the movie. Where did you source all of the old cell phones?
SW: It was a combination of my production designer sourcing it from eBay and me making Instagram blasts of, ‘Hey, does anybody have old technology from the 2000s?’ Because Asian parents love to collect stuff. I had my old PSP, my old GameBoy Advance, my old GameCube. So I had some technology, but I asked my hometown friends, and they were like, ‘My mom has a whole box of [Motorola] KRZRs.’ We had days in prep where we sent a PA to go collect all these old 2000s phones.
MC: What were some wardrobe must-haves that you and the costume designer discussed? I had a strong reaction seeing that shot of the Livestrong bracelet that Chris’ friend wears.
SW: We had a lot, actually. The Cali Skates hoodie that Chris wears—that was a big get for me. The Girl [Skateboards] T-shirt was big. There's a Girl tee that we couldn't end up finding, but I remember so many kids wore it during that time. It says, ‘Get Your Girl Off My Deck,’ like a skateboard deck. Brianna [Murphy], our costume designer, went to all these vintage stores, and we were like, ‘We have to find that shirt,’ and we couldn't.
There were a lot of the Glamour Kills shirts on background actors, [including] one that All Time Low used to wear [that says, ‘I FREQUENT ALL NIGHT DANCE PARTIES IN MY GLAMOUR KILLS.’] There were things like that that I was like, ‘We need to get that in the movie somewhere, somehow.’
The thing with [that time was that] the brands we wore defined your personality at that age. If you were a scene kid, you were wearing ‘To Write Love on Her Arms’ and ties. We couldn't get a ‘To Write Love on Her Arms’ shirt, but that was in our pitch deck for sure.
With Wang Wang, it was like, ‘He's a skater. What brands is he wearing as a skate kid? He's probably like a Girl-Chocolate-SkateAmerica guy because all his favorite skaters are on those brands.’ But then the skate kids, we let them pick it, too. I would send all the skaters bullet point biographies like, ‘His favorite brands are this and this,’ but then some of the skaters would come back and be like, ‘No, I think this guy's a Baker kid.’ Or he's like, ‘My favorite brand is Toy Machine,’ and it's like, ‘Okay, cool. We'll get you Toy Machine.’ We let them have fun building the world of the characters in terms of what brands and outfits they wanted to wear.
MC: You ended up using your childhood bedroom as Chris’ room. What was it like repurposing that space? Did you use any of your things as props, as well?
SW: In writing and developing the movie, anytime I was home where I found something that was period-accurate, I would put it in a box. I had my old Shonen Jump magazines, which was this monthly subscription of manga I used to have, all of my TransWorld magazines, skate magazines from before August 2008. I kept all of my Alternative Press magazines that were, again, before August 2008. I kept FoxTrot, Calvin and Hobbes comic books, and my bedsheets because we shot my childhood bedroom. There were certain stickers and paper residue on [the walls]. There's a whole line of magazine tear-outs above the kid's closet that had been there since I was in eighth grade. So I was like, ‘We can just leave that up. It fits the character.’
MC: The movie is full of Warped Tour-era pop-punk, like The Bouncing Souls and Motion City Soundtrack. Were you a pop-punk kid?
SW: Pretty much. I basically had two older sisters—my real older sister, who I love very dearly, and then a family friend. She was the same age as my older sister and had a little brother two years older than me. They were the music gateway of my life. She was in the local scene. She would manage bands and book shows in the Bay Area. The sister in the movie, Vivian [played by Shirley Chen], is named after that girl.
I would go to their house and my mom would hang out with their mom—the rival kid in the movie, Max [actor Jayden Chiang], his mom is [played by] this person's mom. But I would go to their house and they would be like, ‘Listen to these bands. This is Chiodos, Underoath.’ They took me to my first Warped Tour. I went to an AFI show with them in sixth grade. They instilled and watered the seed of that emo music kid, and I fell in love with that music and that scene.
MC: Hellogoodbye’s song “Touchdown Turnaround” plays on Chris’ crush Madi’s MySpace, and he makes it his ringtone to impress her. Was it always meant to be that song?
SW: I remember I was like, ‘If I can get my top choice for this moment in the movie, it's either going to be ‘Touchdown Turnaround’ by Hellogoodbye or ‘The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage’ by Panic! At the Disco.’’ We needed a song that would hit you in the first five seconds because [Chris] pauses it. ‘Touchdown Turnaround’ has that. It's immediately loud and fast and big. I remember that song from Panic! At The Disco, for a minute, everyone had that as their MySpace song. Every time I’d go to a MySpace page, I’d click pause—but I remember the first five seconds so distinctly.
MC: What was your MySpace song?
SW: I probably had that Panic! song at one point, too. I would always try to find these obscure bands and be like, ‘Guys, look what I'm listening to. You haven't heard of this band? I just found 'em on Pure Volume.’
I remember there was a song by this guy [who went by] PlayRadioPlay! called “Madi Don't Leave.” I was trying so hard to find a way to put that in the movie because of the whole Madi crush. That was my MySpace song for a bit. In fifth and sixth grade, there was a lot of Good Charlotte, Fall Out Boy, and then my taste got more refined—a lot of Fueled by Ramen bands, Cute Is What We Aim For. I changed it every week. I wanted people to think I had taste.
It's just these things that have really shaped me and made me who I am. And I felt permission to make it a love letter to all those subcultures, too.
MC: Even though there isn’t any Paramore music in the movie, their presence is huge. The band particularly means a lot to the female characters; Chris steals his sister’s merch and Madi’s social media is an ode to Hayley Williams. Why was it important to include Paramore in some way?
SW: I'm a fan of Paramore. I saw Paramore on Warped Tour tour a couple of times. I don't want to speak on behalf of my female friends, but I do feel like Hayley Williams really, really, really meant a lot to a lot of young girls during that time because she was this young girl in a scene that was dominated by males.
So, when I thought about the bands that Madi [who’s played by Mahaela Park] would like, we were like, ‘She's probably into that music, but she's probably a little bit more of a We the Kings, All Time Low, The Academy Is…, not boy bands, but these boys who are very pretty and wore the tight pants and American Apparel.’ But then again, [they’re] a bunch of dudes. To have Paramore be a little bit of representation where it's like, ‘Here's one super incredible, cool, and down-to-earth frontwoman,’ that felt like a cool thing to highlight because I saw it growing up. I saw a lot of people being obsessed with Hayley—girls’ MySpace pages like, ‘Oh, my god, I love Hayley Williams.’
MC: It’s very endearing that Chris learns about Madi’s love for Paramore and her favorite movies by looking at her Facebook “likes.” Where did the idea for that come from, was that something you or your friends did?
SW: Should I out myself in this interview? I've definitely done versions of that.
I don't think I ever lied about watching A Walk to Remember [like Chris does] because I actually liked that movie. I've seen that movie 12 times. That was the thing: Anytime there was a party with a bunch of girls in middle school, they would always watch A Walk to Remember, and all the dudes would be like, ‘A Walk to Remember?’ But I'd be like, ‘Oh, I'm going to watch it with you guys.’
MC: Was it a healing experience to revisit your adolescence so closely?
SW: I do hope that when people watch the movie it feels like they're extending a kind hand to their younger self, to be like, ‘Yo, it's going to be okay.’ I think the process of writing it and making it was healing, but I only realize that now, after it's finished, because while you're making it, you're just like, ‘Get the shot. We're burning money, We have to make the thing.’ Now that the movie is done and into the world, I definitely feel like, ‘Oh, I'm a changed person because of all the things that we did for the movie.’
MC: It’s special, too, because so many people look at their middle school years and cringe or don’t like reflecting on that time, but Dìdi does so very earnestly. It’s able to laugh at the time but also recognize how hard it is to be that age.
SW: That was the hope. When me and my friends reminisce about our childhood, we often go back to that age. There's so much dumb stuff and stupidity and immaturity, but it was also a very formative and turbulent time in my life. Especially for me and my friends who I'm still close with from that time, we all went through some pretty turbulent family stuff and things that really were defining moments of our childhood. It was always a period in my life that I was like, ‘There's something here that really meant something to me.’
Also in looking back, it felt like, If I'm going to mine the comedy and the irreverence of what I remember during that time, I have to mine the flip side of the coin, which in our movie is the embarrassment and the cringe, but on a deeper level, the shame that this kid feels. That shame, I don't even think I could have articulated it as shame when I was 13. It was only in my 20s looking back that I could. It felt like, Okay, there's something there that we can explore that I couldn't have even articulated back then. Let’s unpack this.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
