The director of Step Up 2 the Streets makes his feature film debut.
It’s surprising to learn that Step Up 2 The Streets director John M. Chu is twenty nine years old; he looks much younger. Trendily accessorized with a knit cap and a chunky silver ring, Chu projects a youthfulness unusual for a director of a major studio production. He could easily be confused as a cast member.
“I’m closer in age with these dancers” says, Chu. “To me it was like hanging out with friends all summer…and the world gets to see our summer camp video. I’d always use it (Chu’s youth) as an excuse with Disney if they ever had an issue, I’d say, 'Oh, well, young people like this; don’t worry.'”
This is Chu’s first feature film after graduating from USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2004, where his twenty minute short, When the Kids Are Away, garnered enough buzz to get Chu signed by The William Morris Agency. “I was attached to Bye Bye Birdie a while ago, I was attached to a bunch of projects that fell through, and this came up right when one of my movies fell through. At first I was like, ‘a sequel to a dance movie? Oh, gosh, do I really want to do it?’ And then (producer) Adam Shankman said, ‘Jon, you can do whatever you want. You have the whole world at your fingertips.’”
Chu, a trained dancer himself, developed an affection for the project once he saw its potential to add something new to the booming but too often redundant genre of teenage dance movies. And he knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish: “This is (my) opportunity to make a real dance movie, the dance movie I always wanted to see. I’m watching all these dance movies and there are like seven numbers. I’m like, where is all the dance? Why are we spending all this time on the dead mother? Screw that, I don’t want to know about the dead mother; I want to see them dance!”
Chu expresses a clear affection for the first Step Up, but his decision to shift the tone for the second installment of what looks to be a strong franchise was a conscious one. Chu’s emphasis on non-stop entertainment and spectacular dance setpieces reflects his passion for classic musicals like Meet Me In St. Louis and West Side Story.
“I love the first movie (Step Up). It’s very romantic. Channing (Tatum) has such a brooding thing. We just wanted to have fun in our movie. We don’t have anyone get shot. There are no drugs. There are no crazy funerals. Originally (the script) was definitely more tied to the first movie…Pretty much plot for plot it was the same as the other movie, except with a girl. But when I came in I had been really involved with all the dance crews here in LA that are incredible—Jabbawockeez, Super Galactic Beat Manipulator—all these guys who perform along the coast and they battle and they do all this stuff…We came in with a totally different concept that we wanted to show popping, blocking, breaking; we wanted to show salsa. I want(ed) to put a trampoline into a club; we want(ed) to do it in the rain because I’ve watched Singin' in the Rain so many times.”
When Chu is asked about the process of casting a group of largely unknown dancers instead of using seasoned actors, the director gets so hyped about his talent that he breaks out his iPhone to play an audition tape that blew him away. It’s a self-made video shot by the fourteen year old actor who plays Moose (Adam G. Sevani). The hand-held footage, which is slated for the DVD extras as part of two hours of dancing outtakes, shows Sevani having a lot of fun freestyling—which pretty much sums up the appeal of the entire cast. “That’s the thing about these kids” explains Chu, “dance is their language, that’s where they’re their best…When words aren’t enough, when a paragraph can’t describe that feeling of being triumphant, it’s that move that can.”
It’s rare to watch a dance movie and actually get the sense that the dancers are genuinely having a good time. With Step Up 2, Chu claims he couldn’t get his cast to stop dancing once the cameras were off. “When you actually hang out with these guys, they literally will dance anywhere. You’ll be in an elevator and that elevator music will turn on and they’ll be jamming. We were at this club last night…and this guy came up who thought he was so tough—we were all kind of dancing in a circle—he came over and was doing all this wave stuff, and I’m looking at the other people and I’m like, oh no, he does NOT know what he just got himself into. And our guys just tore him up on the dance floor and the whole club was just coming around our area… It was from a movie for sure. Maybe Step Up 3.”
Step Up 2 the Streets opens nationwide on February 14th.