we always we built it with that mom moment in mind and I think the trick of it was following the

character's arc very clearly on you know establishing what her wound was early on um it was important for me

that it all came from a place of character like you know they're joking about it but you know it comes

from a place of like emotional hurt um so that when you got to the birth mom moment, even though it's such a huge tonal shift,

you don't, it doesn't feel completely out of left field.

Yeah. Hello and welcome back to the director's cut, brought to you by the Director's Guild of America.

In this episode, four Chinese American friends bond on an international trip in search of one of their birth mothers in director Adele Lim's comedy, Joyride.

The film tells the story of Audrey, Lolo, Cat, and Dead Eye, who experience friendship, belonging, debauchery, and eventually discover the universal truth of what it means to know and love who you are. Joyride is Lim's directorial debut. Following a screening

of the film at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, Lim spoke with director Jason Ensler about

filming Joyride. Listen on for their spoiler-filled

conversation. Um, hello. Hi. Congratulations. It's amazing. It's amazing. Thank you. Really amazing.

Terrific.

I'll start with something heavy, which is the mom in her video says you, you smiled big and you cried big.

And I feel like that's, I don't know.

I felt like that was our experience of the film.

And I'm wondering how it's such a difficult calibration to have such raunchy, outrageous, where you're pushing boundaries and then you're pulling it back and grounding it.

And you could just talk on that for a second.

Because I'm sure as a writer, you do that on the page.

But how do you translate that as the director?

I know that's a big question.

God damn, Jason.

I thought we're going to start with like K-pop video.

...