Five Dollar Friday — Evelyn Kuo & 'Monkey Park'
A filmmaker and their short film deserving of your attention
Happy Five Dollar Friday!
Today I’m so very happy to introduce you to Evelyn Kuo, a director from the San Francisco Bay Area.
She’s currently crowdfunding her latest film, Monkey Park.
On the night of her daughter’s final track banquet, which also marks the last night of her estranged father’s visit from Taiwan, a mother struggles to navigate familial expectations and her daughter’s growing independence. Monkey Park is a portrait of the strong love shared between Asian mothers and daughters.
Evelyn, I love how you weave in footage from different references as you narrate the story of Monkey Park and personalize it with annotations — it not only brings dynamic energy, but also offers a clear glimpse into your voice as a storyteller. Tell me about how the campaign video came together.
I had a couple comps for my short—just coming-of-age stories I personally love—and my producer, Aiden Choi, kindly helped me compile a catalog of clips from these films/shows available on the internet. They include Lady Bird, Gilmore Girls, Dìdi, Juno, The Edge of Seventeen, and Saving Face.
I sifted through the clips, took the bits that were relevant to our story, added a few more clips I found on my own, and assembled a rough cut in about a weekend. The annotations were my attempt at having fun with the pitch video and inserting a little more of my voice into it beyond the more pragmatic voiceover script.
And I just wanted to include as many photos of my mom as possible because she's beautiful.
Aww, that's so sweet. My mom reads this newsletter so I'm going to take inspiration from you and remind her how beautiful she is.
Hi, Tom's mom! I think it's lovely that you share your work with her.
She’s my #1 fan.
Your voiceover in the Monkey Park campaign video reminds me of the quote, "Be kind to your parents; it's their first time living life, too." I love that you're exploring this dynamic across three different generations. It adds such depth and resonance. I'm curious how you decided to navigate the balance between your own personal story and a fictional narrative when writing this piece. What guided your choices?
My mom only told me about this story of her getting separated from her family when she was little just a few years ago, and I thought it was so compelling I needed to write it down.
I'll be honest, a few weeks ago, we realized I totally screwed up the details of her story in my pitch video and in my script, but I think it's fine and maybe even necessary. My version of the story works the best for my script.
I'm wary about calling this story a personal one. "Monkey Park" is not a story about me, my mom, my family, and my world; it's about the characters I've created. That said, just because this story is fictional doesn't mean it's not true. In fact, I think it's my responsibility to make my characters as real as possible, so I borrow a lot of what I learned from my world to do so.
I grew up in a multigenerational household, and I try to include the different tensions between generations that I see in everything I make. I find that I can shape each character more objectively and empathetically if I remind myself that they're fictional, as opposed to modeling a character after someone I know. I can better understand children, parents, grandparents for all their flaws and their virtues this way.
I think that's the right way to approach it. Personally, I know I'm on the right path when I'm brainstorming or daydreaming and a character's voice no longer echoes their inspiration but instead speaks with a life of their own. Not everyone understands that, though. Do you worry at all about how those close to you may interpret choices characters in your film make?
That's such a good way of putting it, I feel the same. It is nice to just listen to the voices in your head sometimes. I do worry that people close to me might get the wrong idea from my work, but I'm learning to let go a little more and trust that they trust me. And going back to what I said about objectivity and empathy, my goal is to not to write heroes or villains, so I hope people can see all the merits of a character alongside their shortcomings.
I’m curious to hear more about your casting process for Monkey Park, especially in light of what we just discussed about making the characters as real as possible.
It took me quite some time to find the right actors for each role, and I'm so fortunate to end up with the cast I have. We held callbacks with our candidates for the two lead roles in person. I paired everyone up as many times as I could, and I was learning so much just watching different actors try different interpretations of the scene. I was also deciding, at that moment, what I wanted the dynamic of the mother-daughter relationship in my script to look like.
I think if my crowdfunding audience believes in this relationship, they'll believe in this project, so I had a concept photoshoot to communicate to them the chemistry that I saw at callbacks. The shoot itself was a great chance for the two actors we cast to get comfortable around each other. I sent a few reference photos to them both and to my dad (who took the photos and will do our stills photography on set), I brought a few bottles of nail polish and some blankets to the space, and then I just kind of just let them do their thing. I've read somewhere that directing is mostly casting, and watching the two actors talking, laughing, and being themselves that night, I really felt this to be true.
I also felt the same way during our first rehearsal. I was nervous about having to lead the conversation, but once we started, the whole meeting felt like a breeze. All the actors were fully engaged with the text and asked thoughtful questions that spoke to either a real understanding of their character or a deep willingness to understand. With this cast, we'd arrive where I wanted us to go naturally and collaboratively.
Earlier you mentioned the help received from your producer, Aiden Choi, with crafting the campaign video for Monkey Park. Tell me more about the relationship between you as a director and your producer in the early stages of development, navigating the budget, and through the crowdfunding phase.
For over a year, Aiden has been the loudest voice in support of the Monkey Park script. I don't think I could take the leap and decide to make the film without his encouragement. Aiden has read many drafts of my script, and he's the person I'd go to when I'm not feeling too great about it because he'd always hype it up. He's helped me develop the story and work out many of its kinks. I trust in his pitches and his advice.
Aiden has a lot of experience making films of his own, so he's been incredibly knowledgeable and supportive during our budgeting and hiring processes. While we have an added challenge of distance (Aiden's in LA, and I'm up north in the Bay Area), our regular calls keep us on the same page.
With regards to crowdfunding, I have more opinions on what our Seed&Spark campaign and social media page should look like, and he helps me carry out my plans in every way he can. He's also done a great amount of outreach to organizations and helped us forge connections to the communities my film's characters belong to, communities we as Asian American filmmakers belong to. I try to make all major decisions with Aiden; this film is as much his as it is mine. I feel very indebted to him and this wonderful team of artists we've assembled.
It warms my producorial heart to hear about Aiden's impact on your project. Before I had the confidence to direct, I was a creative producer first and foremost. I hope my collaborators felt half as taken care of as you do with Aiden by your side.
I also started my artistic journey as a theater producer in college! I am still producing and hope to continue producing film projects by my friends. I hope I'll carry what I've learned from Aiden to future projects. I'm learning so much about being a better producer just by working with Aiden, and I hope I'll carry what I've learned to future projects. Pushing through a project with a great producer really feels like I'm pushing on wheels instead of just with sheer force. And I'm sure your collaborators deeply appreciate having your support wheels on too, Tom.
How did you and your director of photography, Eugene Ko, meet? What have your early conversations about your vision for Monkey Park been like?
Eugene and I met through school. We worked on a few of the same projects together and we had a lot of mutual friends, but we never really got to work that closely with each other or have a conversation unrelated to another short we were both working on during our last quarter on campus. A few months after graduation, Eugene heard I was writing and sharing a pilot draft with our friends, and he reached out asking to read it. We've been trading scripts through email and calling to talk about them ever since (Eugene's also in LA).
He was actually the first person to ever read a draft of Monkey Park. Since he's really been there since its conception, I think Eugene understands my script more than any ordinary DP would. We've had a lot of conversations about how to make certain relationship dynamics work better or how to heighten the stakes of certain scenes, so I really trust him now to help me carry out the emotional aspects of the project. To get in sync visually, we had long phone calls where we traded comps, images, and mood boards that we felt captured the tone we wanted to emulate.
He pushes me in directions I wouldn't instinctively go, I push back sometimes, and we always end up at a place I feel excited about. I'm very lucky.
What was the moment you knew you had to make Monkey Park?
I wrote this script in 2023 when I was a few months out of college, and I just kept rewriting it and submitting it to competitions and grants, hoping I'd get some funding to make it. I had gotten really close a few times, but it had been a year, and in December 2024, I decided I needed to stop waiting for institutional approval, crowdfund myself, and just film the damn thing already.
Aiden and Eugene had read many iterations of the script and had offered to help me make it before, and I reached out to them around New Years to see if they were still interested. Once I had them both on board, I knew I was in safe hands and nothing was going to stop me from doing this.
That mindset — nothing is going to stop you from doing this — is everything. It’s the grounded determination every creative needs when pushing a vision uphill. What keeps you going?
My friends and family keep me going. I can't go through life without their support, affirmation, and sometimes-harsh-but-necessary advice. I think it also helps that my primary audience for my work, at least right now, is myself. It alleviates a lot of pressure. That's not to say satisfying this audience is a small feat—I set pretty high standards for myself that I don't always meet—but it's nice not to worry so much about impressing people I don't know and to just focus on getting as close as I can to making something true.
Evelyn it’s been such a pleasure. Best of luck to you with the making of Monkey Park!
You can join me in supporting Evelyn and her film Monkey Park by contributing to the campaign here:
Thanks to the help of paid subscribers, my weekly contribution has increased from $5 at the start of this newsletter to now $18.
Again: it’s better for everyone involved if you contribute directly to the filmmaker’s campaign yourself and don’t become a paid subscriber to this newsletter. But, if you ain’t got time for that, you can upgrade your subscription and I’ll contribute a little bit extra each week on your behalf.
💰 Boulder Crest Foundation is offering cash prizes of up to $10,000 for short films and other video content on the theme of post-traumatic growth. The application window is currently open and closes May 23, 2025.
🥂 Congratulations to William Smart on the successful conclusion of his campaign!
⏳ There’s still time to contribute to Rachael Kuecher’s campaign for The Stress of IT!, Jimmy Chhiu’s campaign for Khmerican, and Heath Hill’s campaign for The Repair.
✍️ And, finally, feel free to write back if you have a question for one of the filmmakers, an update on a short film project of your own, or if you just want to say hi!
The picccc 🥹