Jon M. Chu on Shirtless Bieber, Shawty Mane, and the Difficulties of Never Say Never

There's a very natural drama that unfolds at one point, when Justin and his crew become afraid that he's losing his voice. As you witnessed that moment, were you secretly happy to find your big dramatic turn?

I mean, it was always a concern -- what was the drama in this movie? From the beginning I was like, the drama is not him performing at Madison Square Garden. We know he's going to perform. By the time this movie comes out, there are going to be so many YouTube videos that everyone's going to have seen every performance. The journey is how he got here, meaning to this iconic status. And the music is only a part of that story. So in my mind it was always sort of OK if nothing happened, and we would find other things to get us through. And when it happened... I mean, the wheels were definitely turning in my brain. It was kind of good, but at the same time it was a reality that he had to cancel the show two days before our big show, and we had a shoot that day we were setting up to get close-ups. All these other concerts -- in the Miley and Jonas Brothers movies -- they got to shoot multiple shows. We got to shoot one show.

Wait -- all of your concert footage is from one single show?

We play it at different places and don't say anything specifically, but they're from Madison Square Garden. We always struggled; are you being dramatic if you're showing this stuff early? No, because it's not really about that. By the end you will have seen the whole Madison Square Garden show without knowing you'd seen it. Because it's about his journey, his life. And all those stars, those guest stars, were only in one show.

There must have been so much pressure to film as much as you could! How many cameras did you have on the ground for the big Madison Square Garden show?

We had 11 3-D cameras, two 35-millimeter cameras, we had a Super 8 camera, two 5Ds, a 7D, four HD cameras backstage shooting him in the dressing room and stuff. So it was like a robot rebellion. The back room, where all the stereographers were, looked like something from a Terminator movie.

Justin is only 16, and his management crew is clearly very protective of him, and of his brand. How much access were you denied, or what sorts of things were you asked not to depict in the film?

The hardest part was we had no time. We were thrown in there, and we were everywhere he was. The only part that was kind of done jokingly was when he was doing his hair. And every time he would fight other things, I would be there to talk to him and say, you never know when these moments are going to happen -- I just want to shoot and figure it out later. We basically forced our way into everything, knowing that we didn't have time to edit things on the fly.

So you just had to get as much as you could, whenever you could.

Exactly. And he was going to be so self-conscious that we weren't going to be able to get anything. It would become this stale thing. If I told him he was going to look like a kid he would never want to do that, but if he sees it onscreen and says, "OK, it's not little little kid," I think he would understand that idea.

With all of the great, intimate, playful footage you got of Justin, why was there no appearance by [his rapping alter ego] Shawty Mane?

I love Shawty Mane! There were some rights issues with Shawty Mane, but we were going to put him in there, because he's the best. But if we work him out, we have sequences built with Shawty Mane that are a part of this movie that can make it into the DVD, but the rights issues were just... the time that we had, it took us forever just to get the rights that we could get. That was one of the last hanging things that we couldn't quite get.

Well, good. Now I can sleep at night, knowing you at least thought about including him.

[Laughs] I'm surprised you know Shawty Mane!

Are you kidding? I am so plugged in. I know what the kids are talking about these days.

Are you a true Belieber?

You know who partially converted me? You did, through your Tweets. Between Twitter and too many nights spent YouTubing early Bieber videos, I have Bieber Fever. And I'm semi-obsessed with that Kanye remix of "Runaway Love."

Ah, yes. "Runaway Love." It's really good. You know, Kanye was supposed to perform it that night. He was supposed to be there!

What happened?

He Tweeted that song the Friday before, literally the week of the show. They were talking and he was like, "OK, I'm going to come do the show." We planned for it, the day came, and we were like, let's have him rehearse. He didn't show up for the rehearsal and we were like, crap! We'll just let him do his thing. The time comes and I don't know what happened, if there were contract issues, but he didn't come. And we had to do the old "Runaway Love" at the last second. Everything was up in the air at that point, and we just had to shoot.

On a more serious note, what would you say to the fussy, jaded cynics out there who might accuse Never Say Never of being just an idol-worshipping marketing tool?

One, get a heart. Two, listen to Gayle King. If Gayle King loved it, then Oprah loves it, and if Oprah loves it, then everyone will love it. [Laughs] And if George Lopez loves it, then the whole world can love it. And Ellen loves it! No, I think you don't have to love Justin Bieber and you don't have to love his music; if you want to know why this kid is on the cover of Rolling Stone, or Vanity Fair, or why this kid is up for two Grammy nominations and was the youngest ever to win Artist of the Year at the AMAs... If you want to know why this is going on, you can come see our movie and make your judgment on your own of how you feel about him. I think it's a classic fairytale about a kid with a big dream, chasing it. It's just told in a new way, in a new form where the fans are a part of it and people from all around the world had a part in finding it. That's the story that we told and it's really what he is, and I think that's the most interesting part of it.

What's next for you? I'm running out of 3-D Blurays to play at home without more Jon Chu movies. Whenever someone new comes over we play them the Madd Chadd sequence from Step Up 3-D.

I do the exact same thing! Then I show them the Fred Astaire number that Adam Sevani does. Even though there's not a lot of crazy 3-D, it's subtle. It's a one-er.

Assuming you're up for tackling another big project on the heels of Never Say Never, can we expect that you're circling other big films to direct next?

Oh, I'm ready! I mean, this is why I'm here. I want to make more movies, and I want to do it now. I have a couple of projects that I'm figuring out right now, they're really exciting. I just feel so lucky to tell stories and make up stories and share them with people. It's a crazy life and I know it may not last forever, but I'll enjoy every single moment while I get to do it now.

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