THE
HOTLIST60 | Rolling Stone | July 2019
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ULU WANG WAS
in Berlin in 2014,
editing her first
film, when she got
the call: Her grandmother in
China, who’d briefly taken
her in when her parents fled
the country in 1989, was ter-
minally ill. The family, howev-
er, told “Nai Nai” that she was
just fine — and fast-tracked
a planned wedding as an ex-
cuse for everyone to visit her
one last time. “Even as I’m
going through all of this — the
shock, the sorrow — I had the
feeling this is a movie,” the
writer-director says.
The Farewell, Wang’s dra-
medy about her experience,
turns her misadventure into
an alternately hilarious and
heartbreaking story about a
Chinese American woman
(played by Crazy Rich Asians’
Awkwafina) caught between
keeping up a necessary
untruth and saying goodbye
to a loved one. The film was
the breakout hit of this year’s
Sundance festival — after a
bidding war, it was picked up
for a reported $7 million —
and its unsentimental mix of
personal storytelling and uni-
versal culture-clash dynamicsturned Wang into the indie
director of the moment.
“When I first started pitch-
ing it, everyone wanted My
Big Fat Chinese Wedding,” she
says. “But I was like, ‘Yeah,
that movie already exists.
That’s not the story I want
to tell.’ ” A chance encounter
with a This American Life
producer allowed Wang to
record an episode around her
real-life ruse, which attracted
attention. Soon, Awkwafina
was asking to meet her. “I
think my reaction was ‘The
girl who did “My Vag”?’ ”
she admits, referring to her
star’s famous foulmouthed
YouTube rap. “But then she
sent in a tape, and it was,
‘Oh, she could be the black
sheep of this family, easily.’ ”
The fact that Wang decided
to shoot The Farewell in her
still-living grandmother’s
hometown only made it that
much harder to keep their
cover about her illness from
being blown. “We couldn’t
tell her what the movie was
about!” Wang says. When
Nai Nai confused Awkwafina
for Lulu at a party the night
before shooting, “it was an
uh-oh moment,” Wang says.
“But the whole purpose
of the lie was to bring joy.
There’s a line in the movie
that ‘people don’t die of the
cancer, they die of the fear.’
And making this film became
part of that. It brought joy to
all of us.” DAVID FEARUST LIKE 23ANDME offers genetic insight to
optimize health, new weed-focused DNA tests
aim to give you a better high. Instead of looking
for things like celiac disease, these tests eval-
uate markers for everything from metabolic function to
risk for anxiety, and recommend the best kind of strains
for you. “Think of us as a scientific match maker,” says
Len May, CEO of EndoCanna Health, one of a handful
of companies that offer the tests. “We provide you with
your personalized ratio of cannabinoids and terpenes”
— compounds that help regulate physiological functions
like sleep, appetite, mood and pain — “that align best
with your genetic profile.” But are they worth the $100-
plus costs? This is an “experimental phase,” says Dr. Jean
Talleyrand, chief medical officer of MediCann, and most
patients still prefer trial and error. “One day I hope we’ll
be doing screenings using insurance to cover the cost,”
he says. “But it’s still new.” MADISON MARGOLINLulu Wang
OU’VE SEEN the ad
a million times by
now — we all have.
And yet there’s
something weirdly poignant
about it. Ray Liotta might be a
legend for playing a mobster in
Goodfellas, but he’s found one
of his greatest roles in the TV
spot for Chantix, the medication
that helped him quit smoking:
“In the movies, a lot of times
I tend to play the tough guy.
But I wasn’t tough enough to
quit on my own!” In theory, this
should be just another celebrity-
spokesman Big Pharma hustle,
in heavy weekend-afternoon
rotation. But it gets morebizarrely fascinating the more
you see it. It’s so humanizing to
see Henry Hill as just another
struggling American dork of
a dad, playing with his dog in
the kitchen, eating salad on the
deck. And just like Goodfellas, it
has an eerie hypnotic power to
suck you in, over and over, even
when you already know it by
heart. (“OK, I swear, I’ll just watch
up to the Lufthansa heist, and
then I’ll take out the garbage!”)
But there’s a real “twilight of the
gods” resonance to it.
YouTubers keep doing
parodies and mash-ups cutting
the ad with Goodfellas scenes
— there’s a fantastic one whereHenry panics at the helicopters
following his car, while the
voice-over guy warns about side
effects: “Aggression, hostility,
agitation, depressed mood... ”
(Side effects? For Liotta, that’s
his highlight reel.)
At the end of the flick, he
gives up the flashy gangsta life,
goes into witness protection
and turns into an average no-
body: “I get to live the rest
of my life like a schnook.” But
this ad is the great Goodfellas
sequel Scor sese never made:
We finally see the schnook this
guy turned out to be, and
he’s schnookier than we ever
imagined. ROB SHEFFIELDThe Ray Liotta
Chantix Commercial
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