Learning our own family history can be so important to shaping who we are. Asian American Pacifiic Islander Heritage Month is observed in May, but films celebrating AAPI cultures are released year-round. No No Girl is a new feature film that just premiered at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Co-starring Oscar winner Chris Tashima, it’s the second film by Paul Daisuke Goodman, a two-time cancer survivor. It’s a small, independent film but has a strong heartwarming message about family and family history. It focuses on a family who uncovers their forgotten history related to the Japanese American concentration camps of World War II and how those events have been shaping their family ever since.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
We recently caught up with Goodman to learn more about the film, his Asian American experience and inspiration in creating the film, and his two-time battle with cancer while shooting this movie. .
From Film School To Feature Films
MW: Could you talk about your filmmaking career and how you evolved to making features?
Paul Goodman: I was a film student at UCSB and graduated in 2014 with a close group of friends in the film production program. And we moved to LA, and we’ve been making movies ever since. Our first couple shorts were just kind of getting our feet in LA and figuring out what we wanted to do and our voice. And quickly, we got some pretty awesome jobs.
Me and my really close friend Josh, we got onto the show Whale Wars, which was being rebranded as Ecowarriors. We were lined up for a whole bunch of seasons for that. Josh went on to do a couple more, but I ended up getting diagnosed with cancer the next year. And that kind of was really the beginning of my true filmmaking career at this point because once I was diagnosed with cancer, I couldn’t go on these big, adventurous shoots anymore.
I had to refocus and focus on myself and my body. But also, ‘What am I gonna do with my passion? What do I want to do as a filmmaker?’ So I started writing a lot more. I brought my computer in the hospital, started editing. It was just kind of exercise at first, but then it started to form into a real narrative voice. Like I found out how I could tell stories through editing. And I always liked computers and editing software and that stuff growing up, but this is when it kind of fully came to be.
So I was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, did chemotherapy for three years. In that time, we made two shorts that I’m really proud of. It allowed us to keep making bigger movies. So one short led to another short, and that short was the proof of concept for our first feature film, Evergreen, which was like a road trip movie. I really wrote Evergreen in the hospital, you know, when I’m like attached to everything. It’s escapism fanfare, it’s a romantic drama, and we ended up shooting it right at the tail end of my three years of chemotherapy.
So we shot Evergreen. And then, it’s like 2019 going into 2020, and I’m out of my cancer quarantine, and I’m feeling really charged and ready to go. And then…pandemic. I ended up relapsing with my cancer in December of 2020, so I really had less than a year of true freedom away from cancer before it came back. And when it came back, it was a lot more difficult to deal with. But I started responding to the treatments, and everything was going well.
But that whole time, I’m writing No No Girl, which I really want to tell because I feel like it speaks to my childhood. And it’s a Japanese-American story that’s pervasive to my Japanese-American community. And when I was writing it in the hospital, I really felt like it was the only thing that I had. It was like a real tangible thing I could look forward to post-treatment.
The Story Behind Goodman’s New Feature Film
Eight East Productions
MW: Could you talk more about No No Girl and what it’s about?
Paul Goodman: It’s really about a family, and specifically, a Japanese-American family who has to deal with the trauma of the concentration camps during World War II, even to this day. And I think, for me, a big part of writing this story as a fourth-generation Japanese-American — it was my grandfather who was in the camps — that time and that period in history is so, kind of distant, you know? The way we hear about it is through a historical context. My grandpa passed, and my descendants from there are gone.
So the context in which we hear these stories is always from a second-hand. So I feel like, when I hear these stories, the distance creates this buffer between me and it, yet it’s a part of my identity. It’s a big part of my identity. So coming to grips, especially because my parents heard the stories from the source; it was their parents who were there.
And No No Girl is about the eviction of Japanese-Americans on the west coast and how it affects them today, 80-plus years later. The idea in the film is that when their grandma passes, they find clues leading to the discovery that she and her family buried all of their valuables in a panic the night before they were to be sent to the concentration camps. And now, with this knowledge, what does the family do today?
MW: Given the way the camera frequently moved slowly through various shots throughout the film, were there any influences behind your style?
Paul Goodman: Our cinematographer, Ben Slavens, is incredible. Me and him have the type of relationship on set where we don’t need to say anything anymore. Something will happen, and we’ll look at each other, nod, and it’s good. So we’re totally in sync, and I think we’ve developed a style together that we love. Our crew is pretty small relative to other crews, and we like to use the equipment we like to use. So we can set up and break down a Dana dolly and put together a shot really quickly. I think the Dana Dolly is one of our easiest tools, especially in areas where you can’t bring a full-size dolly or a crane or something to make a dramatic move. So in terms of how we move the camera through shots, I think it’s more of just a workflow and a stylistic choice by us to get the best product possible.
The Importance Of A Film’s Title
MW: Where does the title “No No Girl” come from?
Paul Goodman: Being a “No No” in Japanese-American history is kind of an instant trigger word. Like, if you’re Japanese-American and you hear, ‘They were a No No,’ you know what that means because when the Japanese-Americans were evicted and rounded up and identified, they had to sign these loyalty questionnaires, these really insane documents.
And two of the questions, they just said, “Will you declare loyalty to the United States and forego all loyalty to the Japanese empire?” And, “Will you fight for the United States?” And for people who are being taken away from their homes and sent to prison camps, these questions are their whole lives. They feel like their whole life is on the line, which is true.
If you answer “no” and “no” to those questions, you were sent to a different type of camp, a more serious prison camp. And there was a really huge stigma around No No Boys right after the war. They were considered cowards and traitors to their country.
There’s a really famous book called No-No Boy that is not related to this film. I love that book, but I took ‘No No Girl’ as a symbolic movement… [The protagonist] has to face the same type of scrutiny. This is where my generation feels so distant. We have to live in the shadows of these enormous times and these huge heroes and these super-pivotal and dramatic decisions. Our fight does not seem to ever live up to what they had to go through.
The movie being called No No Girl, is just another reference, among other things, to the idea that [the protagonist’s] fight with her identity, her family telling her, “Are you willing to fight for our family? Are you willing to stay loyal to our family?” She has to face those pressures around her within her home. And throughout the movie, she answers them.
