Meet Youthana Yuos

Today we’d like to introduce you to Youthana Yuos.

Youthana, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Life, so far, has been a wildly ungraceful dance toward becoming a filmmaker. It’s like being caught in a sudden flash mob and everyone, but you seems to know the choreography, so you just try to keep up to fit in.

Unlike dancing in public, a part of me has always wanted to be a filmmaker. As a kid, I distinctly remember a moment on the bus when I looked out at the elementary school, pensively mulling over my future, and I imagined a life making movies. Being a shy, artsy kid, I spent a lot of time observing people and imagining their lives, so it felt like a practical application of this specific quirk.

But even before I let that dream crystalize, I swept it away. Irrespective of mileage, the distance between Central Pennsylvania and Hollywood was unfathomable in a different way. As a first-born, first-generation Asian-American, daydreams felt dangerous or in the very least, impractical. I wanted to be pragmatic. I wanted to be all the things a good Asian son is supposed to be. I wanted to be, more than anything, someone to be proud of, and that meant I had to say RIP to those more quixotic parts of myself. Luckily, those parts of yourself can truly survive almost anything.

After being laid off from a computer programming job, I was deeply, deeply unqualified to have in the first place, I finally decided to apply to film school. It was the only way I could imagine breaking into such an enigmatic field. But in the usual fashion, I dragged my feet doing that too. I spent two years convincing myself that it was impossible and even irresponsible. Yet, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. On the night of the deadline, I sent my application to the School of Cinematic Arts graduate program at USC, and to my astonishment, they accepted me.

Now, post-graduation, the dance of being a filmmaker is honestly just as awkward and ungraceful as the journey towards it, but I have to remind myself how fortunate I am to be able to take part in the pursuit of something I almost didn’t allow myself to dream of in the first place.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Allegedly, I am a Leo, and that should make me magnetic, charismatic, confident, and rebellious. These would be incredibly useful traits to have in the pursuit of being a writer/director, but if there’s anything rebellious about me, it’s my complete inability to be a Leo. At birth, the part of myself that held all those cool Leo traits was replaced by the heart of a sad clown.

If I could maybe take a moment to invent an astrological sign, I would identify more with a rambutan: They’re Asian, a little prickly on the outside/mushy on the inside, and they are much more representative of my general silhouette. Oh, and most people don’t know what they are.

This is a roundabout way of saying that my biggest struggle at the moment is myself. It’s an insurmountable task to get people to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself, and I try to work through that every day. Who knows if I’ll ever reach that summit, but hopefully I’ll get pretty close, and when I get there, I pray that for once in my little rambutan life, I will have at least finished writing a feature script.

Please tell us about your work.
I’ve always been drawn to intimate stories and characters who live on the fringes of our periphery. I don’t necessarily know how to think in high concept terms or how to craft a story involving people who run to or from explosions. Part of it, I suppose, comes from wanting to understand myself a bit more. I’m so excited by the current rush of Asian American visibility in media, and I hope one day to have a seat at the table as well. If there’s a market for stories about average Asian people who are bravely terrible at math, I’d love the chance to help tell those stories.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
This might sound facetious, but I wish I had gotten therapy when I was younger and had the insurance for it. There is a fantasy, alternate-universe version of myself who has an insufferable amount of confidence and abdominal muscles you can see through a winter coat and he probably would exist today if I had the foresight to seek treatment. I think about all the rooms he would have hypnotized with his charisma and all the screenplays he would have written and sold by now. He’d definitely have at least one feature under his belt and, at the very least, he would have a verified Instagram account. But at the same time, I am proud of who I am and who I’m becoming. I may not be exactly where I want to be, but I trust that I’m getting there.

Contact Info:

• Email: ysy101@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youthanasux/

Image Credit:
Personal Photo – Chris Winterbauer
Group Photo – Sam Shaib
Illustration – Youthana Yuos
Wearing tan coat – Lars Struck

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