Exclusive Q&A: ‘Never Say Never’ Director Jon M. Chu Spills Beans On Bieber

Jon M. Chu admits that he wasn’t a huge Justin Bieber fan before being tapped to helm the pop star’s big-screen spectacular “Never Say Never.” But once he took the job, the 31-year-old director of “Step Up 2: The Streets” and “Step Up 3-D” had to fully immerse himself in all things JB.

Bieber’s world, Chu discovered, is a place where throngs of little (and not-so-little) girls weep and swoon, where cameras are expected but not necessarily trusted, and where a 16-year-old superstar works so hard no one would ever call him a diva.

What is it about Justin Bieber that makes girls in kindergarten cry at the sight of him?
It’s crazy — like the fact that my mother can love him more than she loves me. He has this charm about him, this energy.

Child prodigies are often described as almost otherworldly. It sounds like he’s like that too.
When he walks into a room, I don’t even have to be looking at him to know he’s entered the room. He speaks this different language with his music, that he’s been playing since he was two years old when his mother got him bongo drums. He makes you believe that there’s something else beyond the physicality of becoming a musician or becoming a star, that he has something very, very special about him.

It looks like he’s mobbed by girls everywhere he goes. How did you survive that?
It’s insane. I went from like 12,000 Twitter followers from ‘Step Up 3-D’ to the day he tweeted my name as the director of the movie, I went up 100,000 followers. Every time I write one thing, they go crazy. It’s a whole other world. Yesterday we were driving from the Toronto premiere, and these girls — 50 girls — were running, in the freezing cold, in a storm, for like six blocks after us. It’s nuts!

Not many people can claim to have fans who can barely speak to women old enough to be his grandmother.
On Much Music they played a clip of one of his “crazy fans,” who was crying, and everyone was laughing. But he said “Don’t laugh. She is adorable. She’s a sweetheart.” He speaks their language. He never laughs at his fans.

Did you know that in one of his unofficial biographies, it says “Step Up” is listed as one of his favorite movies?
No, I didn’t know that. I knew he loved our movies, though. He was kinda cold to me at first. He’s very cautious about who he lets in, because he constantly has all these cameras around him, so it took him a couple of weeks to get used to me. Once he got used to me, he was much more open, and when he saw my movies, he let me in completely.

Speaking of “Step Up” — is that how you got this gig?
I was finishing up “Step Up 3-D,” and the studio came to me – I think half because I’m in that world, and half because I have 3-D experience — and they need to get this done quickly. The Madison Square Garden show was only like three weeks away.

So you signed on, and immediately you were in Justin Bieber-land.
Absolutely. They had no idea what the story was yet. I told them, “Listen, I understand the fascination of what I’d want to know as a viewer not knowing anything about Justin Bieber. Let’s take that approach. I don’t think you need to make it flashy. I don’t think you need to make it Disney-fied. I don’t think you need to make it a poppy concert film.” And they let me.

There are a lot of concert movies about Disney-fied young musicians, but you don’t really come away learning much about the singers themselves. Then there are those amazing documentaries about the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. Where does “Never Say Never” fit?
Our main thing is that this is not a concert film. When I came into this, it started as, “We’re going to go shoot his concert,” and I said, “I don’t do concert films, I don’t like concert films, I never go see concert films. But I can tell stories.”

And he has a fascinating story, which wouldn’t even have been possible five years ago, before YouTube became a tool for following your dreams, where millions of people could choose you as their hero — not a corporation, not a TV show.