A LITTLE LIGHT IN HOLLYWOOD
By Chris Quah and Ong Juat Heng
Working in Hollywood must be a dream come true for many. But working and achieving success in Hollywood, especially if you are a Malaysian and only 26 years old – now that’s a dream of fairy tale proportions. For David Chua, this enchanting dream has become a reality, judging from his many projects with the who’s who of Hollywood, such as Wang Lee Hom, Adam Levine, One Direction, Jessie J, Good Charlotte, Rachel Platten and Arnold Schwazenegger, to name a few.
At the time of David’s phone interview with Asian Beacon, he was preparing to work with NBA basketballer Jeremy Lin (coaching a gaming league for e-sports competition) and with Kanye West on a product line.
David, who now lives in Los Angeles where he runs his own music production company called Mako Studios, may be past the starstruck stage but he will never get past being in awe of God for this privilege to make a godly difference in Hollywood. “Everything that has happened is God’s blessing and timing (but) my real purpose (in Hollywood) is to be a light to others,” said this young man who started off as a coffee boy and worked his way up to becoming a music producer before launching out as an entrepreneur in various aspects in the entertainment business.
Starting out
David’s passion for music began when he was serving in the music ministry of his church, His Sanctuary of Glory in OUG, Kuala Lumpur. Having observed the powerful impact music had on people, even moving them to tears during the church service, he then decided to make music his full-time career. So, when it came time for college, he scooted off to Berklee College of Music in the USA to study music production and engineering.
Before getting his break in Hollywood, David had to deal with persistent rejections, right from getting into Berklee (he only got in after the third application) to securing work after graduating. “I always saw my life as that of the underdog portrayed in movies,” he laughed.
“A lot of these rejections were due to my being a young Asian guy in Hollywood. It was challenging but it strengthened my focus and reliance on God, especially during times when everything was crumbling.”
When David started getting jobs “accidentally”, he saw them as God’s intervention.
“I got most of my connections through prayer and ‘coincidence’. For instance, while I was walking to my car one day, I bumped into someone who was working with Good Charlotte’s studio, and this opened doors for me. I also got connected to a lot of producers who work with One Direction, One Republic and Katy Perry while chatting with church members during coffee meetings,” he said.
Keeping faith
Getting a foothold in Hollywood was tough but keeping his faith once he’s in is even harder. To help him keep to the straight and narrow, David turns to his spiritual mentors, who are mostly foreign missionaries in Hollywood.
“Out here, there are many mega churches. Many famous actors and actresses attend these mega churches, so it’s easy to fall into the temptation of going to church just to be in the same place as the celebrities,” he shared.
“I actually bumped into Justin Bieber four times in two years at four different churches here but personally, I feel that mega churches are too big for me to develop deep relationships or find great mentors. In fact, many non-Christian friends who followed me to church commented that it was more like being at the Grammy awards than Sunday service.”
Because of the right mentors and friends, David has inherited a lot of godly values that have carried him through tough and humbling times. He recalled one of his earliest jobs working with One Republic and One Direction simultaneously, where he had to help build the stage props.
“So there I was, painting, carrying wooden planks and I was telling myself, ‘But I’m a musician, God.’ Well, God just told me to be faithful in the small things. This experience taught me that when I serve others and give my best in everything I do, I really am doing it for Him,” he explained. “This is the secret weapon of living life. It’s crucial too in building relationships, which is the key to everything.”
David shared an interesting incident on how practising this principle led to an amazing opportunity to work with Arnold Schwarzenegger and on the Avatar sequel. For the past two years, he has been working with an artist who is well known in the industry as “challenging”. Everyone who had worked with her had walked out on her, David said, but since he had told God he was going to give his best no matter what, he stuck with her. Unbeknown to him, her father is one of the richest men in London and David is now going to work with her on the next Avatar movie! Through her father too, David got to work on a movie with Schwarzenegger!
“I stuck with her because I depended on God. Also, He wanted me to look at every person through His eyes of love,” David said, adding that it was this realisation of God’s love for people that he had found his true purpose in Hollywood – to reach out to others in Hollywood, a place of desperate needs and unbearable work stress.
Finding his purpose
“This is an industry that doesn’t really sleep,” David said. “We don’t have Christmas breaks, Chinese New Year breaks, any type of breaks. When my parents came to visit me, I only managed to have dinner with them twice. There is literally no time for relationships here. Due to this, a lot of my friends got into depression, and they either leave the country, take drugs or hurt themselves. Some even committed suicide.
“It doesn’t help that in California, weed (marijuana) is legal. They even give out weed for free at after-event parties. I had a friend from India whose boss was giving him too much drug. He finally jumped off a 12-storey building. He was only 29. Another friend drowned herself in the Boston Charles River due to work pressure. All this happened not because the industry is evil, as all industries have a dark side, but they did not know their purpose in life.”
Thankfully for David, he has found his life purpose that has kept him anchored and sane. He appreciates the opportunity of working in the music industry but sees it as a “gift that allows me to be here but my real purpose is to be a light to others”.
Prayer
To help fulfil his purpose in life, David turns to prayer, which he says is an indispensable aspect of his daily life. Before his weekly meetings with clients, he will pray for them and their family. Then he will pray that God will guide their conversations and provide the right timing to talk about Him. “They have to be interested, if not you are going to be seen as pushy,” David said.
“People don’t really need God when the going is fine but when they’re down, they need something that is long lasting, eternal, and that’s God’s love and you have to wait for the right moment to share that with them. My prayer is, that whenever the right moment presents itself, I’ll be right in front of them.”
As a Christian who knows his purpose in life – to be Christ’s light to others – David’s life must reflect Christ’s light. Often, this calls for going against the Hollywood culture of partying and doing drugs.
“I have made a stand not to indulge in those stuff. How am I going to reflect Christ if I do? In the end, I truly believe that if you honour God, He will honour you,” he said.
David ended with this: “If you define your life in God’s terms, He will pull you through. I learned that during my first year working in Hollywood, which was the hardest year of my life. Also remember that at the end of the day, what matters most is relationship. Success may come overnight, but relationships are built over the years.”
Asian Beacon: Oct – Dec 2018 (Vol 50 #4, p8-9, p35)