Harrison Xu and Ivan Leung on Finding Therapy in ‘Extremely Unique Dynamic’

In every Hollywood story, screenwriters and directors are often told to “write what you know.” So that’s what Extremely Unique Dynamic co-directors Harrison Xu and Ivan Leung did.

In their film, out on streaming now, two best friends and actors Danny (Leung) and Ryan (Xu) make a film together as their last hurrah before the latter moves to Canada to start a new life with his fiancée. As they hilariously brainstorm ideas, they decide to make a movie about two guys making a movie… about two guys making a movie. The end result was an exploration of trust, acceptance, and the true meaning of friendship.

It’s hard to believe that it all started one random night while Xu and Leung ate Thai food while high on the floor. Xu planned to move to Canada with his then-fiancee (now wife) in a few weeks. Leung initially wanted to start a drop-shipping company before they came up with the film idea. Leung defended his “terrible idea” but then suggested they’d make a movie.

“It was during COVID when everything just kept happening,” Leung tells The Nerds of Color. “Both of us [have been] full-time professional actors for the past 10 years, and our industry was just getting so slow. If I’m gonna throw money into a fire, why don’t I do something that we love?”

The meta concept was inspired by Xu’s favorite musical, [title of show]. While he knew there had been plenty of films about making films, he thought adding another meta layer would help them stand out.

And, it did.

Extremely Unique Dynamic was praised by critics and audiences and broke several records for independent screenings, including at the Lammarele in North Hollywood. Fans found the duo to be “charming” and have “an unbeatable natural chemistry,” which made sense since the friends had experienced so much together, working in Hollywood for the past decade.

Xu recalls auditioning for the same roles as Leung for years. If a series or film isn’t centering on Asians, there would typically be only one role for an Asian person. They were frustrated with their options. After enjoying their time together on a marketing campaign for Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, they should be able to carry that working chemistry into their acting — and directing.

“It’s just so rare that both of us could be in a project together at the same time,” Xu says. “It’s a big part of why we made the movie. So we could be in a project together and just exist as regular Asian dudes. We talk about Asian things pretty head-on because of its meta structure. I don’t think this is an Asian movie by any means. It’s a movie about friendship. That is a big part of why we had created it.”

With the meta structure, the film touches on many issues, such as being Asian in Hollywood, family expectations, and Danny’s queerness. Leung says the film felt like a therapy session because he’s always wanted to bring these topics up.

“In acting, we’re working with other people’s words and visions,” says Leung. “There was never an opportunity to talk about [ours]. I came from San Diego, which is a very progressive city, but also a military city. We are also Asian American, so we also have those traditional values. There’s a lot of truth coming from that.”

The duo says the best parts of the movie for them were when Danny and Ryan had those honest conversations about their feelings. Leung shares, “Harrison was actually moving to Canada [like Ryan in the film]. We wanted to have that be honest and authentic as possible. As friends, we don’t really talk about our feelings much. We usually just hang out and have fun. But, during filming, we opened up to each other. I love that because you can see where we’re opening up as characters in the film, just like real life, if that makes any sense.”

With the film being their feature directorial debut, they knew they needed a third person with directing experience to help hone their story. Katherine Dudas, who sold her debut feature Juniper to Showtime in 2022, signed on as their co-director.

Xu describes their partnership as drinking green tea: Leung is the tea, Xu is the cup, and Dudas is the honey that makes it taste sweet.

“It worked well because we all had different strengths and weaknesses — and we cared about different things,” says Xu. “The team dynamic was nice because as first-time filmmakers [since we’re primarily actors], we didn’t have a full sense of how movies should be made. It worked for our benefit because we weren’t held to certain standards or didn’t do things a specific way.”

Leung laughs, adding, “Basically, everything that Harrison deeply cared about… I didn’t care about. Everything I thought was very important and /integral to the story, he was like ‘whatever.’ That’s what I meant by green tea and the cup.”

Xu acknowledges that having three directors isn’t very common, but he thinks it’s because a movie like this isn’t typical. Extremely Unique Dynamic was shot in five days. He says, “All that stuff is not really normal when it comes to filmmaking, but we wanted to make sure it was a collaborative environment because Ivan and I are in most of the scenes together, so Katherine was the third director with the eyes behind the camera.”

The finished product of the film exceeded the co-directors’ expectations. After traveling the festival circuit, the picture was acquired by distributor Strand Releasing, giving it a fall theatrical release last winter. It is now available on VOD. They didn’t expect a wide release.

Leung just wanted to make a movie for themselves that they could be proud of — maybe one or two festivals. He laughs, “I guess… we are overachieving, obsessive workaholics that went above and beyond. We are grateful for the attention and the love we are getting because we didn’t expect the movie to go where it was going. It was like a dream come true.”

Xu’s goal was to have distribution so people could see the film. As a marketing expert, he knew he could create the campaign for the film, but he didn’t expect everything to happen so quickly. They met their distributor at the first festival and were accepted to 20 other festivals.

“It was great just seeing how the film played with different audiences,” says Xu. The Asian audience responded to certain jokes. The queer audience responded to another set of jokes. The Canadian audience laughed at things that were different from those of the people in Hong Kong. It’s just been cool seeing how the films resonated with different audiences in different ways.”

Leung and Xu want to make more films. They learned a lot from this experience and now better understand how difficult it is to make a film. But, they are ready for the next one.

“We didn’t realize that 90% of the work would come after the movie was done,” Xu explains. “We spent so much time producing the film, then marketing, distribution, and all of that. It’s been so much, but it’s something that we wish we had known back then, and what type of team to build. We were just doing things ourselves.”

It has given the two a greater appreciation toward producers, filmmakers, and content creators. Leung used to consider filmmakers to be the directors making big-budget films and had to suffer to create their work, but this experience changed his perspective.

“If you’ve done [any filming and editing with the intent to make a movie], you’re a filmmaker,” says Leung. “In my opinion, if you’re a content creator, you’re a filmmaker. There are other avenues than [having to spend millions of dollars] to be taken [seriously] like the Duplass brothers, Kevin Smith, or these other beautiful indie movies we came across at the festivals. Every person’s journey is different. If you want to make something, why not just try it and make something. What’s the worst that could happen? Just go for it.”

Extremely Unique Dynamic is available on VOD on AppleTV+, Prime Video, YouTube Premium, and Google Play.