Why not?

It all started last July, when Kue was giving her 17-year-old sister, Pao, a ride to Troy to audition for the movie. The two rehearsed lines on the way there, practicing two excerpts of dialogue from the film between two of the main characters.

Nervous when they arrived at the audition, Pao Kue said she kept repeating the lines in her head.

“By the time we got there she wasn’t ready to go in yet and there was no one there, so I was like, ‘I know the lines, so why not?’ So I went in and I got a callback and I got a role,” said Choua Kue, who was eventually cast as Youa, a potential love interest of another main character, Thao.

“I was very, very surprised. Obviously I didn’t go in expecting anything. I knew they were seeing thousands of people so I was very shocked,” she said. “I got a callback after my second audition, about a week later, and they said (Eastwood) cast himself, so it was very flattering.”

Pao Kue said although she was surprised her sister got the part, she was very happy for her. The two even practiced the lines again the night before Kue’s shooting began.

“I think my sister’s just really natural with acting,” said Pao Kue, who got to spend more than half an hour on the film set one day. “Even when we were practicing, she was really, really good at it.”

Although she took drama class in high school, Choua Kue said she never really thought she would get anything out of it — especially not to get paid to share the screen with a legend like Eastwood in a movie that grossed an estimated $29.5 million in its first weekend at the box office.

Kue was one of the many Hmong people from Michigan cast in the movie. The Hmong are an ethnic group from the mountain regions of China and southeast Asia.

Ready to roll

“Gran Torino” is one of the most high-profile films to be shot in Michigan following the state’s passage of the Michigan Film Incentive, which gives production companies a refundable, assignable tax credit of up to 42 percent. The screenplay originally set the film in Minnesota, but the tax break inspired Eastwood to change the location to feature metro Detroit, as well as many of the area’s Hmong residents. “Gran Torino” is said to be the first major-studio film to feature the Hmong.

Shooting for the film began in August and took about a month, and with only a few scenes to shoot, Kue said she was on set getting her makeup and hair done every day for about a week.

“I was not sure what to expect because I had no idea what the setting was going to be like. I knew that there was probably going to be a ton of trailers and stuff,” Kue said. “But when I went there I was surprised at how organized everything was. They had great timing on how long you want to spend on makeup, on hair, on clothing, wiring me up to do the filming. … Everything was very organized, which I was surprised at a little bit because you know when you think of behind the scenes, you think of everything to be kind of fast.”

Her first day on set included shooting the first scene of the movie, a funeral for the wife of Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowalski. Although she didn’t have any lines that day, Kue said she stood waiting for hours during the filming. She would have her turn soon enough.

Playing the part

Kue’s favorite scene opens in the basement of a party. Teenagers are scattered in various parts of the room. As Kowalski decides to take up a post leaning on a washing machine, the camera focuses on a group of three guys in the center of the room, surrounding a smiling girl in a black vest and purple sweater, Youa, or Yum-Yum, as Kowalski later refers to her.

Kowalksi crosses the room and along the way notices Thao shyly looking at Youa. Moments pass, and Youa approaches Kowalski and the two have a short conversation.

Later in the film, at a backyard barbecue, Kowalski addresses Youa again.

“Yum-Yum, if he doesn’t ask you out, I’m gonna,” he says, referring to Thao.

“Love to, but he beat you to it,” she replies.

Kowalski tells Thao he will even lend him his Gran Torino — the car that Thao is caught attempting to steal early in the film — for the date.

“I’m really just a really, really silly girl so to see myself being portrayed as the girl-next-door, or whatever, I mean, (my friends) think it’s funny,” Kue said.

She said she and Eastwood talked a little bit about the Hmong culture on the set, and talked through the scene.

“As strange as it sounds, I was never really formally introduced to him. We talked a little bit. I think he knew who I was, and I obviously knew who he was,” Kue said.

Eastwood, she said, was very humble and down-to-earth, which made it easy to do the scenes.

“It’s really funny because you hear that in Hollywood they do the ‘ready, set, roll’ thing. They never did that,” she said.

“He just stood in the basement with me and was just like, ‘Do what feels natural,’ and so they were rolling and they filmed it.”

Janet Pound, a Michigan casting director for the film, said she was touched by how kind everyone involved in the process was.

“You always get the image that Hollywood is less than nice, but (Eastwood) is very calm. He doesn’t want raised voices, he doesn’t even call out action, he’ll just say, ‘Go ahead,’” she said.

Kue is just one of more than 30 Michigan residents with speaking roles in the film, Pound said. The movie also features members of local Hmong communities, including Lansing teenager Ahney Her who plays Sue, a character who serves as a liaison between Eastwood’s character and the Hmong community.

“(Eastwood) did not want acting coaches. He wanted (the actors) to come from a real place,” she said.

Representing the Hmong

One of the central plotlines surrounds racial tensions in a changing neighborhood. In the film, the home where retired factory worker Kowalski once lived among other white families like his own, is now in the midst of a large Hmong community. Kowalski views his neighbors with disdain, frequently describing them using racial slurs and other derogatory words. While the Hmong are plagued by gang violence and economic hardship, Kowalski eventually comes to care for them through his growing relationship with Thao, who works to make up the debt he owes for attempting to steal his car.

Kue said she liked that the film highlighted some of the cultural aspects of the Hmong that the general population may not have been aware. Kowalski, in her view, is essential to showing the understanding that needs to happen between cultures.

“Whether or not people like to admit it, there’s always going to be people like that wherever you go. Sad to say, but in a way, that’s almost normal,” Kue said.

“I mean, you’re always going to run across someone or two people in your lifetime who’s going to be absolutely almost ignorant, but I think his character is very strong in a way that he shows that people are able to change, people are able to be open-minded. In a way, I think (the use of racial slurs in the movie) is fine, but I also think sometimes it’s a little overdone. But that’s his character, you know?”

Kue said she can relate to some of the cultural aspects shown in the film. Born in Thailand, her family moved to Saginaw when she was about 6.

“My parents are still very, very traditional so sometimes when we’re having parties or interacting with a bunch of other cousins who are also very traditional, sometimes we carry on these same traditions that they do (in the film,)” she said. “I think that me, growing up in America, I’ve been very exposed to a different culture. I try my best to fit in to both cultures but I can say that my family, for the most part, are still very traditional, but not to the extreme that the movie portrays.”