It’s 1983, and Ke Huy Quan had just immigrated to the United States. “I barely speak English. I was busy being a kid, you know, trying to acclimate into my new life,” he told David Spade and Dana Carvey this week on the Fly on the Wall podcast. “I was living in Chinatown, Los Angeles, at that time. It was just a very small Chinese community. And then one day, a casting director and his associate came to my elementary school.”

That was a hell of a day. The casting director was trying to find a kid actor for a little independent movie called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Why didn’t Steven Spielberg hold auditions for child actors? Who knows? But the casting director was looking for kids in a school gymnasium just the same. Kwan was given lines to read, but “I can barely understand any of it.