Charlyne Yi

Comedian and filmmaker Charlyne Yi's work is defined by her charming awkwardness and quirky behavior. Her song choices are as revealing as her comedy – from a movie score that inspires her to scream from the mountaintops to a sitcom soundtrack that never fails to make her smile. Charlyne won the Waldo Salt screenwriting award at the Sundance Film Festival this year for her screenwriting debut, the romantic comedy Paper Heart.

For More: Paper Heart

Tracklist

Adrian Johnston: Runaways

Jesse Frederick: Everywhere You Look

Matt Davidson of Twain: The Paper Ship

John Lennon: Cathy's Clown

The Unicorns: Emasculate the Masculine

Transcript

Anthony Valadez: Hi, I'm Anthony Valadez and I'm here with comedian and filmmaker Charlyne Yi. Charlyne won the Waldo Salt screenwriting award at the Sundance Film Festival this year for her screenwriting debut, the romantic comedy Paper Heart. Today we will be playing excerpts of songs she selected that have inspired her over the years as part of KCRW's guest DJ Project.

Becoming Jane. I hike and when I get to the top of the mountain I put it on my player and it's so funny how it can affect how you see the world and it makes me really "Wow! I conquered this mountain and the world is so beautiful!"

Full House theme song.

Full House it just makes me smile. Like I'm smiling right now and it's hard for me to talk.

I Love Lucy and that had a good theme song…that's all. I think I mostly watched cartoons. I'm not sure how much there was an influence. I think I often spent most of my time locked in my bedroom just imagining things and drawing. With Paper Heart, we actually -- Michael Cera and I as well as Alden Penner and Zack Condon --composed most of the music for the film. It was strange seeing how music can affect the tone of a scene like we wrote the music for a Las Vegas scene and everyone was drunk and yelling and there was "man on the street" but with certain music it made it seem sweeter. It seemed less dirty. The people in Las Vegas are probably "grrrrr, we're not dirty!"

KCRW.com/GuestDJProject.