INTERVIEW: ALEX TSE

Preface: I met Alex Tse at the VC Film Festival this year; I had followed his career off and on since the days when he wrote the script for Sucker Free City and as it turns out, Alex knew my music writing thanks to his connection with Bay Area hip-hop groups. I've always been fascinated by the process and business of screenwriting and Alex was gracious enough to meet me in Long Beach to talk about his work and career thus far.

THE INTERVIEW (originally appeared in UCLA's Asia Pacific Arts Magazine)

--O.W.

INTERVIEW: JOHN CHO

Preface: I was really happy to be able to do this; I knew John as a classmate from UC Berkeley - *15 years ago* - and I've taken a lot of pleasure in seeing his career accelerate over that time. I finally had the opportunity to interview him and at the risk of sounding immodest, I thought it was a great conversation, especially with his candor about issues of acting, media and race.

THE INTERVIEW (there are two parts) (originally appeared in UCLA's Asia Pacific Arts Magazine)

--O.W.

INTERVIEW: WAYNE WANG

Preface: I was asked by Asian Cinvevision to interview Wayne Wang for this year's catalog and naturally, I jumped at the opportunity. This was my first time speaking with him and while most of our conversation revolved around his two new films, Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Princess of Nebraska, I also asked him about the state of Asian American cinema, its transnational implications and his own aspirations to make a gangster flick.

THE INTERVIEW (originally appeared in Asian Cinevision's Cinevue).

Interview with Wayne Wang

For the last fifteen years, fans of filmmaker Wayne Wang have wondered when he would “return” to Asian American film. The most influential Asian American filmmaker of the 1980s, with movies such CHAN IS MISSING (1982) and DIM SUM (1985), Wang successfully adapted Amy Tan’s JOY LUCK CLUB in 1993. After that, he took a serendipitous route through Hollywood, directing everything from his celebrated, indie film SMOKE (1995), to the edgy digital video flick, THE CENTER OF THE WORLD (2001), to the Jennifer Lopez-lead romantic comedy, MAID IN MANHATTAN (2002).

With this year’s pairing of A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS and THE PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA, Wang returns with not one, but two films centered on a new generation of Asian American immigrants. Both are adapted from Oakland author Yiyun Li’s short stories and Wang began his interview with CineVue describing their shared affinity for the “new” Chinese immigrant.

Oliver Wang: How did you first discover Yiyun Li’s writing?

Wayne Wang: [Center for Asian American Media director] Stephen Gong came up to me and said, “There’s this Chinese woman writer who teaches at Mills, and you should look into her short stories.” That same afternoon, Michael Ray, the All-Story magazine editor, also said, “Hey, there’s a really good Chinese writer that’s in the Bay Area, and we’re going to publish some of her stuff.” So I went out and got the book, read through everything, and really liked “Thousand Years.”

OW: What about her stories spoke to you?

WW: I’d been off that Asian American theme for a while. When I was thinking about coming back, I kept thinking, “What has changed?” In both coasts, the biggest change has been the new immigrants from China. And you also begin to see literature from writers in China, like Ha Jin and Yiyun Li and they’re many others. So that’s one.

Two, I really like Yiyun’s writing because everything is in the periphery. Nothing is directly hitting you in the face. Yiyun’s stuff is about human nature, how they cope with it, the residual effect. They’re not sentimental...which is what my kind of aesthetic is, too. I was particularly interested in “Thousand Years” because it also dealt with a whole immigration population, a whole other language. And I was also very intrigued with the father, who was involved and hurt by the Cultural Revolution, and the daughter who was on the fringe of it but also affected.

OW: What struck me about both films is that these are stories about Asians living in America, but their struggles and challenges are not around “Asian American identity”, or where do they “fit in” in the social fabric.

WW: It’s not that the Chinese American material doesn’t exist. I think part of it for me is that I’m an immigrant myself, even though I’m very American. But still there’s something about my own roots growing up in Hong Kong, being Chinese—“What is my relationship to China?”—that really intrigues me about that particular area. The world has flattened out, and it’s very global now.

OW: And that changes their relationship to this idea of American and how they’re meant to negotiate it.

WW: Absolutely. That also has to do more with that newer generation like PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA because the way they grew up, with the internet and the computer and being able to travel more, they’re really into that mind set.

OW: You reflect on technology’s role in PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA the use of the cell phone and its camera. How deliberate was that, building that into the movie?

WW: It’s very deliberate, particularly since I met Ling, who plays Sasha. She has three phones; they’re all decorated differently. And one of the phones got shut off by her mother because she racked up, like, $750 of texting. And she’s constantly doing phone texting, talking to her friends, and also shooting little things—like her own hand. When we saw that it was working well as we started shooting that stuff, we just kept building into it more.

OW: Whose idea was it to bring in Yiyun Li to help with the adaptation for THOUSAND YEARS?

WW: I felt that it was a very specific voice. And I felt that she was really smart and really interested in writing a screenplay. So I just gave her final draft. And I didn’t say very much to her, and I said the things that I liked about the story, and she just wrote the draft. And then we worked on it together. I like working with novelists and making them into screenplays.

OW: PRINCESS, on other hand, was adapted by Michael Ray from Li’s story and he seemed to have a free hand to roam with it.

WW: I told Yiyun, with PRINCESS, “I’m going to get Michael to work on it, and we’re going to improvise a lot.” So a lot of it was on the spot. We made things up...like play jazz music, which I really enjoy. She personally ended up liking PRINCESS better than THOUSAND YEARS. That’s very interesting. She felt that I brought more into PRINCESS than was in the short story, whereas THOUSAND YEARS was pretty much a very faithful rendition. But when she saw PRINCESS, I could see that she was really surprised by it all the time.

OW: I should backpedal—you began with the intention of making THOUSAND YEARS but ended up making two different films. How did that happen?

WW: First of all, PRAYERS is so classic. I wanted to do something that breaks away from that, something that’s freer, more like a jazz riff in my mind. And I felt like I was dealing with two generations, and there’s a new generation that I was seeing and meeting...that was so different. I went to CAAM and said, “Hey, what if just do something really fast, really down and dirty, no permissions, no professional actors, we just find interesting people, find the girl, and just go and do something?” But the main thing was that I really felt like following the three generations, and doing the two films about two different women. One is still caught up in the Old China, so to speak, even though she’s been in America for ten years. And this one that has no baggage, no burdens, no history, no morality, so to speak, that I find really interesting also.

OW: With both of these stories, and this goes to your career as a whole, you often times seem to center really interesting, complex women at the center of your narratives. I’m wondering where that comes from and what’s your interest in doing that.

WW: I don’t know. [Laughs] I think I fell into it in the beginning only because I started doing DIM SUM, because Laureen Chew was a good friend of mine was very intrigued by the relationship with her mother. I fell into it. Then JOY LUCK CLUB came along, and it’s just a wonderful book. And then after that, I was basically stereotyped...as much as I ran away from it, I some how kept being drawn back into it. So women is still very much part of my subject matter. People have criticized me for being anti-Asian men. I said I’d love to do a male book….

OW: I find that accusation ridiculous if you consider the body of work. CHAN IS MISSING and EAT A BOWL OF TEA are very much male-centered films. But go back a moment—are you suggesting that you’ve done so many women-centered films because you have an easier time getting green-lit to do them?

WW: Probably. Because of the success of JOY LUCK CLUB, for me to say, “Well, I’m doing something about a Chinese woman,” tends to be a little easier for them to understand what it is. If I said I was going to do a gangster film with guys, they would say, “Why don’t we get John Woo?” So no matter what I do, I’m boxed in a little bit. But the other part is that...you know, I like women. I feel very close to them. I just find them, in a way, more interesting. My wife says I may have been a woman in my last lifetime. So who knows?

OW: What was it like coming to a film of this size/scope after your string of more commercially-targeted films—MAID IN MANHATTAN, BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE, LAST HOLIDAY.

WW: I learned a lot with all those films. Let me give you one example, something like WINN DIXIE. When we previewed the film, we cut and re-cut...the last thing the studio wants is what they call a pacing pass. They cut out anything that has a moment where the character takes a breath or is thinking. Just to keep the movie moving along. And I really missed those things. I felt like with THOUSAND YEARS I wanted to have a very different language, especially in terms of timing. I wanted characters to breathe.

OW: In other words, a very different kind of film from what a commercial studio would expect.

WW: Today, to make a movie about an old man is almost impossible, especially if you don’t have a star. Let alone that it’s Chinese, and that it’s subtitled. So you’ve got to understand these problems. Originally there was also half the money coming from China. China dropped out in the last minute because of the couple of lines. For example, the line that he says, “Communism is not bad, but it fell into the wrong hands.” So half of our financing went away. This movie is really difficult to get made. It will probably never get made again, especially in the context of America. But I consciously made those choices to say, “Work really down and dirty, work cheaply, work with a lot of integrity, and try to make these movies.” And that’s what they are.

OW: With you, with other American directors like Steven Soderberg, or even a younger filmmaker like Justin Lin, there seems to be a back-and-forth pattern with your more commercial films being used as springboards to make more independent films. Is that deliberate?

WW: I realize through my career that if I just did the independent films, I probably wouldn’t be able to support my career and keep doing the independent films. I needed the bigger films. I needed—as much as I hated doing it in a way, but MAID IN MANHATTAN was a huge hit and gave me a lot of leeway to do a lot of other things. I don’t know. It’s tricky, that process.

OW: As a filmmaker, does this come as burden that you’re forced to bear that “Why aren’t you making more Asian American films?”

WW: Well, it is a burden. In the beginning, I felt like I couldn’t get off of that track because of that burden. But after JOY LUCK CLUB, I just felt that I had to get away because everything I was getting was related to Chinese or China or whatever. I had to get off. I exhausted, so to speak, my stories and my interest. Now it’s still kind of a burden, but I don’t mind it. I feel like I know this material. I know it really well, both about, let’s say, Chinese American versus new immigrants in America. I think that it’s so much more complex now, too. For example, Ha Jin’s new book, A Free Life, I was very fascinated by. So I’m trying to do an adaptation of that. The focus I tend to be on right now is immigrants, and particularly immigrants from China. I just feel like that’s where the world is at these days, too.

OW: Not just that but there’s also a spate of reverse migration, you could say, where Asian American filmmakers are going to Asia to make feature films. You did this back in the ‘80s with LIFE IS CHEAP...BUT TOILET PAPER IS EXPENSIVE—you see this as a possible new trend?

WW: I think so. I’m very much in support of that, too. I’m very interested in maybe putting a package together, let’s say six films, where I may do one and produce the other ones with different varying budgets from different parts of Asia—whether it’s Filipino, Malay, Singapore, Thai, Hong Kong, obviously—and make really interesting movies that will also hopefully be more accessible to a world market, not just a limited market. I’m really intrigued by that and challenged by that.

OW: You mentioned earlier, an interest in doing a gangster film. Have you considered doing a straight up genre film?

WW: Yes. I’ve always been talking about that and still trying to find a way to do it. I keep telling my agent, “Just get me a genre film of some kind.” I could do it. But it’s hard. Right now, I was talking to [PRINCESS’ cinematographer] Rich Wong, who was very much working with me creatively as a co-director credit, who [directed] COLMA: THE MUSICAL. I said, “We should do a gangster musical that’s really violent with Chinese guys.” I’m serious.

INTERVIEW: JUSTIN LIN (CINEVUE)

Preface: Seems like I end up interviewing Justin every five years: I did it in 1997, on my then-radio show in Berkeley, I had another set of interviews in 2002, around Better Luck Tomorrow and ACV asked me to interview him for their program for the 2007 N.Y. Int'l Asian American Film Festival.

A lot had changed since our last conversation, to say the least...namely $175,000,000 in global gross for the two studio films Justin had worked on since BLT. Yet, I found him to still be refreshingly down to earth, candid and self-aware (to the point of being a little self-conscious). It's always a pleasure to talk with him about his work as well as the general state of Asian American cinema.

THE INTERVIEW (originally appeared in Asian Cinevision's Cinevue).

My first interview with Justin Lin was in 1997, when he and Quentin Lee were promoting their debut feature film, SHOPPING FOR FANGS. Along with Rea Tajiri (STRAWBERRY FIELDS, HISTORY AND MEMORY), the three chatted about the state of Asian American filmmaking in a cramped studio at KALXFM in Berkeley, CA. At one point I asked if they, as independent filmmakers, would ever consider doing a studio film. Justin replied, half-joking, half-serious: “If I had the chance to make MIGHTY DUCKS 6, I would make the best MIGHTY DUCKS 6 I can.”

INTERVIEW: ERIC BYLER

Preface: I originally interviewed Byler for NAATA/CAAM but had enough left-over material that I also pitched parts of it to Popmatters.com. Alas, the original NAATA interview is no longer available - I'll try retrieving it from my own archives at some point though this Popmatters interview covers most of the same bases.

THE INTERVIEW (originally appeared on Popmatters.com).

--O.W.

INTERVIEW: DARRELL HAMAMOTO

Preface: I interviewed Professor Darrell Hamamoto right around the time when news about his Asian American porn film, Yellowcaust and the related documentary, Masters of the Pillow was starting to make its rounds. I've never actually reviewed the film - mostly because, at the time, I wrote up the description for it in the SFIAFF catalog and couldn't subsequently review it at the time. One of these days, I'll get around to it.

THE INTERVIEW (originally appeared on AsianAvenue.com)

--O.W.

INTERVIEW: JUSTIN LIN (MOTHER JONES)

Preface: This was the last of my three Better Luck Tomorrow-related interviews with Justin Lin in 2002.

THE INTERVIEW (originally appeared in Mother Jones).

--O.W.

INTERVIEW: JUSTIN LIN (ASIANAVENUE.COM)

Preface: This two-part interview originally was conducted for AsianAvenue.com but has since been "lost" on the site. I'm reprinting it, in full, after the jump. Both were done following the big Sundance debacle but Part 2 was conducted right after MTV Films announced that they were picking up the film for distribution.

THE INTERVIEW.








Buzzworthy: An Interview with Director Justin Lin

Justin Lin went into the famed Sundance Film Festival a relative unknown and came out as one of the most talked about filmmakers there. No less than Roger Ebert – the most recognized film critic in the country, if not the world – has written about him and his new film, Better Luck Tomorrow and Lin has gone from being known mostly just in Asian American circles to potentially becoming the next indie film chosen one.

Lin’s previous film, 1997’s Shopping For Fangs (directed by Quentin Lee) was a critical hit among Asian American film festival patrons, but distribution woes hampered its wider release. For his new Better Luck Tomorrow- a story about a group of well-to-do Asian American students who descend into crime and murder – Lee took a major risk in cleaning out his life savings and maxing out his credit cards – not to mention enlisting the funding aid of (MC) Hammer - to pay for this independent feature.

While at Sundance though, a storm of controversy brewed as some viewers – unhappy at the movie’s dark edge and subject matter, attacked Lin for both misrepresenting Asian Americans as well as encouraging youth violence. To his defense came no less than two of the most visible film critics in the country: the NY Times’ Elvis Mitchell and Roger Ebert – the latter of whom used his January 18th column in the Chicago Sun-Times to write about Lin’s film and the need to support it over politically correct paranoia. AsianAvenue.Com spoke with Justin right after he got back from his whirlwind Sundance adventure.

Oliver Wang: I just have to open this by asking – MC Hammer helped fund the film? How did that come about?

Justin Lin: I ran into him in Vegas and we started talking and got to know each other. It was amazing – it’s almost like he was an angel. I called him, he asked “how much do you need” and boom boom, he wired the money within minutes. He never even signed any paperwork and I’m still trying to get his money back but I can’t get a hold of him. He saved the movie.

O: Getting to Sundance - it sounds like things got out of control. I heard that at two different screenings, people literally got into shouting matches in either attacking or defending Better Luck Tomorrow.

J: It’s amazing, if you were in that room, people were so pumped up. It was amazing having two of the top critics in the country [defend the film]. Usually critics just watch movies but they felt so passionate that they had to stand up and voice their opinions. After the Ebert thing, within five minutes, it was going down Main Street, it was buzzing all over the place. It was definitely a Sundance moment.

O: Did you anticipate this kind of passionate response to your film?

J: The whole point of [the film] was to stir things up a little bit, stay true to the characters and to deal with this issue [of youth violence]. This film should open up questions, should be something that you don’t walk out, five minutes and forget about it. You should think about, hopefully, a day or two and you talk to people about it. It’s all about discourse.

O: As one of the few Asian American directors let in the door – so to say – at Sundance, how did you feel about this swirl of publicity?

J; The great thing we found out is that, you go to Sundance, the Asian American contingent is quite small. But this was pretty much one of the biggest buzz films there and it was incredible. As an Asian American filmmaker, I feel like we kind of crossed a threshold. The first thing out of their mouths wasn’t, “oh this was a great Asian American [film]”. People really related to it, our actors walking down the street, just getting stopped signing autographs, taking pictures. People just went across the color lines. They see it for a couple of minutes and they forget [it’s an Asian Ameican film] and people can relate to it, it has universal appeal.

O: That’s funny you should say “universal appeal” since the movie touches on a taboo subject these days, which is youth violence, made all the more risky in the movie world post-Columbine. What made you want to make a movie about Asian American kids going bad?

J: When we read the paper, all of us, every other week, we see something about youth violence and it’s appalling and disturbing and that’s how I feel when I read it. But at the same time, when you read it, you also get a sense you can relate to their anger and that’s what kind of intrigued me. You read about it but people don’t really talk about it and when they do talk about it, it’s never in inclusive terms - it’s very close to us yet everyone distances themselves from it.

O: From what I understand, part of the problem that some had with the film was that they felt like the images of the Asian American youth were very negative…

J: [interrupts] I don’t think it’s negative at all. As a filmmaker, you try to make the best film, you try to stay true to what you’re trying to do. The problem is that every time you see Asian faces on screen, they’re usually there for an “Asian” reason. It’s usually there because they’re a kung fu master, a doctor, a tourist but they’re always on screen for the reason of being Asian or Asian American. And as a filmmaker I don’t think we should have standards different from other filmmakers. It’s not about being negative or positive, it’s about being true to what you’re trying to do.

O: How did it feel to be criticized for making a film – and I’m quoting from one of your Sundance detractor –that’s “amoral for Asian Americans”?

J: I’m Asian American – f--- man, I’ve done more Asian American projects than anybody. Go back to my short films and documentaries. I’m probably more sensitive to these issues than definitely him – he wasn’t even Asian American!

O: He wasn’t even Asian American?

J: No, he was Caucasian. I can’t speak for all Asian Americans, but the ones who were there…there is a certain level of pride when see characters on screen. These characters, they live in this environment, they don’t have to explain why their teenagers in suburbia – they exist. That’s what the struggle is that we go through as Asian Americans. You exist and you live here but at the same time, but you don’t want to have to explain every little reason why you’re doing this and doing that.

---

A few days after our initial conversation with Justin Lin, it was leaked to the press that "Better Luck Tomorrow" was picked up by MTV. As reported by the Hollywood trade magazine Variety, "In the first-ever acquisition of an Asian-American film from Sundance, Paramount-based MTV Films has ponied up just under $1 million for North
American distribution rights." AsianAvenue.Com caught up with Justin who was amused that the story leaked but was quick to note that the figures quoted by Variety are inaccurate (because the deal isn’t officially public yet, he couldn’t tell AsianAvenue.Com the exact figures involved). This led into a larger discussion about the challenges of marketing and distributing an Asian American film to a wide, non-ethnic specific audience. Here now, Part 2 of our conversation with Better Luck Tomorrow’s Justin Lin.

Oliver Wang: I know you can’t cite exact figures, but this MTV deal must still be fairly big, no?

Justin Lin: They’re putting a lot of muscle behind this, it’s pretty amazing. It was incredible man, they really loved the film and the buzz was getting so big at Sundance that there were three different companies vying for it and within one hour they decided to [acquire the film]. Plus they already signed me up for my next film. It’s amazing, I [was] worrying about my rent when I left Sundance because I put everything I had into this film.

O: Let me be candid – MTV doesn’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to cutting edge film, though Election was fairly well received. Are you confident that they’ll have what it takes to get this film out in the way it should be?

J: I have faith in MTV. They were definitely one of the studios that was vying for the film that did not demand a re-cut or even discuss possibly changing the ending. If they’re taking up this film, they’re guaranteeing some investment in this film, I think the worst case scenario is still going to be very positive.

O: Were they at all concerned with how to market a film with an all-Asian American cast?

J: The first meeting we went into, they didn’t even talk about the Asian American demographics and that’s a compliment in itself. I was the one who brought it up – "look, there is a community that is starving for Asian American films" and they were ready to bid for this film without even considering.

O: Were all your potential backers as open?

J: You know, I met with Asian American investors and they’re telling me to change these characters to Caucasians. That definitely surprised me. That’s the struggle of being an Asian American. I can’t totally fault them – they were trying to be good business people and they have their own opinions but at the same, I wish they would have some more faith. That was one of most unpleasant experiences on this whole journey.

O: This film will probably hit the theatres towards the end of the year. Between now and then though, Better Luck Tomorrow will be screening for at least three different Asian American film festivals. You’re now in a position where you wouldn’t necessarily have to do that for publicity’s sake but I suspect the festival circuit is still very important to you.

J: We’re educating Hollywood – they don’t really know the existence of Asian American film festivals and I feel like it’s important that it play at festivals. If you neglect [them] it’s not right. Visual Communications was a big part in being able to help [the film] so I felt like it has to play in the community. The great thing is that we can do that and it can still cross over.

O: Speaking on that, it’s clearly been very difficult for most Asian American films to cross over with the exception of something like Joy Luck Club which Better Luck Tomorrow is clearly nothing alike. When you distributed Shopping For Fangs, it didn’t do as well as anyone would have wanted. Do you think things have changed enough now?

J: I did learn a lot from Shopping for Fangs about distribution. I don’t think things have gotten easier, but at the same time I think there’s been this growth in Asian American cinema. It’s also about the right match and helping the distributors learn that there might be a crossover. But the thing is, it’s up to us to do it. You don’t sit there and wait for the studios to figure it out – you got out there and do it. This is an issue that goes beyond the Asian American community, but I think it’s especially pertinent to the Asian American community.

O: What’s interesting about your film is that your characters are all Asian American, but they don’t spend the film being self-conscious about it in the way that most Asian American films seem forced to be. Shopping for Fangs was much the same way. Why haven’t there been more Asian American films like these where ethnic identity is NOT the sole focus?

J: It is so hard to actually get a film, to raise the money to make a film that a lot of times only certain films of Asian American content get the funding. I also think it’s a maturity with Asian Ameican cinema. I was talking to a filmmaker – he made one of the early Asian American films – and he literally thought they were going to go bankrupt, and if they were going to go do that, they were going to put as many messages as they could into that film. I can’t speak for [all Asian American filmmakers] but when you have the opportunity to speak, you’re eager to get that message across. We’re at a point now where we don’t need to do it because it’s already been very well done. It exists, people know about it. For us, I think it’s time to move on.

--O.W.

PROFILE: BETTER LUCK TOMORROW

Preface: I produced this piece for KQED's Pacific Time program back before Better Luck Tomorrow screened at the SFIAFF in 2002 but after the whole Sundance debacle. The piece includes interviews with director Justin Lin and actor Roger Fan.

THE PROFILE (originally aired on KQED's Pacific Time).

--O.W.