After having his directorial debut In the Family (2011) officially rejected from over 20 film festivals, actor-writer-director Patrick Wang decided to take on one more hat: self-distribution. Refusing to let festival programmers decide the fate of his penetrating and wholly original first feature, Wang is trusting that audiences and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth will give the film the legs its needs to traffic into the world. Not only is his determination admirable, but so is his film, which clocks in at year's end as one of the most mature and nuanced narratives this reviewer has seen in some time. Eschewing formula and stereotype, and comfortable with taking narrative and formal risks, Wang has delivered a heartfelt story woven around child custody, two Dads, parental loss, and the human side of the Law. The project is galvanized by strong performances from a competent ensemble and music by the legendary Chip Taylor, who has written such diverse hits as "Wild Thing" (The Troggs) and "Angel of the Morning" (Merilee Rush). Scheduled to open November 4 at New York's Quad Cinema, In the Family will continue through November 10. My fingers are crossed that audiences will recognize the film for the singular gem that it is and support a prolonged run. In the Family is the kind of film that creatively circumvents industrial machinations to restore faith in independent filmmaking.
Patrick Wang graduated from MIT with a degree in Economics and studied energy policy, game theory, and income inequality at the Federal Reserve Bank, the Harvard School for Public Health and other organizations. As a theater director, he has specialized in classical verse drama and new works (Surviving the Nian, Jonathan Larson Award). He has taught and directed productions at the Stella Adler Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse. As an actor, he has appeared in Jay Weisman's Surveillances (Panavision Prize), Saturday Night Live and One Life to Live. His decision to both act in and direct In the Family was—as he puts it—a "defensive" move: "I couldn't stand the things people were saying about the script. They wanted all the good stuff out and they wanted to bring in all the clichés I had managed to avoid. I decided to direct just to protect the movie."
My thanks to Patrick for his willingness to conduct an email interview regarding In the Family.
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Michael Guillén: In the Family is poised to screen at the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village this coming Friday, how was that stroke of self-distribution arranged? What is your distribution strategy? How have you publicized the event? And what kind of outreach have you effected?
Patrick Wang: Yes, we are self-distributing the movie. If we do well with critics and audiences, we can hold over for additional weeks and book additional cities. The strategy is simple: focus on one city—home for our cast and crew—and let audiences see the movie. Distributors are afraid of not being able to predict how audiences will respond to this movie. That fear will not go away until we show them just how much audiences are capable of. The Quad is an excellent partner. They have a publicist who is helping us with notices and placing a few ads. We've reached out to groups who may have interest in the civil rights and racial issues you find in the movie. But in the end this is a very personal, human movie, and I think its success will come through very personal, human means of recommendation. Friends talking to cousins talking to fathers. I don't understand much about buzz, but I know conversation. And from our first screenings in Hawaii and San Diego, I absolutely love the intimate, meaningful conversations that emerge after people see this movie.
Guillén: You mentioned in our first conversation that In the Family has been officially rejected by nearly 20 film festivals. Surely this is not a comment about the value of the film's narrative content as much as it is about the film's running time and the difficulty programmers experience scheduling films into limited time blocks and venues, which begs the obvious question: why a first film that's nearly three hours in length? Did you consider this crucial to the nuanced maturation of your characterizations and themes? Do you have any regrets about that now? And is this why you are circumventing the festival circuit to have a theatrical run? Do you have concerns that a theatrical run will be one more argument against inclusion in festivals?
Wang: I thought I was making a two-hour film. As we were shooting, it became obvious that the timing and the rhythm of certain scenes were coming out differently than I imagined. Instead of just imposing the shape I was expecting on the scene, I tried to figure out why this was happening. I watched and watched the footage, and then I realized that these wonderfully thoughtful actors were giving me a very honest pacing. Words, expressions, actions all have to be bridged with an individual's thoughts, and they were being honest to that thought progression, which isn't always linear and full of momentum. But it was right. They got it right, and it was a privilege to capture it on film. It takes longer, but it is what makes the scenes and characters captivating. With this movie, I set out to make something meaningful and to do it honestly. Only those goals. I have done that, and so I have no regrets. As far as festivals go, for the most part, I cannot understand what they choose to include, and I cannot understand what they choose to exclude; but, I can understand my film opening November 4. So I'm going to go with that.
Guillén: Now that you have finished your first film, what can you say to first-time filmmakers to embrace or avoid?
Wang: I would say: be curious; do not be afraid of what you do not know; find collaborators who understand that ignorance can be a creative asset; let your confidence come from the enormous amounts of work and thought you've expended and not from your title. And love your actors.
Guillén: Sticky distribution issues aside, let's approach the title of your film. In the Family suggests some secret that is being contained; i.e., keeping something within the family. What do you think that secret is? How did you arrive at this title?
Wang: I like how three little words can be so evocative and yet be a little unclear and incomplete. I like how it is sort of a mishmash of phrases used to refer to the gay community: "family," "in the life." It's also a part of larger phrases like "keeping it in the family," "running in the family"; these feel a little exclusive and protective. So I liked this mix of inclusive, exclusive feelings I get from the title. I don't remember how I thought of it, I just know what I liked about it and why I kept it. And I get the sense of a secret too. I don't know what it is, but I think the instinct to keep it and exclude others from it is interesting.
Guillén: I'm intrigued when actors take the director's chair. That in itself is enough of a challenge but to then direct oneself as well seems daunting. How did you negotiate these double duties?
Wang: The most important tool I had in negotiating these double duties was time. I had almost nine months of pre-production. Before rehearsing with other actors, I essentially rehearsed with myself for five months. My style as a director and an actor is that 90% of my work is building up a foundation and instincts prior to photography, and only the last 10% of the work—which can be the most explosive and thrilling—is done during photography. So it's not as daunting as it may seem. And there are advantages too. In a film like this, if I were not acting, most of my energy and time on set would be spent communicating with the lead actor. So being both in one person saves a lot of time and energy. Also, you get this wonderful tool as a director / actor, which is you can direct the other actors from within the scene. You stay within your character, but if you need something different, if you want to change the rhythm, you can influence the scene right away. You don't need to wait until the next take.
Wang: I had never worked with Frank before, but we also had the benefit of five months of pre-production. We could take our time. We spent a month going through the script without talking any visuals. We talked about what we felt in scenes, the characters, what was happening and why. Slowly we started talking visuals, and slowly a design philosophy started to emerge. I didn't know what to call it, because it was new to both of us, but we had time to make it up and develop it and develop instincts for it. So by the time we were on set, we could make consistent decisions quickly and with confidence. We understood each other very well, our shorthand was really short, and we could be absolutely honest with each other when assessing the challenges in front of us. Our personalities fit. And he was ready to run with me in whatever unusual direction I was headed. Who cares that he had all the experience? It was just an ideal collaboration.
Guillén: As writer, director and actor, one could argue you're a one-man band; however, you have assembled an outstanding ensemble of actors and woven your performance fairly into theirs. How did you go about casting? Did you have certain actors in mind when you wrote your script? How did you level the playing field between performances, all of which have come off so natural and at commensurate intensity?
Wang: I think this cast is astounding. I didn't write with anyone in mind. I only knew two members of the cast beforehand: Brian Murray, who did a play with a friend of mine, and Park Overall—I had never met her, but I knew her work. Everyone else was introduced to me by our wonderful casting team: Cindi Rush and Michele Weiss. They took the time to understand my tastes and knew that I was not concerned about the superficial elements of character, and so they brought in a terrific range of actors for each role. We were also fortunate that some agents and managers really championed the project.
Independent films seem to be less interested these days in scripted naturalism, but I think that's how you see how great the great actors are. Our cast had different backgrounds but the same set of values when it came to acting. I tried to provide ideas and freedom, they provided care and thought. We rehearsed. And with such a sensitive bunch, we found ourselves all in the same movie in no time.
Guillén: Was the naturalism in performance achieved through improvisation? Especially with your young actor Sebastian Banes (who plays Chip), it seemed the actors worked off him, around him. How did you work with such a young actor? How scripted were these scenes?
Wang: In the whole movie, there's probably fewer than a dozen improvised lines total, most of them inconsequential. The script was set before casting, and we shot a white script. Sebastian does have a few improvised lines, but they are usually only one or two lines at the end of a couple of scenes. I would keep going, and he would keep going, and I ended up loving it, so I kept it. But everything else, it's the result of a really sharp kid who knows his lines and knows how to act with the best of them. He's precocious and sensitive and has real emotional imagination. The playfulness and surprise of improv was always there, but the lines were set.
Guillén: One of the things I most appreciated in your film was the avoidance of melodramatic sentiment to effect the narrative. I noted that your character Joey never cries. Can you speak to the emotional core off which you formed Joey's character?
Wang: One of the challenges I really enjoyed with this movie was to be emotional without being sentimental. One tool for avoiding melodrama is to simply avoid the melo- part of it. No score. The other part of it is to withhold. Instead of showing the emotion directly, show it indirectly, like reflected through another character. And what's interesting is that Joey does cry at one point in the movie, but it's in a wide shot and you have to really look to see it.
As far as playing Joey, he is an earnest character and I love earnest characters. Pericles is one of my favorite characters in theater. Thomas Stockmann. They are rare, but they are a real privilege to get to play. I also thought about my father as I played Joey. What Joey goes through when navigating the legal system is a little of what I imagine it must have been like for my father as an immigrant. Joey is cut off from his family—he's in completely unfamiliar, foreign territory—but like an immigrant, he gets by on a mixture of hard work, luck, and the generosity of strangers.
Guillén: You seem to have a tangible sense of working against stereotype. Case in point would be an Asian American speaking in a Southern accent. Not having the opportunity to speak with you directly, I'm not sure if you actually have a Southern accent or if this is yet more proof of your acting chops? What was the importance of setting this story in the South rather than, let's say, California, which is perhaps the location one might expect?
Wang: I don't have a Southern accent, but I grew up in Texas. I have great affection for the South. I think there are certain groups that don't get very sophisticated or diverse screen treatment: gays, Southerners, Asian Americans, lawyers, wealthy people. So I wanted to contribute to that range and depth. Also, I didn't want the audience to too easily identify with the characters and situations at the beginning of the movie. I wanted some element to be foreign and maybe uncomfortable.
Guillén: Another stereotype you've effectively resisted is that of the oversexualized gay male. You've created such grounded characters who have distinct priorities above and beyond sexual concerns. Where did the inspiration come for these authentic personalities? And how do you feel audiences will negotiate that authenticity, which proves difficult? It's easier, of course, to satisfy an appetite for the superficial and the stereotypical than it is to accept authentic characters with conflicted and confused feelings.
Wang: I had this mental picture of this family that I did not recognize or understand. And so I just started wondering about them, and—bit by bit—aspects of their personality and their history started to stick. As I focused on the episodes in their life that were the most interesting to me, they happened not to involve sex. But I know what you mean, certain people will feel confused or cheated seeing a movie in 2011 with two gay male leads and no sexually driven scenes. Still, I think there are others who are regular watchers of the standard fare who will be relieved to see something different and who will be delighted to see whole people and a genuine romance unfold on screen. I am.
Guillén: How do you conceive your relationship with your imagined audience?
Wang: The audience I make a movie for I imagine to be no greater, no less than me.
Guillén: How pivotal was the presence of the boy in determining the unforeseen attraction between Joey and Cody? The fact that their attraction to each other was as much a surprise to the two of them as to anyone else harkens to an authenticity rarely explored with such nuance.
Wang: You ask a very interesting question in how pivotal Chip was in determining the attraction between Joey and Cody. I'm not sure I know the whole answer; but, I think part of the answer is that the boy brings out a tenderness in each of the men, and witnessing that tenderness adds to the attraction between Cody and Joey.
Guillén: Speak to me about some of your actors. Not only is Trevor St. John attractive for being so handsome, but his volatility, his vulnerability, registered like flint sparks. The anger smoldering beneath his grief made him presumptuous and a bit arrogant but I liked that he wasn't a pure angel. Cody's darkness and the fact that he was somewhat unfair to Joey in the beginning made him more human, and succeeded in generating compassion towards him for coming to terms with his grief and, subsequently, his tragic and untimely demise.
Wang: Trevor is just a stunning actor. He understands the anything-goes aspect of personality, that you can find any combination of things in a single person. And he has the range and dexterity to give you many of these elements at once. In addition, he works so hard, and he cares about his work. It's a privilege to watch him do this thing. Sometimes he's a moron and I have to set him straight, but mostly he's brilliant.
Guillén: Kelly McAndrew as Cody's sister Eileen and Peter Hermann as Cody's brother-in-law Dave likewise struck me as amazingly genuine characters, right down to their conflicted confusion and their struggle to compromise.
Wang: Kelly was just a pro. She has more tools than any actor has a right to have and she defended her character and portrayed Eileen's struggles so fairly. It makes the movie. Peter was such a surprise in auditions. His performance was not how I imagined the character looking and sounding, but—in his interpretation of Dave—Peter deepened the character with more facets to Dave's personality than I had given him credit for. I love actors that surprise me.
Guillén: Brian Murray as retired attorney Paul Hawks was outstanding for being so central to the film's narrative traction going where it had to go. His compassion was inspiring, salient and warmly avuncular.
Wang: Brian Murray is a marvelous actor and an even greater human being. We were freezing when we shot that library scene, but there was a different kind of warmth in that room that I will never forget.
Guillén: As accomplished as these actors are, I am admittedly unfamiliar with most of them. Where have they come from? In the Family is without question an actors' showcase. How important was it for you, as an actor yourself, to achieve this? As an actor, what's it like directing other actors?
Wang: These actors come from everywhere: theater, TV, soaps, left field. Wonderful actors are everything to me. And each actor is different. They need different things to feel comfortable, to bring out their most creative work. Help them. Study them and help them, that's how I view my job as director.
Guillén: What are your hopes for this film? What is it you hope its narrative themes will advance?
Wang: It's easier to answer this question now that the film has screened. The audiences have reminded me why I made the film. I want people to feel something beyond the catalog of the five basic movie emotions. I want us to think about loss, family, unintentional hurt, the distance between people, the things we don't talk about, how we misjudge people. This movie is an exercise in sympathies, and I hope it can make us a little more attuned to the hurt and opportunities in our lives.
Guillén: Finally, tell me a bit about your own performance background and what led you to this creative juncture where you secured such control over a project?
Wang: I came to performance when I was about 20. Shortly after, I started a theater company in Boston where I learned how to direct and design. Theater was my great teacher and I have some very modest credits in television and film. I came to this project very much as a film outsider but—I like to think—pretty well versed in its fundamental elements: literature, performance, and photography.
I thought I was stepping away from the arts a few years ago, but this project brought me back. My father was dying and it was a wake-up call that you can't wait around to start living. You never know how much time you have. I was the single investor in this film. My life savings went into the movie, and I'm prepared to make zero income. When I tell people that, they think I mean breaking even, but no, I am prepared to make zero income. I think that's the mentality you have to have going into a project like this, otherwise you start to protect whatever little piece of the pie you've imagined for yourself and fear drives your decisions. I don't know if I'll ever make another movie but I'm going to make this one and I'm going to make it right, with no regrets. Wherever I am in life, I want it to be something I can point to and say, I did that. I did it honestly with people I love and I am so proud.
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Of related interest: Scott Eriksson's interview with Wang for Asians On Film and Richard Kuipers' rave review for Variety.
Of the five documentaries I previewed on DVD screener for this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), my favorite is one doc-purists might disavow. Indeed, when Variety reviewed Uruphong Raksasad's Agrarian Utopia last year they tagged it a narrative feature, while SFIAAFF is showing it under their Documentary Showcase banner. Whatever. Lyrical, advocative and exquisitely shot, this portrait of rice farmers in Northern Thailand shouldn't be missed.
Scenes of rice planting and harvesting are blended with activities like beehive foraging, mushroom cultivation and snake hunting—extracurricular necessities for these farmers who are essentially hired laborers drowning in debt. Raksasad, who is originally from this area, acts as his own cinematographer and what he captures is unforgettable—men hand-threshing rice stalks by the light of a kerosene lamp, time-lapsed electrical storms zooming over verdant paddies, the horseplay of children, the daunting task of training a water buffalo. His "characters" appear unconscious of the camera's presence, making us privy to intimate conversations that frequently revolve around fiscal struggles (and which frequently take place during the acts of cooking and eating). The film is bookended with political rallies that place the farmers' plight in the context of recent upheavals in Thai society. If I have one quibble with Raksasad's film, it's that women's voices are largely absent.
Two other worthwhile SFIAAFF docs fit a more traditional mold, and both concern a Japanese American male with life-changing ties to the U.S. military. Eight years in the army qualified Richard Aoki to become Field Marshall (and an early arms supplier) for the Black Panther Party. Who would have guessed that the iconic marching, drilling and chanting of the Panthers was orchestrated by a self-described "baddest Oriental to come out of West Oakland."
Directors Mike Cheng and Ben Wang filmed Aoki for the last five years of his life and spin a captivating narrative with archival materials, interviews and speeches. Born in San Leandro in 1938, Aoki spent part of his childhood in Topaz Relocation Camp, after which his family moved to Oakland. Following his army stint, he enrolled in Merritt College where he met Panther founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale (the latter appears extensively in this film, along with Panthers communications secretary Kathleen Cleaver). In addition to the Panthers, Aoki was involved in the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and more notoriously, the Third World Liberation Front, which instigated the largest student strike in U.C. Berkeley history. He would end up spending most of his life in academia, while remaining a staunch and greatly admired activist. Curiously, the film makes little mention of Aoki's life outside his activism.
In 2006, Lt. Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer in the U.S. military to refuse deployment to Iraq. In her incredibly moving new film Lt. Watada, Oscar®-winning director Freida Lee Mock (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision) looks at this brave, thoughtful young man and the journey his refusal to be "part of something deeply illegal and immoral" took him on. After graduating magna cum laude with a business degree in 2003, this non-pacifist Eagle Scout, mindful of 9/11, joined the army with a desire to protect his country. In 2006, however, after having researched our reasons for invading Iraq, he decided that deployment there would be a violation of his military oath. Watada offered to resign and twice offered to fight in Afghanistan. The army refused. They offered him a cushy, non-combative job in Iraq, which Watada refused. Mock's film expertly lays out what happened next, detailing three years of court martial limbo during which time Watada continued to speak out and dig his hole deeper. Lt. Watada is part of a SFIAAFF spotlight on Frieda Lee Mock, and after the festival's only screening of the film on March 14, the director will take part in an on-stage interview.
Another SFIAAFF documentary by an Oscar®-winning filmmaker is the North American Premiere of A Moment in Time by Ruby Yang (The Blood of Yingzhao District). Her film looks at the phenomenon of American Chinatown movie theaters—particularly here in San Francisco—and the role those theaters and the films they screened played in the Chinese community. From melodramas that made Chinatown matrons weep, to the kung-fu pics which established new models of Asian masculinity (and whose themes of loyalty and revenge carried over into Chinatown gang life), these films served as a link to the homeland and were a reflection of community not found in Hollywood films.
San Francisco's Chinatown has had as many as five theaters operating simultaneously and A Moment in Time profiles several, including the Grandview (which had its own film studio) and the Great Star (which if memory serves, is where I saw my first Jackie Chan flick, Operation Condor 2: The Armour of the Gods.) At times this doc overreaches by attempting to provide an entire history of Chinese cinema and consequently loses focus. There are also some strange digressions, like the young woman who praises her current boyfriend for the soy and oyster sauces in his cupboard, while bemoaning the ex who had ketchup and baked beans in his. But overall, it's a satisfying look at a bygone era. By 2000 there wasn't a single remaining Chinatown theater anywhere in the U.S. A Moment in Time will screen with Eric Lin's short, Music Palace, which looks at New York City's final Chinatown movie theater.
Sports documentaries are about as far outside my interest zone as you can get, but I checked out Brigitte Weich's Hana, dul, sed… for that rare glimpse of life in North Korea. The film's first half traces the ascendancy of its women's soccer team—culminating in a 2003 Asia Cup win—with profiles of four players and lots and lots of requisite training and game footage. (They get revved-up for a U.S. match by visiting the country's Anti-American Museum). After losing a 2004 Olympics qualifying match to Japan, all four women are forced into retirement. That's when the film gets interesting, as we watch them deal with life as ex-sports stars. While hardly a portrayal of "average" North Koreans (they get to keep their nice state-given Pyongyang apartments and get extra food rations as "Players of the People"), we get to know them and experience the world from their POV: the wide boulevards devoid of auto traffic, the palatial subway stations, a beauty parlor visit, an outing to the National Zoo with its caged dogs and kitty cats, couples rowboating on the Taedong River and a bounty of Socialist Realist poster art (most of it helpfully translated). This film is definitely worth a look.
Continuing with my survey of the diasporic dimension of San Franciscan film festival culture, Chi-hui Yang—Festival Director for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAF)—invited me to the offices of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) to discuss the Center's mission objectives and the Festival's ongoing relationship with Bay Area Asian and Asian American communities. Chi-hui is a graduate of Stanford University and the founder of the Stanford Asian American Performing Arts Series. He has written about culture, music and film for Spin, Giant Robot, and other magazines and on-line outlets and has curated film programs that have been screened at venues and festivals nationwide, including the Seattle International Film Festival and Minneapolis' Sound Unseen Festival.
The San Francisco-based Center for Asian American Media was founded in 1980. Formerly known as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA), CAAM has grown into the largest organization dedicated to the advancement of Asian Americans in independent media, specifically in the areas of television and filmmaking. In 1986, CAAM took over planning, programming and management of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Since then, SFIAAFF has become the largest festival of its kind in North America.
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Michael Guillén: Chi-hui, what prompted CAAM's decision to create the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival?
Chi-hui Yang: When NAATA was founded in 1980, its main purpose was to present works on public television. Then we added the film festival, then our Media Fund which funds documentaries, and then our educational department. Most recently we've added a digitial media department.
The public television work had a national focus. CAAM is one of the five minority consortia funded by the U.S. government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The funding for the entire organization is relying upon commercial appropriations. The money that we get is the same money that ITVS and PBS gets, committed towards building public media.
Guillén: So, in contrast to several of the other film festivals in the Bay Area, you're receiving funding on the Federal level?
Yang: For the organization. The Festival's resources come from a different pool of money, primarily from earned revenue, corporate sponsorship and foundation grants, which is the same as every other festival. The Federal money that comes into CAAM funds our public television and our film funding efforts.
Guillén: What was the perceived need to develop a film festival?
Yang: At that point in the late '70s, early '80s, there was a loose confederation of Asian American filmmakers. There had been a lot of movement in the early '70s in Los Angeles and New York with community-activist filmmaking happening through Visual Communications in Los Angeles and Asian Cinevision in New York; but, those were very much regional. All those groups and more came together for a convening in Berkeley in 1980 to found a new organization which would try to fulfill the promise of public television, or hold public television to what it promised to do: i.e., offer diverse programming for the entire nation that reflected the composition of the country. At that point there was very little Asian American programming on public television. It was still primarily imported British programming. That calculation was strategic in that—with regard to interest in terms of sheer audience reach—nothing can really compete with a public television broadcast. It couldn't then and even still you can reach millions of viewers through one broadcast, which is the large impact the founders thought they could have. That's the reason why the organization was started: to take advantage of American public television to reach modern audiences with Asian American content.
The festival component came after that when the organization decided that it wanted a local component that built community and interaction in the Bay Area as opposed to just a national broadcast that was beamed into homes but didn't actually bring people together.
Guillén: In determining the content that you wanted to show at the festival, what were you looking for? Was it specifically Asian American representation?
Yang: Yes.
Guillén: Yet, you also profile Asian film?
Yang: Our interest is to look at the continuum that happens between Asian American and the diaspora from Asia, to really see what the connections are because in a lot of ways the original impulse was to offer more diverse views of Asian people with a focus on Asian American filmmakers. There's an interesting tension that happens between Asian American and Asian programming in that—politically, in the U.S.—Asian and Asian American often are conflated to be the same thing. They might presume someone from Japan is the same as a Japanese American, even though they couldn't be more different. With cinema there's a strong tension to disassociate Asian from Asian American as a political statement; but, then there's so many interesting cultural, linguistic, and different types of artistic linkages between Asians and Asian Americans that flow back and forth. Part of our interest is to address that tension and look at what it produces. Also to look at what Asian filmmakers in other parts of the Diaspora are creating to reflect upon the cinema from the U.S. Increasingly, you have Asian American filmmakers who are working not in the U.S. but somewhere else. For example, you might have an American indie that is being shot in a non-English language. Those ideas are starting to blur a bit but are the ideas that we're interested in exploring.
Guillén: By giving Asian American filmmakers the opportunity to strengthen themselves, has that cross-pollinated Asian cinema? Is the tension you're referencing a collaborative tension?
Yang: I think it definitely is and the areas where we see it the most are actually where there are the most Asian Americans returning into Asia to make films. A good case study is Vietnam. There's a strong Vietnamese American film movement happening now. There's a number of filmmakers, including people like Ham Tran who made Journey From the Fall (2006), Stephane Gauger who made Owl and the Sparrow (2007), and others who were raised in the U.S., went to film school in the U.S., grew up within the domestic scene here, and returned to Vietnam to reinvigorate Vietnamese cinema. Vietnam is an interesting example, as is Taiwan where Taiwanese Americans are making investments in Taiwanese films. A different model is Korea where a lot of Korean Americans are finding work in Korea. It's not so much about Korean American filmmakers going back to Korea and changing the film scene there, but more that the Korean film industry has seen a route to finding a market in the U.S. to make money for Korean films; their vehicle being Korean Americans. So there's a number of different interactions happening, some based upon personal dynamics, others more on the global film industry processes.
Guillén: Which addresses the question: do Asian American film festivals provide a distribution/exhibition channel by which Asian films can reach diasporic audiences situated in the U.S.? When you're programming content for your festival, how much are you aware that your audience is more than just Asian American? Especially here in San Francisco where the last census revealed that more than one third of the city's population is of Asian descent?
Yang: Our audience demographics tell us that about 60% of our audiences are Asian and the other 40% is a mix of other communities. Our audience is broad. The films that we show are a mix of English language and a lot of other languages too. The audiences that we have are primarily second-generation. As a rough estimate, one fourth of our audience is first-generation where their first language is a foreign language. That dynamic is interesting because a lot of the films that we show are more independent or artistic in nature. We don't show a lot of commercial films. We found that a lot of first-generation immigrants don't gravitate as much to independent films as to commercial films. There's an interesting barrier there that we are trying to address. At the same time, when we show films like Mother India (1957) or other important classic films for certain communities, we see those folks come out. There were certainly a lot of people from the Indian diasporic community who came out to watch that film.
Guillén: Would you say that—by placing a revival screening within your program—you broaden your constituency?
Yang: Absolutely. What's interesting about this idea of what "Asian American" is, it's a term that some people embrace while other people don't quite know how they fit within it. Certainly, within second-generation Asian people living in the U.S., they are the group that embraces that identity more, which is essentially the identity of the festival. At the same time a lot of the offerings that we present are just as interesting to either first-generation immigrants or other groups which haven't historically identified as Asian American but whom we see as part of that.
About 10 years ago we did a big focus on cinema of the South Asian diaspora. At that point we noted that our audience stats for the South Asian community were fairly low and—from talking to people in research—we understood that a lot of folks didn't identify solely as Asian American; they were more South Asian. So that was our effort to bring in and build connections with that community. That program worked well and was about the time that we started working with 3rd i to build in-roads into that community. In this coming year, 2010, we will have a focus on the Filipino American community. In the Bay Area, after the Chinese community, the Filipino American community is the second largest. It's quite big. For that community, there are a lot of ties to homeland, a lot of movement back and forth, both culturally and linguistically, and in terms of travel. There are a lot of first-generation Filipino immigrants in the Bay Area and so that's another community that we want to build connections with and bring into the festival.
Guillén: Is your demographic data from the last census, now 10 years out of date?
Yang: Yes. But we also do a lot of data gathering at the festival so we have a sense of who's coming matched up against the last census information for the city. Also, we acquire information anecdotally, just from being in the community and understanding where those communities are at. The place we've actually found the most interesting demographic data is with advertising agencies who work with us closely. Their intent is to move into the Asian American market and our festival is actually the largest Asian American arts event in the nation. We offer them a great laboratory and an in-road into the Asian American community in the Bay Area. Those advertising agencies actually have the most up-to-date information because they've done a lot of their own in-market research.
Guillén: Having attended SFIAAF for about 10 years now, I've noted that your festival's audiences stand out as some of the most fun, ebullient and engaged audiences of any film festival in the Bay Area. Clearly, as you've been indicating, you have built this audience through community outreach. Do you have a specific community outreach position within your festival staff?
Yang: Yes.
Guillén: So when you're bringing in Asian American content to your festival, its audience is presumed; but, when you're bringing in Asian content, such as Vietnamese or Filipino, as you've mentioned, how do you shape your audience? How do you reach your first-generation, second-generation Asian audiences? What efforts does your community outreach perform specifically?
Yang: There are a number of different key ways that we do that. We work with ethnic press first. We also connect with community social service and cultural organizations, and we work through them to reach communities who often need to be communicated to in their first language. By example, we create a lot of in-language publications and flyers to the Vietnamese and Korean communities.
During the festival, we usually partner with 80-100 community-based organizations. Our marketing, promotion and community outreach strategies exist both on broad-based publicist PR to mainstream publications, all the way to going to grass roots organizations, going to community events, and working through their lists. We have found that these organizations want to be a part of CAAM and the festival. In a way it's a win-win because it allows them to have exposure at the festival and helps them reinforce their relationships with their communities.
Guillén: How do you fit your community organizations to a specific film? I imagine you have a rolodex of opportunity; but, how do you know which organization to approach to co-present?
Yang: Our approach is to go as specific as we can. For example, we often show films about adoption, and if we show a film about Vietnamese adoption, we'll zero in on the handful of organizations that deal with that and invite them to participate in the festival. We'll send them information about the film and make sure it agrees with their politics, as a lot of these social issues are quite contentious within the community.
Guillén: How about consular assistance?
Yang: Consulate help is usually for resources and hospitality; bringing in filmmakers. For example, we had Kiyoshi Kurosawa this last year and the Japanese Consulate hosted a reception for him and helped with travel support.
Guillén: How much is your festival supported by regional collaborations with sister organizations on the West Coast? Do you pool resources to coordinate the visit, let's say, of high-profile talent to the West Coast?
Yang: Not so much. We're good friends with the Los Angeles festival; but, because of the time gap between our festivals—they're a month and a half after SFIAFF—it's harder to coordinate that way. The main way that we coordinate is that every year at the festival we have a convening of all the Asian American film festival organizers in the country. We usually have about 15-17 cities represented, about 40 people, who all come to our festival because it is strategically the first Asian American festival of the year and the largest. A lot of them come to our festival to look for films to lock into their programs. So we have an afternoon meeting to discuss common challenges, collaborations, the state of the field, and how we can help each other out.
Guillén: With the documented proliferation of film festivals world-wide, there is some concern that there is more competition than collaboration among festivals. As most of them are organized on a similar non-profit model, competition for both economic and demographic resources has become a pressing concern. Though that might be generally true, I seek to suggest that in the Bay Area—with its incredibly high incidence of film festivals—there is a strong collaborative ethic between our community-based film festivals, who often co-present for each other, weaving their audiences into each other. Do you find this to be true?
Yang: Yes, film festival work in San Francisco is much different than other cities where they are more competitive for audiences and films. While we do compete for audiences and films in San Francisco, we have found that we have gained more by cross-pollinating audiences. One study that hasn't been done and would prove interesting is how much overlap there is between audiences from Frameline, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, and 3rd i, to determine what the percentage is of people who attend all these festivals or just a few of them. We don't really know; but, what we do know is that we're all working with a similar group of people that we're trying to engage with film. We've found that if we collaborate or even just communicate programmatically—What are they going after? What are we going after?—it helps save a lot of time and effort. If we co-present, then we get our festival in front of their viewers and give a benefit to our membership too, in terms of letting them know about something that's exciting. A lot of times, a film that we might co-present at another festival is a film that we might have wanted to show but couldn't show because it's showing up at another festival, but which we continue to want to support.
Guillén: CAAM and SFIAAF are ahead of many of the other community-based film festivals for having an active arm of distribution/exhibition, specifically through your public broadcasting. What is the protocol, if any, of determining which films that have played at your festival become eligible for further exposure through public broadcast?
Yang: We look at the organization as, in a way, a full-service organization for filmmakers. There's a particular type of film that might make its way through all strands of the organization. Starting with our funding department, we fund primarily non-fiction films for public television broadcast; for example, a film like Hollywood Chinese (2007) by Arthur Dong or Daughter From Danang (2002) by Gail Dolgin. Often when the films we've funded for public television are finished, we will show them at the festival and then present them on public television, and then follow up with the educational distribution to colleges and universities. Every year there are a handful of films that go through all those phases. Then again, there are a lot of films that don't. For example, we did everything with Hollywood Chinese except the educational outreach; Arthur Dong did that on his own.
Though ordinarily it is the non-fiction films that make their way through these stages, this year we produced Fruit Fly (2009) by H.P. Mendoza. We funded it, produced it, showed it at the festival, and the next step would be whether we get it onto public television or educational distribution, which we're still working out to see if its appropriate for either of those channels.
Guillén: And this opportunity for "full-service", as you say, is specifically for Asian American filmmakers?
Yang: It is, though we have a fairly expanded idea of that. For example, a recent film we funded was City of Borders (2009), a documentary about a gay and lesbian bar in Israel. It's about Palestinian-Jewish communities there. Under the broadest possible definition, you could conceive of that documentary as being Asian American—by way of the Palestinian story, which caters to a very broad definition of Asian—but, moreso, we're supporting a talented Korean American filmmaker Yun Suh who had this important film to make.
Guillén: So you're saying that it's not that the content of the film must be specifically Asian American? That the director is Asian American qualifies its inclusion?
Yang: Our interest is in supporting our audiences and filmmakers. A lot of times those interests will coincide where—though we know our audiences want to see Asian American stories and we also want to support the work of filmmakers—a film may have Asian American content and be made by an Asian American filmmaker; but, there are other permutations.
Guillén: How does SFIAAF address the value added of the spectacular dimension of film festival culture?
Yang: We realize we need a good balance between our offerings. Programmatically, our inclination is to go towards smaller, more director-driven projects, because those are the films that have the least support and which audiences would have the least chance seeing. At the same time, knowing our audiences are diverse with a broad range of interests, we do want to balance with some commercial films, namely blockbusters from Asia. Unfortunately, there are no Asian American blockbusters, though—when they happen to come along—we will show the Harold and Kumar movies or films like that, which have a broader recognition. Above all, we want our audiences to have a good time and in a lot of ways the festival is—speaking of the spectacular—as much a community gathering point as it is a festival. Some people come for the films but just as many, or more, come to be a part of something, which they can't find anywhere else. For that reason, we want to enhance that experience by—not just having films—but providing outdoor screenings, concerts, parties, multiple social events where that kind of community gathering happens. That way we can also take a look at Asian and Asian American artists who are working in different mediums than film to explore what the connections might be in Asian American culture between, let's say, music and film. There are a lot of overlaps.
Guillén: You usually include at least one open air free-to-the-public screening at the festival?
Yang: We usually do two a year. We'll stage one in the summer—which we did last week with Kamikaze Girls (2006)—and then we'll stage one during the festival.
Guillén: I see community building as the participatory and celebratory aspect—the "festive" part—of a film festival. You're saying SFIAFF is committed to that?
Yang: Yeah, absolutely. But it's not just fun-for-fun's-sake either. There's a real social value to creating a space within the festival that allows ideas, creativities and connections to be made. Normally at a film festival, those connections you see are often more business-driven or industry-driven; but, here at SFIAFF, it really is more community-based. You see a lot of film projects or collaborations that might emerge out of a casual conversation. Or we have those 80-100 community organizations involved who become part of the mix and other ideas are born from there too. So the festival is a real gathering point for the community and also for people who are outside the Asian American community to see what else is happening.
Guillén: Absolutely. I have to commend that embrace. As a Chicano, I took great pride when your former cohort Taro Goto invited me to contribute a capsule to SFIAFF because it was an open invitation into your community. By contrast, the International Latino Film Festival never once invited me to write a capsule, and barely acknowledged me as press.
Yang: In a lot of ways it's born out of this idea that the Asian American community is so diverse that it's almost contradictory. It's impossible to sum up. Linguistically and culturally it is vast and growing. Out of that, there has to be this acknowledgment of multiplicity. It's inherent within the Asian American experience.
Guillén: I would say that acknowledgment of multiplicity leans into the future, moreso than adherence to identity politics. Local artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña has deeply influenced me with regard to looking past identity politics to explore questions of allegiance in the future: what do you have when a Salvadorian boy and a Korean girl fall in love, marry, and have a child? To what community will that child identify?
Which leads me to ask, is there a point at which your festival will not be necessary? Is there a point where your community, your audience, will be so woven into the multiplicity of the general populace that it will no longer be necessary to specifically address and express the Asian American experience? Or, alternately, with international film festivals broadening their European predilections to include cinema from Asia and the Global South, will a specific venue for such cinemas still be necessary?
Yang: Well, I look at it in two ways. One is through the lens of a specific ethnic original community. The second is in terms of independent media. I think there will always be a need for venues to show independent media, which is primarily what we focus on. In terms of the Asian American focus, sure, there is more integration and assimilation; but, in terms of representation in mainstream media, it actually hasn't progressed very much. In a lot of ways that goes back to why our audiences are so enthusiastic. If you look at, say, other more identity-based film festivals in the Bay Area or across the country—gay and lesbian, Latino, Jewish—they all have more mainstream media representation than Asian Americans.
Guillén: Why is that? I've spoken with Eric Byler about this. He complains about how Hollywood will fly in talent from China or Japan to star in some blockbuster before they think of casting an Asian American actor. Do you have a sense of why that is?
Yang: It's a complicated dynamic. There are marketing researchers saying that American audiences are more comfortable with an Asian foreigner than an Asian American. It's bizarre; but, people are familiar and accustomed to what they have already seen. They want to see more of what they have seen. What they have seen on television or at the movies is that foreigner. That's the dominating image you see of Asians. So when you see an Asian who's an American, it confuses people a little and—when you confuse people—that doesn't make you money. That's one of the overriding dynamics which controls this. Because, certainly, there's no lack of talent.
Guillén: When I think of mainstream Asian cinema, I think of genre. When I think of genre, I think of audience appeal. Does independent Asian American cinema concern itself with genre?
Yang: I would say independent Asian American cinema is a response to genre, to that pigeonholing. Most Asian American filmmakers aren't interested in that, or—if they are—they're doing it in an ironic way to escape the pigeonholing. What's interesting is that there is this idea of the qualifier. You're watching a film and it's crazy, or it's a new action film, right? It's the same thing as the debate over having or not having a hyphen for "Asian American". The hyphen is a qualification. There's a qualifier that has to happen for people to watch certain things that have an Asian American or an Asian in it. Without that qualifier, it's not that interesting—it's a domestic drama; it's a romantic comedy—but, it's not an absurd, spectacular crazy film that would qualify you to see it, even if it has a non-White cast.
Guillén: Do you think Asian American cinema has any influence on Asian cinema, by way of style, themes?
Yang: I don't think there's a whole lot of that. I think Asian filmmakers are probably looking to some of the big American auteurs. Certainly, I think they might look to people like Ang Lee, M. Night Shyamalan, or Mira Nair, who are well-established filmmakers; but, not so much to independent filmmakers.
Guillén: Shifting to the festival's interaction with press, do you tier press?
Yang: No. But I have encountered that at Cannes.
Guillén: Cannes is the mother of all press tiering, which adheres strictly to their spectacular dimension. I understand what's going on there. You could be Manohla Dargis and have trouble getting into a film.
Yang: I can also understand the administrative, logistical and business aspects of press tiering. If your festival is big enough that you have hundreds and hundreds of members of the press attending, then you need to figure out how to accommodate their various needs. You would probably have to figure out some kind of tiered press system because you wouldn't be able to accommodate all their needs. You'd have 100 interview requests for a single director, which you can't accommodate, so you have to figure that out. That's the only reason I can think of. But, no, we don't tier press. I don't see any reason to. It also has to do with a philosophical approach towards marketing, outreach and publicity. What do you value? We certainly value the mainstream press—television, radio and print—but we know that equally as important, perhaps even more important, is community-based ethnic online bloggers who dictate people's tastes and interactions just as much or more than the mainstream press. There has to be that recognition. That's something SFIAAF really values.
Guillén: So SFIAFF draws no separation between print and online press?
Yang: No, not really. We're aware of the value of having a photo placed in The Chronicle; that's great. That's gaining us a lot of people. But equally important to us is having good, critical, more-in-depth coverage, which a lot of times print can't allow for space issues, which online can. This is not to criticize anyone, but sometimes when you have short pieces in print, it doesn't allow room to go into depth. Online coverage gives good copy to our filmmakers that they can take home and do something with. That's the reality of it.
Guillén: I'm heartened to hear that. Beneath the aegis of film festival studies, consideration of the "written record" of any given film festival has become of importance to me. Much of it is manifesting online where the actual experience of a film festival can be chronicled, relying less on a thumbs-up thumbs-down critique of content. Social networking, microblogging, have become a new frequency of immediate and intense buzz for a festival.
Of related interest:
Want to ask the programmers your own questions? The San Francisco Film Society is sponsoring a SFFS Arts Forum panel on Monday, October 12, 7:30PM—"Meet the Programmers"—at The Mezzanine. Panelists include Nancy Fishman (SFJFF), Jennifer Morris (Frameline), Rachel Rosen (SFFS), Jeff Ross (SF IndieFEST), and Chi-hui Yang (SFIAAF), moderated by SF360's Susan Gerhard.
When Eric Byler's narrative feature Tre played at the 2007 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, it immediately polarized critics and—as the film is poised to open theatrically this weekend in Los Angeles and a couple of weeks later in the Bay Area—I imagine the response will continue to be mixed. San Francisco Chronicle critic G. Allen Johnson dismissed Tre as "a borefest" even as Dennis Harvey dispatched to Variety that Tre was the "most compelling" of Byler's three films with characters etched "in terse, credible, assertive strokes that resist 'explaining all' in terms of personal histories"; a "sharply realized" project that "sports juicy conflicts and prickly dialogue, though the directorial approach remains judiciously low-key." I'd have to concur with Harvey and wonder if Johnson wasn't too busy being bored to pay attention to the film in front of him?
I would argue careful attention is requisite in watching an Eric Byler film, whose cadences are exploratory, circumabulating around the doubts and fears of the lovelorn with wary curiosity. I first met Eric when he brought his third narrative feature AMERICANese to the 2006 San Francisco International Asian American film festival, where I likewise wrote up his panel discussion with author Shawn Wong regarding the adaptation of Wong's novel into Byler's film.
Byler graduated from Wesleyan University where his senior thesis film, Kenji's Faith, went on to be selected for the Sundance Film Festival in 1995, won six film festival awards and was a regional finalist in the Student Academy Awards. His first feature film, Charlotte Sometimes was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards in 2003: The John Cassavetes Award for Best Feature under $500,000 and a Best Supporting Actress Award for Jacqueline Kim. The film was called "fascinating and illuminating" by film critic Roger Ebert and won numerous festival awards, including the Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW), The Special Jury Prize at the Florida Film Festival and The Best Dramatic Feature at the San Diego Asian Film Festival. The film was distributed theatrically by Visionbox and Small Planet Pictures before being released on DVD.
Byler's second feature Tre won a Special Jury Award at the 2007 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. His third feature, AMERICANese is an adaptation of Shawn Wong's seminal Asian American novel, American Knees. It won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at SXSW, in addition to a Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Ensemble Cast, which includes Joan Chen, Kelly Hu, Ben Shenkman, Autumn Reeser, Chris Tashima, Allison Sie and Michael Paul Chan. The film will be released by IFC First Take in 2008.
Byler also directed the PBS/ITVS Television pilot, My Life Disoriented and is currently producing and directing documentaries about Asian Pacific Islander political empowerment. He is also teaming with filmmakers Annabel Park and Jeff Man on an interactive documentary about the immigration battle in Northern Virginia called 9500 Liberty. Byler is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America.
After several failed attempts to hook up for an interview, I was delighted that Eric Byler and I were finally able to do so on the eve of Tre's theatrical distribution.
* * *
Michael Guillén: Eric, to be honest with you, when I first saw Tre last year at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, I found it exasperating, which is to say that it was an uncomfortable viewing experience for me because the film demanded a requisite engagement on my part, attracting attention to a somewhat unattractive protagonist. Sitting with the film all these many months, I've come to respect the level of discomfort it caused in me, which revolves around a term that comes up a lot when reviewers write about your films; namely, that they're "anti-romantic." Is that a fair characterization?
Eric Byler: Well, yes, but only if I get a chance to clarify—does that sound like a politician?—I don't mean that I'm against romance and I hope that's not what people mean when they say that the films are anti-romantic; but, in the sense that a hero can be an anti-hero—not necessarily because he's the villain but because he has the same flaws, the same doubts, the same challenges that people have in real life and, in that way, is different than the way heroes are depicted typically in movies—then, yes, that's how I approach romance: with all the flaws and the doubts, the pitfalls and the disappointments and not typically the way romance is depicted in movies.
Guillén: Let's explore that. Why the movie grew on me as time went on is precisely because I think it's brave of you as a filmmaker in your examination of relationships to create a hero who is heroic precisely because he is diving towards an interactional authenticity. The romance you are "against" is actually the commodified version supplied in movies, meant to feed consumer desire. In your effort to provide a more accurate portrayal of relationship, you remind me of Ingmar Bergman's films—such as Scenes From A Marriage—where he fearlessly explores the vengeful underpinnings of passion. Which filmmakers have influenced you in your own cinematic renderings of relationship?
Byler: The goal is to have the influence come from real life and not from movies. Too many movies are inspired from other movies and that's how the genres become so repetitive and why so many of us are just tuning out with the studio fare. But the movies that really made me aware that it was okay to tell the stories that were inspired by life as opposed to other people's movies were films like Carnal Knowledge, Five Easy Pieces, Sex, Lies & Videotape, Midnight Cowboy and The Graduate; films where the relationships are so complex. Five Easy Pieces was the one that really blew my mind. The Robert Dupea character played by Jack Nicholson has many of the kinds of flaws you see in Tre. In fact, in some scenes Daniel Cariaga's performance as Tre reminds me of Jack Nicholson's: for instance, the hobby vs. work argument that he has with Kakela (Kimberly-Rose Wolter) shows no reservation about dissecting someone with the truth that is in their own heart that he can see.
I draw from life, but also lessons I've learned from the masters and those films that were already doing that shortly before I was born. When I rediscovered that era of American cinema when American studios were making art films, and the best and most talented directors and actors were collaborating on art films, that was when I said, "I can do that." The main difference is that I would say I'm influenced by films that were made longer ago than, say, most of the people making films modeled after last year's crop of festival darlings.
Guillén: And thank God for that! It's interesting that you reference those films as influential because those were the films I was watching as a teenager that were affecting me as a young person trying to learn how to get along with people and fall in love.
Byler: I wouldn't recommend those films for a 15-16 year old and I don't recommend my films to anyone who hasn't had their heart broken. You need to have been there once to understand Charlotte Sometimes and Tre. You need to have committed crimes in the arena of love that you're ashamed of and wish you could take back. Heartbreak is really the only thing that brings people there and—if you notice in both of those films—it's heartbreak that causes the most shameful betrayals.
Guillén: And yet those betrayals are necessary illuminations to further growth.
Byler: Yeah. You could say that in Tre the betrayals allow the characters to escape their cycle of loneliness and disenchantment. Not that they find anyone, but that they finally break the circuit and are able to grow up.
Guillén: Exactly, with becoming an embodied individual superceding the romantic myth of the couple. What I appreciate in all of your films is their rebellion against that myth, that there's not an easy reliance on commodified notions of love, even as your characters accept the daunting task of continuing to look for love. Which leads me to ask—since the task is so daunting—who are your films for? Who is your audience?
Byler: I honestly don't make the movies with that in mind. The best answer—in terms of when I'm conceiving the film—is me. I'm making films that I would like to see. I would love if someone who watched one of my films had the reaction that I had when I saw Five Easy Pieces. I should mention McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye, films where Robert Altman turned genre into an art film. I would love if people could say when they see one of my films, "Oh my God, you really can be that honest! You really can be that revealing. You really can be that daring." But I certainly wouldn't be sad if they'd already seen some of those great films; but, if you were born after that era, you have to find a way to discover them. A lot of younger people grew up thinking that movies made before Aliens are all dumb.
Guillén: The flip side to the question of who is your audience and what are you asking of them is what are you asking of yourself as you mature as a filmmaker?
Byler: When I get back into narrative filmmaking, I think I might be a different person and be making different films; but, I'm not sure exactly who I'll be and what those films will be. The three pictures I've made are all seeking to answer the unanswered questions from my twenties, especially Tre and Charlotte Sometimes because those films are not based on a novel written by someone with more life experience. Now that I'm in my thirties, those stories, maybe in my life I haven't quite answered those questions but my films may move into perhaps a little bit more political awareness, a more political commentary, which I really shied away from early in my films. In fact, I would vehemently resist being pinned down for having a political agenda in making Charlotte Sometimes. Now, I'm not ashamed to share my views.
Guillén: You've actually been doing some constructive and effective political filmmaking through your YouTube projects, namely your engagement with last Fall's Virginia race and currently with the Presidential primaries. You're saying, then, that you do think this political work will affect your future feature filmmaking?
Byler: It might. I just know and feel that I'm a different person now and—because my films are so personal—my films will change; but, I'm still discovering who I'm becoming and so I can't predict how my films will change. I know that I could continue to make anti-romances and make them well and I probably will make more of them; but, I've changed through this process and I'm glad I have. I find it more rewarding to make a difference than to make a movie, frankly. I don't know if that means the films will be better or worse in the eyes of others.
Guillén: As someone in their mid-fifties, my life experience has taught me that the personal is political. I consider your filmmaking a potential bridge between the personal and the political, being that you're so attuned to the true examination of the personal, which informs politics much more than it's given due.
One of my favorite scenes in Tre, and its appropriate tagline, is that a whole life can change on the basis of 10 seconds. The scene where you have Nina (Alix Koromzay) count out the 10 seconds reveals it's not a dismissive amount of time. The importance of that 10 seconds reminded me of martial philosophy in the sense that every battle is won or lost at a particular moment in the melee, at a particular pivot on the battlefield, and it seems that—as a filmmaker—you are keen on capturing those moments when individuals change.
Byler: If you were to create a formula for Charlotte Sometimes and Tre—and, by the way, I hope to create a third film where characters from the two films intersect more substantially because the intersection here is peripheral—but, if you were to create a formula for the first two, you ask the question: could an ordinary life be depicted as a movie? Can you find something universal and revealing in a life that doesn't include saving the Earth from a comet that's going to destroy us all or a life that doesn't include running from zombies? [Laughter.] That never happens to any of my characters. It's not the events that make their stories extraordinary; it's the character of their hearts. It's who they are as people.
My hypothesis is that in any person's life, any person that's ever lived, there was a period of time when they were most alive, when everything mattered, when they felt that everything in their life up to that point had led to this particular moment or this particular night and everything that followed was in some sense an aftermath. We could all find that time in our lives if we look back. If there was a movie about my life it would be about the two weeks that led up to that night, after which everything else was just an epilog. In Charlotte Sometimes and in Tre you see four people in each movie who all go through that experience in a short span of time. None of them are going to go down in history. None of them are going to run for public office. None of them will ever fire a weapon at an extraterrestrial. But those extraordinary moments that they lived, any human being could live if they're really open to falling in love or if they have conflicts about being open to falling in love, which is the essence of the title characters in both films.
Guillén: I agree with you on that and it reminds me of what the diarist Anaïs Nin—infamous for recording everyday moments—once described as the large dimension of small gestures. You don't have to be dodging comets or avoiding zombies to feel the drama of your own biography as it's unfolding, moment by moment. As I said earlier, the battlefield of life has these pivots when people change. It'd be fair to say life contains a succession of these moments where everything turns and the individual personality shifts into a larger dimension.
Byler: That's true. I could probably make two or three movies out of most people's lives.
Guillén: These moments are frequently placed within silence in your films. Can you speak to your use of silence to further narrative?
Byler: I only notice the silence in my movies when I spend a lot of time watching "normal" movies and then I come back to mine. Silence is not so uncommon in life and my movies are, as I've said, always an attempt to try to come as close as possible to approximating real life. The choices I make artistically are not necessarily defined by or governed by choices other filmmakers have made. In the case of silence, if a film is about loneliness—as Charlotte Sometimes and AMERICANese both are—you can't depict loneliness without the ache of time. A really quick scene about loneliness I can't imagine I can do sincerely. So, yeah, there are these sprawling long takes that show a person alone in their apartment. I don't know why I've always been interested in what people do when they're alone and how observing them can tell you something about their characters when they don't intend to be emoting or communicating with anyone; they're alone. You really can't do that anywhere but in a movie because—in real life—just as soon as there are two people there, there's something of a performance and a little bit of artifice involved. Here, not only in the scenes about loneliness but in scenes where people interact, in both of those films and in Tre you see people that are hiding more than they show. It's sort of the opposite of the way that most people might approach a movie where a character is designed to emote as much as possible to provide as much information to the audience as possible in a limited amount of time because you know the commercial is coming soon. I assume that if you sit down to watch an Eric Byler movie, you're okay with a slightly unorthodox approach to storytelling and you're not going to begrudge me a secret or a subtlety or a moment of pause or silence.
Guillén: I would group your films as well into a category of film being called "contemplative cinema" where the camera is aimed at everyday life, often in long still takes, to allow the inherent drama of life to emerge without being bullied by an imposed narrative.
Byler: That's the illusion that the films create. I have a specific approach to achieving that illusion; but, obviously, it's not true that these are real people. But, yeah, that's what I'm trying to present. Everything, in terms of where I place the camera, the way I direct the actors, the way I write the script, the way we change the script as we're filming, the way many of the scenes are actually shot as improvisations, all of those things are designed to create that illusion. I don't want people watching the movie and thinking about my storytelling or my directing or my agenda. I want them to believe for that 90 minutes that these characters are real people who existed before the movie started and will continue to exist after the movie's over.
Guillén: Speaking of improvisation, can you speak a little bit about how you work with your actors to capture that feel you're going for?
Byler: The basic premise is that if you've simply memorized a series of desired results and then attempted to execute them, they're not going to have the nuance and complexity and chaos of real life. I try to capture that nuance and complexity and chaos while we're shooting the scene. When the story's already scripted, it's easy to fall into a series of memorized results. You have to find ways to keep it alive. One of the ways that I do that is I don't allow the actors to memorize their cadence or reaction to a line. I make it very clear that how the scene develops and how they react and whether they dare to touch someone or dare to kiss someone depends on what they read from the other actor. They'll actually see me whisper to his or her scene partner a specific direction that he [or she] knows will surprise him [or her]. During the actual take, it's alive because you have no idea what direction it's going to go. You have an idea what [your scene partner] is going to say, but your scene partner might say something completely different than what you were expecting and you'll have to react to that.
In Tre we used that technique a few times. The first two that came to mind were both after sex scenes. Gabe (Erik McDowell) and Kakela have sex and I secretly instructed Erik McDowell to ask Kakela if she came. After the sex part of the scene, there was some dialogue I wanted to capture. Kimberly's reaction was beautiful and so much more beautiful than it would have been if it was written on the page and she was expecting it. Another example is after Nina and Tre have sex, an unscripted line I asked Daniel to say was, "You're not the kind of woman who usually does this. I can tell by the way you hold me." Alix's reaction [as Nina] was so beautiful because she didn't expect that to happen. She didn't expect him to say that. Her reaction—"How do I hold you?"—was improvised. That was what she wanted to know as Nina, but as Alix I suppose, about that moment and why he chose to say that. Daniel's decision to leave was also something that just happened spontaneously and we had to go and shoot another shot to cover it; but, that's one of the great things you can do when you're shooting digitally: to have that complexity to roll with the way the improvisations go. [It's important to have] actors know at every moment that something could change and that something I whispered to the scene partner could throw the scene in a different direction and answer some of the overarching questions that they know their characters are seeking to answer in the process of making the film and exploring the story, that they look at the whole movie as a discovery, not as an execution of pre-determined results.
Guillén: Sounds like it's a challenge as well as fun to work with you on the set.
Byler: I don't know if the actors would say it was "fun" because there's an emotional wringer they have to go through. I do try to get to know them as people as much as possible and change the characters to match their own life stories. I'm open with them and they're open with me about their weaknesses, insecurities and their worst fears, the things that they need most, and a lot of the time it's the same for all people but I'm able to sharpen the character by allowing the actor to be themselves and be in character at the same time. The super objectives, these questions—sometimes they're not even objectives but questions—Tre, for instance, his overarching question is could a woman like Kakela, or any woman for that matter, truly love him as he is? Or do they see him as a sexual object in the same way that he tries to see women? In particular, did Kakela really love him or was she just—as he says at the end of the film—using him so that she wouldn't marry Gabe?
Daniel knew that Kim and I had written the script together and he felt that we were keeping secrets from him. [Laughter.] But that's how I like the actors to feel and that the answer was something that we were going to reveal. I tried to make Daniel believe that it would be discovered and that I wasn't even steering it in any direction, it could go either way, and every scene was written to move things in any way; but, the truth is that I am manipulating the nuances as I go along. In certain scenes I'm getting both, or two or three different variations that will help me craft the overall arc and giving me options later because the way that the final scene went would ultimately color how it would edit scenes that come before that in the movie. The most important thing is that the actors believe that these questions are not already answered so that—as they live each moment—they don't know the future. They don't know their destiny. Everything is shot out of order in a film shoot, but—if they don't know the answers to the questions—in a sense, they don't know the ending of the story. Then every moment is that much more closer to approximating the uncertainty and the complexity of real life.
Guillén: That irresolution is as much of a working definition to describe my discomfort watching the film as anything. These questions raised by the characters in the film are the fabric of existence. It isn't about the answers really. It's about properly articulating the questions. That's the narrative arc of a person's life. I appreciate that as a filmmaker you don't try to impose false answers either on your audience or on your acting ensemble.
Byler: That's true. Life never really does come to a resolution until you die.
Guillén: And we don't really know if death is a resolution. The jury's forever out on that one. Notwithstanding, it's the irresolute that I find so powerful in your examinations of relationship. Tre is here and there being described as a "quasi-sequel" to Charlotte Sometimes and you mentioned your wish to do a third feature combining the characters of your first two. Can you expand on that?
Byler: I would really like to see what would happen when Tre meets Charlotte. That's what I've been chewing on. If you look at them, they are two sides of the same coin. Tre is the male version of Charlotte. If you look at the structure of the constellation of characters and even the spatial relationships, you have this stranger-comes-to-town structure and—in both cases—it happens to be a person who has an incisive, penetrating wit and a crushing vulnerability that they hide with a ferocious, aggressive wall. They seem to be the most dangerous characters, each of them, but ultimately they're the ones who are hurt the most. I would love to do a movie where you meet the characters that they've become and you see how they interact together. Again, it would be an exploration because I've never gotten Jacqueline Kim (Charlotte Sometimes) and Daniel together before. I've never seen them together; but, I have a hunch that it would be fascinating.
Guillén: I want to see Charlotte and Tre go toe to toe! [Laughter.] What is the distribution strategy with Tre? How are you hoping to get this film out?
Byler: Like a lot of the low-budget indie films, you go as long as the money lasts. You start in cities where you feel that you're confident that you have an audience—for my films that would be the multi-ethnic metropolitan areas—and then you see how long it runs. In the case of Charlotte Sometimes, it ran for several months and ended up making it to over 30 cities. With Tre, we're starting out with less money so I don't know if we'll last as long and I don't know if I want to travel to as many cities as with Charlotte Sometimes. We are going to go to L.A., Chicago, San Francisco, Honolulu, New York and D.C. Those are places where Charlotte Sometimes did well so those are the cities we'll be sure to hit. The South Carolina and Texas venues that Charlotte Sometimes made it to, I don't know if Tre will be as fortunate. Even Charlotte Sometimes, a helluva lot more people saw it on DVD than during theatrical.
Guillén: Regarding your other projects, what became of your TV pilot My Life Disoriented?
Byler: We had hoped that it would spawn a real series on a network. PBS doesn't do series so we knew we were on a dead-end track with PBS but we hoped that we would capture the attention of one of the main networks. Unfortunately, a lot of the channels that would have been right for us began to have financial problems about that time and have now folded. Then, the networks have the same mindset from the previous decade, which is that the Asian best friend is allowable but you can't have a story in which the people that you go home with at the end of the day are also Asian. It took us a long time just to convince them that a hospital in San Francisco should have some Asian people. Now they have hospitals in major cities that have Asians in them but when you go home everybody's white. But they do reflect how Caucasian people experience life—they go to work and see the multiethnic world—but then they go home and their family's white and that's how television series are designed these days.
Guillén: And what about AMERICANese?
Byler: AMERICANese we plan to release later this year. It's interesting, neither of the two movies wanted to open first. Tre ended up being the one that opened first. There are also some contractual things that have to be worked out before AMERICANese can come out between the financer and the distributor. I've just been too busy to get myself involved in all that so I don't even have any details.
Guillén: Sure. Finally, what about your YouTube political work? Where are you going with that?
Byler: I really hope that I'm going to spend the year supporting Barack Obama's candidacy for President. It's great to be part of a movement where there is a leader who inspires people so easily to take on that civic duty—that "Ask not what your country can do for you" feeling—that I see returning even in the hearts and minds of people who believed in it once a generation ago and had their hearts broken. I see those people daring to fall in love again. It's beautiful. As far as the younger generation—people younger than me who I have been struggling for many years to engage and motivate to take on that responsibility—I really feel young people will lead this country in the right direction. All of the hatemongering ideas about voting against your own best interests because you hate Gays and you love your country kind of thing doesn't make any sense to people under 35. Whatever else it is, hating Latino immigrants or hating Muslims more than you love your country, none of us get that. If we could just find a way to break this cycle where the politicians annoy us and turn us off, mislead us and manipulate us, and therefore we don't want to have any part of the process, and then the politicians get away with these misleading, manipulative propaganda grenades because we're too disinterested to know better—which is basically how our political process works—if someone comes along who can communicate with us and who we trust and who we want to listen to, someone who can explain to the American people what our problems are and how we can work to solve them, and actually engage people in that "ask not what your country can do for you" mindset—we could really make those changes that everybody's talking about a reality. It would be so much easier for me to continue if Obama is the person who is emblematic of this movement.
Guillén: Eric, I thank you for taking the time today. I wish you the best with the L.A. premiere of Tre this weekend and I look forward to seeing you when the film opens here in the Bay Area.
After having his directorial debut In the Family (2011) officially rejected from over 20 film festivals, actor-writer-director Patrick Wang decided to take on one more hat: self-distribution. Refusing to let festival programmers decide the fate of his penetrating and wholly original first feature, Wang is trusting that audiences and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth will give the film the legs its needs to traffic into the world. Not only is his determination admirable, but so is his film, which clocks in at year's end as one of the most mature and nuanced narratives this reviewer has seen in some time. Eschewing formula and stereotype, and comfortable with taking narrative and formal risks, Wang has delivered a heartfelt story woven around child custody, two Dads, parental loss, and the human side of the Law. The project is galvanized by strong performances from a competent ensemble and music by the legendary Chip Taylor, who has written such diverse hits as "Wild Thing" (The Troggs) and "Angel of the Morning" (Merilee Rush). Scheduled to open November 4 at New York's Quad Cinema, In the Family will continue through November 10. My fingers are crossed that audiences will recognize the film for the singular gem that it is and support a prolonged run. In the Family is the kind of film that creatively circumvents industrial machinations to restore faith in independent filmmaking.
Patrick Wang graduated from MIT with a degree in Economics and studied energy policy, game theory, and income inequality at the Federal Reserve Bank, the Harvard School for Public Health and other organizations. As a theater director, he has specialized in classical verse drama and new works (Surviving the Nian, Jonathan Larson Award). He has taught and directed productions at the Stella Adler Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse. As an actor, he has appeared in Jay Weisman's Surveillances (Panavision Prize), Saturday Night Live and One Life to Live. His decision to both act in and direct In the Family was—as he puts it—a "defensive" move: "I couldn't stand the things people were saying about the script. They wanted all the good stuff out and they wanted to bring in all the clichés I had managed to avoid. I decided to direct just to protect the movie."
Guillén: Sticky distribution issues aside, let's approach the title of your film. In the Family suggests some secret that is being contained; i.e., keeping something within the family. What do you think that secret is? How did you arrive at this title?
Guillén: As writer, director and actor, one could argue you're a one-man band; however, you have assembled an outstanding ensemble of actors and woven your performance fairly into theirs. How did you go about casting? Did you have certain actors in mind when you wrote your script? How did you level the playing field between performances, all of which have come off so natural and at commensurate intensity?
Guillén: Was the naturalism in performance achieved through improvisation? Especially with your young actor Sebastian Banes (who plays Chip), it seemed the actors worked off him, around him. How did you work with such a young actor? How scripted were these scenes?
Wang: I had this mental picture of this family that I did not recognize or understand. And so I just started wondering about them, and—bit by bit—aspects of their personality and their history started to stick. As I focused on the episodes in their life that were the most interesting to me, they happened not to involve sex. But I know what you mean, certain people will feel confused or cheated seeing a movie in 2011 with two gay male leads and no sexually driven scenes. Still, I think there are others who are regular watchers of the standard fare who will be relieved to see something different and who will be delighted to see whole people and a genuine romance unfold on screen. I am.
Guillén: Speak to me about some of your actors. Not only is Trevor St. John attractive for being so handsome, but his volatility, his vulnerability, registered like flint sparks. The anger smoldering beneath his grief made him presumptuous and a bit arrogant but I liked that he wasn't a pure angel. Cody's darkness and the fact that he was somewhat unfair to Joey in the beginning made him more human, and succeeded in generating compassion towards him for coming to terms with his grief and, subsequently, his tragic and untimely demise.
Wang: Kelly was just a pro. She has more tools than any actor has a right to have and she defended her character and portrayed Eileen's struggles so fairly. It makes the movie. Peter was such a surprise in auditions. His performance was not how I imagined the character looking and sounding, but—in his interpretation of Dave—Peter deepened the character with more facets to Dave's personality than I had given him credit for. I love actors that surprise me.
Wang: Brian Murray is a marvelous actor and an even greater human being. We were freezing when we shot that library scene, but there was a different kind of warmth in that room that I will never forget.
