QUEER CINEMA—Boy Culture

Boy Culture, Q. Allan Brocka's film adaptation of Matthew Rettenmund's critically-acclaimed novel has a lot of things going for it, not the least of which is its youthfulness. I mean, think about it. Even though I'm quite proud and comfortable with being 53 years old, Geezer Culture just doesn't have the same draw. As far as queer culture is involved, 53 puts me in the invisibility range. But that's okay. I'm out of the bar scene and more into cruising for magazine gigs than tricks. I have a partner I love, a home I've been in for over a quarter of a century, and concerns more appropriate to my age. But I can still remember being a young gay guy with all its sexual confusion and exploration that—edging towards decrepitude—discretion now disavows. For those confessions, you will have to wait for my posthumously-published memoirs (working title: Idol Chitchat).

Normally I don't go for this kind of gay flick precisely because there's no room for me in it unless I feel like waxing nostalgic, which I rarely have time to do getting on with the creative business of life; but, Boy Culture is more accommodating. It has, in fact, one of the sauciest intergenerational sex scenes I've seen on the screen in quite a while. And its paean to the kind of families that queer youth create in order to survive social marginalization remains a constant across the generations. One of my favorite queer themes, in fact, is the sociality achieved by intergenerational interaction and, without question, Boy Culture endorses that theme.

So what's it about? As the press notes boast, it's a candid confession of "X," a wildly successful male escort. After 10 years of sex-for-pay, "X" becomes romantically entangled with his two hot roommates and a reclusive elderly client, Gregory. But before Gregory will agree to sex, he tells an unsettling love story spanning 50 years and dares "X" to try something he hasn't felt in years: emotion. Boy Culture takes on issues of sexual mores and emotional risk with a witty and incisive voice, revealing the leap of faith that love demands. The film has garnered multiple awards from film festivals around the world including winning the Grand Jury Award for Best Feature at the 2006 Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Screenplay at Outfest 2006, Winner of the Jury Award for Best Director at the 2006 Madrid International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and Winner of the Programmers Award for Best of the Fest at the 2006 London International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. Which is to say Boy Culture is not just softcore porn with a heart. Nor does it simply pander to the prurience that buys tickets. Sure it's sexy, sure the lead actors are all babes, but they're also all vulnerable, which even across the years helps me identify with them. Sex pays. Love costs. Indeed.

A special shout-out to Patrick Bauchau who as the elderly Gregory lends a recognizable patina of mature duplicity redeemed by its own form of risk taking. All three lead actors—Derek Magyar as "X", Darryl Stephens as "Andrew" and Jonathan Trent as "Joey" achieve the likeability that allows an audience to care about them. Molly Manago as Andrew's younger sister Cheyenne steals every scene she's in.

Refreshingly entertaining and honest at heart, Boy Culture opens up at San Francisco's Castro Theater tomorrow evening, March 23, and runs through March 29.

DEAD CHANNELS—Sleazy Sundays in April!

Bruce Fletcher is one of my favorite madmen. My mother warned me about buying beers for men like him; but, since when have I ever listened to my mother? Besides, I'm very fond of beer and any excuse will do. Bruce was the Director of Programming for the San Francisco Independent Film Festival and San Francisco's Another Hole in the Head horror film festival. He's also the Founder and Director of the Idaho International Film Festival in Boise (which is another kind of horror all in itself). I have a fabulous and provocative taped interview with Bruce that he won't allow me to publish for fear of being driven out of town. It would just be terrible if it somehow leaked out to the press.

He's just advised that he and his new cohorts Dan, Scott, Serge, and the rest of the team at Cosmic Hex (some of whom were instrumental at San Francisco's legendary Werepad) have devoted their collective energies to kickstarting a new festival project—Dead Channels: The San Francisco Festival of Fantastic Film!

As he explains on the Dead Channels MySpace page (which has great Youtube clips and big ol' photos and all sorts of bells and whistles) The Dead Channels Film Festival "will showcase a diverse selection of amazing fantastic films from around the globe—usually presented by the artists who made them. We will be playing something for every taste—from the retro Saturday and Sunday matinees for the whole family to the more twisted offerings we unveil at midnight. The Programming Team are scouring the globe at this very moment to unearth the finest international and independent cinema out there. Incredible movies, thrilling parties, and the City of San Francisco itself, guarantee a truly memorable week-long celebration of mind-bending fantastic films—and their creators. So if you enjoyed the movies that played at the Indiefest and Holehead for the last few years; there's an extraordinarily good chance that Dead Channels will slake your thirst for cool film." Hell YEAH!!


To get things going and to drum up initial support, Dead Channels roars into town with SLEAZY SUNDAYS: "three mind bending explosions of raw unadulterated cinema excess unleashed the first four Sundays in April!!!"

On Sunday, April 1st, Dead Channels offers "Other Worlds", first with War of the Robots (7pm), followed by an 8:30pm double feature: Planet of the Vampires and Starcrash.

On Sunday, April 8th, it's the "Infernal Beaster" program, kicking off with Crimson Cult (7pm), followed by an 8:30pm double feature: Dunwich Horror and Werewolves on Wheels. Bah-ROOOOOOOO!

On Sunday, April 15th, the focus is "Nature Revolts", first with Squirm at 7pm, then with an 8:30pm double feature: Kingdom of the Spiders and Son of Blob. The Blob had a son?!! I never knew.

Finally, on Sunday, April 22nd, it's a tip of the hat to Grindhouse. First with Maniac 1934 ("The Original Grindhouse Movie!") at 7pm followed by the 8:30pm double feature: Preacherman and Black Gestapo.

Is this all too exploitive and fun or what? The madness takes place at the Victoria Theatre, 2961—16th St in San Francisco (1/2 block from the 16th & Mission BART station). Individual films are $8, $15 for the double feature and $20 for all three. Sonic delights provided by Zonetech.

Get them going, boys and girls. Support the madness! Cross-published at Twitch.

03/28/07 UPDATE: Dennis Harvey overviews Sleazy Sundays for the SF Bay Guardian, situating the program in Grindhouse mania.

HONG SANG-SOO BLOGATHON—Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Q&A At Pacific Film Archives

Mythologist Joseph Campbell was fond of saying that people mistakenly seek the meaning of life when what they actually want is the experience of life. That keen insight could be applied in appreciating the films of Hong Sang-soo. Because of his thematic consistency from film to film, there's a temptation to draw ready equations. The erotic triangulations mean this. The substitutions and interchangeability of characters mean this. The repetitions mean this. But after listening to Director Hong quietly counter all equations at his two public appearances during this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and spending an animated evening drinking soju with him, I've come to recognize the folly of trying to be either too cognitive or too literal with a filmmaker whose films are essentially emotional meditations on what is bathetic and mundane in everyday human relationships. One gets the sense that Director Hong simply wants to accept and present relationships as they are and not get too distracted in what they might mean. The meaning will vary at any rate by what the viewer sees in the situations.

That's not to say that Director Hong doesn't welcome interpretation. When films are as emotionally honest and open as his films are, they're like empty canvases that invite expressive brush strokes; i.e., words. Case in point: over dinner I asked Director Hong what he thought about Chuck Stephens' suggestion that his films slyly present tensions between North and South Korea and Director Hong responded that he was familiar with Stephens' work and that whether he agreed with it or not was beside the point. The point was Stephens' earnest belief in his own interpretation and his well-thought articulation of same. So though it might appear to some that Director Hong is purposely evasive when he refuses to confirm interpretations as they come winging at him from audiences, perhaps he is in effect trying to keep things open, aware that all too often a meaning guised as an equation is the first step of a petty dismissal. I suspect Director Hong doesn't want his films to be dismissed; he wants them to be savored and considered.


The only other point I might make in this preface is that Director Hong is a party animal. When you are drinking soju with him he is animated and forthcoming because there is something natural about that kind of interaction and—as any Dionysian will tell you—drink is the great loosener. A Q&A session following a film is essentially artificial and whether in opposition to that or perhaps because he—like myself—was hungover and tired from being up most of the night, Director Hong was alarmingly softspoken and laconic. Sitting only a few seats away from him, and even with a microphone in front of him, I could barely pick him up on my digital recorder so rather than a literal transcription, I have had to go the way of reconstruction. This seemed somehow appropriate when considering a film that says so much about the limitations if not the fabrications of memory.

I found it intriguing that the first question asked at both Q&A sessions revolved around Director Hong's characters being involved in the film industry. Was this due, Director Hong was asked, because as a filmmaker he is personally involved with the characters and the writing? Or is there some special significance about his characters being involved in filmmaking?

Developing his characters and situational choices are an intuitive process for Director Hong. He isn't necessarily trying to be autobiographical. It's just what he knows and what he thinks of automatically when he's configuring his scripts. He purposely folds in fictional elements to veer away from sheer autobiography.


I asked about the structure of Virgin Stripped Bare and what his intention had been in numbering the chapters? Director Hong replied quite candidly that it had been such a long time since he'd made the film that he couldn't quite remember what he had intended. The structure was what it was. But as he had come in to watch the last of the film, he quite enjoyed it and was grateful to have worked with the actress Eun-ju Lee who, sadly, at the age of 25 took her own life.

With regard to the numbered structure, I probably gained more insight afterwards by a user comment at IMdb by someone named "Callisto" who indicated that the seven days or stages of the courtship start out from Jae-hoon's point of view, and then shift to the same seven days/stages from Soo-jung's perspective, or memory. "The differences are subtle but I felt they were very real," Callisto writes. "People tend to have different perception[s] of the same event, or they may remember different salient points, or even mix up memories. For example, in one kissing scene, [Jae-hoon] remembers sweeping a fork off the table while Soo-jung thought it was a spoon. The events and dialogue also get mixed up as memories get hazy. For instance, a particular dialogue about drinking took place in two places in the different versions." Using the fallibility of memory as a narrative structure lends to what has frequently been described as the film's Rashomon-effect. One audience member asked if Director Hong had purposely intended to emulate Rashomon? Though admitting that he likes the film Rashomon very much, Director Hong said he did not have that reference in mind when he created Virgin. If anything, influenced by many sources, whenever Director Hong does something wrong in a film, these influences speak up in his psyche to correct him.

Further, I gained insight from the comments of one audience member who stated: "I'm curious about the structure of the episodes. There's like almost two halves but they're not mirror images. They seem to be variants of possible ways [this relationship] could play out. The two men seem to be in competition for the woman's affections to varying degrees in different episodes and she is either intrigued by one or the other or not; she's diffident. What's amazing to me is how deep you go with the characters. How you show them warts and all. And the interesting thing about whether they even know who they're with! Most obviously when the guy says the other girl's name when he's making love to [Soo-jung]. I think that's so true in a way but I've rarely seen that in a film, even in novels. The other comment was simply on the [carousel-like] music, how it cues us to the comedy of errors."

One young woman wasn't sure what Director Hong was trying to achieve by Eun-ju Lee's character of Soo-jung. Was he trying to present a liberated Korean identity? Or present her coping mechanisms with the reality of her situation? Again, Director Hong basically answered that what you see is what you get. He wasn't "trying" to express anything through her character. He simply was showing her as she was. His stance is that "life is full of good things" but that the mind with its perceptual and interpretive overlays distracts from an immediate sense of well-being. Or, alternately, that social programming interferes with an individual sense of well-being. The young woman queried whether Soo-jung was acting passively because society had programmed her to be passive? "I can't say that she's behaving passively," Director Hong countered, "she's calculating and very aggressive sometimes." He felt her character needed to be presented in concrete lines and from there someone watching the film could interpret her character however they pleased. He wasn't trying to express a "message" through her character.

Director Hong was asked where the title for Virgin came from? Where the male characters came from? And if he had male friends like these characters?


The film's title is borrowed from a Marcel Duchamp piece. Director Hong liked the title and wanted to use it himself. He knew the title before he even started writing the script for this film. Again, the male characters are combinations of fact and fiction. In the past he experimented with direct portraiture but found that it blocked his creative process. A direct portraiture exerts a "psychological pressure" on the process that he has since avoided.

Following up on the reference to Duchamp, a woman mentioned that there had been some reviews written about his films referencing Duchamp and Truffaut. As a Korean filmmaker, she wondered whether he had been influenced by French artists and writers?

Of course there are French writers and artists that he very much enjoys. In his 20s he was particularly fond of Andre Gide and read him nearly every day. And he enjoys the films of Robert Bresson. But the truth is that he has been influenced by many people, not just the French.

Director Hong was asked what kind of film stock he used and where he derived inspiration?

With unabashed candor Director Hong admitted he had no idea what kind of film stock the DP used. As for inspiration, he likes to start from everyday situations and then he builds from there. Within such situations there are inherent structures, movement is already present. For example, the inspiration for Virgin came from a chance encounter with an elderly friend who drove by when Director Hong was out walking. The friend rolled down his window, called out to him, and introduced him to his young fiancé. Afterwards, Hong ruminated on this unlikely pairing of an elderly gentleman and his youthful bride.

One audience member felt like many of the scenes were improvised and wondered if that was so? He asked if Director Hong allowed randomness in the shooting process to be part of the final film?

Director Hong explained that he starts with a script outline of about 20 pages, which amplifies into about 50-60 pages. Using this outline on set, he plays with the images, develops the characters, the dialogue, the situations, so though there is some flexibility he has a clear sense of what he wants and what he's striving for. Every shooting day he writes what he needs to capture two or three scenes. The actors may not know exactly what they are going to say but they have an approximate sense of what has to happen to achieve the scene.


Brian Darr asked a question that built on the preceding question. Conceding that it's been a while since Director Hong filmed Virgin, Brian was nonetheless interested to know if there were any specific surprises or things that were different than he expected when he first started out making the film?

"I don't get surprised," Director Hong responded, "because I don't expect too much." He explained that he respects the process of filmmaking and doesn't have too set a program when he goes on set. To do so would be to court disappointment. Rather, he starts slow and builds upon situations. He feels his job as a filmmaker is to make situations as concrete as possible.

Aware that Director Hong attended school both in Berkeley and then later in Chicago, I was curious whether he had come away from his American experience with anything that later influenced his films, which are primarily situated in Korea?

He answered that when he was here in Berkeley training at the College of Arts and Crafts, it was like being in a mental hospital. He was a very confused person at the time, depressed, and not really normal. But he loved the good weather. Loved being able to walk barefoot. Enjoyed his teachers who he found to be nice. It helped him gain his bearings enough to continue his education in Chicago. There, he was influenced by the work of others around him and achieved direction and purpose, enough to approach narrative filmmaking.

One fellow admired Director Hong's "painterly" compositions and asked him to speak about his working relationship with his cinematographers. Director Hong replied that, when he hires a cinematographer, the first question he asks is if it will be okay if he frames the shots. Some cinematographers don't like to relinquish that control. But Director Hong wants to make sure they will capture what he wants to present. He feels very lucky to have found his current cinematographer Hyung-ku Kim [who, incidentally, also worked on The Host]. They understand each other. The cinematographer on Virgin, however, was Yeong-taek Choi, who likewise worked on The Turning Gate. He just tries to discretely tell his cinematographers what he knows. By this gentle manner, he achieves strong collaboration.

Brian wrapped up the Q&A session by asking Director Hong if he imagined working in black and white again, which of course he said he would love to do. Watching the final scenes of the film, he very much enjoyed the look.

Brian Darr's Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Blogathon is venued at his Hell On Frisco Bay site. Cross-published on Twitch.

2007 SFIAAFF—Jesse Hawthorne Ficks Opening Remarks for Big Trouble In Little China

It's truly heartwarming to see how much Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is beloved by his MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS fans and—more interestingly—how he cheerleads their adoration. The man knows how to work a crowd. Co-presenting John Carpenter's Big Trouble In Little China (1986) with SFIAAFF will undoubtedly win him some new converts.

Celebrating the film's 20th anniversary, Ficks remarked, "This film has been such a bitch to try and track down. There's no prints in the world except this print. We got it from London." Admitting he had never actually seen the film on the big screen, Ficks then took count of who had and where. He joked there were more people at the SFIAAFF screening than there were at the opening weekend in 1986. "So give yourselves a hand!"

Acknowledging the co-presentation by SFIAAFF, Ficks added, "How many times are you going to get to see Big Trouble in Little China at a film festival?!" For the SFIAAFF crowd, Ficks explained: "MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS is a series I've been doing for about six years. It's to highlight all the dismissed and overlooked films from the '70s and '80s. These are the movies that you begged your girl friend or your boy friend to watch. And then they hate you."

"John Carpenter, he's like the king of these movies that never got respect. What are some of the other movies that he's made? Dark Star. Escape From New York. The Thing. My personal favorite: Ghosts From Mars. You better re-watch that. But nothing really touches Big Trouble in Little China because this was John Carpenter's commercial film. This was his big break. And it seems like he didn't take it too seriously. One of the great things about Big Trouble and why I feel like it's super necessary to watch this 20 years later is that the stereotypes of Chinese men and women in this film are so hyperstylized, and so beyond belief, that now we can give it a big hug. Because the movie is hugging you! I think Carpenter knew that in 1986 and it took 20 damn years for us to catch up to this movie. I mean, Kim Cattrail [Sex and the City] is in this movie! Right? Kurt Russell's doing his John Wayne impersonation except he can't get anything done. He has to depend on all of his Asian friends to fix the damn thing. So let's hear it for Dennis Dun! He's the real star of this movie. Let's hear it for sleepy-eyed Victor Wong. And he's so good you're going to have to go rent all the Three Ninja movies after this. You can buy them, actually, in a three-pack, I think. And then James Hong, man. He's still alive! He's 2000 years old in this movie and he's still alive."

Lastly, Ficks encouraged his audience to turn off their cell phones and text messaging. "You know when you open that shit everybody can see it behind you. You're checking the time? Don't do it! Big Trouble plays on the big screen once in your lifetime. So have some respect."

Cross-published at Twitch.

2007 SFIAAFF—Q&A With Director Justin Lin and the Cast & Crew of Finishing The Game

In broad farcical strokes, Finishing the Game skewers stereotypes in an effort to level the playing field. It's the kind of fare that's perfect for an opening night feature, demanding nothing less than enthusiastic anticipation.

As Taro Goto synopsizes for the festival program: "In 1973, Bruce Lee died suddenly at the age of 32, leaving behind footage intended for his dream project The Game of Death. Not one to miss an opportunity for profit, Hollywood executives cast stand-ins to double as Lee in a rewritten script which took advantage of 12 minutes of Lee's real footage, including his now immortal fight with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his iconic yellow-and-black jumpsuit. …[D]irector Justin Lin returns to his roots with Finishing the Game, a rollicking comedy spoof about this egregiously exploitative search for Bruce Lee's stand-in. Documentarians capture the absurd, hilarious and sometimes disturbingly true-to-life (but decidedly fictional) audition process as a motley assortment of candidates vie for the role: a former-TV-star-turned door-to-door salesman, a Bruce Lee knockoff named Breeze Loo and some guys who don't even look Chinese, much less like Lee."

Finishing the Game had its world premiere at this year's Sundance Festival where Cinematical's Scott Weinberg found Lin's "confident and consistently amusing" mockumentary to be "a pretty funny little diversion."

"Completely fabricated and admirably on target," Weinberg writes, "Finishing the Game takes square aim at the ways in which Asian performers spent decades pigeonholed into 'delivery boy' roles, full-bore 'chop socky' caricatures—and pretty much nothing else, really."

Variety's Justin Chang didn't like the film much, describing it as "a rice-paper-thin spoof that tries to poke fun at the endangered Hollywood species that is the Asian male actor." Then again, one gets the sense that Chang doesn't care for Lin's work period, mentioning that Better Luck Tomorrow was Lin's "novel if over-appreciated look at Asian-American teenagers in Orange County suburbia."

"Lee himself is rarely shown," Chang mentions, "though his very absence haunts the picture; perhaps the best thing that can be said for Finishing the Game is that the martial-arts icon comes across as genuinely irreplaceable."

Lin was insistent about not repeating the mistake of using posthumous Bruce Lee footage. As he told MTV News, "[Lee's] presence is better felt by not addressing it directly, because . . . it's really a comment on being Asian-American, you know: The best you can do is being able to just stand in."


Justin Lowe's review at The Hollywood Reporter is decidedly more generous. He writes: "Lin, an experienced documentary-maker, expertly duplicates the narrative and stylistic characteristics of the form even as he gently ridicules them, from the earnest interviews and shaky handheld camerawork to the 'balanced' reporting technique. The re-creations of '70s sitcoms, cop shows and chopsocky martial arts movies are spot-on, down to the specific tropes of each genre, even though Lin insists the film isn't really a mockumentary." He singles out Candi Guterres' production design, Annie Yun's period-evocative costumes and Brian Tyler's funky score.

Kimberly Chun interviewed Lin for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Ed Heede explored Lin's decision to apply a digital intermediate process on the road back to Sundance.

Nearly the entire cast and crew of Finishing the Game joined Justin Lin on stage after the screening to talk about the film with the audience, including MC Hammer, Sung Kang, Dustin Nguyen, Roger Fan, Leonardo Nam, McCaleb Burnett, Julie Asato, and Mousa Kraish, just to name a few.

Yul Kwon kicked off the discussion by asking Lin where the idea for Finishing the Game came from and why Lin decided to use the comedy genre? Lin responded, "I remember when I was about 12 years old I saw Bruce Lee for the first time. When I was growing up in the suburbs, I was actually exposed to all the Bruce Li movies first so when I saw the real Bruce Lee, it blew me away. [Bruce Lee] was really complex and empowered. I wanted to see all his movies so I went to see Enter the Dragon, I got all the movies, and then I had Game of Death and I was totally confused. I didn't know why [Bruce Lee] was there and then this other guy was walking around. It's been with me for all these years and it just felt like the right time to explore it. …I had had this big learning experience going into the studios and I felt that was inspiring me so I called up Josh [Diamond] and we drove to Davis and started writing [Finishing the Game]."

Your last film was the big budget movie The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Yul Kwon continued, and now you've chosen to do a smaller, low budget indie movie. Why did you choose to follow up a big commercial hit with an indie? "I had been going on set for the last few years," Lin answered, "and to buy lunch I would spend more money than [the budget for] Finishing the Game or Better Luck Tomorrow. As a filmmaker, [I'm] trying to achieve a balance. I've been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to try different things. Whether I've succeeded or fallen on my ass, whatever, to have the opportunity was very important to me. At the end of the day, I feel it doesn't matter about the budget. It's about the story and what you're passionate about. Making independent films are very different than when you make studio movies. That's the balance for me that I'm trying to achieve. Fast and Furious was that one movie that put me in a place where I didn't have to worry about how I was going to pay rent and I really wanted to enjoy that so I called up all my friends and we went and made a movie."

Addressing the actors and the crew, Yul Kwon wondered what it was about Finishing the Game that compelled them to participate in making the movie? McCaleb Burnett, who played Tarrick Tyler (the guy who doesn't "even look Chinese, much less like Lee") spoke up first. "Justin asked and we came for the most part. I know a couple of us had the parts written for us in mind but the great thing about this is . . . this is why we do it. Working with someone like Justin in this kind of movie is why we went into this business. It couldn't be a better job. We shot this film in 18 days and it was one of the best jobs of my life. I think we can all say the same thing. …He says and we come running, no matter what the paycheck, and it was huge for me…."


Roger Fan ("Breeze Loo") commented next: "What's interesting about working for Justin and the rest of this crew is the tremendous amount of purpose and inspiration behind the work. A lot of us who have worked in Hollywood for quite a long time, a lot of times it's about survival and just doing stuff where you have to compromise your aspirations. For Justin to go from Annapolis to a $100,000,000 Fast and Furious movie and then all of a sudden he picks up the phone and says, 'I want to do something meaningful' is interesting to me. All of us are here because of one thing: to make a difference, and also passion. When you get into a project like Finishing the Game, you feel like you're really making a difference, that you're actually doing something significant. For me it's like moving forward. This is going to be a tremendous year. Hopefully, everyone here—being part of the Better Luck Tomorrow family—and now moving into Finishing the Game, hopefully we'll have a great release later on this year and really make a statement across the country. This is all Justin so thanks, man."


Mousa Kraish ("Raja Moore") added, "I just did it 'cause I got a job. It was a great opportunity. I got a chance to not play somebody who has a bomb strapped to him." The audience laughed and applauded knowingly. "It's good to have filmmakers," Kraish continued, "like whoever's in the audience here who are filmmakers, to write those type of roles beyond the [stereotypes]. Go further. That's what Justin did."

At this stage Yul Kwon opened it up to questions from the audience. The first was how Lin went about choosing his interracial cast? "For me it was very important," Lin replied, "Talent is not the issue because there are a lot of very talented people out there. It does get a little frustrating sometimes in the studio world when you're casting for roles and automatically they cast Asian actors just for Asian reasons. [Finishing the Game] is one where we opened it up and we just had a lot of fun. This was not as much of a casting process as my other movies because I feel that if you can get to the point in your life where you can work with your friends who are talented, that's the dream. I was very fortunate. Like Roger Fan, it's been five years since Better Luck Tomorrow and we've grown together and it's great to meet new members. I feel like it's this little family that keeps growing. Every day we're growing. For people to share this experience is very important."

Lin was asked where the inspiration for his characters came from? Lin fielded to the script writer Josh Diamond. Diamond said, "This was an opportunity for us to pull from all sorts of ideas, things we had seen, heard, felt, experienced, and to pull it together. This was a unique experience too. Justin had had this idea a very long time ago so many of the characters were born with the faces of many of the people on stage and that's an incredible opportunity because—as we're writing together—we're able to visualize Roger or Sung or any of these guys saying these things as they are doing it. Actually it really helped and made the process a lot more fun. A lot of these [ideas] had come to Justin as an inspiration from a very long time ago so for us to be able to then find the form and find the situations to put them in was a real gift. So often you have the basic scenario and then you have to flesh it out with the characters but in this case a lot of times the characters came first."

"It's basically this kind of therapy for working in Hollywood," Lin quipped.

Lin was asked how he achieved the delightful retro look to the film with its attention to details, hair styles, costumes? Lin shouted out to Candi Guterres and her production design. "It was a tough one," he added, "because, again, this was going back to doing independent film and also an Asian American independent film. You are not able to make these films on an equal playing field. To do a period piece is very hard. We're very fortunate to have the relationships with Universal. They kicked in. We were grabbing everything. They were giving us all the props and all the wardrobe for free, basically, from the relationship from the studio movies. We had very little money but Candi and Annie [Yun] and everybody was able to squeeze it out, like Akiko [Matsumoto] doing hair, I've never seen that many wigs in one room in my life!"

Justin was asked what t.v. shows he watched to correctly replicate the visual and aesthetic effects? "The first thing that we looked at," Lin outlined, "was actually Pumping Iron." That drew an appreciative laugh from his audience. "And we watched a lot of Police Woman [and] Mannix."

With regard to the comedy, one audience member wondered how much an influence Christopher Guest had on the script? "Obviously doing comedy is a collaborative effort more than any other genre," Lin responded. "As much as you can stay in the room and come up with ideas in writing, it takes the actors to come in and bring [the words] to life. But the thing is we didn't have the luxury of a lot of time because we didn't have the budget. Working with people who are talented and skilled at their craft was very important. Knowing when to hit those beats. It was important not to overcut, which means that a lot of the cutting was done inside the scenes. The actors delivered the beats. I had the pleasure of working on this project because the agenda for this project was just to work with very talented people. With other films there's sometimes other agendas involved and you're just trying to glue things together."

One young woman was curious about Josh Diamond's ability to capture an Asian American experience not being Asian American. "Josh is more Asian than you think," Lin countered. "He's like my fourth brother. Really." She asked if Josh was a banana but Diamond argued that wouldn't be accurate because that would mean he was white on the inside and yellow on the inside. He determined he would actually be an egg; yellow on the inside and white on the outside. As for how he achieved an Asian American sensibility, Diamond offered: "It happened organically. Many many years ago at the beginning of film school Justin and I met and began collaborating with each other. It happened by osmosis; it's a form of diffusion, right? It wasn't like an agenda. We've been working together and we do have a community that happens to be primarily Asian American, but I have to tell you I haven't experienced any reverse racism here and it doesn't really play a big role in terms of people saying, 'You're white. You don't get it.' It's something that happened naturally and we're together. Racism is racism and it's completely unacceptable. I think [Justin and I] relate to the big important issues and that's the thing about Justin and I; we view the world quite similarly. Injustice is injustice and we relate at a deep level. I don't think [my being white] has prevented us from being brothers."


At this point MC Hammer interjected, "Being a minority and understanding the experience of minorities in this country, we all can relate to oppression, segregation, [and] being culturally divided. The beauty of this film for me was that—as Justin and Josh dealt with stereotypes—they dealt with [them] in a way that would cause you to have an uncomfortable laugh. So you would laugh because it's funny but then—if you're one of the people who support racism—then you know the joke's really on you and that you need to learn to respect the history of the past brothers. I thought this was brilliantly done. [The film is] funny but at the same time there's some great messages in this film that I think at this time in this country we need to see. It's time to get rid of all stereotypes. We might laugh at certain things but we also understand that we've come a long way and we have a long way to go."

In light of movies like Crash and Babel, the same young woman queried after Lin's vision for Finishing the Game? "Growing up watching movies, especially in the suburbs," Lin answered, "as an Asian American I can relate to the characters who aren't Asian. The three-dimensional aspect of it is what makes [filmmaking] universal. We didn't make this film in mind for just one group of people. We do hope to be able to share this with everybody. The issue of racism is inherent. It's real. That's part of life. You can either sit there and complain about it or you also work it in."


One fellow wondered what the reasoning was behind not having any actual footage of Bruce Lee in the film—was it artistic or otherwise?—and he inquired after a previous project he'd heard about where CGI was to be used to insert Bruce Lee into a film? Lin confirmed that project was dead. On his part, he explained, "it was a conscious choice. [Bruce Lee's] presence is still around. To be able to make a movie [about him] and not ever see a frame of him but still feel his presence, that's how strong and how present he still is with us. I have this push and pull relationship with Bruce. As a kid, [Bruce Lee] was the one figure I looked up to. I'm proud. And then you walk down the street and people are calling you Bruce. It will always be a part of me. The exercise was to try to do this movie without seeing him and yet at the same time feeling his presence the whole way through."

The final question revolved around Justin Lin's future projects. "I have a few projects in the works. Some of them are in the studios but I also have a small independent film, a comedy about two brothers called Crickets, which I'm really excited about. I'm working with a very good writer Alfredo who's in the audience. The other thing is I want to focus on and enjoy the process right now and at the same time take care of this movie because—when we made this movie—I didn't want to go through the same experience. As a filmmaker, a lot of times you make the movie and you hope that someone will come and pick it up and then take it to the world, which is the way to go but at the same time I feel like we're in this position right now where we can pick it up ourselves. We're in the process of partnering up with the right people so that we can take out this movie the right way. A lot of times distribution/exhibition as a filmmaker you have no control over. That's something that I'm looking forward to and exploring more."

Cross-published at Twitch.

2007 SFIAAFF—Opening Night Introductory Remarks

Yul Kwon, the winner of Survivor: Cook Islands served as Opening Night Master of Ceremonies for the SFIAAFF screening of Justin Lin's Finishing the Game. "I'm excited to be here for a number of reasons," Kwon enthused. "On a personal note, this is probably one of the first times I've been asked to appear in front of an audience fully-clothed."

Kwon introduced Stephen Gong, Executive Director for the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). Formerly the Deputy Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Gong is likewise a film historian featured in this year's Centerpiece presentation of Arthur Dong's Hollywood Chinese.

Gong straightaway complimented Yul Kwon on how he has worn his celebrity, carrying himself with integrity and respect. Emphasizing the festival's 25th anniversary, Gong recounted: "Key anniversaries such as this provide us with an opportunity to take a look at the past and see how far we've come even as we also look ahead into the future. When we started this organization 26 years ago, we did so to fill a void. There was a lack of authentic and truthful images of Asian Americans on movie screens, on television screens, and the absence of our images and our stories in libraries and class rooms. Over the years we've helped filmmakers get their films made and seen on public television, into class rooms and on the screens of movie palaces like here at the Castro. We're very proud of this work and we're appreciative of the support and efforts that [our audiences] have made, that our filmmakers have made, that our members of the organization [and] our donors, to help us get to this point; but, there is still so much to do.

"The whirlwind changes of technology both promise to and threaten us with the fundamental shift in the way that we are entertained, the way that we're informed, the way we access information, the way we communicate with one another. Whether it's called Web 2.0 or The Living Web, the challenge for public media and entities like CAAM remains the same: how to make this technology accessible to a wide range of people and to provide content that is socially and culturally relevant, that is truthful, that matters? We have both an obligation and a unique opportunity to tap into our community's desires for connectiveness and, in turn, to educate and inform a much broader audience and to transform those virtual ties into real world action for social change, for betterment, for greater tolerance, and respect for difference.

"There was a review of our festival in this morning's San Jose Mercury News that our board member Glenn Osaka passed on to me that spoke of Asia America as 'the infinite empire' and the way that this was a vast terrain at our festival surveys. Now that's an intriguing idea. We once thought we were a very small marginalized community. Our eyes have been lifted. …Our task now is not only to survey this sweet terrain but to help reshape this territory that is Asia America. This, then, is the work for the future: to stay current, to stay relevant, to stay true to our crowning mission, presenting stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian American experiences to the broadest possible audiences. Please join us on that journey.

"Now, returning to the real world, let me put in a plug for the importance of gathering together in person as we are here tonight to commune with one another. This is the other part of community and it's the part that is so very special about our festival. Thank you again for coming."

Yul Kwon then introduced Chi-hui Yang who has been Festival Director for the last nine years. "Which is pretty scary," Kwon joked, "because in the last nine years I've had nine different jobs." Chi-hui graduated from Stanford University and writes about culture, music and film. His curated film programs have been screened at film festivals nationwide, including the Seattle and Washington, D.C. international film festivals and the Barcelona Asian Film Festival.

"When the festival started in 1982," Chi-hui contextualized, "it was a pretty small affair—12 films over a weekend—and in the last quarter century it's grown into the largest festival of its kind in the country. This year: 3 cities, 11 days, 130 films." He provided a down and dirty primer of how to best experience and appreciate the festival. "In terms of major themes for the festival, there's a whole bunch of sub-themes but there's one umbrella [theme] that brings stuff together; that's one of returns. We have a lot of folks coming back that have been at the festival in the past coming back with new films, a lot of folks who were at the first film festival in 1982." Chi-hui singled out Arthur Dong and Curtis Choi as being present at this year's festival and congratulated Ruby Yang, also from the Class of '82, for her Oscar win for The Blood of Yingzhou District.

Chi-hui congratulated Richard Wong and H.P. Mendoza (Colma: The Musical) for the festival trailer and—because there is so much going on in the trailer—Chi-hui offered some tips on three things he wanted audiences to look out for: 1) Where is the horse and what happens to the horse? 2) How many San Francisco firefighters are in the trailer? 3) What actually happens with the stuffed yellow duck?

Finally, Yul Kwon introduced Justin Lin, director of the opening night comedy Finishing the Game. Justin Lin's first short film screened at the festival in 1997 and, since then, the festival has screened many of his films including Shopping for Fangs (1997), Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) and Spotlighting (2005). His recent films include Annapolis (2006) and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006). Finishing the Game had its world premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Justin Lin thanked his audience for coming and CAAM for inviting him. "This is a very special festival for me," he admitted, "because it was my first festival when I was a student at UCLA. My friend Quentin and I drove up in the rain and crashed in a friend's apartment. It's been 10 years and this is also where I learned that a community is about your experience and it's been great to grow and share all the films. [Finishing the Game] is appropriate in the sense that everybody that I've met in the last 10 years are in the film and they're here." Lin invited his audience to stick around after the film to talk with him and the cast.

Cross-published at Twitch.

MAMET AT THE MOVIES

Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne has invited Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter David Mamet to be TCM's latest guest programmer. Mamet will set aside his typewriter to program an evening of his favorite classic films on Thursday, March 22, 2007. Known for the rhythmic nature of his dialogue, Mamet has penned such blockbusters as The Untouchables (1987), Hoffa (1992) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Beginning at 5 p.m. PT, Mamet will introduce several of his favorite movies, including the war classic In Which We Serve (1942); Island in the Sky (1953), with John Wayne and Harry Carey, Jr.; Marcel Carné's Le Jour Se Lève (1939); and The Killing (1956), directed by Stanley Kubrick.


His being a guest programmer on TCM timely aligns with the publication of Mamet's latest book. In singular style and with idiosyncratic substance, David Mamet has bitten the hand that feeds him in his new Pantheon collection of essays Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie Business. The critical response is mixed as one reviewer after another examines Mamet's teethmarks to gauge how fierce the bite and if he has truly drawn any blood.

The New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann and Richard Schickel in the March/April issue of Film Comment both complain that Mamet disappoints for not offering new critiques about the movie industry instead of what "has been common knowledge for a century." Kauffmann wanted to be amazed, enlightened even. Instead, he writes that "by and very large Mamet's book reads like a stenographic report of lecture appearances." Both begrudgingly concede, however, that—though there's nothing new in Mamet's assault—"the manner in which Mamet lays about him imparts, if not the shock of the new, then the pleasure of strong, stinging writing" (Schickel). Or as Kauffmann phrases it, "Scattered through the book, inevitably, are some percepts—if not always fresh, then at least sharply put."

"Since so many of Mamet's beefs with Hollywood are familiar and indisputable—that its blockbusters emphasize spectacle over story, that its bigwigs do too little work for too much money, that its market research techniques dilute its artistry and that its reliance on group decision-making fosters mediocrity—one suspects that his interest in restating them is technical, aesthetic." So writes Walter Kirn for The New York Times who discerns that Mamet's style distinguishes his essays. "He puts things differently from others," Kirn explains, "and he does so in two distinctive registers." One is clean, commonsensical, straightforward while the other is less speechlike. "Professorial, fussy and overbearing, it reads at times like a parody of something." This latter manner, unfortunately, "rules the book."

The Austin Chronicle's Kimberly Jones is less obliging. "No thrills or chills here," she writes, "just some pretty good stories from an incorrigible grump, if you don't mind sloughing through an awful lot of gasbaggery to get to them."

Meanwhile, at The New York Observer, Scott Eyman characterizes Mamet as once again playing Moses laying down Hollywood law. "[T]here's something closed and unpleasantly doctrinaire about Mr. Mamet's attitude," Eyman complains, "he doesn't want conversation, doesn't make modest proposals and rarely seeks to amuse. Charm is not a quality he values, let alone exhibits. What he really wants to do is bludgeon the reader with the blunt instrument of his prejudices."


One has to take all these detractors with a grain of salt. They're critics, after all, and Mamet isn't too complimentary of critics. He calls them a plague. "Here, self-interestedly," Schickel writes, "I must raise an objection to [Mamet's] vividly expressed contempt for critics. We are not, as he seems to think, in business to teach him anything; our real task is to serve as mediators and discussion leaders between audiences and artists—especially on the kinds of films Mamet makes. He's right to be wary of us—awful lot of idiots burbling and blogging out there today—but we are not necessarily his enemies. And we're not necessarily for sale either."

"About critics, he runs out the same old objections," Kauffmann states. "Has any artist ever really liked critics? Mamet includes, in his own words, the usual whine: 'Who gave them the right to judge me?' " To which Kauffmann petulantly counters: "Who gave artists the right to make art?" This is one of those chicken and egg sequences that not only enforces a false dichotomy but entrenched perspectives. Choose your toys and take them home if you don't feel like playing. For example, you might prefer the adulation of Gore Vidal and Roger Ebert at the book's website.

The drawing of Mamet is courtesy of Joe Ciardiello for The New York Times. The photograph is courtesy of John M. Heller / Getty Images. Cross-published at Twitch.