Wayne Wang is one of the worlds great independent filmmakers. People may have forgotten his great talent because hes spent the past few years making very mainstream films such as Maid in Manhattan and Because of Winn-Dixie. But prepare to be reminded now that Koch Lorber is releasing his first two feature films, Dim Sum and Chan Is Missing, on special edition DVDs.
His first film, the groundbreaking Chan Is Missing, is about two Asian cab drivers in San Francisco searching for a man who has disappeared with a large sum of their money. Dim Sum is about an immigrant Chinese widow who wants to make a trip to China to pay last respects to her ancestors since a fortune teller has told her this is the year she'll be alive.
Buy Dim Sum and Chan Is Missing
Daniel Robert Epstein: How was putting together the DVDs of Dim Sum and Chan Is Missing?
Wayne Wang: It was great going back over the films and trying to find just the right look because technically theres so much available these days to make it look better. I was in New York cutting a recent film and I went to DuArt which was great too, because a lot of my independent films started out at DuArt. We wanted to keep the original film noir-ish black and white look but clean it up as well and make it a little stronger here and there.
DRE: Does it look better than it did when it first came out?
WW: I think it does. For example, some shots were a little over exposed because of lack of money. We brought some detail back to it but we kept that washed out look. We made the black stronger so it would have a more ominous look to it sometimes. Then there are also the extra sections, which I was less involved with. I have a very talented, young female filmmaker Debbie Lum who found Wood Moy and Marc Hayashi and did long interviews about Chan is Missing.
DRE: When was the last time you saw these films?
WW: In 2001 the Asian American Film Festival did a 20th anniversary screening of Chan is Missing in New York. Also I saw them in bits and pieces as I was reworking them for the DVD.
DRE: How did you feel about them now?
WW: Its good and bad. A sort of a double edged sword. Some of the technical aspects of the film are a little bit embarrassing. But that is also part of its charm. Some of the rough edges work and sometimes I feel like I could have cleaned it up more like the editing could be a little tighter. But I decided to not touch it. I could go back into my old films and spend hours making them better. It came out 20 some years ago and the Library of Congress has included it in its collection so I felt like I shouldnt change the film.
DRE: I appreciate you not changing them. Thats what directors do now. Its just a strange phenomenon for people to change my favorite movies.
WW: [laughs] I decided, for better or worse, to respect it for what it is. I only visually enhanced it digitally.
DRE: I got to speak to David O. Russell recently and I brought up one of my favorite films of his, Flirting With Disaster. He said that if he were to make it now, he would make it a deeper film. Chan is Missing and Dim Sum are already dark, how much different would they be if you made them today?
WW: I dont think Dim Sum would be a lot different because I think it still applies and is pretty universal. Chan is Missing could be very different because Chinatown has changed, the Chinese-American community has changed, our awareness of who we are has changed. Actually at one point a couple of years ago, a friend and I were talking about making Chan is Missing II or Chan is Still Missing [laughs]. I was very tempted to go out and use a comparable budget to the original to do something really down, dirty and rough.
DRE: That would be a change from the kind of films youre doing now.
WW: Yeah and I would really enjoy it. Its getting harder and harder to go back to a truly independent, low budget mode. I did that with a film called Center of the World a few years ago. That was done for under two million dollars and shot on digital very quickly. The more I do these big, huge Hollywood films, the more Im inclined to actually go back and do these small independent films.
DRE: I read about what you felt your favorite shot was in Dim Sum when it first came out and I wonder if it is still the same. The shot of the shoes left outside the living room door.
WW: Yeah, I still love those shots. I may have held on them a little too long, but I love them [laughs]. I had just gotten married at that time and my wife started having us do it at our house and I asked why and she said, Its customary and because theres a separation between the outside world and the inside world. I think it is a great metaphor for the film itself.
DRE: What struck me in re-watching these two early films of yours are themes that it shared with some of your recent mainstream work like Maid in Manhattan. They are all about alienation and class difference. Of course Maid is a very light film, was that what attracted you to it?
WW: I think theres more of a subconscious awareness with what I get interested in. Im interested in all these identities and who am I on many different of levels. That interest will always be in every film that I do. If you look at my films carefully they are always somehow about identity. Maybe that has to do with the fact that I grew up in Hong Kong with very traditional parents so Im pretty screwed up in terms of who I am. Thats why Im very aware and attuned to that question. Whether its on a more complicated level as I grew up or whether its just any individual asking that question of themselves.
DRE: Do you think you will shoot in San Francisco again anytime soon?
WW: I havent shot in San Francisco since The Joy Luck Club. San Francisco is a hard place to shoot. There are so many big tourist visual spots like the Golden Gate Bridge and you want to avoid them because theyre so filled with tourist-y meaning. The more real and down to earth locations are difficult to shoot in because people are not very sympathetic to films here. I felt that after The Joy Luck Club Id used up San Francisco a bit. I started working in New York, I shot a couple of films in New Orleans and other places. But now Im intrigued by San Francisco again and I want to come back and do something here.
DRE: It sounds like you really are interested in getting back to your roots, which is another theme of yours. If you shoot a film in San Francisco and if it is not the sequel to Chan is Missing, would it be a grittier film?
WW: I am developing and writing a script, based on a book called Adjust Your Life with the author Chang Rae Lee. It came out about four years ago and its about a Korean living in upstate New York. But everybody thinks hes Japanese and he has a very long and dark history. Once again it is a man who in the end has to confront he really is. Whether he is Korean or Japanese, whether hes somebody who could love or not love and all of that. Im working very hard on getting that together. Since The Joy Luck Club I havent done anything Asian either so I want to get back to that kind of material.
DRE: Youve lived in San Francisco for a long time, right?
WW: Ive lived here on and off since 1968 on and off. I do have a small apartment in the West Village in New York as well.
DRE: What do you like about San Francisco?
WW: Its not LA first of all [laughs]. Its a real town. In the last four or five years its changed a little bit but there was always so much energy here and I was fascinated with that. I have a lot of friends here who are not in the film business who are really interesting. It is also a slower paced town. New York is pretty intense and I have to take a break from it once in a while.
DRE: There has been a strong resurgence in Asian filmmakers since The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. You were already established by the time those films came out so has it affected you at all?
WW: Not really but maybe its because I havent pursued it. Ive been more involved with mainstream Hollywood films. But financing Adjust Your Life was easier than usual, so maybe it was because of that. I wont say it was a lot easier but a little bit.
DRE: I think a lot of your fans that followed your independent films through the 80s and 90s are confused by the fact you now do these very mainstream films like Maid in Manhattan and Because of Winn-Dixie. No ones begrudging you directing these films or making a living but I think people want you to do independent films again.
WW: I always say, why cant I be both? Just as much as Im equally Chinese and equally American, I could be equally independent and equally Hollywood. I dont think one negates the other. When I make Hollywood films I make them pure entertainment all the way. When I go independent, I try to go purely independent and not worry about the audience and how much money its going to make. So theres a way to have the best of both worlds.
DRE: What does Jim Jarmusch think of that?
WW: [laughs] Jim Jarmusch should stick to his independent side completely. Broken Flowers is probably his most commercial or most mainstream feeling film that he could ever do. But I think hes going to stick to his guns and be very independent and make the films exactly the way he wants to make them. Jim is a very different person than I am.
DRE: Of course.
WW: I really like the challenge making my latest film, Last Holiday, with Queen Latifah. This is me trying to make a mainstream comedy for the audience. I enjoy having the audience be so into the film and laughing and crying and having a great time. Im getting better at that as well. At the same time I dont enjoy the different kinds of pressure that comes with that such as worrying about the box office, an executive telling you what to do and all kinds of things like that. Thats why I want to have my own identity [laughs].
DRE: I got to speak to Paul Auster a few years ago. He said that after what happened with The Center of the World that the two of you will probably never work together again.
WW: Yeah we had a big fallout over that. He wrote an original version of the script which I didnt like. But I told him from the beginning that I wanted to improvise on this film and that I just wanted something on paper to help me. He became very attached to the script that he wrote and we got into a lot of disagreements and by the end of all of it I think we at least had some understanding and communication with each other. He took his name off the script, which is fine because he thought it wasnt his script anymore. But we are no longer as close as we were when we did Smoke and Blue in the Face.
DRE: That is just terrible for me to hear but I know these things happen all the time.
WW: Who knows, destiny brings all kinds of strange circumstances especially in Paul Auster novels.
DRE: I read about a couple films you might be doing such as Rocket Fuel For Winners.
WW: No, that was something I was interested in and now I dont know whats going on with it. Its an interesting story about a guy called Jason Itzler who ran an escort service in New York and was pretty brazen about it. Hes a fascinating character but it was very difficult to get the money together. I was trying to get James Toback to write it for me.
DRE: That would be great!
WW: James is up for it but we havent quite found all the money yet.
DRE: How about Good Cook Likes Music?
WW: That was a script that was developed with Adam Sandler and I am no longer involved with it. Its a very interesting idea. Adam Sandlers character gets severely drunk and the next morning he wakes up and realizes that hes married to a Chinese woman from China who was to be played by Zhang Ziyi. Its a great premise but I dont quite know whats going on with it right now.
DRE: If she gets nominated for an Academy Award for Memoirs of a Geisha, will that help out?
WW: That would help things out except Adam Sandlers people have their own way of doing things so they took control of it and I got busy doing other things.
DRE: Last Holiday just got released.
WW: Yeah. Thats a real fun movie.
DRE: Queen Latifah is so wonderfully charismatic. What attracted you to that film?
WW: Working with her was definitely a big plus and the story hit me. It is about a woman whos always lived her life in fear and never opened her life up to a lot of things. Then one day she finds out she has an illness that may kill her very soon. So she takes off on her last holiday and her life changes from there. I read the script right after my father died in a car accident. My father had lived a very controlling and careful life. He never let himself go so this script touched a nerve for me.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
His first film, the groundbreaking Chan Is Missing, is about two Asian cab drivers in San Francisco searching for a man who has disappeared with a large sum of their money. Dim Sum is about an immigrant Chinese widow who wants to make a trip to China to pay last respects to her ancestors since a fortune teller has told her this is the year she'll be alive.
Buy Dim Sum and Chan Is Missing
Daniel Robert Epstein: How was putting together the DVDs of Dim Sum and Chan Is Missing?
Wayne Wang: It was great going back over the films and trying to find just the right look because technically theres so much available these days to make it look better. I was in New York cutting a recent film and I went to DuArt which was great too, because a lot of my independent films started out at DuArt. We wanted to keep the original film noir-ish black and white look but clean it up as well and make it a little stronger here and there.
DRE: Does it look better than it did when it first came out?
WW: I think it does. For example, some shots were a little over exposed because of lack of money. We brought some detail back to it but we kept that washed out look. We made the black stronger so it would have a more ominous look to it sometimes. Then there are also the extra sections, which I was less involved with. I have a very talented, young female filmmaker Debbie Lum who found Wood Moy and Marc Hayashi and did long interviews about Chan is Missing.
DRE: When was the last time you saw these films?
WW: In 2001 the Asian American Film Festival did a 20th anniversary screening of Chan is Missing in New York. Also I saw them in bits and pieces as I was reworking them for the DVD.
DRE: How did you feel about them now?
WW: Its good and bad. A sort of a double edged sword. Some of the technical aspects of the film are a little bit embarrassing. But that is also part of its charm. Some of the rough edges work and sometimes I feel like I could have cleaned it up more like the editing could be a little tighter. But I decided to not touch it. I could go back into my old films and spend hours making them better. It came out 20 some years ago and the Library of Congress has included it in its collection so I felt like I shouldnt change the film.
DRE: I appreciate you not changing them. Thats what directors do now. Its just a strange phenomenon for people to change my favorite movies.
WW: [laughs] I decided, for better or worse, to respect it for what it is. I only visually enhanced it digitally.
DRE: I got to speak to David O. Russell recently and I brought up one of my favorite films of his, Flirting With Disaster. He said that if he were to make it now, he would make it a deeper film. Chan is Missing and Dim Sum are already dark, how much different would they be if you made them today?
WW: I dont think Dim Sum would be a lot different because I think it still applies and is pretty universal. Chan is Missing could be very different because Chinatown has changed, the Chinese-American community has changed, our awareness of who we are has changed. Actually at one point a couple of years ago, a friend and I were talking about making Chan is Missing II or Chan is Still Missing [laughs]. I was very tempted to go out and use a comparable budget to the original to do something really down, dirty and rough.
DRE: That would be a change from the kind of films youre doing now.
WW: Yeah and I would really enjoy it. Its getting harder and harder to go back to a truly independent, low budget mode. I did that with a film called Center of the World a few years ago. That was done for under two million dollars and shot on digital very quickly. The more I do these big, huge Hollywood films, the more Im inclined to actually go back and do these small independent films.
DRE: I read about what you felt your favorite shot was in Dim Sum when it first came out and I wonder if it is still the same. The shot of the shoes left outside the living room door.
WW: Yeah, I still love those shots. I may have held on them a little too long, but I love them [laughs]. I had just gotten married at that time and my wife started having us do it at our house and I asked why and she said, Its customary and because theres a separation between the outside world and the inside world. I think it is a great metaphor for the film itself.
DRE: What struck me in re-watching these two early films of yours are themes that it shared with some of your recent mainstream work like Maid in Manhattan. They are all about alienation and class difference. Of course Maid is a very light film, was that what attracted you to it?
WW: I think theres more of a subconscious awareness with what I get interested in. Im interested in all these identities and who am I on many different of levels. That interest will always be in every film that I do. If you look at my films carefully they are always somehow about identity. Maybe that has to do with the fact that I grew up in Hong Kong with very traditional parents so Im pretty screwed up in terms of who I am. Thats why Im very aware and attuned to that question. Whether its on a more complicated level as I grew up or whether its just any individual asking that question of themselves.
DRE: Do you think you will shoot in San Francisco again anytime soon?
WW: I havent shot in San Francisco since The Joy Luck Club. San Francisco is a hard place to shoot. There are so many big tourist visual spots like the Golden Gate Bridge and you want to avoid them because theyre so filled with tourist-y meaning. The more real and down to earth locations are difficult to shoot in because people are not very sympathetic to films here. I felt that after The Joy Luck Club Id used up San Francisco a bit. I started working in New York, I shot a couple of films in New Orleans and other places. But now Im intrigued by San Francisco again and I want to come back and do something here.
DRE: It sounds like you really are interested in getting back to your roots, which is another theme of yours. If you shoot a film in San Francisco and if it is not the sequel to Chan is Missing, would it be a grittier film?
WW: I am developing and writing a script, based on a book called Adjust Your Life with the author Chang Rae Lee. It came out about four years ago and its about a Korean living in upstate New York. But everybody thinks hes Japanese and he has a very long and dark history. Once again it is a man who in the end has to confront he really is. Whether he is Korean or Japanese, whether hes somebody who could love or not love and all of that. Im working very hard on getting that together. Since The Joy Luck Club I havent done anything Asian either so I want to get back to that kind of material.
DRE: Youve lived in San Francisco for a long time, right?
WW: Ive lived here on and off since 1968 on and off. I do have a small apartment in the West Village in New York as well.
DRE: What do you like about San Francisco?
WW: Its not LA first of all [laughs]. Its a real town. In the last four or five years its changed a little bit but there was always so much energy here and I was fascinated with that. I have a lot of friends here who are not in the film business who are really interesting. It is also a slower paced town. New York is pretty intense and I have to take a break from it once in a while.
DRE: There has been a strong resurgence in Asian filmmakers since The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. You were already established by the time those films came out so has it affected you at all?
WW: Not really but maybe its because I havent pursued it. Ive been more involved with mainstream Hollywood films. But financing Adjust Your Life was easier than usual, so maybe it was because of that. I wont say it was a lot easier but a little bit.
DRE: I think a lot of your fans that followed your independent films through the 80s and 90s are confused by the fact you now do these very mainstream films like Maid in Manhattan and Because of Winn-Dixie. No ones begrudging you directing these films or making a living but I think people want you to do independent films again.
WW: I always say, why cant I be both? Just as much as Im equally Chinese and equally American, I could be equally independent and equally Hollywood. I dont think one negates the other. When I make Hollywood films I make them pure entertainment all the way. When I go independent, I try to go purely independent and not worry about the audience and how much money its going to make. So theres a way to have the best of both worlds.
DRE: What does Jim Jarmusch think of that?
WW: [laughs] Jim Jarmusch should stick to his independent side completely. Broken Flowers is probably his most commercial or most mainstream feeling film that he could ever do. But I think hes going to stick to his guns and be very independent and make the films exactly the way he wants to make them. Jim is a very different person than I am.
DRE: Of course.
WW: I really like the challenge making my latest film, Last Holiday, with Queen Latifah. This is me trying to make a mainstream comedy for the audience. I enjoy having the audience be so into the film and laughing and crying and having a great time. Im getting better at that as well. At the same time I dont enjoy the different kinds of pressure that comes with that such as worrying about the box office, an executive telling you what to do and all kinds of things like that. Thats why I want to have my own identity [laughs].
DRE: I got to speak to Paul Auster a few years ago. He said that after what happened with The Center of the World that the two of you will probably never work together again.
WW: Yeah we had a big fallout over that. He wrote an original version of the script which I didnt like. But I told him from the beginning that I wanted to improvise on this film and that I just wanted something on paper to help me. He became very attached to the script that he wrote and we got into a lot of disagreements and by the end of all of it I think we at least had some understanding and communication with each other. He took his name off the script, which is fine because he thought it wasnt his script anymore. But we are no longer as close as we were when we did Smoke and Blue in the Face.
DRE: That is just terrible for me to hear but I know these things happen all the time.
WW: Who knows, destiny brings all kinds of strange circumstances especially in Paul Auster novels.
DRE: I read about a couple films you might be doing such as Rocket Fuel For Winners.
WW: No, that was something I was interested in and now I dont know whats going on with it. Its an interesting story about a guy called Jason Itzler who ran an escort service in New York and was pretty brazen about it. Hes a fascinating character but it was very difficult to get the money together. I was trying to get James Toback to write it for me.
DRE: That would be great!
WW: James is up for it but we havent quite found all the money yet.
DRE: How about Good Cook Likes Music?
WW: That was a script that was developed with Adam Sandler and I am no longer involved with it. Its a very interesting idea. Adam Sandlers character gets severely drunk and the next morning he wakes up and realizes that hes married to a Chinese woman from China who was to be played by Zhang Ziyi. Its a great premise but I dont quite know whats going on with it right now.
DRE: If she gets nominated for an Academy Award for Memoirs of a Geisha, will that help out?
WW: That would help things out except Adam Sandlers people have their own way of doing things so they took control of it and I got busy doing other things.
DRE: Last Holiday just got released.
WW: Yeah. Thats a real fun movie.
DRE: Queen Latifah is so wonderfully charismatic. What attracted you to that film?
WW: Working with her was definitely a big plus and the story hit me. It is about a woman whos always lived her life in fear and never opened her life up to a lot of things. Then one day she finds out she has an illness that may kill her very soon. So she takes off on her last holiday and her life changes from there. I read the script right after my father died in a car accident. My father had lived a very controlling and careful life. He never let himself go so this script touched a nerve for me.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
Skryche said:
Smoke is a favorite of mine.
I was just going to say that. It was on TV the other day and I caught Harvey Keitel's monologue at the end of it. Great, great stuff. It's funny because I think I saw it on a whim and I've never heard anyone really shout its praise, but I really liked it.