With the financial success of the romantic comedy film “Crazy Rich Asians” (earning $53 million worldwide in its first week) directed by Jon M. Chu and a screenplay written by Peter Chiarelli and Adelle Kim, based on the 2013 novel by Kevin Kwan, I felt that it would be great to go back in time of Asian American cinema.
As “Crazy Rich Asians” is the first Hollywood studio film centered on an Asian-American character’s story in over 25 years, I couldn’t help but think about the many Asian American filmmakers, writers, actors/actresses and those in the industry who worked hard in hopes that one day there would be representation of Asian Americans in a Hollywood film since “The Joy Luck Club”.
While Asian Americans have appeared in cinema way back in the ’20s with Anna May Wong in “The Troll of the Seas” (1922), Anna Chang in “Hollywood with Two Little Chinese Maids” (1929), Bo Ling, Bo Ling in “Captured in Chinatown” (1935), in terms of Asian American films featuring a primarily Asian American cast, the most significant would be the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1961 film, “Flower Drum Song”.
The film was an adaptation of the 1957 novel by Chinese American author C.Y. Lee. and would star Nancy Kwan, Kames Shigeta, Miyoshi Umeki, Jack Soo, Benson Fong and Juanita Hall and go on to earn $5 million in the box office which was wonderful during that time.
In fact, “Flower Drum Song” was even selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Unfortunately, for nearly two decades, there were no Asian American films with a predominately Asian American cast until indie filmmaker Wayne Wang’s 1982 film “Chan is Missing”. But he would return with one of the most significant, big-budget films featuring an Asian American cast with the 1993 film “The Joy Luck Club”.
In the 1990’s, we started to see a change with comedian/actress Margaret Cho’s “All-American Girl” debuted on television and became the first series with a cast comprised of primarily an Asian American cast.
In the ’90s, we started to see Asian American student activism strong on college campus, many Asian American magazines and online websites catering to an Asian American demographic.
One film that was popular among the college circuit was the filmmaker Chris Chan Lee’s independent film “Yellow”.
The film starred Michael Chung, Burt Bulos, John Cho, Jason Tobin, Angie Suh, Mia Suh, Lela Lee, Mary Chen, Soon-Tek Oh, Amy Hill and many more.
The film was independently financed by Lee who wrote and directed the film and won the 1999 Golden Ring Award for “Best Asian American Independent Film”.
At that time, it was my final year at California State University Fresno and also my final year as Editor-in-Chief for “Asian Pacific Review” and seeing how the film was screening at various campuses around the United States, I met with our advisor of how I wanted “Yellow” to screen for what was one of the largest Asian American celebrations of that time, Amerasia Week.
Not only were we able to get the film screened at Amerasia Week, we were also able to have director Chris Chan Lee at the event to present the film.
I was able to present Chris prior to the screening of the film and my memories from that evening was how awesome it was to have Chris Chan Lee on campus, how cool and genuine of a person that he was but also the wonderful turnout for the screening of “Yellow”.
Months prior to the screening, I had the opportunity to interview many of the cast members, and while I was able to hang out with Chris that evening and pick his brain about “Yellow” and filmmaking in general, I delegated the interview with Chris Chan Lee to our APR writer Tommy Truong, who did a wonderful job. Also, a big thanks to my good friend and our APR photographer at the time, Mahito Tomoi, who took photos that evening.
While I do plan to revisit my past interviews from “Yellow” on my blog, I would like to share Tommy’s interview with “Yellow” director Chris Chan Lee from 1999.
Korean American film director Chris Chan Lee was present for the screening of his debut effort, Yellow, during Fresno State’s “Amerasia Week” festival.
Yellow has captured the attention of film festival audiences internationally since its release in 1997.
Yellow won Best Film Audience at the 1997 Golden Carp Awards and was the feature film at the Sixth Annual Seattle Asian American Film Festival. Most recently, the movie was shown at the
1998 Slamdance Film Festival as well as the 1998 Singapore International Film Festival.
Yellow was created with the goal of instilling within its viewers an image of Asian Americans as ordinary people. As a child, Lee rarely saw positive references to Asian Americans in American cinema and popular culture.
Lee aspired to make a film in which all youths, regardless of ethnicity, could relate.
Michael Daeho Chung plays Sin Lee, the lead role in Yellow. The character works as a clerk at his father’s convenience store in Southern California, which is the setting for the film.
“The film is actually semi-autobiographical,” the director said.
The real Lee Family’s delicatessen was in San Francisco. It was formerly owned and run by Russian immigrants, said Lee, but was purchased by his parents when he was a child.
“[My parents] are first generation immigrants,” Lee said, “It’s just like…a whole different set of rules for them.”
He also noted that children of immigrants tend to have more opportunities for quality schooling and careers, such as his own.
Lee believes that teen-agers often misunderstand why their parents strictly emphasize good work ethics and schooling. But the parents are just trying to afford their children an opportunity they never had.
“One way to really benefit from the opportunities that your parents give you is to really choose a life that you want to lead,” he said.
“I think my mom would have been a wonderful artist, but she could never have gone into that, “She ended up working with my dad at the store selling Coca-Cola and sandwiches, because she had realities to deal with.”
Taking advantage of his freewill, Lee decided to expand his interests in the arts, despite his parents’ wishes that he pursue an MBA degree in college. He also contemplated becoming a computer science major but realized his strengths were in the visual arts and writing.
“Sure, my parents weren’t totally thrilled about me going into the arts,” he said. “But really, if this is what I think I’m good at, and this is a way I feel like I can lead a fulfilling life, then the best thing I can ultimately do for them, and for myself, is to really pursue the path I want to take.”
In high school, he enjoyed photography and illustration. He also began experimenting with super 8 and video cameras.
At the University of Southern California (USC), Lee enrolled in the undergraduate program and later joined the university’s film school. At graduation, he received a bachelor of arts degree in film production.
“[College] is really where I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker,” Lee said.
“What a lot of people generally do when they get to [college], is they start to really think about how they fit into the world and how the world sort of puts them into certain slots, I really sort of had this awakening to my own Asian American identity and Asian American issues, film school is the best place to find your voice and take chances, I think over the next couple of years, we’ll see the number of films from the Asian American perspective just really multiply. There’s a tremendous sense of purpose. There’s definitely this ground swell of Asian American filmmakers, artists and actors that are really starting to have an impact on American culture.”
Lee decided to use his talents and USC resources to forge the progress of Asian Americans in popular culture. He learned about the filmmaking process and made valuable connections with other students, friends who would later help in the production of Yellow.
“I worked on as many [student] films as possible and I got a sense of what the real challenges were with the nut and bolts of making films.” Lee said.
“I knew that making my first movie would be next to impossible.” Lee said of Yellow.
“[The process] would maybe take years out of my life to get done. And it did.” he said laughing.
It took Lee one year to get a “polished” draft of the script and one year to get financial backing for the movie.
Lee employed David Yang to co-produce Yellow. The two raised funds by pitching the film to distributors as well as soliciting friends and family. The San Francisco-based International Asian American Telecommunication Association contributed grants in exchange for educational screening and public broadcasting rights to the finished product.
Lee’s film cost $160,000 to produce.
“I don’t really see what the point is in trying to make a $20,000 movie look like a $10 million Hollywood studio film,” Lee said, “Why even try to compete on that level?”
The film was shot in 24 days, employing several of Lee’s USC film school friends.
“Some days we only had three or four people…the camera guy and the sound guy,” he said smiling, “Other days it was bigger, you know, It was nothing more than a glorified student crew…everyone getting into cars and going to Taco Bell and messing around. The cast and crew were really great.”
That’s the only way we pulled it off. They worked really hard,”
Lee was excited when all the shooting and post-production work was finished.
“It was one of those moments where you feel really good. Everything went wrong, but in the end we got what we wanted,” he said.
Lee’s parents were also glad that the film was finally completed. The Lee’s anxiously awaited some kind of tangible evidence that their son was actually working, Lee said chuckling.
“They had no concept of what it was I did on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
His parents would ask him, “Why did it take so long?” or “When are you going to make some money?” he said laughing.
Lee has no desire of being a “director for hire” in Hollywood. Instead he looks forward to making films that he and audiences will enjoy together.
Lee also sings for an indie-rock band in Los Angeles.
In September, he will co-direct a film in New Jersey.
“I just sort of found [filmmaking] by accident,” Lee said laughing, “Now it’s just too late to turn back.”
