Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The mysterious "Green Light"

In film, producers and screenwriters are always trying to figure out how to get the “green light” on their project. I’ve had a recent experience that allows me greater insight into the process. It comes from being the Chair, Chinese Canadian Advisory Panel to the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP). Our responsibility is to advise Minister for Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney on projects that address the history of the “Chinese Head Tax” and immigration restrictions.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the "Head Tax" was an “admission fee,” levied solely on the Chinese, on those that immigrated to Canada. This lasted from about 1890-1923. Things got bleaker for the Chinese because when in order to stop any immigration, Canada instituted the “Chinese Immigration Act” (the Exclusion Act) which forbade almost all Chinese from immigrating, from 1923-1947. This was a dark time which we hope will never be repeated but yet must be remembered.

With a $5,000,000 fund, we have looked at projects with many perspectives, including artistic, legal, documentary and cataloguing. This is a competitive process and all of the selected projects show most, if not all, of the following attributes. It's an informal checklist that I've personalized.

1. Passion - do I love this idea? How much? Do I love it enough to spend 1, 10, 20 years trying to put this together?

2. Research & Knowledge – Is this a subject I really understand or the people I want to work with understand to a great depth?

3. Bureaucratic considerations – How much red tape do I have to go through in order to make this happen and do I want to go through it?

4. Community Support – How does the affected community feel about this and are they important to the project’s success?

5. Non-community interest - Will this project transcend local concern?

6. Credibility & Experience – Are the people who are proposing the project know what they’re doing or be able to convince others that they will be able to achieve their goals?

7. Creativity – Are we looking at something in a unique way?

8. Financing – Where is the money coming from? Am I expected to foot the entire bill, is there any other potential sources of funds?

When I think about broadcasters and film funding bodies I have dealt with, their decision-making is similar to how I address the issues above. Now in order to have a project go ahead, it is not necessary to score high on every single point but it is necessary to be able to address most of them in a realistic fashion.

For any of you that have a project idea that fits, the CHRP has just announced a new call. Details can be found at: CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Addressing the above is no guarantee of a "green light," but it is another tool you can use in trying to get inside the mind of the decision-makers.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

How did THAT get made?

As a filmmaker, I often get asked, “How did that horrible film get made?” The acting sucked, the story was no good, the music was too loud…” any number of things.

The easy answer is that someone convinced someone else to give him/her the money. And that is certainly true. But a question arises, “Why did someone give someone else the money?” Let’s look at some of the reasons.

1. FAMOUS ACTOR and REALLY FAMOUS ACTOR want to do the project. Now cast is absolutely critical in making a film work and more importantly to the investor – make people want to go to a movie – but this has always got to be remembered. Actors are human too. They can love script but that doesn’t mean everybody will.

2. PERSONAL CONNECTION. This can be anything – the director is someone I respect and want to work with. The film has a lot of values/minorities/beliefs that I identify with and want to promote. I’m in love with the star. This has nothing really to do with the film or story but more on personal feelings.

3. GUILT. Guilt? How does guilt play in one deciding to make a movie? This is related to “Personal Connection” above. Someone may feel guilty that they haven’t been treating some minority or another as well as they should have and they should “do something about it.” This is tokenism at its worst but it happens.

4. I LOVE THE STORY. One must always remember, “one person’s passion is another person’s poison.” In other words, someone else thinks the script sucks. However, I think as a general, you can say that a good story is the beginning of a good film. (As a side note to this, good storytelling is not the exclusive domain of the professional. Talk to anybody you know and chances are they will have some great ideas for story. The trick is to transform those great thoughts into a cohesive story or screenplay.)

Lastly though, a film is collaborative effort of often hundreds, maybe thousands of people and elements. Any one of them has the potential to mess up a great story.
The truth is that there is no formula for making a film that people will like. Everyone has different tastes.

That's why, when a lot of producers have the time and don't think they'll get sued, they will listen to a story idea, at least for a couple of minutes. You never know where the next Avatar will come from.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Asian American/Canadian

The way, I see it Canada and the United States have two different approaches toward The Changing Face.

I was brought up in a time when institutional racism against the Chinese was alive and well. This made my parent’s generation heritage quite protective of who we were and my father used to say regularly, “Never forget you are a Chinese.” Thanks Dad – I look in the mirror and didn’t really think I looked anything like Morgan Freeman (although I am regularly mistaken for Tom Cruise.) Dad and his generation did that because they had to – Chinese were not completely trusted in North American society and the small community had to protect and build up each other.

To compound the difficulty, many couldn’t tell Japanese from Chinese and with memories of Pearl Harbor still fresh in the North American psyche, anyone with a yellow face was suspicious. As people from Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and more from Asia immigrated, there was an ongoing difficulty with cultural adaptation that still exists for many today.

Why do I bring this up? It’s because today, Vietnamese, Thai, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and Philippinos are lumped together in North America as “Asians.” What makes this crazy is that these peoples historically don’t really like each other. Heck, depending where you were from in China, one village didn’t like another, claiming the others were too haughty or boorish or whatever. You know what? Caucasians don’t hold an exclusive copyright on bigotry. Not even close.

Again, the question is, why do I bring this up? Because this has enormous implications for The Changing Face, especially in the media. In a film, one cannot simply cast any Asian for a role. More than just cultural differences, every group has a distinct look and there are many who will not forgive one ethnic group being cast for another. i.e. to the informed viewer, casting a Korean as a Chinese is as blatantly wrong as casting Antonio Banderas as a Swede. Now with a serious makeover, Banderas could transform into a Scandinavian and that’s the same kind of care that would be needed in transforming one Asian ethnic group into another, a care not normally taken because of the attitude, “Aren’t all Asians the same?”

(For those of you that doubt this, often when I go into a restaurant or supermarket, the waiter or clerk knows what dialect of Chinese to talk to me in - I have the "look" of a Cantonese. Sometimes, the clerk/waiter is astute enough to speak to me in English. I have the "look" of a North American Chinese from the Toisan district of Guangdong.)

This is why the North American concept of the “Asian American” really is a work-in-progress. Many North American-born Asians do not carry the same baggage as their overseas or older counterparts do and the commonality of similar skin colour is enough for them to consider each others a “bro.” They consider me a relic of the Stone Age when I try to explain that there are real differences and that need to be recognized. Canadians are more inclined to agree with this which gives rise to two different attitudes depending on which side of the 49th parallel we reside – the Canadian “multiculturalism” and the American concept of “melting pot.”

Each has its advantages and disadvantages but the important thing is to recognize, not that one or the other is “right” but there are two different philosophies at work here which are inherently in conflict with each other. Depending on who I’m speaking to, I have to adjust my personal outlook and it’s important that you do too because for those that care, that button is white hot.

A Chinese is a Chinese is a Chinese and a Japanese is a Japanese and both have not only Asian heritages but a history of enmity that goes back centuries. And by the time you throw in the traditional animosity of other Asian ethnic groups, you wonder how the countries manage to co-exist in the same general geographic area for so long.

But now that we’re in America, our kids go to the same school, we shop at the same stores, attend the same church, does that mean we’re one big happy “Asian American” family then? Hmmm. Just be careful because for some, not recognizing the differences is a deal-breaker and they aren’t necessarily wrong. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say we are going to “celebrate our differences” from one side of our mouth and then on the other say that “we’re all the same.”

Or are we the same but different?

Happy New Year Everybody - eh?