‘Smoke’ screening to honor Wang
Even though he is receiving what amounts to a lifetime achievement award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Wayne Wang is far from retired.
“I’m not dying yet!” he exclaims, with a laugh, over coffee.
Still, the 69-year-old San Francisco resident — who has a film in the Library of Congress, has had success in Hollywood and has authored one of the most prominent Asian American indie film careers — has been thinking of his legacy as of late. And while he is still working on new projects, he has been focusing recently on restor- ing some of his past works for posterity.
So SFFilm’s “A Tribute to Wayne Wang” (7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 7, at Dolby Cinema) will feature, after an extended clip reel and onstage interview conducted by local filmmaker H.P. Mendoza, a screening of a restored version of “Smoke,” Wang’s delightful 1995 collaboration with novelist Paul Auster about a Manhattan cigarstore owner and the orbit of characters who drift in and out of the store.
The film, which stars Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker and many others, won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, was a box office hit for Miramax and spawned a sequel, “Blue in the Face.”
“People don’t know that film like they do ‘Joy Luck Club’ or ‘Chan Is Missing,’ ” said Wang, referring to his most famous films. “It’s about people who are isolated, each in their own ways, yet they connect through a series of encounters at a cigar store. I really like it.”
It also serves as a reminder of the sweet spot in his career, when he navigated between the independent and Hollywood film world with ease.
Born in Hong Kong, Wang moved to the Bay Area in the late 1960s and attended California College of the Arts in Oakland. His first feature film, the independent no-budget noir “Chan Is Missing” (1982), shot in San Francisco’s Chinatown, was a watershed moment for both the Asian American community and the nascent 1980s indie film movement. The film was later selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.
He followed that with “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” (1985), also shot in San Francisco, but then surprised many by moving out of the Asian American indie sphere with “Slamdance” (1987), a thriller starring Tom Hulce, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Virginia Madsen.
His breakthrough was “The Joy Luck Club” (1993), perhaps his most beloved film, an adaptation of Amy Tan’s best-selling novel. It was one of the first Hollywood films — executiveproduced by Oliver Stone — to feature a mostly Asian cast, and its unexpected success made Wang a hot item.
He saw a Christmas-themed opinion piece in the New York Times by Auster. His wife, the former Hong Kong actress Cora Miao, was a fan of Auster’s writing, so Wang and Auster met and began working on “Smoke.”
“I got a call from Harvey Weinstein, and he said he wanted to do my next film, and that he would pay for the whole thing,” Wang said. “That’s how ‘Smoke’ got made. I don’t think he even read the script.” Yes, that Harvey Weinstein. The now-disgraced film mogul’s other reputation was that of a producer who was always demanding changes (Harvey Scissorhands was a nickname), and after “Smoke” won in Berlin, Wang found that Weinstein had assembled his own recut of the movie — which Wang and Auster both hated.
By then, Wang and Auster were planning “Blue in the Face,” and Wang had an idea: “I said, ‘Please, let us keep ‘Smoke’ the way we want to keep it and you can do anything you want with ‘Blue in the Face.’ … That saved ‘Smoke.’ ”
The next phase of Wang’s career surprised everyone, including himself: a director of female-driven Hollywood comedies and dramas. “Maid in Manhattan,” starring Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes, was his first $100 million box office success. During this period he also directed “Anywhere But Here” with Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon, and “Last Holiday” with Queen Latifah.
“I read an article once that said, ‘One for me, one for you,’ ” Wang said of his strategy of working in both the indie and the Hollywood film worlds. “But I like working in Hollywood. They’re difficult films to make.”
He recalls sitting with an audience during a screening of “Last Holiday,” a comedy-drama about a working-class woman given a few weeks to live who goes on a last fling in Europe.
“I was sitting next to someone who was laughing and crying, and those are the things you really appreciate,” Wang said. “You spend a year at least working on something and go through so many things. ‘Last Holiday’ went through three different administrations at Paramount. They just kind of kicked it around. So it was a nice reward sitting with an audience and the audience appreciating the film.”
In the past decade, Wang has made Asian American indies (“A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” “The Princess of Nebraska”) a studio film in China (“Snow Flower and the Secret Fan”), a documentary about San Francisco restaurateur Cecilia Chiang (“Soul of a Banquet”) and a film in Japan (“While the Women Are Sleeping”).
But he is also always tinkering with his older films. He looks at his entire oeuvre as being in the present. He is also working on new cuts of “Eat a Bowl of Tea,” “Chinese Box” and others.
“I believe that in the present moment, there is another vision that can come” from a previous film, Wang said.
“The previous one will always exist, but 10 years later, I want my perspective. I don’t think they’re ever completely finished. Until I die, I think they can still be worked on.”
G. Allen Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BRfilmsAllen