Filmmaker gets her mojo back
Romantic comedy lets Bay Area native find footing after 15 years
Think about it: What would you do if your Plan A succeeds beyond your wildest dreams? Where do you go from there?
That was the difficulty — and no doubt, it’s a good problem to have — that faced Bay Area native Alice Wu in 2005 after she realized her dream project, the lesbianthemed Asian American comedy “Saving Face,” and the warmhearted film became a surprise indie hit, one that is still shown at film festival retrospectives and repertory houses.
Now, 15 years later, Wu is back with “The Half of It,” also a goodvibes romantic comedy, this time set in a mostly white rural high school. True to Wu’s roots, there’s a lesbian twist and an Asian American lead. Its world premiere on Netflix on Friday, May 1, closes a decadeandahalf journey to her second film that was long and complicated, with Wu confronting her shortcomings, finding new strengths, dealing with family health issues, embracing faith and finding her footing again by moving back to the Bay Area.
“I didn’t go into ‘Saving Face’ thinking ‘I want to be a filmmaker,’ ” Wu told The Chronicle by phone while sheltering in place in her San Francisco home near Dolores Park. “I went into it to make that film. And honestly, what a shocker that that film actually got made. As wonderful as it was to get it made, I hadn’t thought beyond just the craziness — it seemed like such an insane pipe dream to go for.”
Born in San Jose, Wu went to Los Altos High and Stanford University before embarking on a software career at Microsoft in Seattle. Burning to create and with a story to tell, she quit her job, moved to New York and gave herself five years to succeed — or fail — making what would become “Saving Face.” She succeeded, of course, just under the wire.
After that, without a plan to move forward, Wu worked for hire, writing and polishing scripts without credit for a paycheck.
“For me, the next few years after ‘Saving Face’ were a crash course on how Hollywood works,” Wu said. “I didn’t feel incredibly fulfilled. I was making money . ... But it didn’t feel purposeful.”
The breaking point for Wu came in late 2007, when a pitch for a TV series she says was warmly embraced by networks was derailed by a crippling writers’ strike that lasted into 2008. Then about 10 years ago, Wu’s mother and her inspiration for “Saving Face” became seriously ill, and Wu went back to the Bay Area to help care for her. She did not intend to stay, but she soon realized the Bay Area was home, and where she needed to be.
She immersed herself in San Francisco’s queer Asian community. She reconnected with her family (her mother recovered and is in good heath). She renewed old friendships and made new ones. She took to biking 20 miles a day in the city.
But for years, Wu didn’t write at all. She said she went to the occasional writer’s workshop, but “I had epic writer’s block.”
“I’d gone into my office every day,” she said. “Maybe I’d write a line. Then I’d delete it. Then I’d just lie on the floor of my office totally depressed . ...
“I think a lot of writer’s block comes from a fear of failure. And I remember thinking, ‘I’ve got to take something I’m
guaranteed to fail at.’ So I ended up taking an improv class at Endgames Improv. It really changed my life. I fell in love with improv, to the point where I’ve started teaching improv. It’s one of the great loves of my life. That community means a great deal to me.”
Wu’s creative juices were flowing again, but her writer’s block was still there. When Wu got the idea for “The Half of It” — about a mousy Asian American girl who agrees to help a school football star get the girl of his dreams, until she falls for the girl herself — she realized that “sadly, I’m basically someone who responds to punishment to get stuff done,” so she came up with a unique incentive to help her pound out that first draft.
“I wrote a check for a thousand dollars to the NRA,” Wu said, with a laugh.
A staunch opponent of the National Rifle Association and what the organization stands for, she felt it was something that could stoke a fire in her.
“I gave it to my friend CJ, a San Francisco firefighter, butch lesbian, who absolutely would send that check in because she gave her word. And I gave myself five weeks,” Wu recalled. “I told her, ‘On Aug. 8, this first draft must be written. It could be the worst first draft ever written. These two people will read it and confirm that it is done. If it is not done, you are sending that check in.’
“It was literally the most stressful five weeks I’ve ever had. I could not actually live with myself if that check got sent in.”
Still, all was not right. “Some stuff was going on in my personal life,” Wu said, declining to elaborate.
Then suddenly, turning the tables, she asked: “Do you believe in God or some sort of larger universe?”
“I wrestle with that question a lot,” Wu said. “I literally came to this moment, like, ‘I don’t know if there’s some order to the universe. I just prefer the person I am when I think there is. So I’m just going to choose to believe.’ Even if someone conclusively told me it doesn’t exist, ‘We have proved it,’ I’d still just choose to because it helps me organize my life and make better choices. “And that was probably what I was not doing . ... I didn’t have any sense of purpose.”
That epiphany came about three years ago, and Wu suddenly became a writing machine. “It just started pouring out of me,” she said.
Coincidentally, within a month she got an email from an industry contact from years earlier who had just gotten a new job at DreamWorks, and she ended up spending a year working on various
projects for the company.
“It felt like I was regaining my mojo a little bit,” she said.
Soon after, “The Half of It,” which wears its influences of “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Pygmalion” with pride, was on the fast track.
Watching “The Half of It,” and before that “Saving Face,” one realizes that Wu’s strength doesn’t stem from her family, or the Bay Area, or improv, or faith. It’s the belief in humanity that has always been within her. Her gentle films deal with serious issues, but with humor and understanding, one reason she set this latest film in what she calls “Trump country.”
“I believe that even though I’m Asian and lesbian and grew up in an immigrant family, I still think that the vast majority of us are far more similar than different,” Wu said. “As a filmmaker, I probably strive most toward empathy. I rarely have villains. I might have characters that are not actualized as to their understanding of humanity, but they’re not bad people.
“If I can make a 17yearold white conservative boy somewhere in the heartland relate to an immigrant Chinese girl, I’ve won.”