WAYNE WANG'S film world comes to Berkeley
Bay Area director's works — both edgy and mainstream — screening at BAMPFA
Throughout his decadesspanning career, San Francisco filmmaker Wayne Wang has meaningfully toggled between two radically different worlds — releasing both box-office hits and risktaking indies.
While the Hong Kongborn director's filmography overall has been praised and referenced many times over — perhaps most visibly for his helming one of the few studio productions to feature an Asian American cast in an Asian American story, the beloved adaptation of Amy Tan's international bestseller “The Joy Luck Club” — he's not always been the toast of the film world.
His sexually provocative “The Center of the World,” with Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker from 2001, springs to mind. The fallout from that one even led to a short drought in jobs after its release, he reveals.
Much of the respect and appreciation for Wang's creative output stems from his intimate, observant portraits that capture the verisimilitude of the Chinese American experience in the Bay Area and beyond. But the San Franciscan's oeuvre is seasoned with a spicy assortment of envelope-pushing upstarts, a couple that even ruffled the MPAA rating board's delicate feathers.
That Gemini-like duality in the 73-year-old Wang's career gets well represented in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's compelling seven-film retrospective “Wayne Wang in Person.”
As the title says, several of the screenings will have the filmmaker on hand for a discussion.
Even though Wang is credited with directing and co-directing some two dozen films, he admits to trepidation over being the focus of a retrospective and wonders whether his work matters in today's environment.
“I was actually really afraid that some films wouldn't be relevant or resonate as much,” he said during a Zoom interview in which he occasionally punctuates a sentence with joyous peals of laughter.
“But they do,” he then adds.
The films that touch on universal themes about family and familial obligations — the mother-daughter dynamic depicted with such clarity and insight in “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” from 1985 (screening Sunday), and the “Joy Luck Club” (screening April 16) — will obviously endure, he suggests.
The series includes a rare screening of one of his most controversial features — 1989's adherently nontraditional “Life Is Cheap … But Toilet Paper Is Expensive” (March 26). Also included is 1997's “Chinese Box” (April 2) with Jeremy Irons, Gong Li and Maggie Cheung. Both films deal passionately with Hong Kong's severance from United Kingdom control and China's takeover.
“Life Is Cheap” is a wild, raunchy and violent ride wherein a nameless, handsome Bay Area man travels to Hong Kong to deliver a suitcase containing a mysterious cargo to a mobster. The version that'll be shown is a director's cut, and was restored and remastered by the Pacific Film Archive and Philadelphia's Lightbox Film Series. It's intended for mature, open-minded filmgoers who aren't easily offended. It takes us on a tour of a restless Hong Kong.
“To me, `Life Is Cheap' has always been about authority and the bullying that's associated with that,” he said. “When I made that film in Hong Kong, I felt that deeply and I have to say the ultimate bully is the Chinese culture, and I can say that because I am Chinese. I grew up in a very typical, very conservative Chinese family. But there is a kind of patriarchism and bullying that's going on. `Life Is Cheap,' underneath it all, is really talking about that.”
While editing the film in Hong Kong, Wang recalls coming across photos from the Tiananmen Square tragedy.
“Those images hit me
hard and it really gave me a way to kind of find a focus when editing the film.”
The romantic “Chinese Box,” on the other hand, was filmed “when the changeover happened and China was very polite, so to speak, to say `OK, one country, two cities and two different systems' and they promised to have democratic freedom for Hong Kong. It's interesting how very slowly it started deteriorating as the last few years have actually shown.”
Another “surprise” in the lineup is Wang and Paul Auster's 1995 ode to Brooklyn, “Blue in the Face” (April 9). An irreverent comedy that's stockpiled with celebrity cameos from the likes of Michael J. Fox, Lou Reed, Lily Tomlin, RuPaul, Madonna and Roseanne, it's an
add-on to Wang's better reviewed 1995 cigar-store-set “Smoke.”
Wang loved Brooklyn so much that he eventually bought a very small apartment there. Now, he's back in San Francisco full time.
“We loved it when we were there, but New York is a different city now, and we decided to move back to San Francisco. And now San Francisco is changing,” he says with a laugh.
In addition to his work on mostly indie productions, Wang's been behind some higher-profile films, including 2002's rom-com “Maid in Manhattan,” starring Jennifer Lopez in a role that was written specifically for her. It's being screened April 17.
Working with a megastar is different from working
with regular actors, he said.
“You have to deal with everything that comes along with someone like Jennifer Lopez, who is really, really talented and really good in that part. But even at that time (earlier in her career) there's a dozen people to deal with,” he recalls.
“Maid” was shot during the first go-around of her very public romance with Ben Affleck, and the rehearsals were mobbed by paparazzi, who showed up en masse whenever the couple stepped out in the evening, he recalls.
What also comes with someone of Lopez's status, he said, are the star's own “teachers” — “people behind the scenes who rehearse the scene, talk to them about the scene and really predetermine
how they should play the scene.”
While Wang admits it's hard to adjust to losing some of that creative control, Lopez “had a very good teacher. So you have to take that and work with it and try to make it as you think it's most relevant.”
Wang is happy to be having his work shown at the Pacific Film Archive, a cinematic environment that inspired and guided him early in his career.
He moved from Hong Kong to the Bay Area so he could attend Oakland's California College of Arts and Crafts. He fondly recalls watching great double bills at the Pacific Film Archive, seeing works that expanded the breadth of his film education.
“I remember (Jean-Luc) Godard came in and I thought, `Jesus, I gotta meet him,' ” he remembers.
Wang's 1993 “Joy Luck Club” gained renewed interest after the blockbuster success of Palo Alto-born director Jon M. Chu's “Crazy Rich Asians,” released in 2018. Asked about the 25-year lapse between two mainstream Hollywood movies with mostly Asian casts, Wang notes, “It's all about money, about how much money you can make.”
“`Joy Luck Club' did well because it was made pretty cheap, and it did pretty well, not wildly well,” he added.
Wang pitched other Asian film projects and even adaptations of Tan's other works, but studios weren't buying.
“I think it's because they didn't think it would make money.”
And although he prefers author Kevin Kwan's 2013 novel over the film version, he sees glimmers of light ahead for more Asian productions.
“I think because it made money it hopefully will help with the next film.”