Announcement
- "Measure twice. Cut once."
My blog
-
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE ARTICLE FOR "BLT" (Taken from Justin Lin's MySpace Blog)
Tuesday, Jun 5, 2007 11:45AM / Standard Entry
02/01/2003
Need to Succeed
Justin Lowe
Audiences bring certain preconceptions shaped by two decades of ethnic cinema to Asian American films. They expect narratives and themes to revolve around issues of immigration, assimilation and identity, as filmmakers seek to both contrast and relate the multi-ethnic experiences of Asian Americans to trends in mainstream culture. And with so few Asian-American features achieving wide distribution, filmmakers often face the double burden of creating "positive" representations of their communities while also achieving their own personal artistic visions.
In his solo directorial debut, BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, filmmaker Justin Lin presents a strikingly unconventional perspective that marks a notable departure from the identity politics that have characterized Asian-American cinema for 20 years. Armed with a glossy style, Lin has made an independent film that, by employing the tropes of genre moviemaking, somehow manages to recontextualize the Asian-American experience within the larger framework of commercial cinema.
To read the rest of this article, please support Filmmaker Magazine and buy it from your local bookstore.
-
PREMIERE MAGAZINE ARTICLE ON "BLT" (Taken from Justin Lin's Myspace Blog)
Tuesday, Jun 5, 2007 12:24AM / Standard Entry
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH
By Sean M. Smith
IF JUSTIN LIN's parents hadn't made a pit stop in LA on their way from Taiwan to Paraguay and gotten suckered into buying a fish 'n' chips shop, if he hadn't grown up as just about the only Asian-American in the suburb of Buena Park (and certainly the only one on his school's basketball team), and if he hadn't seen Tucker: The Man and His Dream as a kid and thought, Whoa, he wouldn't be sitting in this Park City restaurant, talking about his film, Better Luck Tomorrow- one of the most hotly debated projects at the festival. But life's full of little twists of fate like that. "I knew this was not a feel good movie," the 30 year old director says, smiling. "We made it, hopefully, to start discussions."
Boy, did it. A hilarious, supercool, and ultimately violent tale, BLT tracks a group of Asian-American teens who decide to score some cash by selling test answers to their dumber peers. As their status in the high school food chain soars, they become addicted to their own buzz, and the cheating escalates into drug-dealing and death. While the film got a raucous ovation at its premiere, it wasn't long before audience members began arguing with its perceived message.
During a Q&A session after the third screening, a white man stood up and yelled at Lin, "Why would you make a film that is so empty and immoral for Asian-Americans?" Before Lin could respond, his young cast, who had been toiling in tiny roles as Chinese-food delivery boys and the like for years, battled back. And then Roger Ebert stood up. Pointing to the man who had lobbed the question, the critic snapped, "What I find condescending and offensive about your statement is that nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, 'How can you do this to your people?!'" As cheers rang out, Ebert concluded: "Asian-American characters have the right to be whoever the hell they want to be. They do not have to 'represent' their people."
Lin, oddly, took the whole thing in stride. "I enjoyed it," he said later. "If this [first] guy felt it was important enough to stand up and scream what he believed, that's what it's all about. I wanted him to finish, but people kept jumping in. It was pretty emotional in there." And it would continue to be: The next day, another audience member voiced the same outrage. This time, New York Times critic Elvis Mitchelle rose to the film's defense.
All that heat would seem to bode well for a quick sale, but it had the opposite effect. Although two companies- Lot 47 and Fox Searchlight - did bid on the film, one's offer was deemed too low, and the other asked Lin to consider changing the film's controversial ending. He said no. "At this level, the film is what it is," he says. "If you get it, you get it." MTV Films did, and bought the movie after the festival for just under $1 million. They even signed Lin to direct another picture for them. "They never wavered," Lin says. "We were all blown away by their enthusiasm." But it's been such a whirlwind that Lin hasn't had time yet to celebrate. "I'm just so glad I'm going to be able to pay rent," he says, laughing. He does have his eye on a new Saab, though. "I sold my Ford Ranger, which I really loved, to finish this film. My friend gave me his old car, just to drive around." He can have it back now.
-
OC REGISTER INTERVIEW (Taken from Justin Lin's Myspace blog)
Monday, May 21, 2007 4:08PM / Standard Entry
Monday, May 21, 2007Back to his roots
Filmmaker Justin Lin returns with an Asian-American indie movie.
The Orange County RegisterJustin Lin is standing onstage at the Directors Guild of America, shoulder-to-shoulder with a crew and cast of more than two dozen people who helped make his latest film, "Finishing the Game," possible. The movie has just had its Southern California premiere, and an audience of mostly Asian-Americans is applauding enthusiastically.
Lin is doing the film festival circuit again. It's familiar turf for the director of "Better Luck Tomorrow," one of 2003's stand-out independent hits.
The Buena Park-raised filmmaker is trying to get word out about his new film – a comedy about the search for the next Bruce Lee.
He took the risk of shooting the film on his own without studio financing. When he completed it earlier this year, he didn't have a distributor.
But after a couple of forays in the studio world, Lin feels confident and is returning to his indie roots.
"It did mean a lot for us to go out and do it ourselves," says Lin, 35, who now lives in Silver Lake. "I think, if anything, this project to me symbolizes that I've earned a little bit of independence. It's a big risk – that's the reality. But I want to make a movie that's outside the norm to studios."
• • •
In a short time, Lin has become one of the nation's foremost Asian-American filmmakers. "Better Luck Tomorrow" – an edgy drama about Orange County honor students caught up in a life of petty crime and unexpected violence – was the first Asian-American film to be distributed by a major studio.
Financed on 10 maxed-out credit cards for $250,000, it made $3.8 million in U.S. theaters, according to boxofficemojo.com. The trade publication Variety named Lin one of 2002's "10 directors to watch."
The buzz and success surrounding "Better Luck" led to deals with other studios, including "Annapolis" with Disney/Buena Vista and "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" with Universal Studios. The third installment of the car-racing franchise was a blockbuster, bringing in $62.5 million domestically and $95.9 million abroad.
Lin was able to "retire" his parents who had run a fish-and-chips restaurant in Anaheim for 26 years.
And Lin has shared his experiences as an Asian-American filmmaker with audiences at screenings, on panels and in classrooms.
"I like to learn and share all these things that we've learned," he says. "There's no way I could have made the leap alone."
Dustin Nguyen, who plays Troy Poon in "Finishing the Game," calls Lin "the real deal."
"He's a very rare Asian-American in a certain position of influence as a director," says the actor, who made his first big mark in TV's "21 Jump Street" as Officer Harry Truman Ioki. "He goes out of his way to do something positive, to create positive roles in his movies."
• • •
Lin was born in Taipei, Taiwan. He came to the U.S. when he was eight years old and attended Dickerson Elementary School in Buena Park and Cypress High School.
He grew up loving all kinds of movies, including big, overblown Hollywood productions. He recalls watching Bruce Lee's final movie, "The Game of Death," and being totally confused by Lee's stand-ins, who played the main character Billy Lo after Lee's untimely death at 32.
"I didn't understand who the stand-in was," Lin said. "It made no sense to me. But as I got older, I understood that's movie making. It was the same character, and (Lee) died. It really intrigued me – who was that guy, and how did he get that job?"
"Finishing the Game" is a mock-documentary set in the late '70s. A group of Hollywood executives are intent on finishing "The Game of Death" and aim to find a Lee look-alike. An audition attracts more than 50 aspirants, most of whom bear no resemblance to the martial-arts icon.
The movie stars Roger Fan and Sung Kang, who also had key roles in "Better Luck Tomorrow," as well as Nguyen, James Franco, Meredith Scott Lynn and MC Hammer. It made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, and screened earlier this month at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.
Kang, who has had roles in three Lin movies, said the director has given him and other Asian-American actors roles that "traditional Hollywood would never let us play."
"If I had never met Justin, I would probably not be acting today," Kang said.
Lin has done much to provide opportunities and dispel stereotypes of Asian-Americans in cinema. He blew away the model-minority myth in "Better Luck Tomorrow," and cast Fan as a naval academy student, a non-ethnic-specific role, in "Annapolis."
In "Fast and the Furious," Lin was pleased to create "a post-modern Western with a 3-D cool-ass Asian character."
Finally, in "Finishing the Game," he exposes Hollywood stereotypes of Asian men as silent, sinister or emasculated. In his movie, they're funny, loquacious and buffed out.
"I definitely had to make that movie," Lin said. "You can't expect Hollywood to take a risk. This is not a 'Fast and the Furious' movie. It's a passion project."
Once again, he relied on friends, industry colleagues and independent producers. His buddy Brian Tyler wrote all the funky, '70s-era music, and played all the instruments himself.
"That's the thing I truly enjoy, when you can work with good people who are very talented. There's not a lack of talent, there's a lack of opportunities. My dream would be to do this again, but to pay everybody what they deserve."
Lin and his growing gang have hit the road for this film, screening it at festivals in Chicago, Oregon, San Francisco and Utah.
"If we fail, we fail. I don't want to ever second-guess anything. I feel like I'm just getting started. I guarantee – my best movies are still ahead of me."
After lengthy negotiations, Lin recently learned that the Independent Film Channel wants to distribute "Finishing the Game" in the fall and collaborate on future projects.
This is a huge weight off the young filmmaker's shoulders.
"There's no guidebook on how to be a filmmaker," he said. "I just try to do my best. My journey is my personal journey."
-
FILMAKER MAGAZINE INTERVIEW (Taken from Justin Lin's Myspace blog)
Thursday, Jun 15, 2006 10:18AM / Standard Entry
-
EBERT & ROEPER BLT REVIEW (Taken from Justin Lin's Myspace blog)
Thursday, Apr 6, 2006 11:03AM / Standard Entry
Current mood:
nostalgic
04/06/2003
Two thumbs up!
Richard Roeper & Roger Ebert
*********************** REVIEWS ARE IN ******************
EBERT AND ROEPER (APRIL 5, 2003)
TRANscrīpt OF "BETTER LUCK TOMORROW" REVIEW
RICHARD ROEPER: We move on to another movie, which is much better
I think. It's dazzling, it's shocking, it's unsettling and it's called
"BETTER LUCK TOMORROW." Like the Larry Clark films "Kids" and "Bully," it's a piercing portrayal of American teenagers who are for the most part good-looking, smart, funny-- and almost completely lacking in morals. Directed, co-written and co-produced by Justin Lin, "BETTER LUCK TOMORROW" is narrated by Parry Shen as Ben, one of a loosely knit group of privileged Asian-American honors students living in Orange County.
RICHARD: The film starts with the discovery of that dead body and
then goes back to the chain of events that led to a murder.
RICHARD: Karin Anna Cheung plays Stephanie, Ben's lab partner.
They strike up a sweet, but complicated friendship verging on romance.
Now, nearly all the main characters here are of Asian heritage, but
they're also American teenagers who make fun of stereotypes about their ethnic culture. Yeah, they're the smartest kids in school and they have comfortable homes, but we never see their parents, who seem to be out of town or otherwise too busy to realize their kids are soaking in violence, drugs and crime. My only real complaint is an ending that came too quickly, leaving too many loose ends, but maybe that means there will be a sequel, which I'd love to see.
ROGER EBERT: Yeah you know, at one point the narrator says,
"Our straight A's were our passport to freedom. As long as we got great grades, our parents didn't care where we were." And I agree with you,
this is a brilliant film. I think Justin Lin is going to be a leading American director, if he isn't already, because this film is very mature and well thought out. It's not just another American teenager movie and it doesn't have another one of those dumb studio endings. It really goes all the way with this dark material and says these kids are affluent, they are privileged, they get great grades, they live in this wonderful area. But at the same time, they are completely adrift, completely adrift. Success is their only goal.
RICHARD: They almost have too much, too soon. They're bored.
They get into it not because they really need the money, the selling
of the drugs and some of the other crimes; its' because they have
nothing else to do. They've conquered the world of academia, they're
doing fine in sports, they have friends, they have good-looking girlfriends. "So what are we going to do next? Well, let's see what we can get away with." The direction reminds me a little bit of the promise of a young Tarantino.
ROGER: Yeah.
RICHARD: That kind of thing where it's just dazzling stuff, where
you're saying, " I want to see what this filmmaker's going to do next."
ROGER: The way he handles his camera, the way he handles the actors,
the way he sidesteps obvious points in the plot and surprises us with character insights is very exciting.
RICHARD: Absolutely.
TWO BIG THUMBS UP for "BETTER LUCK TOMORROW."
It opens next week. (APRIL 11)
