IN Wayne Wang’s first feature, “Chan Is Missing” (1982), two taxi drivers go looking for an absent friend in San Francisco’s Chinatown. As they piece together contradictory testimonials from those who knew the missing man, what emerges is almost a composite sketch of Asian-American identity. But the film, which still feels fresh and insightful after all these years, is a mystery without a solution. Its conclusion, unencumbered by the foggy rhetoric of identity politics, is that identity is hard to pin down, up for grabs, something you make up as you go.
The director Wayne Wang has two new movies, one of which, “The Princess of Nebraska,” will be distributed online.
The point applies equally to this versatile director’s unpredictable career. For more than 25 years Mr. Wang, now 59, has reinvented himself time and again with apparent ease, zigzagging between America and Asia, big and small movies, safe bets and wild risks, insider and outsider status.
“The industry can really box you in, so you try to break the patterns,” he said over lunch in Manhattan in July.
“Chan Is Missing” and Mr. Wang’s second film, “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” (1985) established him as a central figure in two nascent movements: ’80s indie cinema and the Asian-American film scene. But he was eager to prove himself in the Hollywood idiom and followed up with the mainstream murder mystery “Slamdance” (1987). After his commercial breakthrough with “The Joy Luck Club” (1993), based on the Amy Tan best seller about two generations of Chinese women, he wanted to avoid being typecast as a China specialist or a director of weepies, and he collaborated with Paul Auster on “Smoke” (1995), a small, quiet drama set in a Brooklyn tobacco shop.
In recent years Mr. Wang has seemed content to play the role of studio journeyman, turning out smoothly anonymous movies like “Maid in Manhattan” (2002), a Jennifer Lopez fable of upward mobility; “Because of Winn-Dixie” (2005), a dog-centric family flick; and “Last Holiday” (2006), a Queen Latifah vehicle adapted from a 1950s Ealing comedy.
That phase of his career, he admits, went on longer than planned: “It was hard to get off the treadmill.”
Course-correcting yet again, Mr. Wang now returns to his first principles, even as he tries out some new tricks, with two of his most intimate films, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” and “The Princess of Nebraska,” both based on stories by the Chinese-born author Yiyun Li (like Mr. Wang, a Bay Area resident).
“I felt I should go back to something smaller, more personal, something about the Chinese-American community,” he said. “Walking around Chinatown now, you feel how the community has changed, which has to do with the new immigrants and how China has changed.”
In “A Thousand Years,” opening Friday, a Chinese widower arrives in an American suburb for an extended stay with his divorced daughter, who has lived in the States since college and who resents her father’s intrusions into her private affairs. “The Princess of Nebraska,” which is being distributed free on the Web starting Oct. 17 (youtube.com/ytscreeningroom), concerns a newer arrival, a young woman from Beijing attending a university in Omaha who has traveled to San Francisco to get an abortion.
Both films are subtle updates of the immigrant story, revealing the complexities beyond the customary themes of alienation and assimilation. Mr. Wang’s own biography is hardly typical. Born in Hong Kong — and named after his father’s favorite movie star, John Wayne — he moved to California in the late ’60s for school. His parents, who were Christians, arranged for him to stay with a Quaker family, who turned out to be prominent radicals. “There were crazy meetings with Black Panthers and anti-draft protesters, and Jerry Garcia and his people were there all the time,” Mr. Wang said. “My eyes were completely opened.”
The initial plan, medical school, was soon abandoned in favor of the arts, a decision that did not please his father, a garment manufacturer. The relationship came under strain again in the ’80s when Mr. Wang married Cora Miao, an actress, without telling his parents. (“We didn’t want a banquet,” he said.) But because Ms. Miao was a celebrity in Hong Kong, they soon found out via the gossip columns.
The standoff in “A Thousand Years” between traditional parents and Westernized offspring, negotiating each other’s expectations and boundaries, holds personal resonance for Mr. Wang. He recalled a visit from his father shortly after the wedding: “One night he said to us, ‘How did you think you could get married with only $3,000 in your bank account?’ Clearly he’d been going through our things.”
Parent-child relationships figure prominently in Mr. Wang’s work. “Dim Sum,” “Joy Luck Club” and “Anywhere but Here” (1999) revolve around mother-daughter bonds; “Smoke” is about the search for a surrogate father. The rote psychological explanation would be that Mr. Wang is working through his relationship with his father, who died a few years ago. But it could also be, he suggested, because he and his wife do not have children.
“I don’t think I idealize parent-child relationships,” he said, “but maybe I’m interested in that conflict because I don’t have my own conflicts.” Besides returning him to familiar themes “A Thousand Years” was an opportunity to indulge in a more contemplative pace, a luxury he forfeited on his Hollywood films. “The Princess of Nebraska,” on the other hand, was an outlet for his experimental side, responsible for films like “Life Is Cheap ... but Toilet Paper Is Expensive” (1989), a rambunctious Hong Kong-set shaggy-dog thriller.
By habit Mr. Wang works efficiently, to the point of turning projects into two-for-one deals. With time to spare after wrapping “Smoke,” he dashed off “Blue in the Face,” a freewheeling companion piece. “Princess of Nebraska” came about when he finished under budget on “A Thousand Years” and convinced his producers that he could fill out a double bill.
With “Princess” he was keen to capture the particularities of younger Chinese immigrants, whom he jokingly called an “alien” species. (He is prone to goofy jokes, and his laugh, an infectious, high-pitched guffaw, is perhaps his most distinctive trait.) “They’re Westernized but also ethnocentric,” he said. “Princess” also serves as a bridge between two generations of Chinese-American filmmakers. In search of a younger collaborator for this micro-budgeted film, Mr. Wang approached the Center for Asian American Media in San Francisco and was introduced to Richard Wong, who had just directed a well-reviewed first feature, “Colma: The Musical.”
Mr. Wong, 31, was the cinematographer on “Princess,” which was shot on consumer-grade digital video, and is credited as co-director. “It must have been liberating for Wayne to do something so guerrilla, where you could make every decision on the fly,” Mr. Wong said.
Mr. Wang sees a younger version of himself in Mr. Wong. “There’s a rebellious creativity there,” he said, “and he brought that out of me.”
At his age Mr. Wang admits that he is increasingly wary of the traps of fogeyism. “In some ways I’m getting more conservative, but it’s also part of my makeup to take risks, and I hope I never lose that,” he said. “I never wanted to get old and become one of those 50-year-old guys who are comfortable doing whatever they’re doing.”
