Part 10: After the Sunshine Comes the Rain
In the room, people come and go, talking of “get me tf out of here”
Hey everybody, I know it’s been a while again, let’s pretend I made a New Year’s Resolution to write this memoir a little more regularly and that I will just try to jot out things quickly. With this memoir type thing, I often get distracted writing it just because I feel like I need to try to check things against old emails or photos (not that I have many of these days, this was pre-iPhone, if you can imagine such a time) and then I lose track of where I was, with all the other things I have going on. In particular, the last few months I’ve been working mostly on a new Moody Vermin album which is more musically inspired by 80s goth rock and synth pop (that was the original intention, it of course derailed from that fairly quickly) so hopefully that will be finished in the next few months. In the meantime, back to the world of 2004-05 Shanghai’s worst wannabe expat independent film producer:
When last we were in this world of the Worst Producer in Shanghai (of independent films, anyway), a few things were beginning to coalesce for our unhealthy (physically, emotionally) friend. Against all odds, he’d managed to get a legit director attached to the film (Steve Wang 王獻篪), an American former star in need of a comeback (Jeremy Miller), and a lifeline of investment from an American Marketing Exec (hereafter AME). For WPIS, this was a sign from whatever powers might be that the light of the gods was finally shining down upon him and that everything, as the ancient proverb says, was turning up Milhouse.
WPIS went right to his Rolodex the next morning and started putting a team together. First he went to try to get an established line producer or unit production manager, but the two people he had contacts with were already engaged, or at least they said they were. One was Aaron, a veteran American line producer who really does have very good Chinese, who worked all the big international feature film productions in China and Southeast Asia. At that time it was rare to see a big Hollywood-China production that he wasn’t involved in. The other was Eric, a Shanghainese man who did feature films but mostly spent his time managing TV drama shoots for Shanghai Film Studios. In turning down WPIS, Eric must’ve taken some kind of pity on him and suggested a different guy to work with who had a small company that could take on a small independent, and help negotiate the convoluted Chinese film system. WPIS was disappointed, but this was the minorest of obstacles.
Lao Wang was incredibly local. A product of the old Shanghai Film Studio system, he was chubby but weathered, his Mandarin heavily inflected with his native Shanghainese, always smelling of stale Chunghwa cigarettes (the Beijing film crews often smoked Zhongnanhai brand cigarettes, and the Shanghainese swore by their local prestige brand as well), with a permanently sour expression framed by his oily combover. Lao Wang wasn’t a bad guy, as it turns out, he just had come of age during a time when everything in Shanghai film was an overt hustle, and you could feel it as soon as he walked in the room.
Lao Wang didn’t speak English to any real degree, but WPIS’ Chinese assistants (if I recall correctly, which I might not, because WPIS went through assistants, who were always promised roles as assistant producers rather than production assistants, like wildfire) were a young Shanghainese man who called himself “Spine”, which was apparently just a word he liked, and a young woman who chose the English name “Fiona,” after the princess in Shrek. While both were deferential to Lao Wang, Fiona clearly had an attitude towards him that was based on her having solidly middle class background and recognition that her family should be of a higher rung on the social ladder. Spine immediately gravitated to Lao Wang as a mentor in the profession he wanted to be in.
WPIS tended to get in all kinds of people as assistants because, just like in Hollywood, lots of young people were attracted by the idea of being in the gritty glamor of independent film, both expats and Chinese who had done well in English but didn’t want to go work for a large international corporation, essentially living that 9-9 office life. The Oughts in Shanghai then were an atmosphere of freedom, honestly, people felt like there was a chance to “catch up” to America as a cultural force, which obviously attracted a lot of creatively-minded younger folk. Pretty soon though, they would discover that working in a crappy office for an independent film production that didn’t seem to have much in terms of future prospects of actually shooting a film for an overly demanding, guilt-tripping type American boss who didn’t have a lot of interest in local culture, how shall we say, less than appealing. As a result, every month or so, someone would quit, and WPIS would have to go through the whole process of finding someone local with good enough English to help him, who was also early enough in their career that they would accept the low pay and also being a part time nanny and sort of housekeeping manager.
In any case, Lao Wang was savvy enough not to immediately accept this relatively sketchy project right away, but said that pending the script and approval by the relevant government organs, he would of course be happy to participate. Steve Wang never came to WPIS’ office for meetings, so Lao Wang went separately to meet Steve as the director. WPIS insisted that I go along, because he wanted a firsthand account of how they got along. Steve was, I think, a little miffed that WPIS did not want to simply let him just run everything his way, which was his usual modus operandi for his TVC productions, but he simply washed his hands of the decision. Typical of a certain type of Taipei man, Steve was not inclined to a lot of direct confrontation, but preferred to leverage people one-on-one behind the scenes. So I became the conduit point for his dissatisfactions, but at the same time, I worked for WPIS, who didn’t want to just raise money for the project and then walk away and let Steve run the show—he thought of himself as far more creative than that. At least that’s what I thought at first.
Besides the line producer, WPIS also got recommendations from different industry people for a First Assistant Director and Director of Photography. He also found a production designer, I think on his own, an expat named Philip who was a little older, some salt and pepper in his beard, who presented himself well and was an inveterate name dropper about his time in Los Angeles. Let’s just say Quentin Tarantino’s name got dropped a lot. The DoP was Michael, a guy from Chicago who at the time had just done a couple a features but also was very devoted to his own indie feature. He was always working on the script—unfortunately I don’t remember anything about it any more. WPIS had flown Michael out as soon as the funding was promised, and he’d found a 1AD from Hong Kong who was also flying in.
Now for those of you who aren’t “in the biz” as actually almost no one says, a 1AD is somewhat of a misnomer of a position on a film crew. Film crews are broken down into departments based on the function they need to accomplish for the film to be made. Many of these departments are self-explanatory. Casting, Wardrobe, Makeup, Props, Set Dressers, Transpo, Craft Services (aka food), Cinematography, Lighting, all that stuff. Assistant Directors sort of sit in the world in between the Director and the Producers, in that their job is to get things organized with all the other departments to execute the director’s vision, so they aren’t primarily there necessarily to make fully creative decisions as they are to execute them in a way that makes logistical sense with the needs and budgets of every department. Thomas had come highly recommended as a 1AD who had abundant experience working on international productions of various sizes, an ideal skill set for a small independent film.
I’ll never forget the day Thomas flew in from Hong Kong, hot off another show that had just wrapped, to be picked up from Pudong Airport by Spine. It was about 10 am when he came into the office and met Philip, Michael, and me, and then disappeared in WPIS’ office for about 30 minutes. Right afterwards he asked me for the address to Steve’s warehouse, where he was going to meet Steve and get the lowdown from the film’s director.
A few hours later, I got a call from Thomas, who apologized for putting us through some trouble, but that we should cancel his hotel room, he’d pay for it if we couldn’t get all the money back, and change his return flight so that he could leave back to Hong Kong that evening. I immediately went into crisis handling mode—maybe something was wrong with his home, or a family illness, something I could figure out a way to help with—but no. After speaking with Steve, Thomas had decided not to be involved with the project any more and he didn’t want to mince words explaining why. He just said he was sorry. WPIS threw a fit when I told him, and blew up at Thomas on the phone himself, but I went ahead and changed the flight and canceled the hotel room.
In hindsight, of course he bailed. We didn’t have a remotely finished script, no government approvals, about half the funds we said we needed, and the director was already in a silent battle with the producer over how the production was going to be organized.
None of this deterred WPIS, who much like certain current political personalities, had a tendency to double down in moments of stress. It became clear that he didn’t want to wait, he simply wanted to push ahead and get the movie into full production swing because he thought he could then leverage necessity into getting what he thought of as “finishing money” from the American Marketing Exec, or pressuring her to find funding from her friends.
Although WPIS said he really didn’t want to, he had a card to play. He was going to put in a call to San Francisco, so someone he’d worked with before, a scriptwriter and 1AD, who could become the linchpin to getting this show on the road.
He made the call, and somehow that person said yes, and would get on a plane to Shanghai in just the amount of time it took to get the visa approval.
The train was going to keep hurtling down the tracks.
Next episode: Enter Carl