You are currently browsing all entries tagged with 'Shopping For Fangs'

Au revoir Kodak! Bonjour Digital!

  • April 18, 2012 12:01 am

(Once the tool of my existence)

When Kodak filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, it was a definite signal to the end of an era—the era of 35mm & 16mm filmmaking. As an independent filmmaker, I have to admit that I have little nostalgia for 35mm or 16mm filmmaking. I was lucky enough to be part of the generation who started making films on celluloid and have pretty much “upgraded” to digital filmmaking. Nevertheless, that process has been an invaluable and forever memorable experience. Filmmaking has “evolutionized”.

 Read more...

Time to Shed that Party Name

  • February 2, 2011 11:24 am

I woke up this morning and saw my friend posted a status update on Facebook saying that he’s changing his name from Ken to Alexander. While his parents gave him the name Alexander, he used the name “Ken” when he first came out in America because of a bad experience. Ken told me that he met this one guy when he first came out and when he told him that he wanted to stop seeing him, this guy threatened to out him to his parents. Learning from his bad experience, he started using the name “Ken.”

 Read more...

Why Not Start Your Own Film Festival?

  • November 29, 2010 12:08 am

QUENTIN

Quentin Lee is the film hustler. A severely edited-for-TV version of his latest feature “The People I’ve Slept With” that he directed and produced is currently on Logo. It will be due out uncut on VOD and DVD from Maya Entertainment. He writes for filmhustler.com when he’s in the mood.

Image courtesy of Daric Loo

Exactly. Why not start your own film festival if you have movies to screen that didn’t get into other film festivals? I have to say that’s the best motivation to start a film festival—having that passionate need of showing films (whether your own or others) that other film festivals neglected.

That’s how Slamdance started. It was a reaction against Sundance not accepting several filmmakers’ features. Those rejected filmmakers went to Park City in 1995 and started their own festival–Slamdance–which has become a bit of an institution of its own.

In the same fateful year, I remember that due to the limited slots in shorts programming, the then Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival ended up not taking Justin Lin’s and a few other Asian American students’ shorts. Jennifer Kim, Daric Loo, Justin Lin, a few students and I banded together to form APACT, the Asian Pacific American Coalition in Film & Television, at UCLA. We also started our own annual film festival to showcase the films made by both undergraduate and graduate film students of APA descent at UCLA.  Read more...

The Folly of Fangs

  • February 26, 2010 12:45 am

QUENTIN

Quentin Lee would like to think he’s a part-time drag queen and and full-time hustler moonlighting as a filmmaker. He went to UCLA Film School with fellow Offender Justin whom he co-directed his first feature SHOPPING FOR FANGS with. Subsequently, he made DRIFT, ETHAN MAO and the upcoming THE PEOPLE I’VE SLEPT WITH. He also blogs as Film Hustler.

We made Shopping for Fangs in the summer of ‘96. And like everyone else, we had the dream of getting into the Sundance Film Festival. I was lucky enough to get a grant of 35K from the Canada Council for the Arts, and I scraped together another 50K from friends and relatives to complete the film. Justin and I canned Fangs under 40K on 35mm, which I thought was a pretty amazing feat.
 Read more...

Part Time Drag Queen

  • February 10, 2010 11:43 pm


QUENTIN

Quentin Lee would like to think he’s a part-time drag queen and and full-time hustler moonlighting as a filmmaker. He went to UCLA Film School with fellow Offender Justin whom he co-directed his first feature SHOPPING FOR FANGS with. Subsequently, he made DRIFT, ETHAN MAO and the upcoming THE PEOPLE I’VE SLEPT WITH. He also blogs as Film Hustler.

The first time I wore women clothes was when I was six. I was hanging out with my mom on a lazy Sunday afternoon while my dad was out. She let me try on her evening gown and carry my favorite glittery purse of hers. As I pranced around on her bed, I playfully dubbed myself “the nightgown chicken.” In Cantonese, “chicken” is the slang for “prostitute.” My mom was cracking up. We both had so much fun. I remember I really enjoyed playing a character… being someone whom I’m not.

But she only let me do it that once.  Read more...

Am I “retarded” for making Asian American films?

  • January 21, 2010 3:15 pm

“For a group of people that are supposed to be good at math, you guys must be retarded to keep making Asian American films.”

That is a direct quote from a conversation I had with a veteran film producer last week about one of my upcoming projects. But before you make any judgment, you need to know that he is Asian American.

Such remarks are not uncommon from a lot of Asian Americans working in the industry. In fact they tend to be some of the loudest naysayers and, at times, biggest obstacles on anything ‘Asian American’ (I will get to that on another day). That being said, I do understand his point. He was referring to Asian American cinema as a business. “Screw business!” you might say, but the reality is that filmmaking is a collision between art and commerce (even the cheapest of films will cost more than your average Mercedes). And within the context of Asian American films, the big elephant in the room has always been its business viability. “It’s a young man’s game,” a filmmaker once told me about Asian American films, “it’s fun to talk about representin’ and stuff until you get a mortgage.” And as a business it definitely makes no sense.  Read more...

Class of ’97

  • October 2, 2009 1:48 am

About a month ago I got a call from my good friend Quentin that our little indie film SHOPPING FOR FANGS from back in the days was going to be screening at a film festival as part of its retrospective series along with Rea Tajiri’s STRAWBERRY FIELDS, Michael Aki and Eric Nakamura’s SUNSETS, and Chris Chan Lee’s YELLOW.
6927_144934380894_608830894_3175785_5291456_n
The four films have since been dubbed by some as the “Asian American New Wave of 1997″.

To me it was a point of entrance into something I never thought I’d get a chance to be a part of and since then has played a huge role in shaping my perspective as not only as a filmmaker but as a person. So I thought it would be interesting to get in touch with the gang twelve years later and ask them what they took away from the experience.  Read more...

Phil’s Journal Entries Part I

  • September 30, 2009 2:30 pm

2712292-mIt may be hard to believe but I wasn’t always the cool and hip dude I am now. Believe it or not, I had awkward moments growing up and made my fair share of bad calls. So to help show that anyone can leave the shackles of pathetic-ness behind, occasionally I’ll post random excerpts from my journal so you can see how far I’ve come.  Read more...