Writer/Director, “The Motel”
Interviewed by Cinema AZN, courtesy of AZN Television

CAZN: So I know you’re a writer, a director, and also an actor. Tell us how you got interested in filmmaking.

Michael Kang: I grew up doing acting and music and photography. The only medium that really combined all those was film…film and theater. Theater is actually my first love. I started doing film because I thought so highly of theater that I didn’t want to just add more garbage to what’s out there. It was too much pressure to write a play of grand-scale.

CAZN: When you were acting and writing scripts and making short films, was the telling of Asian-American stories prevalent in your work?

MK: I felt it was important to do something I care about, and that tended to be Asian- American stories. I gravitated to that; it wasn’t really a conscious decision. It was just what interested me in terms of story-telling.

CAZN: “The Motel” was originally a novella by Ed Lin. What attracted you to the story?

MK: I had just read Spike Lee’s and was thinking about something that I could shoot. I was getting to the point where I’d done enough short films and I just wanted to do something practical and to talk about stuff.  So the setting… the premise of that setting… the dirty motel, and all the issues of puberty and sex.   Surrounding the kids with sex seemed like the perfect way to explore all those things and make it very immediate.

CAZN: What is “The Motel” is about?

MK: It’s about a 13-year-old kid who’s growing up in a dirty motel.  He befriends this guy who checks in who takes him under his wing [played by Sung Kang from “Better Luck Tomorrow”]… He is the wrong father-figure in some ways, but in some ways is exactly what the kid needs.

CAZN: Can you talk a little about the journey of “The Motel”?

MK: I had read Ed [Lin’s] short story and I was like, “Hey man, can I use this? This is a great premise.” I started to work with it and it took me about three years to get to the first draft… I had no idea that there’s this huge gap between making a short and making a feature. I knew I needed another draft, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I’d been workshopping it with one writing group and one filmmakers group.  But there’s this certain point where your peers are struggling with the same problems and you can only go so far… After about nine months, Asian Cinevision had their screenplay contest and I sent it in as a lark. And it ended up winning. Then a friend of mind from high school looked at it and she was like “Hey, it’s pretty good.” She sent it to the Sundance Labs –I had no idea what they were – and I got in, and it just snowballed from there. That was also where I met Miguel Arteta, who produced the film. It was a snowball effect from that Asian Cinevision contest.

CAZN: How did you adapt the novel into your screenplay?

MK: I just took it and ran with it and made it my own thing.  After the premise of putting this kid into this setting, I had to ask myself what part of me would exist in this story, and that’s how the Sam Kim character was born. I was asking myself what kind of knowledge could I impart to a young boy and realized absolutely nothing. I created this character based on that.

CAZN: You deal with sex in very explicit ways with such a young actor. How was it working with someone so young in such comprising scenes?  I heard that Jeffrey Chyau’s first kiss was actually on set.

MK: Both of those actors – Jeffrey and Jackson, who plays Jess in the movie – every single kiss of their life up to that point is on cellular. It was a six-month search looking for Jeffrey, a total grassroots effort. We started doing the traditional casting routes… but generally the kids in musical theater or doing film are not the artist’s character. The challenge was finding a kid who is heavy-set, a little awkward, but at the same time as an actor totally comfortable with himself. I was literally strolling the streets of Chinatown asking kids in playgrounds if they wanted to be in a movie.  And going to every boyscout meeting, every Chinese school, every after-school program until we finally found Jeffrey.

CAZN: And where did you find him?

MK: He came from the Columbia University Chinese School… actually that was a really good crop of kids. There was something I realized the story is in a suburban setting and the other problem in urban youth like Chinatown kids are very comfortable in their setting and they’re very in touch with their kind of…their  community. And Jeffrey being from uptown… he was kind of having a suburban experience in the city. So it was really that that really attracted me to that. I realized that… he… he…understands his character in a… on a very unconscience level. You know… 

CAZN: What did you try to get out of him in the audition?

MK: At the Sundance Labs I learned a lot about working with kids.  Sally Field grabbed me and said you have to do everything to get this kid to make the best performance, because if you don’t you’re going to make him look bad and you’re not doing him any service. It kind of jolted me and I had to really think about the approach… We did a lot of improv, mainly to see if they’re open. One of the great things that Miguel Arteta told me to do was to make them sing a song.  You can tell if someone is really free if they have no problem just singing a song for you.

CAZN: Did you do that with all the actors?

MK:  For the most part.  In retrospect, the thing I liked about all the actors was this kind of quality to them – that you really want to take care of them.  There was something fragile about all of them, and putting delicate people into this harsh environment is what I feel really works in this movie for me.

CAZN: How did you find Jade Wu?

MK: I knew Jade as a filmmaker first.  I just said come in and read, and it was very obvious from the get-go that there was so much going on in her face.  There was history there. So much of the film really is visual, most of it had to be conveyed by looking at them… and Jade had that quality.

CAZN: What was the most valuable lesson you learned about yourself and about the filmmaking process?

MK: I realized that there’s no one way.  I don’t think any feature has been made the same way as any other, ever. You have to be open to anything that pops up and just flow with it. Nothing prepared me for doing a feature. There’s no way to prepare for it.  You just do it.

CAZN: Is there anything that you’ve learned about yourself personally?

MK: Uhh…that’s a weird question. I mean there’s a lot…

CAZN: How have you changed?

MK: About the third week of shooting, I was totally sleep-deprived.  We were shooting some scene and I was all crouched by the camera watching the performances and everybody was really quiet. It was one of the quieter last climatic scenes.  All of a sudden, everything was transformed and I felt like I was this cave-man in the Stone Age, and I understood why that one guy gets up and starts telling a story and everybody listens to him. I realized that this is just a very elaborate version of that. This is the camp fire and you’re just making this thing so you can tell stories to each other. I felt like that’s my job: I’m a story-teller.

CAZN: Switching gears a bit… there’s a surge of Hollywood remaking Asian films – Korean films, Thai films, Japanese films.  Do you have any opinions on that, whether that’s good for Asian films?  Is it good for Hollywood?

MK: I guess it’s good for Hollywood or else they wouldn’t do it. They’re probably making money off of it.  It’s a good thing because it validates the stories told in Asia. I don’t always think that it translates though.  When John Woo first came over I felt like none of his stuff was really working for me here. You know there’s no sense of brotherhood in America, and so when John Woo comes over, it’s like, “What are you talking about?” It’s a cultural thing.

CAZN: Would you want to remake an Asian film?

MK: Sure. [laughs] Actually I wanted to redo “Old Boy,” but then it was announced that Justin Lin was doing it.

CAZN: God, you want to take on “Old Boy?”

MK: Ehh, I don’t know I’m really scared of what Justin might do to it.

CAZN: You were a second-unit director for Wayne Wang. How was that experience? And how did you hook up with Wayne to begin with?

MK:  Wayne Wang works with the producer Lydia Pillcher, and they were developing a project and looking for a writer. Lydia had read my script for “The Motel” a year before and she said, “Hey, do you mind if I give Wayne your script?” Of course I was like, “Yeah, he’s The Daddy so give it to him!” He read it and liked it.  It was over the weekend that he read it, and on Monday they called and said, “Do you want to fly out here to L.A. to talk to Wayne and have lunch?” So Tuesday I was on a plane and Wednesday we were signing papers. It was amazing to not only have him appreciate what I do, but also to just connect with him. He’s been so amazing with support. He kept track of what was going on with “The Motel” as well. When he was shooting “Because of Winn-Dixie,” he called me up out of the blue and asked me to do second unit.  So I flew down to New Orleans. His idea was it would be an interesting experiment to have another filmmaker come in and do some of these dream sequences and just meld them in and see what happens. He didn’t need to take that kind of chance but he would always fight to have more Asian-Americans behind the scenes. Watching Wayne on a big studio film made me realize that you could work in this setting and still have the same kind of family bond that I was trying to do in “The Motel.” You can set the tone and you can be a good person and still do good work and have people like you. So I felt like it’s possible to thrive. I mean, he’s a bankable Hollywood director now.

CAZN: Do you have any future projects lined up?

MK: I’ve been working on this other script with a partner about Korea-town flushing gangsters that will hopefully be done soon. But you never know how long these things will take. It took a long time to get “The Motel” made.

CAZN: How long did it take?

MK:  From the initial idea, eight years. It took me at least three years to get to a first draft because I’m meticulously crazy.

CAZN: Shawn Wong’s American Knees is also being made into a film. Do you have any thoughts about adapting novels into films?

MK: It’s definitely tricky. The relationship between “The Motel” and Ed Lin’s book Waylaid is very loose. I think that, generally, bad novels make better movies, and good novels you end up destroying by making them into movies. But I think it’s great to have the cross-pollination. And maybe it inspires audiences to read something and to see that there’s an Asian [American] literature out there… it’s not just cinema.

CAZN: If you had the chance to do it all over again… or, for those people about to embark on their first feature, is there any wisdom that you would like to impart?

MK: I always feel very cynical about this.  My advice is that if there’s anything out there that makes you happy, go do it, because it’s really hard to make a feature, and if you have an escape, go use it, because it is a long road. You have to have a lot of patience. Not just getting money to make the film but also making sure you’re telling your story right. I feel like I had to wait eight years, because I wanted to get in the right environment to tell the story the correct way.  What I’ve seen with other filmmakers is that they’re so eager to get it made that they don’t really think about how this is your debutante ball, and it only happens once; so do it right. Was that harsh? It’s totally harsh.

CAZN: No it’s really good advice… if it’s the truth.