Chinese Outtake
Arthur Dong’s fascinating ‘Hollywood Chinese’
By Andy Klein
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Arthur Dong is best known for his trilogy of gay-themed documentaries – Coming Out Under Fire (1994), Licensed to Kill (1997), and Family Fundamentals (2002). His latest, Hollywood Chinese (opening in Los Angeles May 30), represents a change in focus: It looks at Chinese-Americans and their relationship to Hollywood filmmaking, both as participants and onscreen subjects.
During an interview a few weeks ago, I ask him about the shift. “I’m a film lover,” he says, indicating the collectible posters on the wall. “When I was a kid, I didn’t go play in the playground and play kickball or whatever; I watched movies. It’s always been a part of my life.
“But, also, having worked on a trilogy of pretty hardcore gay issues – killers of gay men, fundamentalist Christians with gay kids, gays in the military – it was time for a break. That was a 10-year chunk of time on some heavy-duty stuff. So it was a welcome break from all of that.”
Nonetheless, Dong says, “It’s all about perception. In some ways, Hollywood Chinese is pretty gay. I mean Hollywood’s just ... it’s Hollywood. You can’t be ‘not gay’ in Hollywood and tell the story of Hollywood. Even if it’s not blatantly gay, or overtly gay, it’s gay ... because it’s Hollywood. Studio heads will differ with me ... but then a lot of the studio heads are gay.”
Dong did exhaustive research for Hollywood Chinese, discovering the existence of forgotten landmarks like Marion Wong’s 1917 The Curse of Quon Gwon and James B. Leong’s 1921 Lotus Blossom. He interviews leading Chinese-American directors like Justin Lin and Wayne Wang; authors Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang; stars Joan Chen and Nancy Kwan; and ubiquitous characters actors James Hong, Lisa Lu, and James Shigeta. He also speaks to white actors with experience playing in “yellow face” – Turhan Bey (Lao Er Tan in the 1944 Dragon Seed); nonagenarian Luise Rainer, who won the 1938 Best Actress Oscar for The Good Earth; and, of course, Christopher Lee, who played Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu several time in the ’60s.
In and among the other stories, it’s the career of Nancy Kwan – not to mention the radiant Kwan herself – that provides the blend of glory and frustration that still dogs Chinese-American performers in today’s Hollywood.
Kwan was the first Chinese-American to star in a major Hollywood production ... in fact, in two – The World of Suzie Wong (1960, opposite William Holden) and the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song (1961). But her breakthrough turned out to be a one-off; no one was as successful following in her footsteps. By the ’70s, she was starring in movies like Wonder Women (1973), as the evil Dr. Tsu, leader of an army of sexy female martial artists. (Let me note that I love such grindhouse stuff and am dying to see Wonder Women, but still, it doesn’t map to the career arc a young star would hope for.)
Kwan is half-Chinese, half-Scottish, and she was cast in a number of non-Asian roles. “When you talk about Hollywood,” Dong says, “it’s all marketing. Could Nancy Kwan have marketed herself as a white actress? It’s hard to say, but she started as a Chinese actress. In her subsequent roles, she played Italian, French, native American, generic/no race, and Asian. She was able to cross over; there was no resistance from the audience. Not all of them were good films, but that’s not her fault. She was able to transcend the fact that she was Scottish and Chinese and just play the role that was given to her. I can’t think of any other actress with any Chinese blood, even one drop, who has done that in Hollywood – fluidly moved from one ethnic group to another.”
In Hollywood Chinese, it’s the venerable Christopher Lee who brings up a remarkable historical irony: During World War II, the sudden rush of patriotic war movies meant a boom in juicy villain roles for Japanese-American actors in Hollywood. Unfortunately for them, they were all in internment camps, so the parts went to Chinese-Americans, who were regarded by the studios as indistinguishable – generic East Asians.
The notion in Hollywood – and in the dominant culture in America, in general – that Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and dozens of other ethnic groups are all interchangeable comes up throughout the movie. “Each group has their own story. At one point, I hoped to cover all of them in a four-part series.” When he couldn’t get the funding and had to limit his scope, he decided to deal with Chinese-Americans only. “To try to do them all together would have been like clumping together performers from all the European countries: The Story of White People on Screen. My job was to make it clear that this wasn’t about generic Asians, but about Chinese and specific issues of Chinese history and culture. That’s what this documentary is about.
“Still, you can understand – though maybe not forgive – why all the Asian groups are clumped together. Even Asian people can’t always differentiate the different groups. So why would we expect non-Asians to? In Hollywood, they don’t care; all they care about is how the audience perceives it. If we keep feeding the audience a certain image, and they’re happy with it and they expect it, well ... Hollywood is a machine that makes you happy.”
It’s clear talking to Dong that Hollywood Chinese represents a condensation of his research. He’s hugely knowledgeable, so our yakking about Chinese-Americans and Chinese-Chinese and Hollywood and Hong Kong stretches my half-hour appointment with him to three times that length. I’m hungry for more and ask him if he ever thought about expanding the material into a book.
“Are you kidding? I’d love to. I want to do a coffee table book; I have all these posters and historical documents and stuff just sitting here. I want a publisher to say, ‘Here’s a $50 thousand advance! Go work on your book for a year!’ It would be my dream project. I mean, it’s not going to be the definitive story of Chinese in Hollywood. It would be my version, based on my research and my work on this film. I would love to use the extended interview transcripts. And get in more of the stories. Luise Rainer has some great stories about working in Hollywood at the time and working on her character. I would love to do a book!”
Well, I’d love to read it.
Published: 05/21/2008
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