Director Justin Lin and Cast Discuss ‘Finishing the Game’

Arts and Entertainment

 

From the Nichi Bei Times Weekly March 22, 2007

By BEN HAMAMOTO
Nichi Bei Times

Filmmaker Justin Lin strolls into the lobby of the Miyako Hotel where his cast is doing interviews. His latest work, “Finishing the Game,” played to a packed house the previous night as the opening night film for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF).

Lin approaches the cast with a plate of manju from the nearby J-Town institution Benkyodo. Careful not to disturb the interviews taking place, he tiptoes around passing out confections to journalists and the actors.

While “Finishing the Game” made its premiere at Sundance, it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate opener for the 25^th SFIAAFF. Lin is a festival vet; a key member of what Oliver Wang calls the “Class of ’97,” as the tone and content of his “Shopping For Fangs” was one of several films at that year’s fest to mark a different direction in Asian American art.

Lin followed with the breakout API film, “Better Luck Tomorrow.” That got him in the Tinseltown door, where he subsequently did two big-budget features — “Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” and “Annapolis.”

“The Game” marks his return both to the world of Indie filmmaking and to Asian American subject matter.

“’Finishing the Game’ is my baby,” he tells the Nichi Bei Times. “I grew it from the ground up. I have complete control, which is something I was very adamant about and I fought for.”

The new film comes from an idea that Lin had many years ago. It takes a figurative way of explaining the plight of Asian American actors in Hollywood (or maybe even Asian people in America in general): “all they see us as are Bruce Lee stand-ins.” And it goes back to a specific situation in recent history when that complaint was not a metaphor but was actually quite literal.

When Bruce Lee, the highest profile Asian American the country ever knew, unexpectedly died, he left a studio with 12 minutes of footage from an incomplete film. Eager to capitalize on Lee’s fame, the studio set out to find a replacement to be a stand-in, a body double for Bruce Lee.

“The Game” is a little piece of historical fiction. It’s a satirical take on the casting process for the body double from the imagination of Lin and co-writer Josh Diamond.

Lin assembled a cast, comprised largely of old friends, to play the hopeful Bruce Lee stand-ins. The group of actors the filmmaker brought together is almost an eerie fit for the film on multiple levels.
In the hotel lobby, Dustin Nguyen, Sung Kang, MacCaleb Burnett and Roger Fan behave sort of like a group of college roommates. Playful and at ease around each other, there is genuine chemistry at work.

Their real-life personalities, at least as they are presented to the press, create distinct roles within the group. The majority are Asian American actors and can directly relate to the film’s metaphor. But the film’s tone, and how that metaphor is presented, also seem to fit them.

Despite the easy-going demeanor, the actors and the film itself all have serious thoughts about entertainment.

Nguyen, who plays Troy Poon, a cop-show actor turned vacuum cleaner salesman, has been in the business the longest. His career took off with a lead role in the teen detective drama “21 Jump Street” and he went on to work on the action comedy series “V.I.P.” The veteran actor is friendly and humble. There is a compassionate air about him. The adversity he’s over come, both inside and out of the film industry, gives him a visible maturity.

Kang, who entered the hotel with Burnett wearing fake moustaches, plays Colgate “Cole” Kim, a humble Southern bit-player also in contention for the role. His star has been on the rise since “Better Luck Tomorrow,” which he has led to a number of memorable roles in API features as well as a standout character in Lin’s addition to the “Fast & Furious” franchise.

Kang rejects the typical actor-interview format, and engages interviewers conversationally, taking away both the constraints and protections imposed by the roles. Oscillating between molestation jokes and insightful remarks about the film industry, Kang makes his multi-dimensionality so visible, he almost becomes one-dimensional.

Burnett, who sits beside Kang and plays with his hair with alarming frequency, delights in his co-stars’ antics. He plays the hapa beat-poet pro-Asian activist, who looks a little too Caucasian for the Bruce Lee role he wants to play. The “Annapolis” vet revels his real-life role as “the white guy” in the group.

Fan, who was in both “Better Luck Tomorrow” and “Annapolis,” never rushes to be the first to answer a question, but when asked questions, is never without a thoughtful response. He comes off as the right balance of understated but not passive, confident but not cocky. He plays Breeze Loo, whose name, which suggests the swap-meet knock-off version of Bruce Lee, says a lot about his character.

Mousa Kraish, the only main cast member other than Burnett who is not East Asian, plays Raja, a doctor of Middle Eastern descent. Like Nguyen, he is both humble and enthusiastic.

The film, the filmmaker and the cast represent oppositions, sometimes to each other and sometimes inside themselves. In this way, “Finishing the Game” seems to be about duality.

Role-model and Stereotype

“Finishing the Game” is rooted in the contradictory legacy of Bruce Lee, a subject of great relevance to many of the actors.

“The idea of Bruce Lee is a double-edged sword,” Kang explains. “It’s great that this Chinese American guy became this international phenomenon, almost a superhero. But on the other side it’s very offensive… he created this stereotype that is so big and so gigantic that it’s hard for us to break away from it.

“In my career I’ve always avoided martial arts,” Kang continues. “I studied to be an actor. It’s great because (in “Finishing the Game”) we get to use the legacy, but underneath it, we’re essentially playing actors, these three-dimensional characters who have feelings, they’re narcissistic (but they are trapped imitating Lee).”

“Everyone assumes a movie about Bruce Lee is going to be about martial arts,” Fan adds. “The funny thing about it is that it has almost nothing to do with martial arts. I don’t know anything about martial arts, partially ‘cause I refused to… We were lucky to have Don Tai who works with the Jackie Chan stunt company and when he saw us, he was just like ‘oh boy.’”

Nguyen, however, is an experienced martial artist, the only one in the cast other than Burnett, ironically. He’s done a lot of action onscreen and off-screen he has said in a previous interview, that he advocates Jeet Kun Do — a martial arts style and philosophy founded by Lee himself.

Seasoned Veterans and A New Movement

Asian Americans have been making strides in Hollywood recently. Kang and Fan have each appeared in Lin’s Hollywood outings “Fast & The Furious” and “Annapolis,” respectively. Kang, however, sees a potential glass ceiling within the studio system.

“If I were a (Hollywood) agent or a manager I don’t really know where ‘Sung’ fits in that system,” he muses. “In the TV world, would the advertisers pay for (me) to be in a pilot opposite the blonde blue-eyed leading female as a possible love interest? Is America ready for that?”

This comment evokes a response from other cast members.

“I think people are ready to see the world multi-ethnically,” Fan turns and answers. “They’ve been ready for years and years and years… It’s just that Hollywood isn’t going to make the change and so they keep making a product that makes the world very one-dimensional… Hollywood isn’t into risk taking. Hollywood is into, ‘if it worked before, keep doing it.’”

“America isn’t into risk taking,” Burnett adds, “Corporations don’t want to lose money.”

Due to Hollywood’s reluctance to take chances on API films, Asian Americans have taken to making such works independently, leading to an increasingly diverse output evidenced in the growing SFIAAFF.

“It’s interesting ‘cause coming to a festival like SF you look at the program and you see that there are over 12 feature films this year,” Kang says. “And it’s a really exciting time ‘cause Asian Americans are making feature films.”

However, before such a movement existed several API actors struggled in the film industry without the kind of support that exists today.

“When I came into the business there were a couple of guys who were there before me and they kind of just saw you as the new kid on the block,” Nguyen, who landed his first TV role in 1985, explains. “Work was so scarce and it was so competitive that everyone kept to themselves. I got really lucky, but it was still very lonely cause you didn’t have peers.

Kang expressed admiration for the veteran API actor.

“In this business if you can find friends, if you can find a mentor, I think you’re very lucky,” Kang said. “(I) totally admire him, I was like a sponge when I met him. I was like, ‘how do you stay normal?’ At least Roger and I had other guys we could ask questions to. Dustin was kind of by himself.”

“For me, (in terms of peers) it was like people in my acting class or my teacher, who I could hang out with and vent my insecurities to,” he continues. “It’s nice that, now that there’s this movement (I have people to talk to).”

Kraish sees many similar challenges as those Nguyen faced in the past.

“(As a Palestinian American actor) I don’t have peers in a sense,” he says.

“I’m lucky enough to be able to play character roles and really be among really great actors and work with them,” Kraish continues. “Maybe one day there will be a community like this community. I would love to have a festival just like this and hold cross festivals. It’s a good… to watch (my co-stars) because I can see what the future could be like for me.”