Dragonslayer

Q: Very few TV shows or movies explore the Asian immigrant experience in North America with the daring of Dragon Boys. What was your response to the script?

A: Well, I’d already heard about it — been warned against it, in fact. The script had a negative buzz. The rumour here in Vancouver and in Hong Kong was that it portrayed Chinese in an unfavourable light. But when I finally read the script, I thought, this is entertaining. The creators, [writer] Ian [Weir] and [director] Jerry [Ciccoritti], had done their research and had a good story to tell.

Q: Where do you think the rumours came from?

A: Hong Kong filmmakers believe it is all right for them to make crime stories about their people, but when western filmmakers do so, watch out.

Q: My favourite scene is a fight between your character and his white wife. “You’re out there on the front line, stamping out the yellow peril. These guys threaten how you see yourself, so you’re out there like a Samurai warrior, taking them on one by one,” she hollers. “The Samurai are Japanese,” you say finally, walking away. It’s a great moment that disguises a provocative insight in glib humour.

A: That’s what I liked about the script. Most [scripts] are full of black-and-white scenes. Dragon Boys has grey scenes. Maybe there is some truth to what she’s saying, though at a certain level she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Q: Do you think gangs pose a threat to how Chinese people in North America see themselves?

A: [Long pause] When we showed Dragon Boys to a Vancouver Chinese audience, the reaction was universal: What an educational film! We had no idea gangs were so prevalent! Many in the audience were no doubt genuinely surprised, but I am sure there were some merchants [in the audience] who pay off gangs, believing that is the price of doing business. The response of the community to gangs is very low-key. The gang bosses don’t draw attention to themselves. People don’t ask questions. Gangs are something the majority of the Asian community choose not to know about.

Q: Do you think your character is committed to destroying the gang for professional or personal reasons?

A: Oh, it’s personal with Tommy. I spoke with Ian a lot about the character before we went into filming. We saw Tommy as a guy who played on the hockey team in high school, was popular, had a white girlfriend, really fit in. In making detective on the Asian Gang Squad, he must face some aspects of his culture for the first time.

Q: You grew up in Hong Kong, the son of an American-Chinese mother. You studied in a British boarding school and then moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA. Growing up in Hong Kong as a child of mixed parentage, did you experience the social dislocation we see in Dragon Boys? Or was Los Angeles a greater adjustment?

A: Oh, the latter by far, but I should explain that I went to school in Wheaton, Ill. for one year in between. That was difficult. Hong Kong is very diverse. Illinois I found very homogenized. I didn’t experience overt racism … but you do feel like an outsider.

Q: How did you come to live in Vancouver?

A: I shot Street Fighter, with Jean-Claude van Damme in his prime, here in 1994, and made another film, Crying Freedom, in Vancouver the following year. Growing up in Hong Kong, a city on water by the mountains, made me receptive to Vancouver, I think. But it’s more than that. In the United States you feel a pressure to fit in, become Americanized. Whereas Vancouver celebrates ethnic diversity. I found the same thing true in Toronto when I made The Corruptor there with Chow Yun-Fat and Mark Wahlberg. It probably comes from the French-English tradition of Canada, this acceptance of outside cultures. I felt very at home in Vancouver. My parents moved from Hong Kong to live here a few years after I arrived.

Q: There is a rough humour regarding ethnic diversity in Dragon Boys.

A: Some of that was in the first draft, but a lot came from [Asian gang squad] cops. We spent a lot of time with real Vancouver cops before the film. With them, it’s no holds barred. They joke about race in a real edgy way. Sometimes, if a line didn’t feel right, we’d phone the cops. Once, I asked a Chinese cop what he’d say to a white cop in a certain situation. He said, “I’d probably ask him to go build a railroad for us.” We had that line in the film for a while.

Q: Devotees of Hong Kong films will recognize many of the character actors here, like Eric Tsang and Chang Tseng. The film frequently goes from English to Chinese and back again. Describe the collaborative process on Dragon Boys.

A: Well, there were translators. And Jerry and Ian were very interested in getting the [cast] to participate in the creation of their roles. The language is difficult to get right. Chinese [people] in Hong Kong and Vancouver go back and forth from Chinese to English, and styles of language and expression are always changing. I heard from someone in Hong Kong who told me they were impressed we got the Chinese [in Dragon Boys] right. It is very modern.

I’ll tell you a story that explains how private people from Hong Kong can be about matters of culture. It was really something that we could get Eric Tsang, who has made many movies and has his own game show in Hong Kong. I acted as his translator in his very first Vancouver meeting with Jerry. I think I said four words. Eric spoke English fluently. I said to his son, Derek Tsang, who plays Fox Boy in the film, “Did you know your father could speak English?” He had no idea.

Q: You’re currently acting in Vancouver with B.C.’s most famous physical structure, after the Rocky Mountains: Pamela Anderson. How is that going?

A: Ha. The movie is Blonde and Blonder. Pamela and Denise Richards play a couple of women hired to take me out. They think they’re supposed to date me, but the mob has hired them to kill me. It’s a comedy, obviously. I like Pamela. In movies, I judge people by how they treat the crew. She’s great in that respect.