Words At Large

There are multiple stories behind the life of Long Tack Sam and you speculate that he was the author of most of them. Why do you think he felt the need to invent these stories?
Long Tack Sam had a long and varied career. I think that he was always reinventing himself, to suit his situation better. Different stories worked at different times and for different audiences, for all sorts of reasons from personal to political. Also, I think he was just a fabulist. He liked to change it up. Having made a documentary on his life, and now this book, and having retold his story many times myself, I can see how he'd want to spice things up over a lifetime of recounting.

What surprised you most when researching his life?
I know this sounds weird, but I was most surprised by how Chinese-y he was. I had only seen pictures of him in western dress and I knew he did a disappearing woman trick and some close-up magic, but I had no idea he was from a Chinese circus tradition, that he was an acrobat, that he wore traditional Chinese opera clothes in his act, that he spoke Chinese, even (as his children didn't, nor his wife) and that he actually took a political stand against the portrayal of Chinese in Hollywood cinema. Amazing.

What inspired you to first create a documentary film about Long Tack Sam?
This was initially a case of necessity being the mother of invention. I had this footage that I wanted to conserve, but couldn't find an archive to donate it to. I was moving back to Canada and between projects, and Karen King, a producer at the NFB in Toronto happened to ask if I had any ideas for a documentary film. I said I was interested in exploring this relative of mine, that i knew almost nothing about. That he was a successful vaudevillian with a Eurasian family, and maybe that would be an interesting story to tell about the Chinese diaspora...one that was different than a lot of immigrant stories of Asians to North America in the early part of the 20th century. A very celebratory one. Then the personality of Long Tack Sam came along, and he was very persistent that I keep on at it.

When you decided to adapt the film into a book, why did you chose the form of a graphic novel?
Again, this was fortuitous. I had created comics for the film itself (Julian Lawrence designed them) to mimic the Golden Age of comics, which was the Golden Age of Long Tack Sam, really. The 20's, 30's. Comic style seemed to suit his ever-changing, larger than life, history. The film is really a collage of so many different visual styles. I worked with a lot of different artists. Much of it is animated. I think it suited Long Tack Sam's own variety act and peripatetic life. When the film was shown on the Sundance channel in the U.S., an editor from Riverhead Books, Megan Lynch, saw it, and called me up, to ask if I'd be interested in adapting it into a graphic novel. I leaped at the opportunity. It's very much the same, and yet very different to the film, as the book medium has different challenges and possibilities.

What were some of the challenges in piecing together this memoir?
Ohmigoodness. Well, there was almost nothing known about Long Tack Sam. At least, not by any one I knew (family). Or, they weren't talking, at first. Certainly, there was no one in my immediate family who had been alive when he was at the peak of his career, so their stories started after that. And there wasn't any collective history of Long Tack Sam. I had to travel all over the world, interviewing magicians, historians and acrobats, trying to piece together his life. I searched libraries and archives to find a picture of playbill or newspaper clipping to say he'd been there, he'd done this, he'd said that. It was like a forensic search.

Why wasn't Long Tack Sam remembered, if he was such a big deal? Why didn't he tell his family his tale? Well, I'm beginning to realize that he probably got tired of hearing it, and just wanted some peace and quiet.

Does the book closely follow your film, or are there places where you diverge?
There's more background to the story in the book. More about me, I guess. About why I was interested in the story. And a little more of a tie-in to the family. And I reference geo-political contexts in a different way. It's stuff I wanted in the film, but as I mentioned, the mediums are so different, and when you are dealing with something time-based, you have to stay pretty much on the story. I got to ramble a little bit more in the book. Get a little more tangential, which I love. There's even a recipe in it. The book also comes out of a few more years of research and thinking about the film, Long Tack Sam's story, and the impact it's had on people, myself and my family included. So, that's in there.

Your great-grandfather overcame isolation, poverty, cultural and linguistic barriers, extreme racism and world wars to become one of the most successful magic and vaudeville acts of his time. What have you learned from his experiences?
Well, I gotta say, Long Tack Sam is an extremely inspirational character. I think of him as a contemporary man. He dealt with issues that we are still dealing with. And even though his story is amazing, I don't know too many Chinese immigrant stories from his time that wouldn't make your jaw drop, and it's the same with immigrants from all over the world. In fact, when I was trying to get funding for this film out of the states (unsuccessfully), I'd give them the spiel about Long Tack Sam's life, and they'd say (an actual Chinese administrator of a public funder) "Yeah, so... MY father was..." It's true. One of the great things coming out of doing this research on my own family, is that I've learned so much about so many others.

To what do you think he owed his great success?
Perseverance. Okay, so he was incredibly handsome, talented, dedicated, hard-working, socially agile and believed
in himself. He was lucky. He had a loving and supportive wife. He loved what he did. And he just kept on doing. If there's a life-lesson here it would be "It ain't easy, but you've better get on with it." Bugs Bunny would say "On with the show, this is it..." Like the book says, love is the answer. That ain't easy, either.

What role does magic play in your life today?
Well, it really is the magical life of Ann Marie Fleming. I've always done a little bit of magic. I love it. I am incredibly lucky. I guess I have done a little bit of conjuring here, bring back to life my family, having them speak to me, and to a lot of other people, and I see myself in as part of a continuum now. In a way that I don't mind. I'm a filmmaker and animator and photographer, amongst other things, and the first films were made by photographers and magicians. Like the work of Georges Melies, for instance. Films of fantastical stories full of imagination and wonder like flying to
the moon, and films of the most mundane documentation, like leaving a factory. All, amazing. People are amazing. Our lives are all amazing.

I get to talk with ghosts, in a way. With film, and pictures and stories. People ask me what Ii think and want to hear about it. That's pretty magical, I'd say.