By Chi Tung
Filmmaker Justin Lin doesn't care about setting particular trends or standards. However, he does want you to watch his movies.
The film industry is a business. Just ask film-geek turned powerhouse visionary Justin Lin, who, in trying to sell his directorial debut Better Luck Tomorrow to investors, met with varying degrees of resistance. Too many Asian Americans. Not enough Caucasians. Too many unproven actors. Not enough Macaulay Culkins (This was actually said by one such potential investor who would've coughed up two million on the spot for casting the former child-starlet). And yet, Lin sloughed on in the hopes of accomplishing what he set out to do—make a film reflecting his know-how, his worldview, his passions. The result is the first studio film since the Joy Luck Club to feature three-dimensional Asian American characters living three-dimensional lives and saying three-dimensional things. So what if countless meals of oatmeal had been consumed and heaps of debt incurred (At one point, he owned ten different credit cards)? The important thing for Lin was that he had made his presence felt and in doing so, trumped the notion that a general audience couldn't possibly be interested in the lives of individuals who until now, served merely as background d?or.
Having already received his Bachelors degree in film directing from UCLA, Lin was knee-deep into the completion of his Masters when providence smiled upon him. While in the midst of writing a page-and-a-half for a final paper that required seventeen-and-a-half-more, he was informed of Better Luck Tomorrow's acceptance into indie-film haven, aka the Sundance Festival. Since then, Lin has been nothing but busy, while the film has taken off to both commercial and critical success, finding a niche with both mainstream critics like Roger Ebert and adolescent youth. Still, despite its widely held reputation as a broader, more inclusive survey of the Asian American experience, BLT is also sometimes cited as a mixed bag of ethnic stereotypes, since it perpetuates new ones at the same time that it nixes others. Lin, however, does not view this scattered range of responses as a detriment to the film's enduring perception.
“It's more than that. I don't think that anybody plays into any stereotypes. A lot of times, people say, “Well, you're Asian American, therefore as an Asian American filmmaker, you'll make Asian American films. But my experience is very different from your experience, even though we're both Asian Americans.?o:p>
Lin continues by saying that in five years, “hopefully we'll have twenty-five films of various Asian American perspectives.?He doesn't seem to mind the variety or the criticism that a true genre for Asian American films exists only as a marginal device because he believes that the more people are willing to engage themselves with alternative perspectives, the greater likelihood there is for a comprehensive, representative body of work. To Lin, that “body of work?is what cinema is all about: a singular portrayal of certain social phenomenons, conflated with those everyday emotions and dialogues separating our train of thought and basic ideologies. Justin Lin's mission is a simple one—to make films about experiences that people can relate to, visual techniques that they can ooh and ahh over, even inconsistencies they can argue about. Somewhere in this process, everything else will naturally trickle into place. Better luck tomorrow? Lin believes in a whole lotta artistic integrity and sincerity today.
www.betterlucktomorrow.com (http: //www.betterlucktomorrow.com)
us.imdb.com/name/nm0510912/ (http: //us.imdb.com/name/nm0510912/)
Published: Thursday, April 22, 2004
