By Angela Kang
Korean-American filmmaker, Grace Lee, searches for what really is in a name; from a violin prodigy to a pastor's wife to a social activist, she documents how the simple name of 'Grace Lee' can be so much and bind so many.
Who's name ISN'T Grace Lee? Writer and director, Grace Lee, addresses this question in her latest documentary, "The Grace Lee Project," a film that finds diversity among the group of women with this commonly held name. Lee was raised in Missouri, but moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television. She is the creator behind such works as documentary films "Camp Arirang," and "Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice." Her UCLA thesis film, "Barrier Device," which stars Sandra Oh and Suzy Nakamura, gained her recognition and won her prestigious awards, such as the 2002 Student Academy Award and the Directors Guild of America Student Award. She is currently working on "The Grace Lee Project," a film that hopes to use a comical perspective to analyze the role of Asian American women in our modern society. Also, she is producing another documentary, "The Best of the Wurst," exploring the lives of people living in Berlin through the "Curry Wurst" connection.
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Interview with Grace Lee
August 19, 2003
Interviewed by Angela Kang
Transcribed by Carol Soon
Angie: Please introduce yourself -- who you are and how you got started in writing and directing films.
Grace: I didn't go to an undergraduate film school, but I was always interested in storytelling. I studied history and journalism somewhat while I was in college. I got into filmmaking after college. I went to Korea to live there for a couple of years, and while I was there I became involved in a group that was sort of like a support and educational center for Korean women who were working as prostitutes for the American military. I was interested in these women's stories so I decided to do an oral history project. I didn't have any video experience, but my friend and I decided to tape these interviews instead. We thought that it would be a good idea to share this information and educate people about these issues. So it sort of started from there, and from there, I decided to get more experience working with cameras in the more technical side and working with independent film productions. That is what I have been doing for the past several years.
Angie: So you went to Korea. What was your motivation for going to Korea? Logically, you would think that filmmaking would be more prominent in Hollywood.
Grace: It had nothing to do with filmmaking at that point. I had never been to Korea before, although I am Korean American, and I wanted to learn the language. My parents had also moved back to Korea about twelve years ago at that time, so I decided that I should learn more about Korea. I was also interested in situations of women because in college, I had done an oral project relating to Korean American immigrants. So I thought I should get more language training and find out more about the culture and history.
Angie: How has growing up in the Midwest shaped who you are as an artist, filmmaker, and director? Has it given you a particular perspective that you might not have had otherwise?
Grace: I grew up in Columbia, Missouri, which is a small town, kind of a college town of about seventy thousand people, and I guess it has shaped me because I was born and raised there and even went to school there. Mostly growing up, there wasn't a lot to do; there weren't many diversions. I think that was what drove me and propelled me to be interested in other people's stories. I have always been interested in characters and different people and I think that was what propelled me toward journalism at such a young age. It was a great excuse to talk to people about who they are and find out more about them. So I think the journalistic tendencies and storytelling tendencies started there and gradually found their way toward visual filmmaking. Also, in the kinds of stories I tell, although I am Korean American, I am not from Los Angeles or New York. My experiences are shaped by growing up as pretty much one of the few Asians around.
Angie: As you have said, in your prior filmmaking you were doing quite a bit of nonfiction journalistic writing and now you do a lot of fictionalized films. Do you see a lot of mixing of both fiction and non-fiction in your work, or do you still maintain a predominant journalistic style of writing because that was your background?
Grace: Yeah. I am working on fiction films and non-fiction films at the moment and at the same time. Even in non-fiction films, such as documentaries, I blend fictional elements, and even the fictional films have a realistic bend in them. So I think that is what I have always been interested in. It's a mix, and I like that kind of storytelling the best, where it is rooted in reality but you have the freedom to go off in another direction if you feel like you are hampered by reality.
Angie: So what is the "Grace Lee Project"?
Grace: The "Grace Lee Project" is about a woman named Grace Lee, which is my name and a common Asian American woman's name, which I did not know growing up in Missouri. I thought I had a really unique and special name. It wasn't until I started living around a lot more Asian people, in New York and California, where I would meet people who kept saying, "Oh, I know another Grace Lee" or " I know this Grace Lee. She does this and that." When I would press them about more information about this Grace Lee, I would always get a similar response like "Oh, she is a violin prodigy" or "She went to Harvard when she was sixteen." They are always people that make me feel like I'm inadequate. Anyways, facetiously, I thought "Well, I can't just judge these people, I really need to find out who they are." The other thing is people never knew what happened to Grace Lee and I started thinking "Well, I want to know what happened to her" and "Are people back where I grew up saying the same things about me?" So it started off from there. But it's sort of a humorous investigation into contemporary Asian American female identity through diverse cross sections of "Grace Lee."
Angie: So was one of your purposes for creating the "Grace Lee Project" to shatter those kinds of stereotypes that you have encountered growing up or was it to share all the stereotypes that Grace Lees have encountered?
Grace: I think it is a combination of both. I meet people who defy stereotypes and also explore what those stereotypes are and where they come from. It's interesting how it works itself out. I want to distance myself from the certain kind of idea of what an Asian American woman is or an Asian woman is and by distancing myself, I question, "Is that something I feel comfortable doing? Should I be ashamed that there are so many people who play the violin and are devout Christians?" And questions like, " In what way are we shaped by who we are?" and "In what way are we shaped by what we are trying to resist? Is it what society is putting upon us or expecting from us?" So those are the kinds of question I hope to bring up in the project.
Angie: The "Grace Lee Project" is unfinished, correct? You are still in the midst of making it?
Grace: Yes, I'm still in production.
Angie: So what types of stereotypes have you dispelled or confirmed or have been shocked by? I know you have also interviewed non-Asian Grace Lees.
Grace: I have a website gracelee.net where Grace Lees come in, whether they have heard about it or someone has recommended the website to them, and they can fill out a survey which asks them certain questions. It's very unscientific, but they are just questions I want to know, like everything from "What's your full name?" to "How did you get the name Grace Lee?" "What kind of skin type do you have?" "How many years of violin did you play?" just to see if that is actually true. I guess it is not so much stereotypes as it is statistics that I have been finding. I mean there are a lot of Grace Lees who have combination skin or I found out that there a lot of Grace Lees who were named for the Christian idea of grace, which I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting that there would be a lot of Grace Lees named after Grace Kelly, the movie star from the fifties. There are all kinds of people. Right now on the website, it is very unscientific because it is basically people who on their own accord come to website. It is mostly people in their twenties and I know that there are Grace Lees who are older and younger, but there seem to be a big cluster of them in their mid-twenties. I heard that a friend of a friend had a baby and named her Grace Lee, which was a surprise because I didn't know that people were still naming their kids Grace Lee. Then there were also non-Asian Grace Lees who have come up.
Angie: How has coming to UCLA, a diverse university with a high Asian population, shocked you? Coming from the Midwest, you probably didn't see so many Asians in one place.
Grace: I came to UCLA for graduate school. Prior to that, I actually lived in Korea, New York, and San Francisco, so I wasn't really shocked when I came to Los Angeles. I have been living in California for about seven years now and so it has been more of a gradual change getting used to being around so many Asians. But actually, the thing about Los Angeles is that there are a lot of Korean Americans, which I wasn't used to. I was either surrounded by people from Missouri or when I went to Korea, I was surrounded by only Koreans. Actually, Los Angeles is a really nice mixture of "I can get the Korean culture if I want it" or "I can do my own thing." Most of the people I hang out with are a mixed bunch of filmmakers. Yeah, so it wasn't such a big shock because I had gone through that cultural shock before.
Angie: What is the "Grace Lee mistaken identity syndrome"?
Grace: I have been mistaken for some Grace Lees. When I came to UCLA, there was another Grace Lee who was in the theater department while I was in film school, and people kept saying, " Oh, I think I met you before" or "Didn't you audition for me?" And I would say, " No I am not an actor. I am a filmmaker." So that would happen and it was more not being mistaken for them, but being told that there were other ones out there who I wasn't like or was like. I think when you are younger, you want to be able to relate to people. Meeting other Grace Lees who have grown up in California and knowing other Grace Lees, I hear from them how they get frustrated for being mistaken for other Grace Lees. That has never happened to me. I only heard about these Grace Lees and wanted to know more about them.
Angie: According to your Grace Lee survey, 47% know other Grace Lees and 55% have been mistaken for other Grace Lees, although this is not error proof. What are some of the testimonies of the Grace Lees?
Grace: I think people want to be unique, and I thought I was. The whole impetus for this project is " I thought I was special. I thought nobody had this name." I had people come to the website and say, "I thought I was the only one." On the other hand, when you are younger, you want to be like everybody else. The general tendency is you want to fit in. As you get older, you want to form your own identity. You want to definitely be yourself. I definitely felt that when I was a little bit younger, finding out about other Grace Lees and worrying if people thought about me in a certain way. Now I think of it as a positive thing. There is a community of Grace Lees, and Grace Lee can be whoever she wants to be. She can be an eighty-eight-years-old radical Marxist activist in Detroit who is Chinese, or she could be a seventeen-years-old high school senior who is trying to pass her SATs, or a lesbian activist in Korea. These are all people whom I have met. Grace Lee can be a pastor's wife. I like the possibility that from seeing through these collective Grace Lees, Grace Lee can be anything.
Angie: You have received numerous awards for your previous work, and you received several grants to make this documentary, the "Grace Lee Project," happen. What is it about your work that distinguishes it from others?
Grace: What people have told me about what they liked about the "Grace Lee Project" was that it is so specific. It is about me, but it is also about other people named Grace Lee. But more than that, I think it is universal, especially with the internet, everybody has had that phenomenon where they typed their name on "Google" to see who else comes up. You are only linked to this person because you have two words in common: your first name and your last name. But are there really things that you share? I think that curiosity is held by a lot of people. The added extra layer to that is that there is this phenomenon of Asian women named Grace Lee who are not just Korean, but Chinese, Filipino, and Hapa. I think that "Grace Lee = Asian woman" is what people find most fascinating.
Angie: How do you think the American audience, Asians and non-Asians alike, will receive this film?
Grace: I hope they receive it positively. The questions that are in the "Grace Lee Project" are questions that especially immigrants and minorities can relate to. As I have said before, they are questions such as, "To what extent does your name shape you? Is it part of your culture? Is Grace a traditional Korean name or is it talking about other things, such as Christianity and Grace Kelly? And what are the forces that shape us or are we resisting the forces that shape us?"
Angie: In your opinion, what do you think is the force that shapes us?
Grace: I think it is so many different things. I think part of it is also nature- who you are. Definitely the environment, family, and where I am has shaped me a lot.
Angie: So when can we expect to see this film?
Grace: I'm shooting another separate project this fall, which has nothing to do with Grace Lees, so the "Grace Lee Project" has been pushed back a little bit, but I hope to finish shooting in the winter and starting editing in the spring, and hopefully it will be done by this time next year- fall of 2004.
Angie: What is this next project that you are working on?
Grace: I am working on several projects, but there is this competition in Berlin, Germany to make a film about Berlin today, and I am one of three nominees to make a short film. It is a short documentary about a street food in Berlin called "Curry Wurst," which is a curry sausage that they sell all over the city. The film is about a woman who is searching for the best "Curry Wurst" in Berlin, but it is really about the different characters she meets as she comes across in her journey. So it really is a portrait of Berliners today.
Angie: How did you come upon being one of the nominees for this Berlin Competition?
Grace: I was invited to this talent campus in Berlin, where they had invited filmmakers from all around the world to participate in these workshops and then afterwards, the film board, Berlin Brandenburg, which is a funding organization opened up this competition saying, "Submit a proposal about Berlin today." So it really came out of this intense experience I had with a "Curry Wurst," which shaped my trip in Berlin. So when I was thinking what could I write about in Berlin, I immediately thought about this "Curry Wurst" and created a story around that. One of the things I tend to do in my storytelling is to see what is interesting to me because if I am going to spend time to work on a film or story then I better be passionate about it and really want to get into it deeply, especially a documentary. So I used that as a springboard to look into other things.
Angie: So it seems like documentaries are what you are passionate about and what you gravitate towards.
Grace: Well actually, prior to film school, I worked a lot in documentaries in production and associate producing various things. When I came to film school, I came to work specifically on fictional films and to work with actors and writing scripts. I am doing that too, but for emerging and younger filmmakers, it is a bit easier to get into documentaries. It is also because I like documentaries. You don't need as much crew and you can get a regular camera and start shooting. You can use Final Cut Pro. You just don't need as many resources to get started. For me, I want to be making the film, and not wasting the time for a feature to happen. So that is sort of how I combine both.
Angie: What is the name of your short documentary on Berlin today?
Grace: It's called "Best of the Wurst."
Angie: What are some of your other feature projects?
Grace: There are a couple of feature projects that I am working with writers on to get them going. I am also writing a script now that hopefully will be my first feature script. I made a fictional short film for my UCLA thesis film, which starred Sandra Oh. It was about a researcher for a female condum study -- a story about a friendship between two women -- a comedic drama, sort of what I find interesting and what I would like to do right now.
Angie: Do you intentionally or by coincidence tend to explore women's experiences and character?
Grace: I think it is partially intentional and partially coincidence. I mean I am a woman and I don't think that there are necessarily women's issues stories, there are just protagonists who are women. Just like in my film there are two characters who are Asian American women, but that is not what the story is about. The story is about one person dating the other person's ex-boyfriend, and that's really the focus of the story.
Angie: So how is the "Grace Lee Project" any different?
Grace: A lot of people like me who are making films these days are making films that feature Asian Americans who are not necessarily worrying about their Asian American identity. The "Grace Lee Project" is a little different because in that film, I want to bring attention to the fact that it is about an identity crisis, but I sort of make fun of it because that is how I feel about the whole identity thing.
Angie: Any last words you would like to say?
Grace: If there are any Grace Lees out there, please come to my website. It's gracelee.net.
Angie: Thank you so much.
Grace: Thank you.
Published: Friday, September 12, 2003