Lin, who along with two of the film's stars stopped by KPBS after hosting the San Diego premiere of his film at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, noted that Bruce Lee was a huge part of his identity as a kid growing up in Orange County. But the irony was that "my first introduction to Bruce Lee wasnt even Bruce Lee -- it was Bruce Li and Bruce Loo because when I was growing up, they had this thing called Kung Fu Theater, and they booked the cheap films, not the real Bruce Lee films. So I saw all these imitators first. It was with the advent of the VCR that I finally saw Bruce Lee in
Enter the Dragon . That was my introduction to the real man. And I thought, 'Oh, this is the guy that everyone is trying to be.' It was amazing to me to see an Asian face on the screen that was complex, fearless, sexy -- everything that I had never seen before."
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The cattle call for Bruce Lee's double (IFC)
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Something else the ten-year-old Lin had never seen before was a body double. When Bruce Lee died in 1973, he was at the height of his fame and in the middle of making the movie The Game of Death. It was completed without him. Lin found it confusing that for much of the movie, there was this other person on screen pretending to be his beloved Hong Kong superstar. Later Lin began to wonder about this other guy and how he got the job. Lins imagined documentary, Finishing the Game , follows a group of Asian American actors in the 70s as they vie for the role of Bruce Lees double.
First there's Breeze Loo (Roger Fan), a actor whose career seems to be a clone of Bruce Lee's, but Loo is in total of denial of that fact, even though he does chop socky imitations of Lee's martial arts films. The only difference is that Loo considers himself an "acteur" and refuses to do any of his own stunts or fighting. Then there's Raja Moore (Mousa Kraish), an Indian man who after serving one day as a doctor (to make good on a promise to his mom) has now decided to become an action star. Troy Poon (Dustin Nguyen), on the other hand, has already enjoyed Hollywood celebrity as half of a cop duo on a popular TV show that has since been canceled. He's now forever doomed to repeat his character's catch phrase to everyone he tries to sell vacuum cleaners to. Then there's Colgate Kim (Sung Kang), a struggling actor with dreamy ambitions, and Tarrick Tyler (McCaleb Burnett), a Caucasian-looking action bit player who aspires to an Asian on-screen identity.
Assessing this group of wannabe Bruce Lee's are a youthful first time director (Jake Sandvig) and a veteran casting director (Meredith Scott Lynn). Each one has a "vision" of who the right person is and the process by which they try to pick that person is often hilarious since neither one seems to know the slightest thing about martial arts movies. The audition process provides some of the film's biggest laughs as we get inside the industry to see some of its pretensions, lack of risk-taking and the sheer desperation of all those actors trying to claw their way up. And the biggest joke -- which is actually quite sad -- is that all these hopeful actors fighting ferociously at the massive casting call are only being cast to play someone's double!
"Thats the big denial," actor Dustin Nguyen said. "Theres a certain state where everyones so desperate for work and the opportunities are so few that when there is something that does come along, its a huge thing, even if it's just to play someone's double."
And to add insult to injury, it is to play someone's double in a manner that turns Bruce Lee's originality into a confining racial stereotype that Asian actors still have to reckon with today.
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Roger Fan working out a love-hate relationship with Bruce Lee (IFC)
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"I have a love-hate relationship with Bruce Lee," actor Roger Fan said. "Bruce Lee as the man, the iconic man, I have so much admiration for his sheer amount of machismo -- something that you never saw and something you still dont see much in American TV and film. For me, I think the hate part of it comes in the reinterpretation and the stereotyping of that machismo that becomes sort of mocking. Where people start making those high pitched noises of Bruce Lee fighting, then it becomes this thing thats no longer macho or cool. Its something thats used to make fun of someone. So at the end of the day, its wonderful that Bruce Lee is an amazing icon; the question is, as a community can we build beyond that?"
That's what Lin is trying to do with wit and grace in Finishing the Game. Lin says it was the first time he really had the ability to write specifically for Asian American actors that he knew well, such as Roger Fan and Sung Kang. Lin points out that in Hollywood, Kang has been cast as "the cool, brooding figure. But I know Sung as something else, he's more the humble bumpkin that Colgate Kim is."
So in Finishing the Game, Kang makes Kim an acting oddity: an actor who doesn't seem to have much of an ego. His Kim is delightfully goofy as he asks Breeze Loo for an autograph at a casting session where they are both fighting for the same role. Kim is also too naive to realize that one role he shows up for is for a porn film with Ron Jeremy (in a funny cameo playing himself).
Lin wrote Breeze Loo's character with Roger Fan in mind. Lin fought to get Fan into the movie Annapolis because he felt that there needed to be an Asian American presence in a film about the military, not because he wanted to cast his friend, but because that was an accurate reflection of what today's military looks like. Lin won that argument with the studio. Now he casts Fan as Breeze Loo.
"Breeze Loo is an interesting fellow," Fan said. "He wants to be a real actor, a Sir Laurence Olivier, but the reality is what is available to him is only the kung fu genre. I was born in U.S., but the ironic thing when I go to Hollywood to work is that more often than not they want me to be exactly what Im not. I feel in my gut that Im a Matt Damon or a Ben Affleck, but when I show up on a Hollywood set, its gangster number 32 or dead waiter number 5. Thats my Hollywood destiny."
Or worse. Fan says there was a recent audition for a computer generated Bruce Lee movie in which they wanted to cast an Asian actor for his body and then digitally remove his head and replace it with that of the late martial arts superstar!
Lin confronts that kind of acting destiny in his film by considering how Bruce Lee's popularity has made Hollywood look to Asian actors only within a certain limited realm. Take a scene where Fan's Breeze Loo answers questions in an interview about the similarity between Breeze Loo and Bruce Lee. Breeze draws the analogy of taking the Coke-Pepsi challenge. Breeze states with the utmost confidence: "Its like Pepsi and Coke. I can guarantee you one thing: Anyone whos taken the challenge can taste the difference." What's not only funny, but clever about that analogy, is that it's a pop culture reference that everyone can get and it gets to the idea that not only are the differences not that great but it also taps into the commercial nature of how the media brands things. So a line that seems like a casual throwaway joke actually has layers of subtlety that audiences can either look into for meaning or just enjoy as a funny gag. For Fan, Breeze is just "going through a level of denial that you just can't put a meter to," and that denial becomes very funny.
But in the case of both Fan and Kang, Lin is creating interesting characters that can exist outside of their Asian identity, by that I mean the characters are more than just their Asian ethnicity. Breeze is a conceited actor and Kim is a laid back guy not quite able to commit to a career or a relationship. What's great about what Lin does is that he is more concerned with presenting a diversity of Asian images than with just promoting a positive image. Presenting the positive image is sometimes the only thing that the Asian American community wants to see. That's why Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow ran into some criticism -- it showed well to do, smart Asian kids getting involved in drugs and murder. But that's what makes Lin's films more interesting as works of art. He's not out there just to create positive role models, he's out there to create fascinating characters. In Finishing the Game, Lin has fun challenging stereotypes and doing so without lecturing us.
Im Asian American, Lin said. And Im very sensitive to how people see each other and see me but as a filmmaker. But Im more interested in people who are flawed because were all flawed. The reality is that were not black or white. Life is about grays and thats what interests me as a filmmaker.
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Dustin Nguyen and M.C. Hammer in Finishing the Game (IFC)
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Those are actor Dustin Nguyen's concerns as well: "In one way, Bruce Lee's popularity is a bit of an obstacle because I think theres certain expectations of Asian American males to identify with Bruce Lee and all the qualities of Bruce Lee, but that can become a stereotype. I like to see Asian American males represented in a more diverse, realistic way."
Lin does just that in a humorous way in Finishing the Game. Lin had originally wanted to make Finishing the Game right after Better Luck Tomorrow , but couldnt pull the project together. So he ended up doing a pair of big budget Hollywood movies The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Annapolis instead.
I think Finishing the Game benefited from me having gone through the studio experience, Lin explains. The theme of the movie shifted from being about identity to being about denial. In Hollywood, you see denial everywhere and on so many different levels. Often in order to gain success, many resort to being something that they are not and living in denial. At the same time, you have to have a sense of humor about it or else youll just get eaten up. The film also became more of an insiders view of the film industry.
That denial is evident in the character of Troy Poon played by Dustin Nguyen.
"He refuses to be a part of this whole search for Bruce Lee," Nguyen said. "He feels hes not going to compromise his dignity. But because he had fame once, its true that once you have a certain level of recognition and have the slightest taste of success and you have it taken away from you, what are you willing to do to get it back?"
With his films, Lin has been trying to push at the stereotypes facing Asian American actors and challenge what he calls the studio's "laziness" about diverse casting. But he's doing it from the inside and with an understanding of how to operate within the business-minded Hollywood system.
"The thing I appreciate about the studios is they are very upfront," Lin said. "Its all about making money. Its working backwards, and the marketing dept has a lot of power. At the end of the day, its about getting in that room and having that discourse. I think color blind casting is still very rare. And its something you really have to fight for."
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The all-white team behind the search for the new Bruce Lee (IFC)
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You sense that Lin drew on his fights with the studios as well as his Hollywood experiences for the highly competitive scenes of cattle calls for actors and encounters with a pretentious casting director. To shoot the scene, he said they actually put out fliers saying they were looking for Bruce Lee extras and dozens of people showed up thinking it was a real casting call. That reveals once again Lin's mix of indie savvy and Hollywood smarts, after all what's the best way to make a low budget casting call look like the real thing than to stage one? Lin took a similar approach to creating the film-within-the film of the Fist of Fuhrer, the Breeze Loo chop socky film.
"With the Fist of Fuhrer sequence, I actually brought Evan Leong [a young filmmaker] on to direct," Lin said. "And I was acting like the studio boss. It was fun. I was saying 'You have no money. You have $200, and you have half a day, and how you gonna do that?' And I kept squeezing them and pushing them and every time hed ask for a dolly, Id say 'No money for dolly.' And it was fun to be the studio bully for a day."
Lin learned more than just how to be a studio bully by working on studio films. He also learned about that thing known as networking.
I did have the advantage of having relationships with studios and prop houses, Lin said. And there was no way we couldve done a period piece like Finishing the Game for the money we had without their help. We literally had sets that were from You, Me and Dupree. Kodak came in and really helped us with the film stock, and Panavision came in and basically let us use the camera. Those are relationships that I didnt have on Better Luck Tomorrow and to have these people step up and really help us was gratifying.
Those relationships along with some innovative work by his production team allowed Lin to create a '70s film that was accurate down to the shag carpet and layered hair. It's that attention to detail that lifts Lin's film from just a low budget indie comedy to a clever satire worth savoring. Lin reminds us that there is such a thing as a smart comedy where careful consideration of all details and a well written script are highly valued (something that films such as Hot Rod and Blades of Glory make us forget).
Lin says he appreciates being able to move between studio and independent films: I mean, when you do a credit card movie and go into six-figure debt, then to do a studio film, it really does help you. It was the first time in my life I felt like I could be creative without having to worry how much it was going to cost. But its very clear when you are making a low budget film that money is not the currency -- the currency is passion. The people who come on board have to believe in the project because theres nothing else to offer except the script. But doing the big budget Hollywood movie is kind of the opposite, you actually have a lot of money, but youre trying to get everyone hyped up when they get to work because money is the currency in that situation. You have the best people in the world, but you have to get them motivated to have fun with it.
Finishing the Game (unrated) serves up a kick-ass comedy about a dead martial arts star, starving actors and the Hollywood system. There are no positive role models of any kind to be found here, just hilariously flawed individuals who not only entertain us but make us think about how we not only place limitations on others, but how we might be limiting ourselves. Roger Fan may sum up the film in the best way: "I actually always felt like Finishing the Game was a tragedy wrapped in a comedy."
Listen to my feature on The World.
Companion viewing: Better Luck Tomorrow, Enter the Dragon, The Game of Death, The Rebel -----
