Bumping Into Michelle Krusiec

I bumped into Michelle Krusiec while reading my daily online edition of the New York Times (registration required, though):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/movies/29leib.html

While the movie itself does make some kind of statement for Asian-American filmmakers on the one hand, and a different love angle through the experience of lesbians (oh boy, I said it, I'm going to get a few webhits for this one), I was more intrigued because one of the lead actresses was a name I haven't heard for quite some time - that of Michelle's.

My buddy Des and I thought of a travel magazine during our down-and-out following our aborted careers as educators (the memories those times bring up ---!) and one of our inspirations was "Travelers" which aired from 1996-98 on the Discovery Channel. Michelle was my favorite regular on the show, though up until now her obvious Asian ancestry does not explain her last name, and until I read her short bio I had to assume her father was American.

I would have caught her earlier had I been a fan of "The Mind of the Married Man" on HBO (where she appeared as topless Japanese masseuse "Sachiko" - dang, now I have to find DVD copies of the show!)

I just liked the memory seeing Michelle's face and the associations it had with some part of my life - aside from the fact that I have always been partial to Chinese girls. Anyhow, one other thing that grips me is that there is so much talent out there in the Philippines that could use a break. Whether or not the current trend of reality-shows/talent searches would help in generating more talent, I really don't know. All I know is too much of a good thing (as matters stand right now) turns out bad in the end.

Anyway, back to Michelle, here is her website:

http://www.michellekrusiec.com/

For more on the movie:

http://www.sonyclassics.com/savingface/

And, for those who don't want to waddle through the NY Times, I'm posting the article ---

May 29, 2005
Kissing Vivian ShingBy ED LEIBOWITZ
THE story behind Alice Wu's "Saving Face" - which is squeezing into theaters between commercial giants "Madagascar" and "The Longest Yard" this weekend - is almost as improbable as the film's plot. The first movie wholly about Chinese-Americans bankrolled by Hollywood since Disney released "The Joy Luck Club" in 1993, it is a romantic comedy about three generations of an immigrant family: a deeply traditional grandfather, his middle-aged daughter (widowed and mysteriously pregnant) and his lesbian doctor granddaughter, who happens to fall in love with a ballerina.
Even one of its producers, the superstar Will Smith, calls the movie "perfectly bizarre" in its twists, on-screen and off. Indeed, "Saving Face" owes its existence to the vagaries of business planning at Microsoft, to new assertiveness in the Chinese-American film world, and to a helicopter soaring above Manhattan for the $70 million Sony Pictures blockbuster "Hitch." More, it was born from Ms. Wu's unlikely success in refusing to make unwelcome concessions when she was asked for them by seasoned film executives.
In 1998, Ms. Wu, having earned her Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University, was the program manager at Cinemania and Music Central, Microsoft's CD-ROM entertainment offerings. Unfulfilled, though, was her long-held desire to become a writer - an option that she believed was closed to her as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, who spoke only Mandarin until she entered the California public school system. "I certainly grew up knowing I was going to take care of my parents," Ms. Wu said in a recent interview. "And English majors generally don't make enough money to pay off their loans and take care of her parents."
At the time, Microsoft was betraying uncharacteristic indecision about how to retool its information services for the fast-emerging Internet. Suddenly, Ms. Wu's division didn't have much to do, and she began writing a novel inspired by her experience of coming out as a lesbian, along with her mother's difficulties in middle age. "You have to sit there for nine hours," Ms. Wu said, "so at least I always looked busy typing."
In the culture she was exploring, Ms. Wu found that many of her characters would say things they didn't mean. The chasm between their words and conflicting facial expressions, she thought, might come across better in a movie.
That insight led to a 12-week screenwriting class at the University of Seattle and a draft of "Saving Face" - which was hashed out in three nights after epic procrastination. Amazingly, she said, her instructor liked it. But he told Ms. Wu she could protect the integrity of the script only by directing it herself.
Defying colossal odds, she quit Microsoft and set out to do exactly that, giving herself five years to succeed. Moving to Brooklyn, Ms. Wu enrolled in a course taught by Alan Oxman, editor of Todd Solondz's "Happiness" and "Welcome to the Dollhouse." She was in the first graduating class of what would become Mr. Oxman's Chelsea-based Edit Center. There, she learned what she calls "guerrilla filmmaking," but, for almost three years of her allotted five, left "Saving Face" untouched.
That changed in 2002, when, on a tip from her screenwriting teacher, she entered the script in a contest sponsored by a Hollywood advocacy and networking group called the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment. And won.
"They had me meet with a lot of people in Hollywood, mostly Asian-American studio executives, which I hadn't honestly known existed," Ms. Wu said. She also hadn't anticipated just how often she would be asked to consider changes that struck at the very heart of the script everyone seemed to like so much: Couldn't Ms. Wu make her characters white, so maybe the young doctor could be played by, say, Reese Witherspoon, and Ellen Burstyn could be cast as her mother? How about making the love affair heterosexual? Did she have to direct as well as write it? It was advice Ms. Wu declined to take.
On a later trip back to Los Angeles, Ms. Wu met Teddy Zee, who, until last month, was the president of Overbrook Entertainment, Mr. Smith's production company. Before joining Overbrook, Mr. Zee had served as a longtime executive at Sony Pictures. He'd grown up in cultural isolation in the Catskills - his Shanghai-born father was a salad chef at Grossinger's; his mother had traditionally bound feet and didn't speak English - and he seized upon movies as his escape. And, after a career spent on studio films, he found Ms. Wu's story striking at his roots.
"I didn't pick this script; this script picked me," Mr. Zee said. "You don't set up to do something crazy like this." " 'Saving Face,' " Mr. Zee explained, was "an awakening for me about the Asian-American experience in Hollywood, because I was always such a part of the studio system. Every day there are actors coming in who are Chinese-American, who don't get an opportunity except to play prostitutes or waiters."
The aspiring filmmaker's obstinacy only reinforced his commitment to her. "Alice comes off as very accommodating," Mr. Zee said. "But when it comes to her vision, she's a killer."
For Mr. Smith, the great appeal in "Saving Face" was its unpredictability. "You just never heard a story like that one before," Mr. Smith said, "and it's half in Mandarin Chinese. I was completely out of my wheelhouse." Mr. Smith and James Lassiter, his longtime manager and partner at Overbrook, committed to produce with Mr. Zee, if the financing could be found.
In November 2002, Mr. Zee had lunch with Ben Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, who told him that he could greenlight certain genre movies at the right price. Even in the event those films never made it into theaters, his division had the wherewithal to market them directly to video.
Mr. Zee urged Ms. Wu to fly out a few days later for a dinner held by his Hollywood advocacy group. She went, despite her skepticism that anything would come of it. At the dinner, though, Mr. Zee buttonholed two of Mr. Feingold's executives - Fritz Friedman, his Filipino-American senior vice president of publicity and a co-founder of the group, and Lexine Wong, the division's Chinese- and Japanese-American executive vice president for worldwide marketing. "I introduced Alice to them, and I said: 'You know what, guys? Your boss says he can greenlight movies, and this is one of the best scripts I've ever read,' " Mr. Zee remembered saying. " 'You guys should champion this - the three of us should do this just based on the fact that we're Asian.' "
The next Monday, Mr. Feingold approved the project at a modest budget of $2.5 million. But the film's language barrier remained an issue at Overbrook. "Certainly, my producers said, 'Do they have to speak Mandarin?' " Ms. Wu recalled, "and I was just like, 'These things are nonnegotiable, and this is why.' " Mr. Zee had no better luck when he suggested she consider changing her ballerina's ethnicity. "He really thought the love interest should be white so that we could cast a star," Ms. Wu said. "I said, 'No.' The moment you make the love interest white, it becomes about race."
So instead of a Scarlett Johansson, Ms. Wu cast a retired ballerina and aspiring actress, Lynn Chen, in the pivotal role of Vivian Shing. Playing opposite her as the medical student is Michelle Krusiec, who had supporting parts in "Dumb and Dumberer" and "Daddy Day Care." Mr. Zee also advised Ms. Wu to cut out what he first regarded as a false ending to the film, but, predictably, she demurred.
Ms. Wu sees nothing strange in her disregard of virtually every story change suggested by her producers. "It's not like I'm out there hiring script consultants," Ms. Wu said. "I'm hiring producers. I need them to find financing. They did, you know, and then they were really supportive."
Filming began in fall 2003, with a Buddhist prayer ceremony and burning incense. Despite her enormous confidence in her story, Ms. Wu delivered a warning. "I said to my producers: 'God, I need to tell you that I might be terrible at this. I know I really love the writing, but I've never done a feature.' "
Many of the scenes would be shot in Brooklyn and the Chinese-American enclave of Flushing, Queens. Not long into production, Ms. Wu realized that the date was Oct. 10, and that, while the film had a few more weeks to more to shoot, she had made good on her five-year plan.
Ms. Wu's film entered a slow postproduction as Overbrook geared up for "Hitch," the comedy featuring Mr. Smith and the "King of Queens" star Kevin James, a bit of synchronicity that solved yet another problem for "Saving Face."
Ms. Wu had about exhausted what money was available to her, but she still insisted that her picture have exterior scenes to situate her story in the larger landscape of New York City. "Alice had always been adamant that we needed to have some second-unit shots," Mr. Zee said, "and I was never a supporter of doing more shooting until absolutely the movie was locked in."
As it happened, when a helicopter lifted off above Manhattan to film aerial shots for "Hitch," Mr. Zee arranged to have a "Saving Face" shadow unit pile into the cabin for a sharply reduced fee. While the "Hitch" crew captured city views of Madison Square Garden, Ms. Wu was getting the sequence that established her entire film - her heroine's D train making its way over the Manhattan Bridge, with the camera veering up to capture the New York skyline for the credits.
"Saving Face" was an official selection at the most recent Sundance and Toronto film festivals. In Toronto, Ms. Wu learned that Sony Pictures Classics would handle its distribution.
Pleased as he is to see the picture finally in theaters, Mr. Zee admits to a certain wistfulness now that the filmmaking family around Ms. Wu is about to break up. "We go to the various festivals and screenings, we all get together and we have reunions," Mr. Zee said. "So it's sad to see the movie actually come out because it means it's going to be the end of our run together."