Georgia Lee on "Red Doors" -- opening tonight in San Francisco and Los Angeles!
09.22 - Posted by Editor
Georgia Lee's debut feature film "Red Doors" opens today in San Francisco and Los Angeles after a blow out first weekend in New York City. Read on for an interview with Lee in which she discusses the film, the parties, and how it feels when an elderly, non-Chinese man tells her, "I am Ed Wong."
Asian American Film: What’s the film about and who should go see it?
Georgia Lee: RED DOORS is a dark comedy about the Wongs, a quirky dysfunctional family in New York. As the three daughters each grow up and grow apart from their parents, the family struggles to stay connected with each other. The patriarch, Ed Wong (Tzi Ma), has just retired and plots to escape his mundane life. However, the tumultuous, madcap lives of his three rebellious daughters change his plans.
I hope that EVERYONE will go and see it! But seriously, I do think that audiences of any age, gender, race, socio-economic background, and sexual orientation will relate to the film since it is primarily a film about family and the growing pains that we all experience with our siblings, parents, and children. As the film is about a Chinese-American family and a subplot revolves around a lesbian daughter, we have also found that RED DOORS seems to resonate especially well with the Asian American and LGBT communities as well.
AAF: Tell us a bit about the special events around the openings in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Parties? Q&As? Who, where, and when?
GL: Tzi Ma (the star of the film), John Fiorelli (producer), and I are up in San Francisco this weekend. Tzi and John will be hosting Q&As after all screenings this weekend. I will be joining them through Saturday afternoon and will then be heading down to LA. Jacqueline Kim, Elaine Kao, Freda Foh Shen, and Mia Riverton will be hosting Q&As at most of the screenings in the LA area during the weekend as well. I will be joining them starting Saturday evening in LA for Q&As all through Sunday.
As for parties, the RED DOORS San Francisco after party, co-hosted by The Center for Asian American Media, Frameline, and APICWTC, will be held at Thai Stick (2001 Fillmore Street at Pine) on Friday, September 22 at 9pm. A RED DOORS ticket stub required for admittance.
The Los Angeles after party for RED DOORS, co-hosted by House of Glam, will be held at Garden of Eden (7080 Hollywood Blvd) on Saturday, September 23 at 9:30pm. A RED DOORS ticket stub required for admittance.
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the theaters and parties!!
AAF: Congrats on the incredible success of the opening weekend in New York! What contributed to that incredible per-screen average? And what kind of doors has that opened in terms of future theatrical dates in other cities?
GL: Thanks very much!! I was really blown away by our opening numbers in New York. We had a miniscule marketing budget (just enough to buy the tiniest ad in the New York Times) and only our own manpower (womanpower?) to spread the word. So we turned to the web. We started with our own rag-tag website: www.reddoorsthemovie.com where we keep a blog, have downloadable music, photos, podcasts, etc. And then we created a myspace site: www.myspace.com/reddoors.
After creating our two main sites, we then emailed all our friends and families telling them about the film and asking them to please tell their friends and so on and so forth. It was really a case of on-line word-of-mouth.
I think that the web really has the power to inject some life into the indie film scene. Prior to the internet, it was very costly to get the word out to audiences. Now, you can reach people by a click of the mouse.
Also, we wanted to share the wonderful and painful process of making an indie film and then getting it distributed in theaters. There were so many hard-won lessons that we struggled through in making 'Red Doors' that we thought it would be great to save any other aspiring filmmakers from the same pain! So our blogs and our podcasts cover many of the nitty gritty details of pre-production, production, post-production, festival strategy, and distribution process.
We hope that our opening box office performance will help us expand throughout the US. After NY, we have been getting a lot of inquiries from theaters around the country, so hopefully we'll be able to announce more cities soon!
AAF: What’s the most exciting, moving, strange, or otherwise memorable encounter or reaction you’ve gotten from an audience member since you’ve been on the road with the film?
GL: At the beginning, we were just so thrilled that folks other than our immediate family actually watched and enjoyed the film! 'Red Doors' is an intensely personal film about my family and close friends. The characters are all based on people I know very well, so I didn't necessarily expect many other people to directly relate to the film.
As we have taken the film around the festival circuit, I have been overwhelmed by how may Asian Americans have come up to me afterwards and said that it reminded them of their own family. It has been so great to know that the film resonates with so many folks, but I was frankly surprised since I always thought that I grew up in a very bizarre and rather unique family. Apparently, my family has not cornered the market on dysfunction!
The most surprising audience response has been that the characters and their relationships seem to have transcended traditional lines of race, class, age, and sexual orientation. One of the most rewarding moments for me was when an elderly Long Island Jewish gentleman came up to me after a screening and said 'I am Ed Wong.' He thanked me for portraying an aging man coping with retirement, loss of purpose, distance from his children, and an existential angst.
AAF: A few months ago, we heard that “Red Doors” had been optioned for a television show. Can you tell us about the status of that project?
GL: Last year, CBS bought a pilot script based on RED DOORS. We developed and wrote a pilot script with Paramount TV and CBS. It was a really great learning experience. They didn't end up shooting the pilot last year but still have another year option on the project. So we hope that when they see the interest from the theatrical release, they may consider the TV show again.
