Ann Marie Fleming's feature film, "The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam," won rave reviews at film festivals and nabbed awards like the Grand Jury Award of the 2004 Asian Film Festival of Dallas. And now it's a graphic novel that the American Library Association has named one of the Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens. AsianAmericanFilm.com editor Greg Pak spoke with Fleming about her new adventures in comics. Read on for the interview -- and click on the images below to see preview pages from the book!
AsianAmericanFilm.com: Please describe the book in three sentences or less.
Ann Marie Fleming: "The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam" is a graphic novel based on the animated documentary of the same name, which traces my search to find the life of my great grandfather, Long Tack Sam, who was a world-famous, globe-hopping Chinese acrobat and magician that my family had really not know very much about at all. It takes us on a trip of the events of the 20th century through the prism of this one particular man's life, and, stylistically, it riffs off from the collage-like, multi-media quality of the film itself.
AAF: How did the plan to make the film into a graphic novel come together?
AMF: This was very serendipitous. Megan Lynch, an editor at Riverhead Books in New York City, saw the film on the Sundance Channel and got in touch with me, asking me if i'd be interested in adapting it into a graphic novel. She thought it would be particularly relevent for teaching inner city kids about valuing themselves in the world through the stories of their own families.
AAF: How did working in comics allow you to tell the story differently than working in film?
AMF: 2D is VERY DIFFERENT from 3D... from time-based media. I had to completely rethink the film. I didn't have the sound and music element, and my voice-over, which is such a large part of the film and gives it so much of its colour.
I tried to shift the layout on every pages, so you can explore the information differently, and change it up... I guess it was my way of visually pacing... I added other elements (like Stickgirl, my avatar, the narrator) and I also got to go on more tangential lines which I had to cut down or out in the film. I play with lists and timelines, which is very much how I began to structure my search in the first place.


