Lisa Onodera: Producer of Picture Bride, The Debut

Multicultural Entertainment Marketing Series: Perils & Rewards of the "Ethnic Niche" in the Entertainment Industry (Part 4 of 4)

By Yayoi Lena Winfrey, AAV Contributing Editor

Film Producer Lisa Onodera
Finding Audiences...or Building Them

"I'm tired," sighs film producer Lisa Onodera, 40, an expectant mother with a three-year old who is laboring to self-distribute The Debut, a feature about Filipino Americans she produced in 1997.

Always a difficult undertaking, self-distribution is doubly challenging in The Debut’s case. It’s not just a matter of finding financing and venues for screening to an established, mature, clearly delineated audience. Rather, along with her partner, director Gene Cajayon, Onodera is "trying to...define the Asian-American audience as an economic force."

Director Cajayon does the booking. Onodera handles most of the publicity, and says "We both make decisions about the cash flow and where we should spend money. It's an expensive undertaking. To date, we've grossed almost 1.5 million dollars that will hopefully translate to home video sales and foreign markets taking us more seriously."

It's an indication of today's tough climate for independent "ethnic films" that Onodera is looking to be "taken more seriously," since hers is something of a model indy film success story.  In 1993, the yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese American) from Berkeley produced her first feature, Picture Bride, by Kayo Hatta. Onodera was working as a television producer's assistant while at film school, where she met Hatta. From that meeting, what began as a 16 millimeter student thesis project evolved into a full-length feature that is not only touted as the first American dramatic feature film written, produced and directed by Asian-American women, but also went on to win awards at Sundance and Cannes. The historical story of Japanese sugar cane workers in Hawai'i, Picture Bride was immediately picked up by Miramax.

"We were very lucky that...there was an executive at Miramax that really liked the movie," Onodera says. However, she does not think that the Disney Miramax of today would pick up Picture Bride. "I don't see the same kind of art house fare in their line up anymore...They're a gigantic company (now)."

After a few months, "Miramax said, ‘It's been out for 15 weeks...we can't afford to buy any more ads,’" Onodera recalls. "Attendance dropped off in the multiplexes. I wanted to keep it going, [but] you just don't have that control."

Comparing self-distribution to a studio release, she says, "The trade-off is huge."

For Onodera, producing is a hands-on, creative endeavor. Although she went to film school assuming she wanted to direct films, she "came away with a real passion for producing [and being] a facilitator for the writer and director. I feel like I'm a partner in creating the overall product or project."

Onodera read The Debut script at the request of investment partners who were interested in it. Another backer was the National Asian-American Telecommunications Association, a San Francisco funding organization.

"When we finished...we screened it for all the regular distributors," says Onodera. "Universally, they loved the movie. People were very moved by it. They praised it, but [felt] they would have a difficult time marketing an all-Filipino cast...Gene undertook this research project about how we would go about self-distributing."

"It's so wonderful to sit in a packed theater of The Debut...when it's all Asian, Filipino kids, and they're all rolling with the movie. The emotional wave that goes through the audience: [It's] a huge high to know you created that...that your marketing reached these people."

"Totally different" from Picture Bride’s high-profile festival experience, self-distributing The Debut is "more fun than being at Cannes for me," she laughs. She also suspects it was necessary.

"We understand that people at Miramax don't understand our people..." Onodera says. In The Debut’s third week, "we're getting maybe 30% to 40% non-Filipino; African Americans, whites and Latinos--who share an interesting link with Filipinos in speaking Spanish [and being] conquered by the Spanish...That wouldn't have happened with Miramax and New Line [distributing.]"

The approach is rewarding, but also costly, she warns: "We are spending everything we get on the distribution side and plowing it back under into our distribution effort."

Onodera continues looking at new APA-inflected projects while working with Cajayon on another script. She just optioned Shawn Wong's novel, American Knees, which will be scripted by Eric Byler and financed by Stars Encore.

"I feel very strongly that there are many stories and...voices and I'm really thrilled by a different point of view or...culture when I see it on the screen.," she says. "It's a natural because I'm an Asian American to want to tell a story that I've heard among my family and my friends...people I know in a real and loving way...I'm really dedicated to that and it's difficult to market and raise financing because the Asian-American audience hasn't really been defined as a market [that will pay] money to go see movies."

"The world is so diverse," she concludes. "It's crazy that there aren't as many kinds of films."