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In a Georgia State of MindWhen her life seemed most perfect, Georgia Lee dropped out of Harvard, formed a production company with college friends and took on Hollywood with her bold film, Red Doors
June 2004 - Georgia Lee steps into the spotlight onstage posture perfect in a crimson dress like a human highlight amidst scrappy filmmakers clad in jeans and corduroy. She talks about how in her early 20s she sent her first short film to Martin Scorsese’s fan mail, laughs at her naivety, and then announces the West Coast premiere of her first feature film, “Red Doors,” which also happened to enviably be the closing film of this year’s Los Angeles-based VC Film Festival. A week later, from her parents’ home in Connecticut, Lee reflects on that night as “very much like a friends and family screening” where jokes about a family dog named Lucky really struck emotional chords with the largely Asian Pacific American audience. And for Lee, the hysterically dark story about the Wongs, an emotionally frayed Chinese American family, was so deeply personal that she inserted a part of herself in the film. Literally. Look closely and the little girls dancing and ice-skating in the Wongs’ home videos are really Lee and her real-life sister as young girls. “Truth is stranger than fiction,” Lee said, adding with a laugh, “We debated about ‘re-shooting’ and making fake home videos, but there was the issue of not having any money … and there was a graininess there that could not be replicated. It was decaying the way home videos do.” The home videos are in fact gems — little winks from the filmmakers to the fascinated audience — that make the otherwise conventional story about a disconnected modern American family so intimate and touching. “I’ve been obsessed with the idea of memory and identity and what is a real story because memory is so subjective. I was playing with that — taking these objective real memories [in the home videos] and injecting them into a created story.” She collected nearly 100 hours of personal home video footage, holed herself in the editing room and watched herself grow up all over again. During the film’s post-production phase, Lee’s mother lost her battle with cancer and suddenly the self-proclaimed “semi-autobiographical” story took on a whole new resonance. “I couldn’t even watch the home videos without crying,” said Lee. While the film is loosely based on her own life, she says everything is “hyper-dramatized” for entertainment. The story about a seemingly perfect Chinese American family crumbling under the weight of miscommunication seemed organic. One day, she left a draft of the script on the table and her father, a scientist with a penchant for philosophy just like the father in the film, read the title of the script and puzzled, “Red Doors?’ We have red doors!” “Hmmm,” said Lee with a laugh.
Harvard to HollywoodThere are more parallels between the movie and real life. According to Lee, her own life is mirrored in the movie’s eldest sister Samantha (played by “Charlotte Sometimes” Jacqueline Kim), an ambitious businesswoman. Not so long ago, Lee was hating every moment of being a business consultant and attending Harvard Business School (where she also received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry), so she took a leave of absence from school and her then “resume perfect” boyfriend, moved to a friend’s kitchen and began changing the focus of “Red Doors” from just a story about Samantha to an ensemble cast complete with a silently desperate father, a traditional mother, a lesbian middle sister and a rebellious youngest sister (played by Lee’s real sister Kathy Shao Lin Lee). But like she said before, truth is stranger than fiction. Lee never went to film school, instead she spent five months in Rome on the set of “Gangs of New York” as an apprentice to Scorsese — who believe it or not — watched the short film she sent to his fan mail and took her under his wing.
To make “Red Doors” come to life, Lee elicited the help of family members and college friends Jane Chen and Mia Riverton to form a production company, Blanc de Chine. When all was said and done, “Red Doors” won this year’s Tribeca Film Festival award for New York Best Narrative Feature.
Setting the Record Straight“I wasn’t going to make a ‘Joy Luck Club Two,’” said Lee about some critical posts on the Internet message boards (including www.asianamericanfilm.com) condemning the film for having two out of three of the onscreen relationships be between an APA woman and a white man. “We were like blink, blink naïve and suddenly there was this flame war going on against us. I completely understand the argument about the under representation of Asian American men in the mainstream media. I completely agree,” she said. But added, “What was most important to me was the family theme. I am Chinese American and I don’t know about you, but my family never sat around the table and talked about how it sucked to be immigrants.” It’s more important to portray APAs like anyone else, said Lee, who said she originally cast Asian actors in the roles of the male love interests, but both dropped out at the last minute. Ultimately, Lee said her decision was based on who was best for the role. Flame wars aside, the next biggest hurdle for “Red Doors” is gaining distribution to come to a theater near you. “I think right now there is a critical mass of creative fountainheads and Hollywood will start to notice that these stories can be commercial. I think these are exciting times,” said Lee. “Red Doors” will screen at CineVegas and Outfest Film Festivals this summer.
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