Wang, (John) Wayne 1949-

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WANG, (John) Wayne 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born January 12, 1949, in Hong Kong, China; father, a businessperson and engineer; mother, a painter; married Cora Miao (an actress). Education: Attended Foothill College; California College of Arts and Crafts, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Bart Walker, International Creative Management, 40 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Director, producer, and screenwriter. Director of films, including A Man, a Woman, and a Killer, 1975; (and producer, editor, and narrator) Chan Is Missing, 1982; (and producer) Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, 1985; Slamdance, 1987; (and producer) DimSum Take-Outs, 1988; Eat a Bowl of Tea, Columbia, 1990; (with Spencer Nakasako) Life Is Cheap … but Toilet Paper Is Expensive, Silver Light, 1990; The Stranger, 1992; (and producer, with others) The Joy Luck Club, Buena Vista, 1993; (with Paul Auster) Blue in the Face, Miramax, 1995; (with Paul Auster) Smoke, Miramax, 1995; (and producer) Chinese Box, Trimark, 1998; Anywhere but Here, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1999; The Beautiful Country, 2001; (and producer) The Center of the World, Artisan Entertainment, 2001; Maid in Manhattan (also known as The Chambermaid and Made in New York), 2002; Because of Winn-Dixie, 2005 (in production), Good Cook, Likes Music, 2005 (in production); and Last Holiday, 2005 (in production). Also director of the short film 1944; assistant director of the Chinese sequences, Golden Needles. Producer of the film Lanai-Loa (also known as Lani Loa: The Passage), Chrome Dragon Films, 1998. Director of the television special "Small Sounds and Tilting Shadows," Strangers, Home Box Office (HBO), 1992. Appeared as himself in the television specials Slaying the Dragon, 1988; I Love New York, 2002; and Intimate Portrait: Jennifer Lopez, 2002.

WRITINGS:

SCREENPLAYS

Life Is Cheap … but Toilet Paper Is Expensive, Silver Light, 1990.

(With Paul Auster) Blue in the Face, Miramax, 1995.

(With Jean-Claude Carrière, Larry Gross, and Paul Theroux) Chinese Box, Trimark, 1998.

(With Paul Auster, Miranda July, and Siri Hustvedt) The Center of the World, Artisan Entertainment, 2001.

Also author of (with Richard A. Richardson and Richard R. Schmidt) A Man, a Woman, and a Killer, 1975, and (with Isaac Cronin) Chan Is Missing, 1982.

SIDELIGHTS:

Wayne Wang may be best known for directing such wide-audience Hollywood films as The Joy Luck Club and Maid in Manhattan, but he has also made some smaller-budget films from his own screenplays that have been critical if not always commercial successes. Born in Hong Kong to Chinese parents who were refugees from the Communist regime in mainland China, Wang was named after American Western movie star John Wayne. Wang went to a Jesuit high school in Hong Kong, and after he graduated he came to California to attend college. Wang has remained there, in the San Francisco Bay area, ever since.

Wang's first successful film, Chan Is Missing, was made on a budget of a mere 22,000 dollars in grants from the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Shot in black and white, Chan Is Missing documents life and prejudice in San Francisco's Chinatown through the eyes of two cab drivers in search of a mysterious man Chan, who owes them 4,000 dollars. The movie became a surprise box office hit, and, as many reviewers later noted, its visual style presaged that of many of Chan's later works, including Chinese Box. In both films, Wena Poon explained in Film Quarterly, Wang's camera frequently pauses on such minutia as an elderly person peering out of a doorway or a cigarette dangling from a bystander's mouth, in what "amounts to a type of time-capsuling, an archeological preservation of poignant fragments that will perhaps vanish in the near future."

Filmed in Wang's native Hong Kong on the eve of that colony's return to China from the British, Chinese Box follows a dying British journalist, played by Jeremy Irons, as he films the streets of Hong Kong and becomes involved in the lives of two Chinese women, a bar owner (played by famed Chinese actress Gong Li, in her first English-speaking role) and a hustler (played by Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung). Each character's struggles parallel those of one of the geopolitical players in the Hong Kong handover: Irons is dying, just as the British presence in Hong Kong is; Li is trying to live down her checkered past and to figure out where to go in the future, as is mainland China; and Cheung, like Hong Kong, has been abused by those who control her but is determined to keep going no matter what. Despite its political overtones, on a personal level Chinese Box is still a "poetic and well-told story," a reviewer commented in the News and Record. Likewise, Richard Huntington noted in the Buffalo News that Wang "saturates this sorrowful movie with lovely and intricate shades of feeling."

"A lot of people asked me, why don't you use the mindscape of a Chinese in approaching [Chinese Box]," Wang told Bergen County, New Jersey Record interviewer Laurence Chollet, instead of using an Englishman as the main character. "Well, I'm not really a Chinese. I was brought up a colonial subject.… I was very influenced by the English." Wang has also rebelled against the idea that as a Chinese-American filmmaker he should stick to "ethnic" subjects, instead of making films like Blue in the Face and The Center of the World that lack an Asian angle. As Wang told New York Times interviewer Bernard Weinraub in 1993, "I'll eventually get back to [making films with Chinese themes]—I'm sure I will—but at the same time, I feel I'm just as American as anyone else. There are stories and characters about America that I want to tell."

The Center of the World was released amid a swirl of controversy in 2001. A gritty film about the difficulties of making romantic connections in hyper-commercial modern America, The Center of the World was released unrated because it was too explicit for an R, and several newspapers refused to run an advertisement for the film that they considered to be too suggestive. The film stars Peter Sarsgaard as a young dot-com millionaire who hires a stripper, played by Molly Parker, to entertain him during a weekend getaway in Las Vegas. Parker is adamant about the fact that she is not a prostitute and lays down several ground rules for the weekend, which include no intercourse, no kissing, no talking about feelings, and separate rooms. Despite Parker's insistence on maintaining a businesslike relationship, an attraction begins to develop between the two, but they still find themselves unable to connect on a meaningful level. "The Center of the World is sober and serious and downright glum, ultimately an all-too-familiar portrait of lonely souls unable to break through their own isolation," Sean Axmaker concluded in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Notable Asian Americans, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

PERIODICALS

America's Intelligence Wire, March 5, 2003, interview with Wang.

Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, AZ), May 25, 2001, Phil

Villarreal, review of The Center of the World, p. F26.

Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, March 13, 2003, Shogo Hagiwara, review of The Center of the World.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 1, 1998, Eleanor Ringel, review of Chinese Box, p. P10; May 4, 2001, Bob Longino, review of The Center of the World, p. P9.

Boston Herald, May 15, 1998, James Verniere, review of Chinese Box, p. 5; May 1, 2001, Stephen Schaefer, interview with Wang, p. 34; May 4, 2001, James Verniere, review of The Center of the World, p. 18.

Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), May 22, 1998, Richard Huntington, review of Chinese Box, p. G27; May 25, 2001, Jeff Simon, review of The Center of the World, p. G5; May 26, 2001, Jeff Simon, interview with Wang, p. D1.

Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, OH), May 25, 2001, review of The Center of the World, p. W6, Robert Denerstein, review of Center of the World, p. 6B; June 7, 2001, Margaret A. McGurk, "Edited Movie Yanked at Esquire," p. B1.

Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), May 1, 1998, Lisa Friedman Miner, review of Chinese Box, p. 38; May 4, 2001, Dann Gire, review of The Center of the World, p. 41.

Daily News (Los Angeles, CA), April 22, 2001, Rob Lowman, review of The Center of the World, p. L11.

Daily Telegraph (Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia), November 4, 1999, John Spence, review of Chinese Box, p. T6.

Daily Variety, December 2, 2002, Robert Koehler, review of Maid in Manhattan, p. 6.

Dayton Daily News (Dayton, OH), June 15, 2001, Dusty Smith, review of The Center of the World, p. 11.

Detroit News, May 4, 2001, Susan Stark, review of The Center of the World, p. 3.

Entertainment Weekly, April 24, 1998, Lisa Schwarzbaum, review of Chinese Box, p. 56; April 27, 2001, Owen Gleiberman, review of The Center of the World, p. 88.

Evening Standard (London, England), September 20, 2001, Andrew Alexander, review of The Center of the World, p. 30.

Film Journal International, January, 2003, David Noh, review of Maid in Manhattan, p. 43.

Film Quarterly, fall, 1998, Wena Poon, review of Chinese Box, p. 31.

Guardian (Manchester, England), September 21, 2001, Peter Bradshaw, review of The Center of the World, p. 13.

Herald Sun (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), February 13, 1999, Leigh Paatsch, review of Chinese Box, p. 108.

Houston Chronicle, May 1, 1998, Louis B. Parks, review of Chinese Box and interview with Wang, p. 4; April 29, 2001, Eric Harrison, interview with Wang, p. 11.

Independent (London, England), April 18, 1996, Robert Hanks, review of Smoke, p. 15; May 16, 1996, review of Blue in the Face, p. 10; September 21, 2001, review of The Center of the World, p. 10.

Independent Sunday (London, England), March 30, 1997, Jo-Jo Moyes, review of Chinese Box, p. 14; September 16, 2001, Matthew Sweet, review of The Center of the World, p. 8.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, April 30, 2001, Glenn Lovell, review of The Center of the World, p. K4633; May 24, 2001, Jay Boyar, review of The Center of the World, p. K6120.

Los Angeles Magazine, May, 2001, Steve Erickson, review of The Center of the World, p. 126.

Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1998, Kevin Thomas, review of Chinese Box, p. 6; April 30, 1998, Mark Chalon Smith, review of Chinese Box, p. 6; April 20, 2001, Kevin Thomas, review of The Center of the World, p. F15.

Maclean's, May 14, 2001, Brian D. Johnson, review of The Center of the World, p. 64.

Nation, May 28, 2001, Amy Sohn, review of The Center of the World, p. 34.

New Republic, May 4, 1998, Stanley Kauffmann, review of Chinese Box, p. 27.

News and Record (Piedmont Triad, NC), October 8, 1998, review of Chinese Box, p. D1.

New York Post, April 18, 2001, review of The Center of the World, p. 56.

New York Times, May 30, 1982, Tony Chiu, interview with Wang, pp. 17, 35; September 5, 1993, Bernard Weinraub, interview with Wang, section 2, pp. 7, 15.

Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), April 19, 2001, "Newspapers Refuse to Run Suggestive Ad for Movie," p. 5E.

Record (Bergen County, NJ), April 17, 1998, Laurence Chollet, interview with Wang, p. Y1.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), November 12, 1999, Jack Garner, interview with Wang, p. 3C.

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO), May 8, 1998, Robert Denerstein, review of Chinese Box, p. 8D.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 22, 1998, Joe Holleman, review of Chinese Box, p. E5.

San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 1996, Edward Guthmann, review of Smoke, p. D12; April 22, 1998, Ruthe Stein, review of Chinese Box, p. C1; May 8, 1998, Edward Guthmann, review of Chinese Box, p. C3; February 2, 2001, Ruthe Stein, "Theaters Balk at Incendiary Trailer for Wang Film," p. C4; April 8, 2001, Bob Graham, review of The Center of the World, p. 40.

Sarasota Herald Tribune (Sarasota, FL), October 16, 1995, Terry Lawson, review of Blue in the Face; May 29, 1998, George Meyer, review of Chinese Box, p. 12; June 1, 2001, Philip Booth, review of The Center of the World, p. 19.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 1, 1998, William Arnold, review of Chinese Box, p. 28; May 4, 2001, Sean Axmaker, review of The Center of the World, p. 36.

Seattle Times, April 26, 1998, review of Chinese Box, p. M1; May 1, 1998, review of Chinese Box, p. F7; May 4, 2001, John Zebrowski, review of The Center of the World, p. G37.

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), April 21, 1998, Allen Barra, review of Chinese Box, p. 31.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), May 22, 1998, Jeff Strickler, review of Chinese Box, p. 5E.

Tampa Tribune (Tampa, FL), May 25, 2001, review of The Center of the World, p. 4.

Tennessean (Nashville, TN), June 8, 2001, Gene Wyatt, review of The Center of the World, p. F20.

Variety, April 23, 2001, Dennis Harvey, review of The Center of the World, p. 17; June 11, 2001, Dana Harris, "Artisan Yanks Edited World in Cincinnati," p. 4.

Washington Times, May 15, 1998, Gary Arnold, review of Chinese Box, p. 17; May 11, 2001, Gary Arnold, review of The Center of the World, p. 9.