Yesterday morning I got up at 6am, got ready and hopped in the car at 6:45, just in time to make the 7am call time. All was silent on the way to set (our office). The large Gulshan intersection was oddly quiet. The streets were deserted. The morning was calm. When we reached the office, I trudged upstairs and tried the door handle: locked.

I called the line producer: no answer. I called the producer: no answer. I called some other people that work at our office: no answer. I called my translator: no answer. I would have called the 1st AD, but we fired him yesterday. There was no one in sight. Did I land in some alternate universe where my crew no longer existed? (Perhaps an episode of “Dr. Who” from the previous evening precipitated that thought.)

After my driver and I made countless phone calls to anyone we could think of, I finally managed to rouse the producer (who wasn’t meant to be on set) and get the office key. Slowly by slowly, after getting in touch with the line producer, our crew started to straggle into the office, between 7:45 and 8:30. Shyama, my translator, AND the gaffer apologized personally to me for being late.

What’s wrong with this picture?

This was, in fact, the first true “Bengali day” in three days of shooting in Bangladesh. Generally, this is the way things work: you set a call time, people straggle in between 1 and 2 hours after call time, and you begin your day in fits and starts about 4 hours after you thought you would. No one apologizes, or really even notices. It’s a true novelty to even hear them apologize! And this was the first of THREE shooting days on which I was the first person to set. The previous two days, impressive in their timeliness, ran long but productive, in spite of a 1st AD who consistently showed up late and did little. Complete with the various hiccups, turf wars, actor dramas and circuit breaker failures that comprise a normal shooting day, our first two days had run remarkably like “set” in America. But today was a regular Bengali day. After the initial delay, we spent 1.5 hours moving from location A to location B, and waited at location B for everything from dramatic make-up failures to a Muslim actor who held us up for 20 minutes while she bowed towards Mecca and said her prayers.

But if that’s all I have to complain about, I’d say we’re doing remarkably well.

Today I’ve been transcoding  footage, which requires an awful lot of waiting and very little do-ing. In this meantime, I meant to spice this post up with some photos, but my technical know-how has apparently been spent on the transcoding because I can’t figure out how to make you see the photos I’m trying to upload on here. Thus, I’ll go with the old-fashioned way and link you to my album here:

Voila! It’s movies in the Desh!

Loving the @jonstewart show today.

Check out this great episode of @planetmoney.

@bout how long has it been since I composed an e-thought of more than 140 characters?

Over the past few months, I’ve been trying to re-establish my presence on Twitter. The reasons for this are twofold: first, I wanted to re-establish contact with some of the great people I started meeting in my first phase of tweeting, a few years go; secondly, I’m trying to promote a Kickstarter campaign for my film, Transnationals, and word on the street is, Twittville is the place to be.

Now, there are certainly great things about Twitter. It is definitely a “community” space where people can share their thoughts, give and get advice, promote their stuff — all without that creepy chat-room feel. (Why no creepy chat-room feel? I’m still not sure.) But it’s also a massive time-waster that fosters this “keep up with the Joneses” mentality that almost necessitates that you keep checking, keep tweeting, keep responding — keep on keeping on in the spotlight. That’s probably why there are nearly as many “how to get more Twitter followers” tweets as there are Twitter users!  That’s the part of Twitter that just makes it feel like one big giant narcissistic PR campaign.

Oh, and the fact that most of your thoughts must be truncated, oddly spelled (to save characters, of course) and re-purposed into catchy soundbites  with mass marketing appeal. I really don’t dig that.

So why do I persist with Twitter? Can I persist beyond the threshhold of 3 or 4 months? Will I continue to tweet once I don’t “need” Twitter’s much-touted marketing help? Only time will tell. But, as with too much of ANY good thing, right now I just feel like it’s bad. Really, really bad. Poor Twitter. You once held such promise….

I love the city.

I love the city of Los Angeles, specifically, but I also just really love cities. On Sunday in church, the message was about cities, and how they are the “cultural and economic crossroads of the world,” which causes the most creative, industrious and cunning creatures to flock to them. And that number keeps growing and growing: In 1800, 3% of the world lived in cities. In 1900, it was 14%. Today, over 50% of the world lives in cities.

Do we really have that many culture-makers out there? Or do we just seek connection with those that are at the same time just like us, and utterly different from us?

And, because of the experience of alike-but-different, we create culture. We create technology. We create industry. We create. Or we participate in someone else’s creation. Or, ultimately, we follow and consume, when something that celebrates diversity and connects universally is created. After all, we are people, and it’s this alike-but-different that moves us and causes us to do what we do. Maybe I shouldn’t speak for all of “us” though.

My one-time landlord in San Francisco told me an interesting thing about America’s three greatest culture-making cities: “Smart people go to San Francisco. Ambitious people go to New York. But smart and ambitious people flock to Los Angeles.”

Hmmmm…

This week, I’m unveiling some of the social media stuff I’ve been working on for my film, Transnationals. It seems a bit backwards that I have to start marketing a film before I’ve even made it, but I guess that’s how the world works today. I have to shut off my inner luddite and start websites, twitter and facebook pages, a kickstarter site, a trailer, a photo album and a whole cult of personality around a script and (let’s be real, here) myself! I’m not comfortable with that — at all!!

But I’m trudging along. Today, I launched Transnationals on Facebook. I’m on Twitter too, despite not having any followers. It’s Kickstarter tomorrow (link to follow) and any day now, you can go to www.transnationals-movie.com and the website will be up and about! There is something very unclean about this. It seems untoward and selfish to seek out all of this attention, yet this is the culture we’ve created. “He who screams the loudest is heard.” The web can be a cruel place for those not aggressive enough to preach their own gospel. That’s always been my problem, whether I’m launching a short film, a story, a blog or anything else I’ve worked on. I’m too afraid to ask for a pat on the back, and I squeeze my eyes shut, tense my muscles and wait for the storm to pass when I put my work out there (once and for all) for all of my friends. Then I’m back to hiding in my own little corner, working on the next thing, while I hope and pray that the world has forgotten all about me.

Except that I don’t want it to. I want them to come back. I want to produce more and more, so they don’t have to be told to come back.

Such is the artist’s paradox: we do our art for no one, but in order to keep doing it, we must appeal to someone – anyone, or even everyone. Even though we are all just social caterpillars.

This week, I’ve been talking with a casting director about casting my film, Transnationals. It could be a casting director’s dream because it’s a small story that’s an ideal vehicle for new talent. There aren’t a lot of established talents that really fit my roles — at least, not here in the US. In Asia, there are some huge actors that I’d like to target, like Lee Min Ho or Rain from Korea, and Aishwarya Rai, one of the biggest stars of Bollywood. But here at home, my movie doesn’t call for anyone of that sort of celebrity status, which is kind of a blessing in disguise (no big names = no divas!). All that to say, as I’ve been thinking so much about casting, it prompted me to compile this list of a few of my favorite actors of the moment…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Once a creepy long-haired alien kid posing as the son of even-weirder John Lithgow in Third Rock From the Sun, I think this perpetual man-child has finally come into his own. I just saw 50/50, which was just another opportunity for him to surprise me with his subtle, natural, slightly awkward way of making “cute white guy who’s down on his luck” actually seem real, believable and poignant. He even did this in the less-stellar Zooey Deschanel vehicle, (500) Days of Summer. I was not a huge fan of that movie, but his performance didn’t disappoint. But let’s talk about his choice of roles in the past, which is infinitely more interesting (see photo). Rian Johnson’s 2005 film Brick is one of my favorite films of the past decade: the script was amazing, the dialogue so pitch-perfect it’s uncanny, and the execution was brilliant. Every detail was just right. It was a little-film-that-could, gone absolutely, concretely, unabashedly right. Go a bit further back in the actor’s history when he played David Collins in a 1990 re-make of one of my all-time-favorite TV shows, Dark Shadows. I loved the original 60s version, which lasted much longer than the 90s remake, but the casting of the 90s version was absolutely spot-on. Gordon-Levitt was great as the bratty misfit, David. All and all, I think he’s THE great actor of my generation. Oh – and then there’s stuff like this out there: Check out Morgan M. Morganson\’s Date with Destiny

Rebecca Hazelwood: Sure, I’ve only started following her recently, as a result of my new obsession with the television show Outsourced, but already I know there is something magical about Hazelwood, beyond the obvious “exotic beauty” calling card. She, like a number of other western-born Indian actresses out there, is trying to distinguish herself  by playing provocative characters in provocative dramas (Kissing Cousins, The Ode) but I think her true success will come when she embraces her potential and starts playing strong women characters. Perhaps she’s gotta fight past the “repressed Indian woman” stereotype before she can do that, but I think she’ll manage. She’s got such obvious star power.

Audrey Tautou: In spite of a filmography with just as many massive hits as supreme misses, I still think Tautou is brilliant. She’s one of the non-English-speaking-world’s most recognizable female faces in America (although Marion Cotillard is hot on her heels these days) and somehow, no matter how many times she loses her head and makes a movie like Priceless or The Da Vinci Code, she’ll always run back to a great director and do something amazing. I’m satisfied that she’s spent her career hopping back and forth from celebrity status in the small French film industry to “supporting player” English language films. I was one of a few people who loved Dirty Pretty Things, but I understand that she can’t make films like that all the time: she’s a comedienne, and she needs roles worthy of quirky leading lady. It’s true, she’s no new, undiscovered talent, but she remains one of my favorites of the moment, so here she belongs, on my list of love.

Cillian Murphy: I’ve been following this young Irish actor since the days of Disco Pigs,

which led him to a short, beautiful string of indie performances (Intermission, Girl with the Pearl Earring, 28 Days Later) before Hollywood snapped him up as an evil bad guy with an accent (see the awful Red Eye, or better films, like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Inception) but I think there’s still more out there for him in terms of festival shorts, heart-wrenching dramas and small, Irish stories. If you ask me, Ireland is one of the most under-valued film centers in Europe; and with that under-utilized potential, there are probably dozens of actors of Murphy’s caliber going totally to waste. Murphy is obviously torn between Indie-wood and Hollywood; personally, I hope he returns to his roots and makes a few more Danny Boyle-style films across the pond to restore his street cred as an indie lead. I have Ewan McGregor-like dreams for this one, I do.

Earlier this year, I shot five films in Bangladesh. It was my third time to the country, but never does it fail to captivate my imagination – each time for a different reason. This time, I got to thinking back about the first time I was in Bangladesh, and the story that had been marinating in my mind ever since. In May, I visited Cambodia to work on my shorts with my editor. And after those four intense weeks I had not only finished 5 short films, I had also written the first draft of what was to become “Transnationals,” my fourth feature screenplay.

Except there was a difference between this screenplay and the others: people actually liked it! My friends liked it, my colleagues liked it – people started to get excited! So, a few drafts, many notes and some increased confidence later, I decided in August that I was going to make the film: I AM going to make the film! It’s about three Asian-American adoptees who each return to their birth country to seek out the culture, family and identity they never knew.

People have been asking me why I’d choose to write a story like this. It wasn’t in Cambodia, playing ultimate frisbee with the national team called “Angelina’s Orphans” that I chose to write about adoptees. And it wasn’t even necessarily because I grew up with two adopted cousins from Korea. No, it was a certain experience in Bangladesh in 2006, some five years ago, that first sparked my interest in the subject. Below is an essay I wrote on the subject…

“I  have always had a soft spot for the exotic, colorful, magical land of singing and dancing that is India. So in the beginning of 2006, I was thrilled to be offered a job in Bangladesh to work on a documentary short. A sign in the airport read, “Get here before all the tourists do!” It didn’t take long to see why tourists bypass India’s eastern neighbor and former annex: crushing poverty, lack of infrastructure, narrowly-defined social norms and a government-led disdain for outside influence.

A few weeks later, I met a 23 year old French-Canadian woman who had been adopted from Bangladesh as a baby. If I found the reality of Bangladesh a harsh contrast to the colorful Bollywood movie I’d had playing in my head, I could hardly imagine her feeligns of displacement in her own homeland. It seems her expectations were similar to mine. But for all of the strange and sometimes-traumatic stories I had about the country, what she was experiencing as a “foreigner” was altogether different.

I remember walking into a high-end retail store with her and another white foreigner. The white foreigner and I walked right in while two armed guards stopped her outside and forced her to turn in her backpack before she entered. I was confused until my white foreign fright told me it was because she looked Bengali. It was then that I first thought about what it must be like to be a transnational adoptee: halfway between the white, middle-class Western families they grew up with and the homogenous Asian cultures with whom they only have a skin color in common. It’s a strange island of misfits that make up a large part of the 6 million adopted children in the U.S.

Through the landscape of transnational Asian adoption, which started after the Korean War when many babies were orphaned, or born to American soldiers and Korean mothers who later abandoned them, three cultures stood out to me and piqued my interest in the people who are now adult adoptees. Japan, for its traditionalism and homogeneity, which seems to reject any sense of multi-culturalism; Korea, the homeland of more international adoptees than any country in the world; and Bangladesh, because it is the home of at least one French-Canadian whose image is forever burned in my memory.”

Today I’ll move on to my photos of Cambodia. Here I’ve noticed a marked shift that I may not have realized when thinking conceptually about it: I’ve graduated from “South Asia” into “Southeast Asia.” This is where all of your “Asia” stereotypes really come from. Like the constant and abusive (but funny) Engrish, indecipherable accents, constant bowing, the whole “saving face” thing… and noodles! Tons of noodles!

Beer time!

I found it extremely funny that this was a kids’ shirt. I’d hope my 3-year-old wasn’t wearing a shirt that said “Hello beer!” on it. But then again, I could hardly resist getting this for my own 3-year-old niece….

Dead duck

I found it re-assuring that ALL of my Asian stereotypes were being fulfilled on that first day in Phnom Penh: absurd misspellings of English AND dead birds hanging off someone’s food truck. It was really better than I could have even expected.

Moto!

Motos are transport from families of 2 to 5. Often, the front passenger will be a little toddler with hands firmly affixed to the handlebars. Behind Toddler will be the driver, followed by another infant and mother… or sisters… etc. It’s quite a sight.

A few passengers

Just another example of the absolute crammage of bodies onto one vehicle. Dan has some much more excellent photos in this department.

Riverside...

When I arrived in Siem Reap, it was picturesque, but brutally hot. And it only got hotter.

Not bad for $14 a night!

This was my adorable hotel room in Siem Reap, for cheap!! All of this luxury, complete with AC, a TV and a private shower/bathroom is the kind of amazing value for money that Cambodia offers. It’s really swell.

Little Angkor

It’s hard to know what to say or what to post about Angkor. It’s kind of something you just have to experience for yourself. One thing that continues to amaze me about Cambodia is the smiles of its people. I asked this little boy for a photo and a smile, and I think he’s just as impressive as any surrounding temple.

Angkor Vat

But in case you’d rather see temples, I’ve got those too.

Steep

Delicious Sunlight

Buddha worship

Concentric Temples

Rock formations

Which god?

Framed

Breakfast

This is my tuk-tuk driving eating a noodle breakfast. He was so chill.

Soap Farm

I visited a candle-making and soap-making place back in Siem Reap. It’s one of those “fair trade, direct from the source” type of places.

Tineapple!

Cambodia is a land of tiny pineapples. I thought this was just a baby pineapple until I saw a normal pineapple in a grocery store and realized that they don’t get a whole lot bigger than this: the green spiky hair of the pineapple is usually bigger than the fruit itself. Are our pineapples just genetically deformed so monstrously that they become huge and ridiculous, or are these babes the ones with stunted growth?

Cardamom tea

As it turns out, Cambodians like to put anise or cardimom in nearly everything. I don’t think that’s such a bad deal. I could see myself getting really used to that….

I know that I’ve been posting a few photos here and there along the way, but it’s time for a photoblog, like I used to do in the old days. So, to take you back to Dhaka for a minute…. Welcome to Wonderland. Wonderland is a magical theme park filled with good girls and boys who ride on some very small amusement park rides and have the opportunity to see exotic animals, like this giant panda. It was also one of our shooting locations.

Adventures in Wonderland

Although extremely kitschy, I thought it might make a nice faux-horror location. All it really did was make us really, really, really hot. Because there is no shade in Wonderland. This poor guy, Areeb, got the worst end of the deal. He was our tiny star player, and he simply could not deal with the heat. He just ran out of cuteness, long before our shotlist was finished. Sigh. We made do.

Areeb

We had the opportunity to work with a few female stars on another show. Gita, the “elder sister” in the green sari, starred as a poor maid and Sumi, in the pink, was her evil master. Sumi turned out to be loads of fun, as she proved later on when we went to our second location: “hell.”

L to R: Sumi, me, Gita and Sara

This is our crew. I’m not joking. You might think that there are like 17 other people behind the camera, but you’d be wrong. Dan, Sara, Tajul and me are the only other members of the crew. Zia is the production designer, to his left is an assistant, and the 3 other guys do our lighting. Khalil, in the middle, is our awesome gaffer who is with us on every shoot. When he’s not trying to strangle goats or practice his English, he’s taking notes and hanging on Dan’s every word to make the lighting just a little bit better. Once, I tried to tell him that we didn’t need a light; just some bounce from a foam bounce card. But because I don’t know the Bangla-lingo when it comes to lighting, he had no idea what I meant. Dan later told me that a bounce card is called a “corksheet” in Bangla, which, when pronounced with the Bangla-accent, sounds a whole lot like “coc-sheit.”

Art assistant, Zia, Khalil, and 2 other light dudes

Below you’ll see our dancers. They performed a Bollywood dance for the other main character: a rich, fat Bollywood producer…

Dancers!

…. as seen here!

Rich, fat Bollywood producer

I was worried he wouldn’t be fat enough. Oddly, the camera seems to take away 10 lbs in his case!

What up, Hipster?

This is Dan because.. well… do you even have to ask?

Dhaka Airport

This photo is entirely extraneous. It’s inside the Dhaka Airport, which has become waaaay less sketchy in the past year. I could hardly believe the normality lurking between the walls.

Please.

This is the Kuala Lumpur airport, but this sign would have been even more appropriate in Dhaka. Bangladeshis have this horrible habit of “hawlking”… you know, like when you have a loogie stuck in your throat and you make this gutteral grunting sigh to try to bring it up out of your lungs? Yeah. That’s a pretty frequent occurrence in Bangladesh. Like, every 5 or 10 minutes on the street, you hear someone do it. In the office, we’ve got about a half hour window between hawlks. So when I saw this sign by the drinking fountain, I thought it was just perfect. You may think it’s obvious that you’re not supposed to spit in the fountain, but believe it or not, it’s not that obvious in S.E. Asia.

I’m going to leave it here for now and do another photoblog of Cambodia tomorrow. That’s enough crazy photos for one day