American Fusion Information Packet AMERICAN FUSION

American Fusion Information Packet
Table of Contents:
Synopsis
Director’s Statement
Frank Lin, Writer/Director Bio
Sylvia Chang, Actress Bio
Esai Morales, Actor Bio
Cast and Crew
AMERICAN FUSION PRODUCTIONS AND WILDCAT RELEASING PRESENTS
A FRANK LIN FILM
“AMERICAN FUSION”
IN SELECTED THEATERS AUGUST 17, 2007
LOS ANGELES
SAN FRANCISCO
SEATTLE
American Fusion Synopsis
Yvonne (Sylvia Chang) is a divorced middle-aged Chinese immigrant who thinks her life
is over, and she is doomed to spend the rest of her days as a slave to her large and
eccentric family.
Suddenly, romance enters her life and Yvonne gets a long deferred chance for true love.
However, she falls for the last person a Chinese family would ever accept, Jose (Esai
Morales), a Hispanic dentist. To make matters worse, Yvonne’s 70-year-old mother
hurts her back in a massage accident, and uses her suffering to guilt all her children into
doing her bidding.
Now, to find true happiness, Yvonne must overcome her three demanding siblings, 5,000
years of conservative Chinese tradition, and one tyrannical mother who is about to
undergo major back surgery!
American Fusion:
A Comedy as Diverse as Love Itself.
Creation:
Last summer, my seventy-seven-year-old grandmother underwent a five-hour spine
surgery. It took eight months for her to recover from the ordeal and to regain some of her
normal daily routines. This life affirming and changing event put my large and crazy
family through an incredible experience as we worked night and day to preserve our
grandmother’s sanity and her life.
We did it, not only because she survived the Japanese occupation of China, escaped the
Communist revolution, begged at refugee camps for rice to feed her family, worked
herself to the ground in Taiwan to put her kids through school. It’s not only because she
raised all of us: my mom, my aunt, my three uncles, my two cousins, and me. On top of
all the love and admiration we have for Grandma, there is one more thing that made
every hard enduring task to save Grandma’s life worth while, it is our Chinese culture,
5000 years of filial piety, of honoring the people who brought us life.
From this experience and from almost thirty years of living with my insane but lovable
family, I came up with a story.
A comedy that honors the virtues of a Chinese family, pokes fun at their follies and
confirms a lesson learned over and over again by immigrants in America. Here in the
biggest melting pot of the world, our color is only as deep as our skin.
As people from every nation and culture learn to live closer to one another we slowly
realize that we are not so different. We are all made of flesh and blood, we all love our
parents, our children, and we all want to better our lives and pursue our own American
Dream.
Frank Lin
Writer/Director
Frank Lin Bio
A graduate from the UCLA film School, Frank's first short film, The Violence Vaccine,
won the Peter Stark Award and his senior thesis, The Visit, won both the Peter Stark
Award and the Alan Jacobson Memorial Award for best undergraduate film of the year.
An Honoree of Film Independent’s Project Involve Program, Frank’s mentors include
Arthur Seidelman, Lee Zlotoff (Creator of MacGyver), and Don Cheadle (Crash, Ocean’s
Eleven).
Frank’s first feature American Fusion, a Chinese American romantic comedy staring
Sylvia Chang (The Red Violin, 20:30:40), Esai Morales (NYPD Blue, La Bamba), Collin
Chou (Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolution), James Hong (Kung Fu, Blade Runner), and
Pat Morita (Karate Kid, Happy Days), won the Audience Award at the Hawaii
International Film Festival and broke the record for most sold out screenings.
In addition to writing, directing, and producing American Fusion Frank recently complete
production on Hysteria, a horror film he directed for producer Rick Fox. Frank is also
attached to direct an action/thriller he wrote, Leaving America, with producer Harvey
Keitel, starring Joan Chen (The Last Emperor) and Sammo Hung (Around the World in
80 Days, Martial Law).
Sylvia Chang
Actress / Director /
Producer / Script Writer
Sylvia was born in Taiwan in 1953. She began her first job as a disc jockey at the age of
18, her acting career was also started after that. Since then, she has acted in more than 90
feature films. Along with the critical praise, Sylvia has won several prestigious awards
and been nominated for many others. In 1976, she earned her first Golden Horse Award
in Taiwan for Best Support Actress with “Prosperity and Perplexity”(1976). Following
this honor were two Golden Horse Awards for the Best Actress “My Grandpa”(1981) and
“Passion”(1986), and 5 Best Actress nominations. She has also earned the Hong Kong
Film Awards for the Best Actress with ”Passion” (1986), and the Asia Films Awards for
Outstanding Performance. Sylvia was having a good harvest at the beginning of 2002;
she won the Best Actress again with “Forever and Ever” (2001) in the Hong Kong Film
Awards and Golden Bauhinia Awards respectively.
Sylvia’s directing career had been well received since her 1979 directorial debut. In 1986,
she directed and starred in “Passion” which earned her a Best Director nomination in
Golden Horse Award. “Passion” was also nominated for the Best Picture. Other
directorial credits include “The Game They Called Sex”(1987),” “Mary from
Beijing”(1992), “Conjugal Affairs”(1993). The film, “Siao Yu”, which was directed and
written by her in 1995, gained 5 awards in Asia Pacific Film Festival. The 5 awards
included the Best Picture, the Best Screenplay, the Best Actress, the Best Production
Design and the Best Sound Effect. “Tempting Heart” was released in September 1999.
The figure of this movie was the surprise box office champ in Taiwan, reaching the
NT$50 million mark and also in Hong Kong it gained HK$13 million. Besides,
“Tempting Heart” had earned the Best Script Writer and the Best Art Director in the
Hong Kong Film Awards.
Her latest directed film is “20:30:40”.
Sylvia was also a producer. She has produced seven feature films since 1982.
International acclaim has comprised special tribute to Sylvia at both the London Films
Festival (1989) and the Toronto Films Festival (1992), as well as participated in the
Berlin Films Festival as a member of the jury.
ESAI MORALES
Biography
Esai most recently appeared in Richard Linklater’s FAST FOOD NATION and Fox’s
VANISHED. He also stared as Cesar Castillo in the San Francisco run of the musical,
THE MAMBO KINGS.
Esai spent three seasons playing Lt. Tony Rodriguez in the Emmy award-winning ABC
drama series NYPD BLUE. He will soon be seen in the independent films, THE
VIRGIN OF JUAREZ, with Minnie Driver, and AMERICAN FUSION, directed by
Frank Lin, as well as the CBS telefilm HEARTLESS with Melanie Griffith.
In 2002, Esai was awarded best actor in a television series at the prestigious ALMA
AWARDS and was honored as entertainer of the year at the 17th Annual IMAGEN
AWARDS. Esai was nominated again last year for another IMAGEN AWARD in the
category of Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series for Gregory Nava’s PBS drama
series AMERICAN FAMILY.
Born to Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn, New York, Esai ran away from home at the
age of 13 because his mother did not approve of his desire to pursue acting. He attended
New York's prestigious High School for the Performing Arts while living in a group
home as a voluntary ward-of-the-state. Shortly after he finished his studies, Esai debuted
on stage in EL HERMANO at the Ensemble Studio Theater and Joe Papp's production
of THE TEMPEST with Raul Julia for New York's Shakespeare in the Park festival.
Other theater performances include TAMER OF HORSES for the Los Angeles Theater
Center for which he was awarded the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, Oscar
Wilde's SALOME with Al Pacino at New York's Circle in the Square Theater on
Broadway, and THE EXONERATED, directed by Bob Balaban.
Esai made his film debut in BAD BOYS with Sean Penn. His next major film role as 50s
rock musician Richie Valen's half-brother Bob in the Luis Valdez directed film LA
BAMBA (1987) caught the attention of the entertainment industry and stole the hearts of
audiences. LA BAMBA remains the most commercially successful Latino-themed
motion picture to date.
Always conscious of maintaining positive representation of Latinos in entertainment,
Esai's portrayals of ordinary men struggling under extraordinary circumstances and
conflicts always rise above convention. In RAPA NUI (produced by Kevin Costner),
Esai is chosen to represent his servant class tribe to compete in a contest for control of the
island. As an Amazonian rubber tapper, he risks his life in civil disobedience in the
award-winning HBO film THE BURNING SEASON - THE CHICO MENDES
STORY (with Raul Julia). In the Gregory Nava film MI FAMILIA, he joined an
ensemble cast which includes Jimmy Smits and Edward James Olmos as a loving yet
troubled son of a working class Mexican American family trying to achieve the American
dream. And in THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GARCIA LORCA, Esai starred as a
young journalist who returns to Spain in search of the truth behind the death of the
famous Spanish poet/playwright.
Describing himself as an "actorvist," Esai has combined art and activism to build bridges
of understanding. In 1997 Esai co-founded the National Hispanic Foundation for the
Arts (NHFA), created to advance the presence and quality of Latinos in media,
telecommunications and entertainment. He is a founding board member of ECO (Earth
Communications Office), a global clearinghouse for environmental information. He's
worked for the Wildlife Preservation Fund in Costa Rica and is active with "alternative
AIDS" programs such as ALIVE AND WELL and H.E.A.L. (Health Education AIDS
Liaison). In the late eighties, Esai used his heightened public profile to organize an Oscar
night benefit for El Recate/The Rescue, a Central American refugee service agency.
This contributed to the promotion of the concept of benefit events on the film industry's
most important night of the year, which led to the current trend of Academy Award night
benefits. Currently, he is a Board member of the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) and on the
Advisory Board of Women in Film (WIF).
Esai resides in Los Angeles.
PRINCPLE CAST AND CREW
SYLVIA CHANG
ESAI MORALES
COLLIN CHOU
JAMES HONG
PAT MORITA
YVONNE
JOSE
TONY
DR. WONG
LAO DONG
LANG YUN
GEORGE CHEUNG
HIRA AMBROSINO
SUSAN CHUANG
RANDALL PARK
JAMES CHANG
GRANDMA
ALBERT
JULIET
SUZY
JOSHUA
STEVE
PRODUCED, WRITTEN, AND DIRECTED BY
CO-WRITTEN BY
PRODUCED BY
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
EDITED BY
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
COSTUME DESIGNER
ORIGINAL MUSIC BY
CASTING BY
FRANK LIN
RANDALL PARK
ROBIN RANDAL OLIVER
JASON INOUYE
JOHN DUNN
ESTHER CHAO
SHEREE LIN
T.G. WING CHOW
JASON K. INOUYE
JAN LIN
DAYNE TANIOKA
MARGARET MEGUMI MILES
SUSAN CHAN
DAVE IWATAKI
BRAD WARSHAW