TWO filmmaking stories, (1) EDITING WAYNE WANG'S CHAN IS MISSING, and (2) discovering the future title ––"Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices."

FINAL CUT (1981)

One day, while living in Oakland with my wife Julie, I got a call from my old roommate Wayne Wang, asking if I could meet him in San Francisco to discuss my working as an editor on his feature-in-progress, what later became entitled CHAN IS MISSING. I knew the footage, had previously helped sync up most of the scenes a few months earlier, and was financially very needy at the time. I was thrilled at the chance to edit someone else’s movie, take a vacation from my own feature-in-progress, Emerald Cities, and get caught up with overdue bills. We met at a dingy editing facility on Hyde street in San Francisco, and I watched as Wayne threaded up the rented Moviola flat-bed editing machine.

Roll by roll he ran his present cut, about 75 minutes total, while I sat there in the dark with him, staring at the small TV-sized viewing screen. He sat directly in front of the machine, operating the knobs, as I watched from behind, kind of looking over his right shoulder. After a while I found myself dozing off, then jerking awake, farther into the footage. I don’t know if Wayne noticed, but that’s what happened. It wasn’t really a reflection of his movie’s quality, just that the darkness, hypnotic flickering screen, warm cozy room were all conducive to over-relaxing. But when I snapped out of my somnolent trance for the last time, at the end of the final sync roll #3, I seemed to know his film inside and out, and told him I thought I could improve the cut.

How did I know how to cut a film that I didn’t see, you ask? I have a few bizarre theories, but none that will probably clarify anything. It was almost as if I’d edited Chan Is Missing in a past life or something. It just felt so easy to understand his film and make improvements. I’d have to believe I was just a force of nature for him and his work, and that the gods already knew they could use me to help deliver a great cut, to send Wayne on the road to Hollywood fame and fortune, which they soon did.

But before the editing began, Wayne and I had to work out the thorny issues around my pay. We sat on some uncomfortable tall editing stools and discussed financial arrangements. I told him I needed to get: (1) $1000 salary (the exact amount I currently owed on bills), (2) a travel and food stipend of $200 (I would have to commute from Oakland, and once I paid off my bills I wouldn’t have any money left for travel by BART subway, or for the purchase of meals needed to keep me going through the long editing hours). And (3) I’d need a percentage of the film’s profits. If I was responsible for moving that body of loose footage into a solid cut, and because of my efforts the film made money, I figured it was only fair I be further rewarded for my crucial services. I knew I wouldn't hold back any energies if there was that carrot dangling overhead. Wayne agreed to all of my requests and profit points, allowing me to give his film my total attention for a month.

I started cutting. And after a few days I had a pretty good sense of the exact structural problems of the footage. To begin with there was no “Reel #3,” nothing happening in the last twenty-five minutes of the film that could summarize or resolve what you’d been watching. I had seen footage of an argument between the two Asian American lead actors in Reel #2 and told Wayne he needed to move that footage to the rear. He strongly resisted. I started to raise my voice as I told him that’s what he had to do...if he wanted a film! And he got even more defiant.

Just before I could have launched into an ego battle with him, reminiscent of earlier personality conflicts (A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER set disputes, back in 1973…), I caught myself.

What was I doing? I lowered my voice, backed off and apologized. I told him that for a second I had forgotten it was his film. “Just do what you like,”I said, and left for the day. I realized that I was stressing myself out for no reason. Later that night I got a call from Wayne, saying that I was right, and that he’d see me in the editing room the next day. So we were back on track again.

Beyond flexing my editorial muscles, watching my hard-won editing skills make a difference with his footage, what inspired me to do the very best job for Wayne was that I hoped we could become friends again out of this collaborative editing effort. We had had our problems in the past, but I hoped those days were over (weren't we older and wiser?). I gave the most powerful force in the universe – my love – to him and to Chan Is Missing, putting forth my best effort (at the cheapest cost possible).

Once the overall structure for the film was set, the intelligent (and appropriate) narrations Wayne extracted from his lead actor helped tremendously to conform the film to a new standard of clarity. I cut away on the film for the next several weeks after that, occasionally working alone in the room as I shaved excess footage out of almost every scene, cleaned up edit-points. Before long the “outs basket” (an open- mouthed metal bin, with many small hooks off which to hang pieces of film) was totally filled with strands of extra picture and sound track. The tighter the film got, the more evident the extraneous footage became.

One of the most important contributions I made to the film was conceptualizing the opening credits sequence. Months before, when syncing up the footage, I had noticed a wonderful shot where the main character, an old guy, was seen behind the wheel of his cab while reflections of San Francisco Chinatown rooftops played over his windshield. And in the first cut Wayne had screened on the flat-bed machine for me, I had particularly enjoyed hearing the Chinese rendition of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” (one of the first 45 records I had bought as a kid), that accompanied a scene halfway through the rolls. So I suggested that Wayne begin his film with the cab driving shot, coupled with the Bill Haley song, to kick off things with an Asian/American flavor. I also suggested that the opening titles be synced to the black and white reflections on the windshield, black titles over reflected white sky, white titles when dark buildings were rolling by. Wayne had no problem agreeing to either suggestion.

Knowing Wayne was on a tight budget, I tried to save him money at every turn. I handled all the titling chores myself, saving him probably five hundred dollars in the process. I selected all the type faces and sizes, had them typeset, ordered kodaliths (negatives), and set up each title on its animation cell, with shooting instructions concerning final size and duration for the screen. The Palmer Lab art department was then able to shoot the whole bunch for under two hundred dollars.

I also saved Wayne money by charting his film through the technicians and facilities I had developed relationships with through my own years of movie- making. Keeping the soundtrack to just the most basic “A” and “B” rolls, I checker-boarded them (alternating sync sound tracks between rolls, to give control over separate volumes and equalizations), and helped Wayne mix the sound at Palmer Lab, completing the job in under eight hours (this process is usually expected to take many weeks on Hollywood films).

Then I got the film conformed (cutting the original footage to match the edited workprint, necessary to make a high-quality projection print) by my friend Lela Smith, which probably saved him another thousand dollars, thanks to her reasonable fees. I have no doubt that I saved Wayne more than double my salary, for that overall month of editing work.

After the premiere screening of Chan Is Missing at the Pacific Film Archive, the Asian-American woman who edited the film for a year before I came aboard asked me what I thought of it. “It’s perfect,” I said, and it was. In Vincent Canby’s review of the film when it premiered in New York at the New Directors/New Films showcase in 1982, he wrote that the movie was, “perfectly realized—not an extra frame in the cut”

USED-CAR FILMMAKING (1984)

In 1984, when I was preparing for a trip east for an in-person tour with my completed feature, Emerald Cities, Linda Blackaby, director of Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Film Project (one of my stops), called up, asking if I wanted to conduct a workshop for an extra $100. After hearing I did, she then asked what title she should use for the workshop in her program notes. I told her I’d have to think about it, and that I’d call her back in 5 minutes. Just before our phone call, I'd been shocked to read in the newspaper how American used-cars were costing an average of $4,300. That seemed more like the price of a new car! Reading that bizarre fact had triggered memories of Emerald Cities financing, how the sale of my dependable classic 1939 Dodge pickup had been necessary to get the on-location costs covered. I grabbed a pen and quickly jotted down a title and haiku that popped into my head. I read the words back to Linda on the phone:

“I read recently that Americans are buying used cars for an average of $4,300, and I thought, ‘Why not take the bus to work and make yourself a feature film instead?’ Let me show you how.” I then told Linda she could call my workshop, “Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices,” which later became the title of my how-to book, published by Viking Penguin in 1988, revised and updated in Penguin paperback editions, 1995 and 2000 (by that year the average cost of a used-car had risen to $12,000!). And my digital how-to, “Extreme DV,” published by Penguin/Random House in 2004, has remained in print, in the ‘used-car filmmaking’ tradition.

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