Charlie Nguyen is exhausted. Having recently returned from a strenuous week producing a live music concert in Miami, FL., the Buena Park, CA native has had barely a chance to decompress, as his attention is now turned to an equally stressful, though fulfilling task: overseeing the coming DVD release of his 2007 film festival circuit hit, THE REBEL. The film, an unqualified box-office juggernaut in Vietnam, is an historical thriller set in 1920s French Indochina and observes a uniquely love/hate triangle among two government agents (Johnny Tri Nguyen, Dustin Nguyen) and a plucky rebel operative. It is also an unqualified crowd pleaser, replete with chase scenes, improbable cliffhangers, and a particularly acrobatic form of Vietnamese martial arts courtesy of Johnny Tri Nguyen, who also co-wrote the screenplay and choreographed the film's many fight sequences. Bombastic and patriotic in equal measure, THE REBEL was acquired late last year for home distribution by The Weinstein Company, and after a successful film festival circuit run will hit both online and brick-and-mortar retail outlets on Sept. 30. In this short interview conducted shortly after his return from Miami, director Nguyen talks about the importance of insuring the authenticity of his story by returning to shoot the film in Vietnam, working with a cast of matinee idols, and of collaborating with his brother, Johnny Nguyen. ___________________ Charlie, you've said in past interviews that THE REBEL is in part inspired by stories that you and your brother have heard from your father and grandfather. Given that the end product feels closer to an Indiana Jones action thriller than historical/political melodrama, could you talk a bit about why you positioned your story in this fashion? It seemed that you intended from the start to produce a work of "popcorn" entertainment for the masses rather than an arthouse drama. It would have been cool to make THE REBEL an arthouse drama. I thought of adapting my Grandfather's memoir at one point. However, and simply put, we had to make a genre film to get the project green-lighted. In retrospect, the stories about my grandfather were represented as a source of inspiration on the central theme rather than as a historical frame of reference. It was the idea of freedom as something you can't buy or conquer that we wanted put into the film. There's a beauty in the notion that a country can be conquered but not the independent spirit of its people. This was the thematic element that we took from my Grandfather's memoir. How important was your brother Johnny's contributions to the story? Did your script facilitate his skills and choreography work as a martial artist, or was it the other way around? Johnny was involved in the early stages of writing. He came up with a rough storyline and set up the pacing for the action sequences. Then Dominic [Pereira, co-screenwriter and cinematographer - ed.] and I took over and rewrote many drafts after that. In the beginning, Johnny and I had different perspectives about the choreography. I wanted the action to be more realistic and grounded, and Johnny wanted more cinematic flair. We ended up somewhere in between and it worked! It was a tough collaboration but it was all worth it in the end. You're based in Buena Park, CA, in the shadow of Knotts Berry Farm, yet THE REBEL was photographed entirely in Vietnam. How important was it for you to go "back home," so to speak, and what advantages and/or challenges were there in shooting the film there? The film was shot almost entirely on location all over the country. Some of the locations were built from the period and others were more ancient. It was important for me to capture an authentic world from the era. I've seen too many movies about Vietnam that never seemed to look real despite that they were beautiful. I wanted a genuine look and feel for the story and no other location would work except for Vietnam. The shooting condition was miserably harsh all around. Dealing with the extreme heat was absolutely grueling. You just have to be there to know what it's like. How much work, both creatively and otherwise, went into producing the many action set-pieces that distinguished the film? Are there many films of this sort being made in Vietnam these days? In spite of making things authentic, it was important to find a distinctive look as well. We needed the action set-pieces to evoke a certain feeling and reveal some aspects about the characters in the scene. We were fortunate to have a very good production designer and he had a team of 30 artists that worked tirelessly to create a unique world for THE REBEL. There were other period movies made in Vietnam, but none were meticulously crafted as we have done in THE REBEL. Let's talk a bit about your cast: all three of your lead actors (Johnny Tri Nguyen, Dustin Nguyen, and Veronica Ngo [Thanh Van]) have all enjoyed varying degrees of international success as actors and print models. How did you come to cast all three in the film, and how have their talents impacted the film? This was Johnny's project to begin with so we wrote the script with him in mind. Johnny and I talked about the villain character and thought Dustin would be great. Johnny sent him an early draft, which had me worried. But then Dustin said he really liked the story and would love to play the bad guy. As for Veronica, she came to one of our casting sessions in Saigon. Within seconds into her cold reading I knew she was the one! Dustin was always examining and probing beneath the surface of his character. The emotional depth he brought to his character, Sy, was never there on the page. Johnny was always on top of his game. He was incredibly confident and creative when it's time for action! He made the most difficult thing looked easy. Dustin, Veronica and the stunt guys got to trust him completely. THE REBEL would not be what it is without his action choreography. I remember Veronica would ask to roll the camera only when she felt she was honest with her feeling. Everything she did had to be honest to her character's feeling. She was thoroughly transformed into her character. Later, she told me it took her a month after we wrapped that she was finally free from living and breathing her character's life. The brand of Vietnamese martial arts your brother Johnny (who stars as the government agent Cuong) showcases in the film - a swooping, high-angle, high-velocity series of helicopter spin moves that is as lethal as it is camera-friendly - has not been seen before on film, to my knowledge. How important was Johnny's contributions to the film as a fight choreographer as well as romantic/heroic lead? I think I observed previously that he was practically a human special effect, as his on-camera skills were quite unique... My brother and I started out making short martial arts films around our house when he was in junior high. I worked on the story and camera and he handled the lighting and choreography. Johnny's asset is that he was a filmmaker, a die-hard martial artist, a fight choreographer and a professional Hollywood stuntman before he got into acting. It was the combination of all his background experiences and his constant creative need to break new ground that brought a unique action to the film. And definitely, Ngo Thanh Van and especially Dustin Nguyen were quite remarkable in the film. How was working with them? Dustin will make you a better director and storyteller. He knows the craft well and he's a great listener. The script was just a point of departure for him to delve deeper into the character's psyche to bring his character to life. With Veronica all I did was answer her questions about how to do her scenes. Her intelligence required no other additional information. When she was done questioning I just left her alone to find that honest place inside her. Dustin's character Sy, a corrupt government agent, is briefly intimated to be influenced by some form of black magic. How did this character development come about? It seemed quite subtle, yet went a long way in explaining Sy's seeming invincibility. I believe the most important character of an action film isn't the hero but the villain himself. The better the villain, the better the hero and the film. We wanted a powerful, menacing yet emotionally vulnerable villain. Next to creating a dimensional bad guy with real emotional thorn, we wanted Dustin's character to have an indestructible quality for Johnny's character to overcome. Hence the idea of black magic and his "iron jacket"! The casting of fellow director Stephane Gauger (OWL AND THE SPARROW, as a dastardly French magistrate) speaks to the amazing concentration of filmmaking activity by expatriate Vietnamese American filmmakers around the time that THE REBEL went before the cameras [besides THE REBEL, OWL AND THE SPARROW and SAIGON ECLIPSE were both in principal production at that time - ed.]. Were you aware of everyone who was in Vietnam around that time, and to what extent was everyone available and/or willing to help out on each other's projects? I think we all share a common goal. We want to see more and more films get made from our filmmaker friends. And with that you look out to support one another. Stephane came on as a key gaffer before he was cast to play Dustin's boss-man. When you're exhausted and under tremendous stress, it's very comforting to be surrounded by your friends and familiar faces. How has the film done since you premiered it last April at the Vietnamese International Film Festival? And what hopes do you have for its impending DVD release? We had a long run of festivals around the world and it was great everywhere we went. We were all worried about the fate of the film before the first screening at ViFF. Even though the film has been well received, I'm still a nervous wreck on the eve of the DVD release! THE REBEL is not your first feature film, as your very different feature debut, CHANCES ARE..., was produced back in 2001. A rom-com, an action film...what's next for you? That is the question! I'm currently writing and developing several screenplays with friends and hope that one of them will turn into a movie in two years. |
