Totally Taiwan

Getting to Taiwan from HK wasn't the best experience.  My flight was delayed several several hours and basically I didn't touch down to Taipei until well past 1AM which meant troubling my college buddy to wake up at 2AM to let me into his place.  If it were just him, I wouldn't feel so bad, that's how we did it in college...but with wifey and poodle sound asleep, my awakening the house wasn't the coolest thing I've ever done.  After that though...I have to say...it was mostly smooth sailing the rest of my time in Formosa.

I love Taiwan.

Industry aside, it's the best city in Asia in my opinion.  I've been to many places - Tokyo, Saigon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, but by far, my favorite place to be in all of Asia is Taipei.

Perhaps I'm biased given that I'm a Mandarin man, but there's just something so comfortable about the land where my parents grew up.  The food (oh my, the food - I could eat egg pancakes for days on end), the kind people, the pace of the city (not too fast and not too slow)...all of it, I adore.  I also feel most confident with my Mandarin there.  In China, the locals often can't understand me, or look at me funny when I speak, but in Taiwan, when I speak, sometimes people actually think I'm a local.  Nice!

The problem with Taiwan however is that from a professional standpoint, the film industry there doesn't really exist.  At least, that's what everyone will tell you.  It's true, Taiwan isn't reknown for producing many films - maybe 20 a year - and in terms of world class filmmakers - there are but 1 or 2 who get their movies out there for all to see.  My visits to agencies wasn't the most fruitful as the trend there is to develop and promote young late teen/early 20's musicians or tv soap opera actors.  That said, there still was some interest from some folks to work with me were I to actually plant myself there...it's something I'll have to think about.  I love Taiwan so much that I'd consider it a good place for me to start out in Asia.  Get into a Mandarin class for a few months, get my feet planted there, and then see where it leads me.

A take away that I got from my trip overall, but that really set in for me when I was in Taipei, was that, the world is really what you make of it.  Although seemingly everyone I met in Taiwan told me that the film scene there didn't exist, I met a few groups of people - all not originally from Taiwan - who were living/working there who proved to be real inspirations and who seem to respectfully defy what everyone says about working in Taiwan.  It brings to mind my favorite Adidas quote: Impossible Is Nothing.

First was a young SC film grad from the Bay - Arvin Chen - who's making his first feature out there called Goodnight, Taipei.  Fascinating, and someone to keep an eye on.  Then, there was someone from Cherry Sky Films, the production company behind Asian American features Better Luck Tomorrow, Finishing the Game, and Ping Pong Playa.  They're doing interesting things because they've developed partnerships with a couple of Taiwan based production companies and so I kind of see them as a classic example of what I like to call a hybrid organization (or person) - someone/thing that exists in both America and Asia, as both here and there, that has sensibilities of the East and the West, that works across both regions.  Finally, there was Jeff Huang, formerly of the LA Boys, who's out there running an empire called Machi - a music, artist, clothing company that, who knows, could one day evolve into the film sector.  I wouldn't bet against it.  All Chinese/Taiwanese-Americans turning it on its head and doing good stuff out there. 

Yea, so Taiwan doesn't produce hundreds of films a year.  Yea, Ang Lee hasn't really done anything to raise the level of the filmmaking in Taiwan.  Yea, there are more attractive places to be and do when it comes to this stuff, but try telling that to these folks.  Try telling that to the team behind Cape No. 7 which is breaking all kinds of box office records in Taiwan right now.  I bet you they'd say that life is what you make of it and impossible is nothing - two phrases I live by.

It was in Taipei too that I had one of the most memorable exeriences I'll ever have in my life, let alone on this trip.  It wasn't a huge deal, but I got cast in a film for being at the right place at the right time by a French team who was shooting their feature One O One Le Filmin Taiwan while I was there.  I only spent one afternoon shooting a couple of scenes, but what was so unreal about the whole thing was that I played a local doctor who converses in Mandarin with the main actor who has come to Taipei from France in search of a little girl.  Here I was, an American speaking my American Chinese and here was this Frenchman, speaking his non-Chinese (he learned it phonetically), in Taiwan with French and Taiwanese crew members surrounding us speaking to each other in a combination of French, English, and Mandarin.  I tried out my high school French with them which didn't get me very far, but the moment won't soon be lost on me for being a bizzare experience of thinking/being/and living in 3 languages all at once. 

Neither of us truly speaks Chinese. It was kind of crazy cool.  Weird, but crazy cool.  I hope to do it again someday!

I think I also enjoy Taipei the most because it's where I have the most friends.  It's where the new people you meet are the friendliest.  And it's where the nightlife is the best.  I've got to find a way to work/live there.  After all, impossible is nothing.