Wayne Wang

Wayne Wang (born January 12, 1949, Hong Kong) is a Hong Kong-born film director, producer, and screenwriter who became one of the first major Asian directors in the United States. He directed both big-budget Hollywood studio motion pictures and low-budget independent films (without the backing of a major studio). His independent films especially often explore Asian American immigrant experiences.

Early life and education

Wang was born in British-controlled Hong Kong (now a special administrative region of China) and was named for his father’s favourite Hollywood actor, John Wayne. When Wang was a teenager, his parents encouraged him to move to the United States to go to college. He attended junior college in Los Altos, California, before studying film and television at California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in Oakland. While working on a master’s degree, he cowrote and codirected the film A Man, a Woman, and a Killer (1975).

Career

After graduating, Wang returned to Hong Kong, where he worked at a public broadcasting company. He directed several episodes of a drama series, Below the Lion Rock, which chronicles the lives of ordinary people in Hong Kong. Soon, however, he returned to the United States. He settled in California, where he taught English to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. His experiences meeting diverse people led him to cowrite, produce, and direct the landmark low-budget film Chan Is Missing (1982). The black-and-white mystery—set in San Francisco’s large Chinese community called Chinatown—follows two cab drivers as they search for a man named Chan, which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fictional Chinese detective Charlie Chan, considered by some to be an Asian stereotype. Along the way they encounter ordinary Chinese Americans and get a glimpse into their everyday lives. The movie attracted mainstream audiences and gained a widespread distribution, becoming the first Asian American independent film to be released in the United States. Wang’s other early films include Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985), which he both coproduced and directed, and Slam Dance (1987) and Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989), both of which he directed.

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Wang’s first major Hollywood studio movie was The Joy Luck Club (1993), which was based on the best-selling novel by American author Amy Tan. The film explores the struggles of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese American daughters to relate to each other, and it was one of the first movies in Hollywood to feature a majority Asian cast. In 1995 Wang directed the comedy drama Smoke (an ensemble film centred on a tobacco store and featuring Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, and Forest Whitaker) and codirected and cowrote the follow-up film Blue in the Face. His film Chinese Box (1997) is set in Hong Kong in 1997, when Great Britain returned sovereignty over the territory to China. Wang’s next mainstream film was the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan (2002). It starred Ralph Fiennes as a wealthy political candidate who mistakes a hotel maid, played by Jennifer Lopez, for a socialite. The family drama Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) and the romantic comedy Last Holiday (2006), starring rappers-turned-actors Queen Latifah and LL Cool J, followed.

Wang’s later works are mostly independent films. In 2007 Wang directed The Princess of Nebraska and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. Both were based on Chinese-born professor and author Yiyun Li’s short stories. The documentary Soul of a Banquet (2014) chronicles the life of chef Cecilia Chiang, who was one of the first Asian Americans to open an authentic Chinese restaurant outside of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Wang’s other works include the dramas Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011), While the Women Are Sleeping (2016), and Coming Home Again (2019).