Charlotte Sometimes writer/director Eric Byler has a heart to heart talk with
AsianConnections' Lia Chang about feeling marginalized as an Asian American man, why Asian men are angry with Asian women and a hornet's nest of sexual politics.
I met with Eric the morning after I screened
Charlotte Sometimes at the Asian American International Film Festival at the Asia Society.
Staying at his friend's apartment, he's a bit behind schedule. In fact, he is just stepping out of the shower. Wavy brown hair, six feet tall, with eyes the hue of dark chocolate, my first glimpse of him is wrapped up in a towel. Bathed in natural window light, Eric bares his soul and opens up about love, loneliness, passion and his new projects.
Nominated for two 2003 Independent Spirit Awards and hailed by Roger Ebert as a breakthrough film for Asian American filmmakers, Byler's impressive feature debut
Charlotte Sometimes explores different kinds of love.
The plot revolves around four characters involved in an intricate relationship tale. Betrayal, repressed emotions and loneliness resonate throughout the film in which the characters Byler has etched have deep fears that they are too ugly to be loved, juxtaposed with those who have never been faced with that fear.
Michael (Michael Idemoto), a reclusive auto mechanic is secretly enamored with his tenant and best friend Lori (Eugenia Yuan). Lori's self absorbed live-in boyfriend Justin (Matt Westmore) leaves her so emotionally cold that she finds platonic comfort at Michael's apartment watching old movies and sleeping over after she and Justin have had sex. Lori offers to set Michael up on a blind date, but he declines. After another restless evening of listening to Lori and Justin's noisy sex session through the thin walls, he heads out to his neighborhood bar where a mysterious drifter named Darcy (Jacqueline Kim) catches his eye.
The film's dialogue is as much verbal as it is non-verbal as Darcy's appearance on the scene and in their lives shakes this triangle to the core as a relationship mind-game of cat and mouse takes place.
Jacqueline Kim was nominated for an Independent Spirit Best Supporting Actress award for the role of Darcy, a part Byler had written specifically for her.
Charlotte Sometimes is the first Asian American film to be nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards since Kayo Hatta's
Picture Bride in 1996.
During our interview, we left no stones unturned. Searching for identity and a desire to fit in have always been linked to "race" issues for Byler especially during his formative years growing up with a Chinese mother and a father of European descent.
As a bi-racial adolescent in Virginia, he recalls feeling marginalized as a human being and as a sexual being. At the age of ten, Byler discovered girls, and although he looked more Asian, he didn't relate to the other Asian kids in his school.
His teachers came down on him hard for not towing the model minority line sending him the message that any interaction with White girls was inappropriate. His mother wisely transferred him into a special magnet school for smart kids. With a new set of goals, fitting in for Byler meant being smart.
Lia: Where did you draw inspiration for the characters in Charlotte Sometimes?
Eric: You'll find that with most of the characters that I write, each of them in their own way will have a fear that they are too ugly to be loved. And definitely that was a fear that I had at different times. I never realized this but I had that fear much more strongly when I started to go through puberty because it matters more. But when there was no escaping being an Asian boy, up till 6th grade, I didn't feel it as strongly. I had no trouble being a playground combatant, competing for the attention of girls with White boys when I looked full blooded Asian.
Check out The Official Charlotte Sometimes Website for theaters in your city . c h a r l o t t e s o m e t i m e s is now avalailable on DVD/VHS and can be ordered on the web:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/CharlotteSometimes-1124476/dvd.php |
