PRODUCTION UPDATE



  Chris Chan Lee's Yellow starts out with eight Asian Los Angeles teens counting down to high school graduation. Then grad night comes, and Sin Lee's held up while minding his parents' store. If his parents find out, he may end up staying home to work for them instead of heading off for college, so the kids spread out to raise a replacement $1,500 by sunrise any way they can by scouring the city's streets, beaches, and bars and making a disastrous attempt to sell one relative's car. When it's clear this scavenger hunt is only eating time, Sin gets desperate, and he and his friend Alex cross a line that will change their lives.

"It's about the juxtaposition of growing up in America and having immigrant parents so you've got a cultural gap as well as a generational gap," says Lee. "Even now, Asian kids are forced to identify with other subcultures because there isn't anything that directly reflects their experience."

Lee, 27, was born in San Francisco the year after his parents arrived from Korea. "My parents had the archetypical Korean experience of opening a grocery store, and they had that business for 20 years, until they moved to Long Beach," he says. He graduated from USC's film program in 1992 and has since served as cinematographer on West Coast indie features Crispy Crackers and Beans (IFFM 1996) and Spaceman. He met producer David Yang (Broken Words) through CAPE (the Coalition of Asian Pacific Entertainers), a film-dominated group that fosters networking, and says they spent a year struggling to finance Yellow. "We started off approaching studios and worked our way down the list," he says. "Finally we started with seed money from one family friend and my credit cards." The Super 16mm Yellow had already been shooting for a week before a long-pursued Japanese investor stepped up to the plate. Yellow shot throughout L.A. neighborhoods like Redondo Beach, San Gabriel, and Koreatown for three weeks beginning July 15. Lee credits word-of-mouth within the Asian filmmaking community with attracting a pool of talented young actors and an accomplished crew, including soundman Curtis Choy, who regularly works with Wayne Wang. All signed on for deferred salaries. Lee's already planning a 35mm blowup and says he should have a rough cut by fall. All rights save Japan are available.

Cast: Soon Teck Oh, Amy Hill, Michael Chung, Mia Suh, Emily Kuroda, Angie Suh, Lela Lee, Jason Tobin, Mary Chen, John Cho. Crew: Producers, Chris Chan Lee, David Yang, Rita Yoon; Executive Producers, Taka Arai, Theodore Kim; Screenwriter/Director, Chris Chan Lee; Cinematographer, Ted Cohen; Production Designer, Jeanne Yang; Sound, Curtis Choy. Contact: Chris Chan Lee, Public Works Films, 8306 Wilshire Blvd., #1804, Beverly Hills, Ca 90211. Tel: (213) 969-4919.



 
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