Director Wayne Wang shoots his latest film "Center of the World" in digital video to capture a steamy eroticized portrait of love and sex in the technological age with the backdrop of the Dotcom Craze of 2000.
StudioLA.com's Suzanne Kai joins fellow journalists at a round table chat with Wang at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. Here are highlights of the half hour with the acclaimed director "The Joy Luck Club" (1993), "Anywhere But Here" (1999), "Chinese Box" (1997), "Smoke" (1995). Wang directed the MPAA unrated movie as well as the movie's official website. Please be advised the website has posted a warning prohibiting viewers under age 18 from entering due to the explicit sexual content.
Q: Was it the lure of working in digital that attracted you to this piece or was it the material?
Wayne: No, it was the year 2000. I was getting bored. The Bay Area was booming with “Dot-Com Kids.” I was hanging out with some of them and one night they said, “lets go down to a strip club, a group of us are going.” I went there with them. Its like watching kids being released from prison or something, they’re so full of energy. Lots of cash. And then beautiful young ladies selling a lot of fantasies. And I saw that interaction and I go, “Geez this is amazing and this is really something that very much, in a way, [was about the] year 2000”.
Q: But writing a film about sex in a society that is predominantly puritanical?
Wayne: It’s very puritanical in a way. It’s about the morality of the stripper. It’s about the stripper defining what the line is all the time. And that’s what happens in these strip clubs too. They give you a fantasy and they are constantly defining the rules. “You can’t touch me here, you can’t do this, I won’t do this. But you keep giving me money.” So that’s why I was interested in it. It’s about the morality of sex in America and the fantasy that it projects.
Q:Is the American audience ready to embrace a film that deals with sexuality in relatively graphic detail?
Wayne: That I don’t know. …Some films I have to think of the audience. When I’m making a studio movie and I know I have to go to a preview audience, I have to think of the audience. On this film I said that I’m not going to think about the audience or whether or not they are going to accept it or what the box office will be. I try to just make an honest film.
Q: Is there a message here, I drove away from the film thinking about a lot of different things…
Wayne: …For me its what is real, what is real about sex and love, its always an issue I mean nobody ever asked the question after you make love, “Was that real,” I’ve always been curious you know, so again it comes down to the fact that trust and communication and love, if you have those things then maybe those questions are not as important. You know its about those things…trust, communication, and love and what is it about between people. And I think these days with kids who grow up in suburbs and on computers, those things don’t mean anything to them, they don’t understand it, and that’s why I think its important in this film.
Q: Speaking about performances, let’s talk about how you coaxed, well maybe not coaxed, performances I think everyone would agree were pretty amazing performances.
Wayne: Well those two are really good actors that are very interested in honesty and truth and constantly asking themselves the question of that. I mean they did their research of the characters and were very, very adamant, you know, about the truth of their characters every step along the way. My job was relatively easy once we got that together.
My job was putting the pressure on Molly so that she always feels the stress to having to have sex or having to go across the line. Because, I said from day one that this was my way of putting the pressure on her. I said I want real sex in the movie. Because there's only one scene that has sex in the movie. And that scene questions whether the sex was real or not.
So I want the sex to be real. And she said, “I won’t do it." But I kept putting that pressure on her, because I know that’s what her character goes through. Peter was easier in that he really got into this mindset of the “dot-comer” who all believed that they were masters of the universe and really objectified the women that they’re dealing with in the computer. And he was thinking, “I’ll get to her and I’m gonna get what I want."
Q: What he wanted was love in the end.
Wayne: Yeah, and that’s what he couldn’t get. So (laughter).
Q: He has it for about maybe twenty seconds.
Q: How did you select the cast?
Wayne: Peter came in, Peter wanted to do this really bad, and he was really good. Every time he came in he got better and better at it. And we did the scene where he raped her in the movie, and he was just wonderful. And then Molly, I went through a lot of possibilities, a lot of variations. And I felt Molly had an integrity about her that would translate into the character which I wanted. She’s not your typical stripper look. She’s beautiful in her own way and had a more down to earth quality about her, especially without makeup. So that’s what I ended up finally going with.
Q: Did you find a difference [between film and] working with digital cameras with actors and their performances?
Wayne: Yeah, it’s freer. It relieves a lot of pressure. In film, especially with film cameras, big crews, time pressures, it’s always…"I want to get that performance right, I don’t want to make a mistake, I don’t want to get my line wrong." Here, it seems a little more relaxed and tape is so cheap that you can improvise a little bit. You can be more real with it. You don’t have to worry about making it in the next take. So I think that, for me, that freed up a lot of stuff. You know, we could even shoot the rehearsals and not worry, and sometimes rehearsals were better.
