Julia's notes on the making of Eve & the Fire Horse

ON THE GENESIS …
ON THE OVERALL LOOK …
ON CASTING THE GIRLS …
ON CASTING VIVIAN WU …
ON CASTING IN HONG KONG …
ON CULTURAL AUTHENTICITY …
ON FINDING LOCATIONS …
ON PRODUCTION CHALLENGES ...

ON THE GENESIS …
The story first took shape when I imagined a scene between two little girls preparing for sleep. One little girl, kneeling at her bedside, says a prayer. This girl has decided her sole purpose in life is to become a saint, and for an entire year, she wants nothing more than to ride the Number 14 Hastings Bus everyday just so she could relinquish her seat to an elderly person. The other little girl, younger, clasps her hands together while she is tucked underneath her blanket, and says a cursory prayer in her head. She says this even though she knows any prayer she makes in bed, in a horizontal position, doesn’t count. Her sister has told her this. At the moment I started to focus on these two girls, memories from my own childhood came flooding in, and the story started to unfold. Eve & the Fire Horse is a personal story that stems from memories and imagination.

I have a memory of our mantels being filled with statues of Buddha, fat and happy, alongside pictures of Jesus, emaciated and suffering. I believed that they were friends and they danced at night.

I have a strong memory of the first time I ever got down on my knees and prayed to God. I was eight years old and I had yet to attend my first Sunday School class. I remember the purity of that gesture, so filled with good intentions and faith. I was in love with the idea of absolute goodness and believed unequivocally that God existed. It was the one time I ever felt that I was not alone in this world. I did not feel this way for very long.

Another strong memory is the death of my grandmother when I was five years old. I believed unequivocally that my grandmother was reincarnated into a goldfish.

Looking back, I realize I found strength in my beliefs and that’s what moves me so much about children. There is such a purity in their beliefs and an ability to simplify complex issues and reinvent them. I wanted to explore the way children, especially sensitive and imaginative ones, deal with heavy adult issues like death, faith, guilt, superstition and religion. I was also moved by the way children internalize guilt and take on the burdens of the world. I remember, as a child, I thought I could affect the results of a hockey game just by watching it and I felt extreme guilt if the team lost. It’s a very child-like, self-centered way of thinking.

Because of a child’s ability to believe so deeply, there is nothing more evocative and powerful than the imagination of a child. In some sense, growing up in a deeply superstitious family added fuel to my imagination. What an idea that if I dropped a pair of chopsticks on New Year’s Eve, I would curse the entire year! Or if I left grains of rice in my bowl, my future husband would be pockmarked! With the sisters, Karena and Eve, it was easier for them to believe and take those leaps of faith throughout the film, because their family consistently did.

Karena, the older sister, is a noble yet somewhat tragic character. She is content with the explanation, “the Lord works mysterious ways”, whenever her faith comes into question. However, her sister, Eve, is the questioning one and feels a childish indignation at what she perceives as injustices. When Moses parts the Red Sea, she cannot understand why God would drown all the horses, too. When she finds out at Sunday School that her parents are going to Hell because they worship another idol, this realization tears at her heart.

I was also fascinated by the idealism of children and their simplistic notion of kindness. It’s interesting to me how many women I know who had wanted to be a saint as a child.

The script evolved over the course of nine years. I tend to think that the process has been so long because my own spirituality continues to evolve. The film is part truth, part imagination. The Eng family bears only a slight resemblance to my own family, but the characters are fictional or composites of people that I’ve known in my life.

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ON THE OVERALL LOOK …
The style of the film reflects a lyrical realism. I drew my influences and inspiration from such films as Lynne Ramsay’s RATCATCHER, Wong Kar Wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and Truffaut’s SMALL CHANGE and 400 BLOWS.

Unfolding like an odd fairytale, the film is very much filtered through the eyes of a young girl. As such, the sensory experience is heightened as each new experience is seen through a child’s purity of gaze. The colours are richer, the sounds are sharper. The reds in the Buddhist temple pop, the earthy tones in the Catholic Church mute the overall mood. Using the palette of the colours from the 70’s, Mary-Ann Liu, the production designer, chose warm tones such as oranges, browns and their compliments to enhance the overall mood. It was important that the film exuded warmth but without being overly sentimental. Nicolas Bolduc, the cinematographer, is a master at lighting and composition and has the visual sensibility of a lot of films that I admire from Quebec. Being a huge fan of Quebecois films as such Leolo, Jesus of Montreal, Maelstrom, Emporte Moi and La Turbulence des Fluids, it was important that the film had a strong visual sensibility that enhanced the emotionality of each scene.

Ozu films influenced my idea about camera positioning, as he always positioned his camera at the height of someone who was sitting cross-legged on the floor. In keeping with the perspective of a child, Nicolas often positioned the camera at the height of a child, stealing glimpses.

Both Mary-Ann and I were intrigued by the duality of the film – East vs. West, Buddhism vs. Catholicism, reality vs. imagination. Mary-Ann felt that “layering of the two cultures made the visual components exciting. One served to enhance the other because there is comparison and contrast.”

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ON WORKING WITH THE PRODUCERS …
In 2001, my producers, Shan Tam, Erik Paulsson, Yves Ma and I embarked together on this journey. I had written the script five years earlier. It was originally titled, Karena and Eve and had received a Charles Israel Screenwriting Prize for best unproduced screenplay at the Writer’s Guild of Canada Awards. When I sat down to write my polish draft, my producers told me to stay true to my vision and set the film in the 1970’s, as it was in the original draft. I had been concerned about the budget at the time, but their unwavering support and creative feedback allowed me to write the next draft freely, without any artistic constraints. Little did they know the script would suddenly include images of horses swimming underwater and a Chinese opera singing goldfish!

Concerned that the title didn’t reflect the lyrical qualities of the film, my producers suggested we come up with a different title. (Some irreverent suggestions – All the Pretty Horses Drowning, Time of Drowning Horses, They Drown Horses, Don’t They?) Ultimately, we settled on Eve & the Fire Horse, which more reflects the magical qualities of the story.

Shan, Erik and Yves worked tirelessly, with passion and great commitment, to put together the finances. None of us thought it would take another three years. They made many sacrifices for the sake of the film.

Three years and many Buddha belly rubs later, we were in a favourable financial position with the generous support of Telefilm, BC Film, Mongrel Media, CWIP, City-TV, Movie Central, The Movie Network, and Harold Greenberg Fund. Even though every funding agency came through for us, we were still short of the budget by 15%. Ultimately, a friend and extremely generous entrepreneur from Edmonton filled in the financial gap. At long last, we were ready to go into pre-production.

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ON CASTING THE GIRLS …
We knew that finding the two lead girls would be a great challenge. Very early in the process, we worked with a casting director, Sue Brouse, and scoured the country for two Chinese girls. As well as going through talent agencies, we put up posters at elementary schools, performance schools and Chinese community centers. We held auditions in Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton. We finally found our leads, Phoebe Kut and Hollie Lo, both of whom lived in Richmond, BC and have never acted before. They both responded to a poster at their school. In fact, it was Phoebe’s older sister who really wanted to audition for the role of the cousin and their Mother signed Phoebe up as a lark. Phoebe had no real desire to act. I loved that about her. During the second audition, we knew we were looking at a girl with an exceptional talent. During a reading of a particularly emotional scene, Phoebe locked eyes with her reading partner, and when her partner started to cry, she teared up as well. I was overwhelmed. Phoebe has a great capacity for feeling empathy, an important characteristic to have not only as an actor, but also as a human being in general.

We brought on Sarah Kanter, an acting coach, for the girls and we basically had four weekends to arm the girls with some basic acting tools and to rehearse all the scenes. Luckily for me, the girls are very smart. Hollie’s process was more cerebral – she has to think about it before she feels it whereas Phoebe has more natural instincts as an actress. She works very intuitively. For many lines, I gave the girls a subtext, and all that preparation paid off during the shoot. They understood each scene and rarely ever dropped a line. I also loved the fact that the girls completely bonded through this experience and looked out for each other. From the very beginning, they were bonding, giggling in the corner, whispering secrets – just like sisters …

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ON CASTING VIVIAN WU …
Not only did finding the girls prove difficult, finding actors for the adult characters proved just as challenging. We needed our actors to speak fluent Cantonese. For the role of May Lin, I always thought of actresses like Joan Chen or Sylvia Chang to play the mother role. When my producer, Shan Tam, put forth Vivian Wu as an option, I was surprised but intrigued by the idea. Vivian Wu has oftentimes played the glamorous, seductress role, but never a working class immigrant mother. After watching several of her films, I realized that the characters she played very much embodied the spirit of the character, May Lin. She often played strong, fiercely independent women. We forwarded a copy of the script to her, and she immediately responded to the material. She felt a very deep connection to this character and she is also a fire horse. Oddly enough, we both had the same name for our production company – Fire Horse Productions. With a two-week window in her schedule, Vivian came on board. I couldn’t have been happier.

Vivian brought so much to the character of May Lin. From the beginning, Vivian was afraid to discuss this character too much, as if saying the words out loud would take away its power. On set, we maintained this synergy to the point where we would show up wearing the same coloured top or we finished each other’s thoughts. For some scenes, her performance mirrored exactly how I had imagined it in my head. This rarely ever happens without giving much direction. We attributed it to the strength and kinship of the fire horse.

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ON CASTING IN HONG KONG …
After an unsuccessful search in Canada for the characters of Frank and Uncle, we held auditions in Hong Kong. There, I met Lester Chan, an actor who held a masters degree in engineering and studied film at NYU, where he met Ang Lee. Lester had a lead role in Lee’s Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. Lester was perfect for the role of Frank and luckily for me, he spoke fluent English. (I speak “Chinglish” – half Chinese, half English) Joseph Siu was hired to play the Uncle. As his English is minimal, we had an interpreter/dialogue coach on set. At the end, we had an international cast. Actors came from Canada, the States and Hong Kong.

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ON CULTURAL AUTHENTICITY …
Hiring actors who spoke fluent Cantonese was an important issue for us because we wanted to make a film that was authentic to the Chinese culture. Some felt that the adults should speak pidgin English as subtitled films are deemed less commercially viable, but we wanted to maintain the integrity of the work. For cultural authenticity, we hired a Chinese production designer, who paid attention to the minute details of a working class immigrant environment. Throughout the production, Lester Chan, Joseph Siu and our dialogue coach, Margaret Cheung, provided lots of information on cultural practices such as praying and other Chinese rituals. At the end, the production had a very international feel to it. At one point, four different languages were being spoken – English, Cantonese, Mandarin and French. One of the producers, Yves Ma, is Chinese-French from Paris; our director of photography is French from Quebec as is my director mentor, Lea Pool, who came on set for a few days.

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ON FINDING LOCATIONS …
After securing our cast, we were presented with the challenge of finding neighbourhoods with houses that were built before 1974. The film is a period piece. We ended up shooting mostly in New Westminster, BC, as it is an older community than Vancouver. Driving through the New Westminster neighbourhood, we came across this three-story run-down house. The floors were wooden and creaky and the original wallpaper was peeling off. We had found our Eng house.

One of my producers found the location of the Chinese restaurant where the character of the Father worked in the East end of Vancouver. She was acquainted with the owners and they offered the use of their establishment, free of charge. By pure coincidence, the restaurant was the exact same one that my own Father had worked at for many years. It became a Szcheuan restaurant after his retirement.

ON PRODUCTION CHALLENGES …
Because we had to juggle many of the actors’ schedules, we were working with an arduous and challenging production schedule. We shot the film in 27 days – a very hectic and pressure-filled schedule, as we were also limited to 8-hour shooting days because of child labour laws.

This was the film first film I directed without a storyboard. In the past, I have gone into my short films with a ridiculously meticulous plan and storyboards. I did not have this luxury because of the time constraints and I found the first day of production to be a profoundly frightening experience. However, as the production progressed, I found this process to be completely freeing and organic.

A big challenge for the girls on set was the wardrobe. Because it was a period piece, they had to wear a lot of polyester and wool on scorching hot August days. Overall, it was a harmonious set and quite serendipitous. In keeping with the luck/superstition theme of the film, Vivian Wu suggested the cast and crew purchase lottery tickets. We actually won 150 dollars! We were lucky in other ways as well. The day after we wrapped on our location at Riverview Hospital, the entire location was shut down for a week when the police found a huge marijuana grow-op in the attic. Only in British Columbia!