We met at the corner of 14^th and Union, walking to our lunchtime destination of Saigon Pearl at Harvard Mkt I pointed out the landmarks. This, being Lees second visit to Seattle, land of the frigid air and atmosphere you can touch. I was wearing my yello specs and he mentioned that if youre in a yellow room, it makes you agitated and somewhat violent. Hmm, I think that if youre looking thru yellow your eyes adjust to it, and gloomy gray days get a little brighter.

We arrive at the café and I order my usual of pho and hot Vietnamese coffee, he orders the number 9, braised meat on skewers over rice noodles and no coffee.

Whats your Asian zodiac sign?           Monkey.

Whats your favorite color?

did you have a favorite color when you were a child?  Yeah, it was orange.

Where were you born?  San Francisco, at Childrens Hospital, I grew up around Park Merced, I believe its fairly close to San Francisco State (University) that SW part of SF. Our family had a little basement apartment. Eventually we moved to the suburbs, San Mateo. My parents had their business in SF, and they went back and forth a lot.

What kind of business was it?  It was like a "mom & pop" grocery store and Russian Deli

(he laughs) yeah.

So San Mateo is the place the Asians go to for being in the burbs?  When I was there, It felt like I was the only Asian there. My highschool was where Merv Griffin and Alicia Silverstone attended.

When did you decide on becoming a filmmaker? um, at the end of high school whenthere was no certainty or logic to it, I just decided thats what I wanted to do. It like totally dropped out of the sky. I was doing a lot of photography at the time, the arts, illustration, things like that. Filmmaking, I only knew it from the home video stuff, Super-8 and goof around with things with clay and stuff.

Somehow I just heard about USCs film school, I was aware that my interests were in Visual Arts/Photography, and I knew for sure I didnt want to get into Business and Computers, stuff that my parents were pushing me into. I just sort of fell into it (film).

My resolve for actually doing it steadily grew through Film School. But even going to USC, there was a lot of uncertainty, it was hard to get into the Film School, I was accepted to the undergrad program and it took 2 years to actually get into the Film School.

If you didnt become a filmmaker, what would you probably be doing now?  Like managing a video store or something, like some computer thinglike a game designer (laughing).

Yeah, actually what I did was I crewed on a lot of films, I worked on over 100 student films, as a PA (production assistant), in sound, production management, cinematography and stuff, I tried to learn every aspect of film. Like even before Film School I worked on stuff.

While I was in school I totally loved it, I just lived for production and I hated everything else. And now I just feel like totally burned out, I get psyched about it , but I really dont want to be on the set like every day. Cuz its like really hard physical labor and all that, I guess Im getting older

I used to be totally obsessed with production. I worked on a bunch of student films, I graduated , and did some independent work, like really awful industrials to independent features. I was either producing or doing cinematography. Just before I did Yellow I shot 2 super-low-budget indie features for other directors.

Doing all the production work geared me up for directing- because you learn everyones job and you know what they need to know. You see how things operate smoothly and how they dont,if its not planned well.

Maybe I shoulda had one of those coffees, Im all foggy.

How did you come up with the idea for Yellow?  I was writing all these scripts on spec, writing feature scripts and trying to sell them or whatevertrying to get money, and it was just really hard and I felt like I was making these little incremental gains but didnt amount to anything real.

I decided that I was gonna write a script that at all costs,was I gonna produce it, where it was for a million dollars or a dollar, Im gonna turn it into a movie.

So I had to really think hard about what I thought I was ready for, what I was willing to live with. I knew it would take years to finish it, Id have to see it everyday and WHAT Id want to see in the theater.

YELLOWs not a real heavy film, theres lots of comedy, its about teenagers. The passion   I had was just MAKING this film about a youth culture that had Asian Americans at its core and that in itself was the statement that I really WANTED to express on the screen.

Thats how I decided on YELLOW, I really wanted to do a character piece that had a really simple , yet solid story. The core of the story for YELLOW is the teens have to recover money before sunrise. So creatively in that sense, it was the RIGHT concept.

From today,it would be 4 1/2 years from concept to movie.

yeah, I definitely decided to make YELLOW because be at least one voice to express an issue such as Asian Americans in American culture. Its only one story,one point of view, I dont think people should think its the definitive Asian American story,we dont really expect that of other films--other non-Asian films.

What film stock did you use?   7279, Kodak Vision 500, a brand new technology it was only a month old, its high speed, the grains really tight and color is really rich. we shot it on Super 16 and we blew it up to 35.

The first cut?                                                                                      yeah, it was 2hrs 45 min, way too long.

Permits?   50 locations in 24 days, 1 permit for 3 hours on the beach, it was totally guerilla. The sheriff came by and kicked us off the beach, the sand is the beach, so we ended up shooting the close-ups in the parking lot, we tried to match the lighting and stuff.

Weird stuff?    yeah, the bowling alley. this photographer was shooting some great shots, after he left, I asked around and no one knew who he was.

Competition between other Asian american directors?          Very supportive, moral support. Everyones too busy trying to get their own work out, information is shared.

Asian American Film Festivals?   YELLOW has screened at most of them, and Ive attended most.  Chicagos is cool. The organizers let you crash at their place,a floor full of filmmakers, amongst all the stressof putting on a festival.

Chaos?   the liquor store was way out past Pasadena, as soon as the owner saw how big our cast and crew were,saw our truck.He thought we were loaded, and started to extort money from us and started charging us $100 per 15 minutes. So we shot that whole scene in 1 hr and 15 min.

Yeah, I had to throw out the shot list after the first 3 shots,cuz of the time frame, so I had to have the DP (director of photography) shoot it hand held from the two points of view, to save time. that night, it was hellish. right after that we had the cemetery shot, and we had permission to shoot there, but the sprinklers kept going off and we had to wait for someone to turn them off. A lot of waiting.

When Q was shooting "Shopping For Fangs", was that around the same time?   Yeah, we started the SAME day, it was totally by coincidence.     As it turned out, we had two of the same cast members, so we had to coordinate that a bit. I didnt know Quentin (Lee) that well, I didnt want it to be 2 filmmakers bickering over a schedule etc.   But, they were really cool, actually. It was no problem at all.