WANG BREAKS THE MOLD

Movie sets tend to hum with free floating anxiety that reaches critical mass wherever the director happens to be standing. It’s easy to spot the director, who functions like a queen bee surrounded by darting workers clustered to do his/her bidding. He/she’s the nerve center that controls the psychological climate of the set and if the director’s in a good mood, everybody’s in a good mood. If he had a fight with his producer or a root canal, it’s apt to be a sad day in Mudville for cast and crew.

Not the case with Wayne Wang, 36. Walk onto the set of “Slam Dance,” his third film (after “Chan Is Missing” and “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart”) and you’d have a hard time picking him out as commander-in-chief.

Dressed like a well-scrubbed preppie in short-sleeved golf shirt, khaki pants and running shoes, Wang evidences no visible signs of either the ego or the strain endemic to his job. Powering through a frenetic 36-day shooting schedule which wraps on Oct. 6 after racing to and from locations throughout Southern California, Wang remains composed, gracious--in short, classically Oriental.

He neither chain smokes nor consumes rivers of coffee. No anxious pacing, fits of temper, long brooding silences. He rarely even raises his voice and is apt to slip up to an actor and offer his point of view in the form of a suggestion rather an order. In fact, Wang is so boundlessly self-effacing that it’s hard to figure how he wound up at the helm of a major motion picture.

Wang’s previous pictures offer ample evidence for his current status of promising newcomer on the verge of being called up to the majors. Both films were graceful comedies built around well-drawn characters and serious sub-plots suggested with an uncommonly light touch. Transposing the timeless theme of the alienated stranger in a strange land into the fresh context of the Asian-American community, Wang’s movies are ideally scaled; big enough to rise above the heap of obscure independents yet small enough not to invite the heavy artillery of the critics.

So, here Wang finds himself, with considerably more money to spend, directing Academy Award nominee (for “Amadeus”) Tom Hulce, veteran character actor Harry Dean Stanton, new-wave sensation Adam Ant and in his first major role, John Doe, vocalist with the L.A. band, X.

Born in Hong Kong of Chinese parents, Wang moved to California when he was 18 to earn his master’s degree in film and TV. He relocated to Japan for a few unsatisfying working years, then relocated to San Francisco (where he presently lives) and a job as a community activist working with immigrants in Chinatown.

That experience provided the raw material for his 1982 debut feature film “Chan Is Missing,” a detective story set in San Francisco’s Chinese community, which was made for a $22,000 and went on to gross more than $1 million. Wang explored similar themes in last year’s “Dim Sum,” which examines cultural differences between generations of Chinese-Americans. “I used to feel guilty about the fact that I didn’t fit into the culture I was born into,” Wang explains, “but my first two films satisfied my emotional need to work that out.”

Having resolved his cultural schizophrenia, Wang tackles the internal conflicts of your basic American bohemian in “Slam Dance,” which chronicles the misadventures of an underground cartoonist played by Tom Hulce who inadvertently becomes implicated in a series of lurid crimes. Based on a screenplay by Don Opper, the film is set in L.A.’s art/nightclub scene and began shooting on Aug. 13 with a budget of $4.5 million. Slated for release next spring, the film will make its deadline by adhering to a grueling schedule of 12-hour days. In light of that pressure, the set is surprisingly relaxed.

“Wayne’s influence can be felt on this set, which is unusually organized,” observes Harry Dean Stanton. “I took this part because I wanted to work with him after I saw ‘Dim Sum,’ which I thought had a lot of heart and humanity.

“Wayne gets the performance he wants by encouraging you to take the time you need--a rare thing with any director.”

Directing a movie often comes down to nothing more than blocking out the nuts and bolts logistics of how basic action unfolds. Shooting on a sound stage at Renmar Studios in Hollywood, Wang spends the better part of an afternoon working on just such a scene.

Involving approximately a dozen actors performing a complex series of actions at the scene of a crime, the sequence requires repeated takes, yet the tension level never seems to increase. Fine tuning the scene a little more with each run through, Wang makes directing appear relatively effortless, but between takes, he acknowledges that it’s tougher than it looks.

“Before we began shooting, we all had physicals and the doctor told me my blood pressure was high, but then he said not to worry because he’d never yet examined a director who didn’t have high blood pressure,” he laughs.

“Directing is an extremely physical process. I used to run marathons and directing is similar to running a marathon. You have to know how to pace yourself and avoid becoming worn down. I deal with the pressure by simply ignoring it to a large extent.”

The copacetic mood on the set also can be attributed to the fact that he does the lion’s share of the work before the camera is even loaded with film.

“Wayne knows exactly what he wants and arrives at the set thoroughly prepared,” observes Adam Ant, who portrays an oily nightclub proprietor. “Consequently he’s able to instill a great feeling of confidence in his actors.”

“When we’re shooting his directions often amount to nothing more than ‘speed up’ or ‘slow down’ because any improvisation that might occur is hammered out in rehearsal,” adds John Doe, who’s cast as a corrupt cop.

“It’s a widely held misconception that movie making happens primarily on a set,” Wang explains. “What happens on the set is only 10% of the process and shooting it is often nothing more than perfunctory execution. A movie goes through three lives in the course of being made: The first life is the script and preparation. The second is the actual shooting. And the third is the editing process which, along with the preparation, are the most enjoyable parts for me.

“In directing actors, my basic philosophy is that casting the right person is 80 percent of the job. Beyond that, I try to make sure the actors understand the point of each scene and remain sensitive to timing, which I feel is the key element in acting. Actors usually know their lines so well that they tend to speak them too fast. They have to learn to think about what they’re saying and remember that pauses and pregnant silences give the words weight and credibility.

“The people in this cast are all character actors of one sort or another,” he continues. “For instance, Harry Dean’s (Stanton) always saying, ‘Gimme the specific, what’s the specific of the moment? What am I thinking about at this second?’ With Tom Hulce, if he’s supposed to appear out of breath, he’ll go out and actually run around the block five times.”

Wang encourages the players to do whatever is necessary to feel at home with a part and frequently defers to them should a difference of opinion arise. Wang’s apparent lack of ego--unusual in a director--may be due to the fact that he’s not so much intoxicated with the dream of movie making as he is fascinated with human behavior and seems largely content to make small movies long on story and short on technology. This isn’t to say, however, that he’d turn down an invitation to a power lunch.

“I wouldn’t mind making a big Hollywood film--in fact, ‘Slam Dance’ is a stepping-stone in that direction--but I don’t think it’s in my blood to make a fast-paced action movie with loads of technology. I’m not that kind of director nor am I interested in those issues. I’m attracted to the comedy and irony of human relations and the little things between people, those moments when people pause and don’t talk and look at each other. Some people think that makes for a slow movie and many directors cut those moments out, but I expect those kinds of passages will recur in all the movies I make.”