County Puts Varied Faces Forward in Fast-Moving Film

“I was driving through Anaheim on the Santa Ana Freeway, just past the Howard Johnson’s motel by Disneyland. The scene just suddenly came to me:

“You’re inside a motel room, there’s a young Vietnamese guy being tortured (by) another Vietnamese and an American. The young guy is killed. You know it’s a movie, so you assume you’re in Vietnam in some kind of war scene. Then you cut to the morning. The boy’s body is in the closet. The maid comes in, sees the body, screams and opens the blinds.

“And there’s the Matterhorn. . . .”

Michael Tolkin, a fast-talking screenwriter from Los Angeles, was describing the initial vision that led to his screenplay for “Gleaming the Cube,” an upcoming action-adventure movie that’s set in Orange County.

The movie mixes some seemingly odd elements: the intrigue and drama of the Vietnamese culture at one end of the spectrum, the visual flash of skateboarding at the other. It recently wrapped a 60-day shooting schedule in Orange and Los Angeles counties and will be released this summer by 20th Century Fox.

“I was fascinated with Orange County,” said Tolkin, a transplanted New Yorker, “ . . . and intrigued with the idea of a story set in this world where there seemed to be no history, where nothing is more than a generation old.”

But as he studied the area, he found more than Disneyland and 7-Elevens. That initial scene in the motel room led Tolkin into Orange County’s multifaceted Vietnamese community. “The more research I did on the county’s Vietnamese, the more I realized that Orange County deserved more than a sarcastic approach. There were vast areas of the county that I had never seen . . . Westminster, Garden Grove, the orange groves. . . .”

Filming began at Irvine’s Woodbridge High School on Sept. 7 and continued there for three weeks, involving up to 150 cast and crew members, according to production manager John J. Smith.

Production then continued throughout the county, often with the cooperation of local businesses and individuals. The Irvine Co. loaned a large orange grove on the Irvine Ranch for a climactic scene, the Koll Co. opened an office tower that was under construction, and officials with John Wayne Airport and the Million Air Club (a privately owned hangar and runway service for executive jets) helped coordinate skateboard scenes on the airport Tarmac and taxiways. Other locations include Westminster’s Vietnamese centers, the Balboa Ferry and Fun Zone, the Cosmic Age Motel, and of course, Howard Johnson’s in Anaheim.

At first reading, Tolkin’s script is all fast-rolling adventure; gravity-defying skateboard stunts performed by spike-haired teen-agers, shady business dealings, some G-rated romance, and just enough chase scenes to keep audiences on the edge of seats. But look again and “Gleaming the Cube” changes its colors, revealing a more poignant tale. Beyond the stunts are subtler shades, of a displaced culture coming to grips with a confusing land, of dignity and failure, of growing up and coming of age.

The central character is Brian, a 16-year-old skate punk played by bony and lanky Christian Slater, who describes the character as “a fun guy . . . kind of a punker, but sort of charming.” Brian is thrill-seeking, rebellious--and scornful of do-gooders like his adopted Vietnamese brother, Vinh. But when Vinh is murdered, Brian is forced to grow up quick as he struggles to bring the killers to justice.

Le Tuan plays Col. Vu Dal Trac, a fiercely patriotic Vietnamese who clings to the hope of returning his country to its former glory. Le Tuan is enthusiastic about the film’s Vietnamese angle.

“I don’t think anyone would be suicidal enough to put out this kind of money to make a movie just about Vietnamese. . . . In ‘Gleaming the Cube,’ the skateboard story line will (bring) commercial success, but we (the Vietnamese people) will ride the coattail of that success.”

His co-star, Kieu Chinh, is pleased by the way the film portrays the Vietnamese experience. “We’ve seen a lot of films about Vietnam, like ‘Platoon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ but they’re all about soldiers, macho-macho fighting. Nothing about its people, its cultures. I hope this is a steppingstone to more stories like this.”

In addition to their on-camera roles, Tuan and Chinh served as the film’s technical advisers, helping director Graeme Clifford (who made “Frances”) maintain authenticity and detail in the Vietnamese scenes. They coordinated hundreds of Vietnamese extras during filming in Westminster’s Little Saigon, working with locals at the Asian Garden shopping center, Today Plaza, Market 99 and Thanh Tam billiards hall. And they supervised a major festival scene with 300 Vietnamese at the foot of Balboa Pier in Newport.

“We were fortunate to work with Graeme,” said Tuan. “He was very up front asking for our suggestions about things in the script that are related to the Vietnamese people. He took my suggestions immediately and made the changes in the script, no questions.”

As an example, Tuan described an important change that was made in his own character. Seeking to portray Col. Trac as a true patriot, Tolkin originally had him wearing a uniform through most of the film. Tuan pointed out that a Vietnamese military man who had fought on the losing side would rarely want to show himself in uniform. So when the cameras rolled, Trac was dressed in uniform only once, during a war memorial ceremony.

Exposure to the Vietnamese culture through Chinh, Tuan, and young Minh Luong (who plays Tina, the Tracs’ daughter) has been an eye-opener for many on the film. Director Clifford, a native of Sydney, Australia, says he has long been fascinated with the subject.

“When you make a movie about any kind of real situation, any real cultural milieu like the Vietnamese, you can’t help but learn a great deal,” said Clifford. “Now I have a sense of what it must be like to live through that. It’s caused me to ask questions. That’s what film making’s all about.”

Young Slater has learned a thing or two as well. “It’s just a totally different way of life. They have these set rules for everything, like how the daughter treats the father, all that kind of stuff--it’s a lot more structured. It’s really beautiful.” The gentler moments in “Gleaming” are the ones that Slater says appeal most to him.

Actually, Slater said, the Vietnamese culture wasn’t the only aspect of the story that was foreign to him.

“I’m from Manhattan, where it’s suicide to try to skateboard,” he said with a grin. “You hear stories about guys who get three concussions and break their arms and keep on doing it! I don’t understand it. Hey, I don’t want to break anything.

“I think I’m going to hang up my skateboard after the film. Maybe use it as a book shelf. . . . “

Stacy Peralta, a nationally acclaimed skateboard champion, served as technical adviser for the skateboarding scenes, leading a team of professional skateboarders through stunts that could make Evel Kneivel faint. Production manager Smith described a climactic chase scene filmed along Long Beach’s Shoreline Drive, which doubled in the movie for the San Diego Freeway:

“Brian’s stunt double (Mike McGill, one of the nation’s top five skaters) cuts underneath a moving 18-wheeler and grabs on to the side of this pizza truck. When he hits the off-ramp, he pushes off the truck and literally flies up off the freeway wall, crosses over two lanes and catches the bad guy at the side of an overpass bridge. It’s amazing.” The completed chase scene runs only five or six minutes on film but took over three weeks of shooting to accomplish.

But how did scriptwriter Tolkin get from that motel room in Anaheim to skateboarding on the freeway? “The skate story clicked,” he explained, “because Brian was Zorro, a kid who gave up the thing he held most dear--the idea of being a skate punk--to track his brother’s killers.

“Plus, I was interested in the obsession of it all. There’s a lot of drama in these kids. I ski and rock climb, so I have to travel a long way to enjoy my sports. These kids just put on their shoes and they’re in Aspen, the sidewalk is an Olympic course. Every curb, every sidewalk, every parking lot is Eden.” The title “Gleaming the Cube” is a skateboard expression; it means reaching the ultimate.