A Hollywood Ending : Despite Slim Budget, Setbacks, ‘Hung Vuong’ Makes It to the Screen

Charlie Nguyen’s first feature film is a historical epic that has just about all the elements one would expect: a large cast, lavish costumes, a palace, horses, battle scenes, political intrigue, a beautiful princess in peril and a handsome warrior who gets the girl and saves the day.

What it didn’t have was a budget of epic proportions.

“The Era of Hung Vuong XVIII: A Vietnam Legend,” which premieres today at the Stanton Theatre, was produced for a paltry $280,000 by Nguyen’s independent, Westminster-based Cinema Pictures.

Not surprisingly, with such a meager budget, shooting conditions were less than ideal. The raw footage sat for a year while funds were raised for post-production work. And paychecks have yet to be handed out to cast and crew members.

“We just fed ‘em,” says writer-director Nguyen, 27. “And we still owe a lot on our credit cards.”

Although the Vietnamese-American filmmaker hopes eventually to compensate everyone who helped out on the three-year project, and to gain some recognition for his company, he doesn’t expect hefty profits for “Hung Vuong.”

What “pushed us into something like this” wasn’t dreams of riches and fame but a desire to present Vietnam’s history from a Vietnamese perspective and to reconnect with his own cultural roots, Nguyen said.

He came to the United States with his family when he was 10 and settled in Texas, in a small town not known for its ethnic diversity. “I was out of touch with the Vietnamese people for a long time,” he said.

Nguyen rediscovered his heritage after moving to Westminster, where he began directing music videos for Vietnamese American artists. That led to his first short film, “Short Life,” which focused on a family coping with death.

“It received a lot of compliments from the community,” Nguyen said, “and that encouraged us to make this movie.”

“Hung Vuong,” shot in 35mm, in Vietnamese with English subtitles, is based on events in 286 BC when two kingdoms struggled to unite against the threat of Chinese invasion. In the film, certain members of the ruling class attempt to subvert the union, and a princess (played by Thuy Vi) is caught up in the turmoil.

Along with writing and directing the movie, Nguyen starred as a heroic warrior who falls in love with the princess and joins the battle for his country’s survival.

The film’s producer, Nguyen’s sister Thanh, said the original idea was to make “Hung Vuong” a short film in keeping with the modest budget. But when construction of the palace set was finished, she said, “It looked so nice. We thought it would be a waste to do only a short.

“At that time I had no idea what a feature would cost us,” said Thanh, 25, a 1993 graduate of Cal State Fullerton.

Lacking the funds to shoot in a jungle-like setting, the crew tried gamely to transform the sand-and-cactus environs of Hemet into a rain forest. Bringing in bamboo, banana trees and sugar cane helped only so much; most of the filming had to be done at night to conceal buildings, utility lines and anything else that would look out of place in ancient Vietnam.

Problems soon began to mount. An actor broke his leg during a martial arts sequence; Nguyen’s brother Tri, a 22-year-old cinematographer, was knocked unconscious in a fall; crew members had to fend off rattlesnakes and bees and cope with the desert’s heat and sub-zero temperatures.

Then there was a village scene that required dozens of peasant farmers--and Nguyen didn’t have the money to hire extras. So the cast went to a Vietnamese church one bright Sunday and asked those in the pews to help out. More than 100 turned up for the shoot the next day, and ended up feeling so sorry for the crew that they returned the following week with food.

The moment of deepest despair came when a ferocious wind storm destroyed two sets. But the palace was left standing.

Charlie Nguyen remembered lamenting at one point: “Why don’t you just blow the castle down so we can pack up and go home?”

Eventually the sets were rebuilt and production resumed with some financial assistance from family members. After 88 days of shooting, director Nguyen was able to call it a wrap. But the project languished for a year until he could come up with the money for post-production.

Producer Thanh (who also portrays a confidante to the princess) said that she often worried that “Hung Vuong” never would be finished. “Sometimes I got so stressed,” she said, remembering how hard it was to balance all-night film shoots with the demands of work and school.

But all’s well that ends well.

“We got the print last week,” said Nguyen. “We only got one print, and we’re paying credit for that.”

His dream is to show “Hung Vuong” at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Meanwhile, he already has begun work on his next project, a character-driven movie aimed at the art-house crowd.

“We’d love to do a historical drama,” said Thanh. “But we’d need a larger budget.”

The Stanton Theatre is at 11300 Beach Boulevard. Information: (714) 897-1380.

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this report.