Hollywood without borders

Ivan Zivkovic aspires to be the next John Ford. At the moment, however, he pays the bills by editing videos and shooting second unit on low-budget features. Still, the 33-year-old director has managed one sought-after badge of arrival in Hollywood: He has been dubbed an “alien of extraordinary ability” by the INS.

Standing near the bar at West Hollywood’s dark, trendy Formosa Cafe, bourbon in hand, Zivkovic twists a farm metaphor to explain the obviousness of his decision to come to Hollywood from Serbia five years ago. “What do you do if you want to grow oranges and you live in Siberia?” he asks, voice booming above the din of music and conversation. “You move to Florida. That is what I decided to do.”

Behind Zivkovic, a pack of martini drinkers listens closely as an immigration lawyer soberly explains aspects of the law. A cacophony of languages -- Spanish, Mandarin, French, some heavily accented English -- ricochets around the room.

Clearly, this is no run-of-the-mill happy hour, and Zivkovic is not the only “alien of extraordinary ability” in town.

Hundreds like him have turned out for this monthly gathering of the group calling itself the Film Expats. They’re here to commiserate, network and celebrate their arrival in Hollywood, where they’ve come to ply trades ranging from directing to deal-making.

Even in an industry town where cliques form a protective armor against the cruelties of the business, Zivkovic and his pals stand apart. They’re Hollywood’s newest immigrants -- a new breed of creative talent that’s arrived on the scene just as the industry is expanding its international ambitions like never before.

“Hollywood is more open than ever to reaching out,” says John Lesher, an agent at the talent agency Endeavor, who represents directors like Brazilians Fernando Meirelles (“City of God”), Walter Salles (“Central Station”) and Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Amores Perros”). “The excitement to sign people has made things much more competitive. We will take the best from wherever they are from.”

Of course, Hollywood, built by immigrants, always has taken the best from the world: Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Evelyn Waugh, Ernst Lubitsch, to name just a few who made their way here in the 1930s and 1940s.

But this latest wave of expats is not a Eurocentric lot. They come from Asia, Latin America, Australia, as well as from Europe, reflecting contemporary immigration patterns and representing some of the globe’s hottest movie-making regions.

Unlike previous generations, this group for the most part has not come to Hollywood to escape poverty or wars or persecution. They tend to be well-educated, show-business-savvy young men and women with a hunger to learn from the world’s leading exporter of entertainment.

And they have landed on California’s shore at the right time. Today, nearly 60% of Hollywood’s box office receipts come from the international market.

Increasingly, Hollywood is feeding its gigantic production needs by searching for content, funding and talent from abroad. All of Hollywood’s major talent agencies have people in charge of finding the latest trends, films, books and people from around the world -- anybody and anything that might translate into English and big dollars.

“It’s an asset to speak more than one language and to know the film industry in other countries,” says German emigre Susanna Bieger, a co-founder of the Film Expats group, who works as a talent/material scout for a literary agency in town. “This is not an American industry, it’s a multicultural industry.”

With 526 members from 50 countries, the Film Expats group is perhaps the largest group of its kind in L.A. Another is the whimsically named Frijolywood, made up of more than 100 Mexican film industry transplants (and another hundred or so non-Mexicans who are part of “Friends of Frijolywood”). Other loose networks of immigrants, including Australians and mainland Chinese, also gather regularly around town.

Most are not the famous foreigners -- people like Ang Lee, Alfonso Cuaron, John Woo, Gael Garcia Bernal or Penelope Cruz -- currently in vogue in Hollywood. But they do form part of the industry’s core, working as producers, executives, publicists, directors, actors, screenwriters and cinematographers.

It is difficult to gauge exact numbers. None of the Hollywood trade unions or talent agencies keep track of the entertainment industry’s immigrant work force.

“The truth is that the INS doesn’t even know,” said Chris Wright, an immigration lawyer who founded the Wright Law Firm in Woodland Hills.

But the consensus is that a strong foreign presence is a highly visible part of today’s Hollywood.

“Go to any cafe frequented by industry types and you are bound to hear as many accents in English from Europe, Asia or Latin America as you are going to hear from other parts of the U.S.,” said Wright, who himself is South African.

GLOBAL CONNECTION

Many of these expats, like Zivkovic, come to America via the American Film Institute, which qualifies them for one year of work after graduation.

After a year, some are hired by a production company or a studio, which then facilitates a working visa. Others come in as tourists and, because of their skill levels, land gigs quickly and become “aliens of extraordinary ability.” Others may work illegally.

Like other immigrants, the Hollywood expats find ways to adapt, survive and, in some cases, thrive. As Hollywood gives them work and connections, they act as Hollywood’s liaisons to the world.

When Daxing Zhang landed in Hollywood seven years ago, he was just another hopeful actor, waiting in line for his big break. In China, he had acted in several movies as well as in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 Oscar-winning saga, “The Last Emperor.”

But finding steady work here proved difficult. So on a recommendation from a producer friend, he was hired in 1998 as a translator and liaison for Wo Ping Yuen, the choreographer for “The Matrix.”

Zhang immediately saw an opportunity and took advantage of Hollywood’s latest trend: martial arts choreography.

Coming on the heels of “The Matrix,” Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” further fueled the martial arts craze. So Zhang quickly compiled a demo tape of Wo Ping’s brother, Cheung-Yan, also a choreographer-director in Hong Kong but an unknown in Hollywood.

Zhang pitched him as a martial arts expert to the studios and helped land Cheung-Yan as the choreographer for “Charlie’s Angels,” “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” and “Daredevil.” He is now Cheung-Yan’s manager, negotiating deals on his behalf.

“Where I come from in China, film is not something to make money with. In most other countries, film is not a commodity,” says Zhang, who lives in Los Angeles with his Irish American wife and 6-month-old baby.

“Here, it’s a very different ballgame. So you become less of an artist and go with the flow.... We go with the highest bidder.”

But landing in America -- never mind in the cutthroat world of Hollywood -- without money or contacts can be intimidating.

When producer Ross Grayson Bell (“Fight Club”) came to L.A. in 1988, he didn’t know a soul. Bell, from Sydney, came to Hollywood as an intern to the producer Roger Corman.

Bell didn’t have a car or a place to crash. So he lived in Corman’s office and slept on the couch until a friend (from New Zealand) rescued him months later.

“I had to fend for myself,” he says. “Today, anybody who is in Australia and is thinking of coming to L.A. would ask if they know anybody and the word would go out. You never leave an office or a place without a contact.”

While Australians may have an easier time assimilating than other groups -- mainly because of the language -- they do have their cultural quirks. And in an industry that worships celebrity and wealth, they often have to rely on one another to keep a proper dose of Aussie humility.

“We have this saying about tall poppies in the field. The tallest poppy, the one that dares to put its head above the rest, will get cut down,” Grayson Bell says. “The minute you think you are the tallest poppy, Australians will cut you down. There is no star system in Australia. You do not respect people who get too big for themselves. And so you can let your guard down when you are with other Australians -- it’s about keeping in touch with your base.”

FRIJOLYWOOD

You wouldn’t think that keeping in touch with their base would be a problem for Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles. After all, at least one-third of the county’s population considers itself to be of Mexican origin. But Mexicans in Hollywood are a rare breed.

They are neither Chicanos, born in this country, nor the impoverished Mexican or Central American immigrants who are on the front lines of California’s immigration wars.

And because they’ve lost daily ties with their homeland, they live in a kind of netherworld. So, two years ago, documentary filmmaker Elias Nahmias founded Frijolywood.

Most of these expats knew one another well from their days in the Mexican film industry. But they are finding their homeland connections can fade quickly.

Nahmias was surprised -- and somewhat saddened -- to see that he didn’t recognize any of the new filmmakers’ names listed at the most recent Guadalajara Film Festival, Mexico’s premier showcase for film.

“There comes a time when you visit Mexico and you realize that you are not part of that world anymore,” Nahmias says. “Yet your identity is already formed as a Mexican and so you are really not American. And frankly, the connection between Chicano filmmakers and Mexican filmmakers is not that strong.”

Frijolywood members bond over anecdotes of their old neighborhoods (many come from Mexico City) and the day-to-day struggles they face in Hollywood. They also come together to recall bad memories of the Mexican film industry’s politics and difficulties that forced them to flee north.

“We got tired of not being able to advance because three politicians stood in our way,” says Maria Amparo Escandon, a screenwriter-novelist (“Santitos”) who founded Acento, an advertising firm in L.A., with her husband, Benito Martinez-Creel, 20 years ago.

With so many Mexicans nominated for Oscars this year (Salma Hayek for “Frida”; “The Crime of Father Amaro” for best foreign language film, and “Y Tu Mama Tambien’s” Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron for best screenplay), Nahmias decided it was time for their first full-blown party.

Carlos Carrera, “Father Amaro’s” director (who signed with Creative Artists Agency after the movie opened), showed up while people danced, ate homemade guacamole, tacos and sushi. The party ended at dawn with the revelers agreeing to do it again soon.

Beyond the socializing, Nahmias and other Frijolywood members see themselves as importers and defenders of Latin America’s rich literary, artistic and cinematic traditions.

And from the vantage point of their new professional home, Hollywood, they’ve made a point of civic engagement.

They plunged into an e-mail campaign against Vanity Fair when the magazine published a satirical essay by Dame Edna (complete with accompanying cartoon of a man in a sombrero talking to an armadillo) suggesting that learning Spanish was useful only to communicate with “the help” or “the leaf blower.” (Salma Hayek, coincidentally on the magazine’s cover that month and a friend of many Frijolywood members, jumped in too, writing a letter suggesting that Dame Edna “start talking to the help and the leaf blowers; it seems to me they have a lot to teach you.” The magazine published an apologetic letter.)

Frijolywood also persuaded the City Council to rename a street in East Los Angeles in honor of Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And the group regularly sponsors a lecture series at the Los Angeles Central Library.

“There is a long tradition of literature, art and film that we bring from Mexico that often gets lost in translation,” said Gabriel Beristain, cinematographer of the coming “S.W.A.T.” and a member of Frijolywood. “After our self-imposed exile, we realized we couldn’t really integrate ourselves fully into the U.S. Latino culture. Within all of these wonderful Latino cultures in the U.S. there is a different one, which is ours and comes directly from Mexico.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Some of Hollywood’s international cast

Since the movies’ earliest days, performers, writers, composers and directors have come from other countries to try their luck in Hollywood.

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SESSUE HAYAKAWA, Japan

Best known for his Oscar-nominated performance as the strong-willed Col. Saito in 1957’s “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” the Japanese actor came to America during the silent-film era, starring in such melodramatic classics as Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Cheat” (1915). During his five-decade career, he also produced and wrote films.

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ERICH VON STROHEIM, Austria

One of the most influential and controversial directors of the silent era, known dramas such as “Foolish Wives” and “Greed.” After his directing career was finished, Von Stroheim was an actor , notably as Norma Desmond’s butler, Max, in “Sunset Blvd.” (1950), directed by fellow Austrian Billy Wilder.

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RUDOLPH VALENTINO, Italy

The tall, dark and handsome Italian sex symbol displayed tremendous sex appeal in such silent films as “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” “The Sheik,” “Blood and Sand” and “Son of the Sheik.”

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GRETA GARBO, Sweden

The tall, androgynous beauty came to MGM in 1926, and often teamed in silent melodramas with actor John Gilbert. She managed the transition to sound, appearing in such classics as “Anna Christie,” “Anna Karenina” and “Ninotchka.”

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ERNST LUBITSCH, Germany

Mary Pickford brought him to American in 1922 to make “Rosita” and he stayed until his death in 1947. His deft comedy style, known as “the Lubitsch touch,” has often been imitated, but few films match “Trouble In Paradise” or “The Shop Around the Corner.”

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CARY GRANT,

England

Though he was born Archie Leach to a lower-middle class family in Bristol, Grant became the quintessential sophisticated, urbane Englishman (though he often played Americans), equally at home in screwball comedies (“The Awful Truth”), thrillers (“Notorious”) and dramas (“None But the Lonely Heart”).

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ALFRED HITCHCOCK, England

The Master of Suspense came to America in 1939 and directed two of the 1940 best picture nominees -- “Rebecca,” which won, and “Foreign Correspondent.” For the next 36 years, Hitchcock scared the bejesus out of moviegoers with such classics as “Psycho” and “The Birds.”

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BILLY WILDER, Austria-Hungary

Hitler’s rise to power sent Wilder fleeing to France and then America. Under contract to Paramount by the mid-’30s, he co-wrote a series of sharp, satirical comedies and in 1944 he directed one of his greatest films, “Double Indemnity.” Wilder moved between stark dramas such as “Sunset Blvd.” and “Ace in the Hole” and comedies like “Some Like It Hot” and “One, Two, Three.”

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LOUIS MALLE, France

A director who came to fame during the late 1950s New Wave, Malle was one of few from that era who found success in American films. He came to America in the late ‘70s and directed “Pretty Baby,” the multi-Oscar-nominated “Atlantic City” and the cult hit “My Dinner With Andre.”

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PETER WEIR, Australia

After the art-house hits “The Last Wave” and “Picnic at Hanging Rock” in his native country, Weir directed “Witness,” “The Year of Living Dangerously,” “Fearless” and “The Truman Show.” His latest feature, “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” is set for Christmas release.

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MIRA NAIR, India

The English/Hindi director achieved international success with her first feature, 1988’s “Salaam Bombay!,” which was nominated for the best foreign language Oscar. She’s continued to make films in her homeland, like “Monsoon Wedding,” as well as in America: “Mississippi Masala,” “The Perez Family” and “Hysterical Blindness.”

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ANG LEE, Taiwan

Lee initially made his mark with his Chinese-language ensemble comedies “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “The Wedding Banquet.” His first English-language film was “Sense and Sensibility” (1995), and the New York University grad has since tackled American angst (“The Ice Storm”), a Civil War western (“Ride With the Devil”) and action-adventure (“The Hulk”). He returned to China in 2000 to make “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which won the best foreign language film Oscar.