A girl with a mission

Jeffrey Kramer had an inkling that his teenage daughter’s 2002 trip to the Philippines on a medical mercy mission would have its life-altering aspects. He didn’t realize that one of the lives most changed would be his.

Kramer’s feature film debut, “Smile,” opens Friday in Los Angeles and San Francisco before rolling out nationally. He wrote and directed the story based loosely on his daughter Katie’s experience as a volunteer for Operation Smile, a Virginia-based charity, founded in 1982, that provides free reconstructive surgery worldwide to children with facial deformities.

Rather than head to the Philippines, Kramer, a journeyman stage and TV actor who lives in Malibu, chose to film much of his picture in China, a country that has long fascinated him but that often gives Western projects the cold shoulder.

“While it was extremely difficult to obtain the [filming] permit, once they met me and spent a little time with me, they were in complete support,” Kramer said of Chinese government officials who preside over their nation’s entertainment and media. “I had freedom to shoot anything and anywhere I wanted, which is unheard of. And they pre-approved the movie for release in China, which just doesn’t happen.”

That unusual level of support has much to do with the film’s gentle, heartwarming script, in which Katie, a self-absorbed Malibu teen, becomes interested in the wistful tale of Lin, a teen with facial deformities who was abandoned as an infant. Rescued from a haystack by a blue-collar worker, Lin was reared as his own. The father’s loving attention to his adopted daughter, who hides her disfigurement beneath a blue scarf and floppy hat, eventually leads to the disintegration of his marriage and estrangement from his own biological son.

“Smile” stars Mika Boorem (“Blue Crush”) as Katie and costars Beau Bridges, Sean Astin, Linda Hamilton and Cheri Oteri (of “Saturday Night Live” fame). The coming-of-age story takes young Katie from the beaches of Malibu to the densely packed cities and villages of China, where she encounters millions of people living a life far different from her privileged existence.

After scouting 40 towns and cities in China, Kramer selected Shanghai and nearby Kunshan and Jinxi, a historic town of about 15,000 that is built around the zigzagging Jinxi River in southeastern Jiangsu province.

Kramer and his mostly Chinese production crew spent three months on location in early 2004, challenged at times by unseasonably chilly rain and the lack of toilets and electricity. The first-time writer and director was struck, however, by the many kindnesses of strangers.

In Jinxi, an elderly man who had been born with a deformity offered Kramer the use of his small, dimly lighted house. It became the residence of Lin (played by Yi Ding, who as a child was featured in “The Joy Luck Club”) and her father, Daniel (Luoyong Wang, who starred on Broadway in “Miss Saigon”).

Eighteen-hour shoots were common, and a noodle restaurant down the street would stay open to feed the crew. One villager painted an early scene from the film -- of a cormorant-laden fishing boat passing under a bridge -- and presented it to Kramer. To repay their graciousness, Kramer featured townspeople throughout the film, including a pair of sisters, 88 and 92, who had never strayed far from Jinxi.

One scene features locals sitting in an amphitheater that Kramer had built in a Ming Dynasty courtyard. They are raptly watching a vintage musical Western starring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. The scene has particular poignancy for Kramer, who in the 1980s launched a family entertainment company with the famous duo. He still runs it today with Roy Rogers Jr., known as Dusty.

All the while, the “Smile” crew routinely and uncomplainingly put in 15- to 20-hour days.

“The level of artistic integrity and the work ethic were unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” Kramer said.

The project also attracted significant talent from the United States. Stan Winston’s studio -- Winston is an Oscar-winning special effects artist -- created the prosthetics that turned Ding’s lovely face into the malformed visage that is not fully revealed until late in the movie. And he did so at a discount, said Kramer, who quipped that Winston’s “typical budget is what my entire movie cost to make.”

For Katie Kramer, now 19 and a sophomore at Loyola Marymount University, watching her father create and mount a story based on her experience -- or, as the movie poster notes, 80,000 true stories -- has been “kind of surreal.” She almost didn’t believe him when he told her he had written a rough draft, after staring for months at a photo that hangs over his desk of Katie and a child who was helped by Operation Smile.

“I just know that when I came back from my mission, he saw how it changed my life and me as a person,” said Katie Kramer, a former competitive figure skater who now studies dance and business.

As their father worked on location in 2004, Kramer and her three siblings -- Nicole, 30; Dashiell, 16; and Dusty, 14 -- joined their mother, Quinton, for a tour of China.

Yet again, Katie found, her eyes were opened.

“I felt so guilty,” she said. “I was touring, and I felt so helpless. There are so many people who need help. It reminds you of how you live and how easy it is to take stuff for granted.”

Her current work for Operation Smile involves an effort to launch at college campuses a community service program similar to the high school drive that first lured her. A portion of the film’s proceeds will go to Operation Smile, which plans to go on changing lives.

For her father, having the chance to film a project in China has been life changing but also life affirming.

Said the daughter: “I can’t imagine that I will ever experience anything like this again.”