“We don’t need Hollywood”: How ‘The Paper Tigers’ filmmaker Bao Tran defied whitewashing pressure and went DIY for his heartwarming kung fu comedy [Fantasia]

It took nearly a decade for Seattle filmmaker Bao Tran to complete his feature directing debut, the heartwarming kung fu comedy The Paper Tigers, which has its world premiere on Sunday, August 30 during the virtual Fantasia Film Festival.

The story of three childhood friends and kung fu disciples, Danny (Alain Uy, Marvel’s Helstrom), Hing (Ron Yuan, Disney’s upcoming live-action Mulan), and Jim (Mykel Shannon Jenkins, Undisputed III: Redemption), who come together decades later in middle-age to avenge their murdered master (Roger Yuan, John Wick 3), The Paper Tigers is a funny and sweet film that also features legitimate action sequences —  it’s the rare film that manages to work both as a comedy and as a traditional action movie, a tone that’s notoriously difficult to nail down.

Bao developed the film for years, and studios and distributors were interested, but he kept getting the same feedback — make the characters White. “We knew it was going to come and we knew that race bending or whitewashing was going to be a challenge,” says Bao. “But, you know, it was clear for us — that’s not what we want to do.”

Buckling down and committing to a DIY ethic, even in face of offers exponentially higher than the budget he ended up with, Bao crowdfunded a portion of the film and relied on the generosity of the Seattle community, who rallied behind the local production in a city not necessarily known for filmmaking. Filmed predominately in the city’s Chinatown-International District, local restaurants donated food, let the production film in their spaces for free, and even provided free hotel rooms for the non-local actors, which allowed Bao to keep to his tight budget while strengthening the community’s ties to the film.

We spoke to Bao about what inspired his crowd-pleasing film, the long process of getting it to the screen, ignoring the whitewashing pressure and taking the more difficult DIY route, and much more. The Paper Tigers screens as part of the virtual Fantasia Film Festival on Sunday, August 30 at 9:00 pm and on Tuesday, September 1 at 5:30 pm. Tickets are available here.

Bad Feeling Magazine: How did the idea for this film first come about? How long had it been kicking around with you?

Bao Tran: I’d had this script as an idea for about nine years. And through that time, it just took time as far as writing and developing the script and putting it together. So yeah, it’s been almost a decade. And my producers started coming in at different stages. I think we all deserve a PhD, I think we should get an honourary degree sometime soon, I expect one and then the invitation next spring. As an independent film, you know, you have to kind of bootstrap, and raise your own money and figure out ways to put it together.

But as far as the story, it was just something that I was really interested in. It’s the story about men of a certain age, and I was starting to become a man of a certain age, [laughs] and it was a little bit of ruminating about what that could mean, but especially about, you know, this theme of things that were valuable to you when you were younger, and whether you grow up and grow out of them and forget about it, and whether it’s worth coming back to and revisiting. I always thought that was a really interesting thing to [develop] a movie around, and this is in a martial arts genre, and exploring that as well.

Martial arts films in English or those that have been more widely seen by English crowds, tend to be more serious, but there are really great comedic kung fu films — was that something that inspired you, the fact that English audiences haven’t had a chance to see a really fun and funny kung fu film in a long time?

Yeah, it came as a consequence, it’s just being born in America but from an Asian ethnicity, you know, we are in kind of an environment, it’s just how we see the world automatically. So, I wouldn’t say it was totally intentional. It’s just kind of like, okay, we love Hong Kong movies, we live here in America, and we have an experience that’s lived here in the States that’s very different. And we want to just tell a story [about] the way we see the world, so it just kind of came out that way. But yeah, I mean, English language American film was always what we wanted to do and you know, I don’t speak with an accent, so we wanted to see characters and actors that would play these parts without having the need to do an accent, so that was a way of putting forth their own story.

The cast that you assembled is so good, and it feels like you’ve seen them before, there’s something comforting about them. Was it difficult to cast? They have to have dramatic chops, comedy chops, and they have to be able to do the fighting, that’s a pretty tall order.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, speaking to kind of the challenges of actors of colour in Hollywood, you know, you do reach a certain bit of a glass ceiling. So the parts that you have can tend to be not as big, you don’t get offered these main parts. These guys are equally as talented, but the parts that they get are — I think what you’re kind of pointing to — you kind of see them around, they’re familiar faces or supporting parts in other films. So they’re familiar enough, but not necessarily household names. So, that’s kind of where we’re at as an industry. I think it’s wonderfully refreshing for them to come to this film, and then see that they could have a bigger part or have a more fleshed-out character.

And, yeah, to your point, it’s definitely challenging, as far as what we wanted to do, especially at our budget level, you know, we didn’t have like, a six-month 300 Sparta boot camp, like, we know, we can’t do any of that. It’s kind of that challenge, and honestly, it was a debate all the way down to the final decisions because, do you cast a martial artist or stunt person who can maybe act, or have an actor who can really play the part and give life to it? But we did luck out. I mean with Ron, he’s like a veteran, who has martial arts chops and acting chops. So, we definitely lucked out with him. But like with Alain playing Danny and Mykel playing Jim, you know, they’re not as experienced as Ron. So it was just trying to get that right balance, but in a way that lent itself to what we were trying to do because they are out of shape, a little behind. So, you know, try to kind of embrace the challenges on that and then figure out what to do. But ultimately, I think we went for the best actor for the part. It helped in a bigger way than just [having] cool action, you know?

Yeah, definitely. When you were shopping the film around, I was reading that you were close to signing a couple of deals for even four times what your budget ended up being, but they want you to make some drastic changes. Can you talk about that process and how you decided to follow your vision, even if it meant much more work and a longer development process?

It was a bit of a crash course in film production, film financing. So, you know, we learned a lot as we went, and, obviously, we wanted to find some type of studio support, because it would make fundraising a lot easier and we could have done this movie, after one or two years of development, and just like, been off to the races. But we had these meetings with studios, these mini studios are streamers and stuff like that, but they were really interested in the concept and the idea of it, but they wanted to change our POC leading cast to White people. So, it was like, “Hey, we love the script, but can we change it to Caucasians, because that way we can cast someone more well-known or just have something a little bit more appealing or mainstream.”  We knew it was going to come and we knew that race bending or whitewashing was going to be a challenge. But, you know, it was clear for us — that’s not what we want to do. So we just had to pull up our bootstraps and do it ourselves. That was kind of a clarion call for us to realize what we want to do because that money comes with strings. And then we had creative control by the time we were able to make it ourselves.

What was the choreography process was like? Action choreography is really intense and difficult, and for this film, because not everyone is at the same speed, you have to have a number of different types of fighting styles within the film. That must have been a challenge as well.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, props to our action director, Ken Quitugua, who was also featured in the film. Obviously, we had different stages of fighting, one was in the opening scene when they’re in their prime, and then later on as they’re older, and then facing off against various types of opponents of different ages and stuff like that. I think the important thing was that we wanted to keep it grounded. And we were always on the same page as far as like trying to understand, to really draw out the consequences of what it means for these people in their bodies at this certain age. And kind of really dig deep and pull out as much as we can, as far as consequences or results or just kind of like the contrast of, like you were saying, the fast and slow of that. So, you know, it almost sounds like a musical analogy, just trying to think about in terms of something like jazz, where things are a little more free-flowing. What we wanted to do was kind of break it up a little bit and make it a little messy. Nothing about these heroes was clean or crisp at all. So if a kick comes through, and then they actually take it with their body a little bit, that’s great as well. We kind of embraced those little happy imperfections.

Was the entire thing shot in Seattle?

Yeah, we’re based in Seattle, we shot all in Seattle in the International District, as we call it, our Chinatown. So I mean, it was very much like a neighborhood and a community affair. A lot of people like local restaurants came out and donated food. It was a really cool thing as far as coming full circle, like when I was saying before, when we pitch to Hollywood, like, we don’t need Hollywood, we had our community here that was coming in and pitching in and donating and finding extra apartment rooms and stuff because we had cast and crew that was from out of town. So it was just a really incredible community experience that we had. And we were pulling, you know, thousands of favors, obviously. But that’s what you have to do with an indie film. But yeah, it was really very heartwarming just to have all that kind of community show up and support this film.

What do you think resonated with everyone about the project that got them to rally behind it?

I think it was a lot of things. So I think, number one, Seattle film is not crazy on the map. You know, there’s a lot of films that come out of here, but it’s not known as a filmmaking city. So, I think anytime something of this scope and scale happens, then of course, the community definitely wants to get all in because it represents their town. I think, number two, was just also seeing Asian Americans making films, to be frank. Because we were in Chinatown- International District, it was just kind of a rallying cry.

I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus necessarily, but there was another show called The Man in the High Castle, they shot some stuff in Seattle. And you know, there was some friction, I think between the community and the production. I think it was maybe an example of show big timing. So I think we were kind of a welcome contrast or a welcome difference. We didn’t pay like The Man in the High Castle, they definitely paid everybody, as far as like, if they shot in a restaurant or, you know, a shop, they definitely pay for that, but I think it was a little more transactional. I think it was kind of interesting to have us come in as a community and have local kids making this movie, so I think that [made for] a difference in treatment.

The Paper Tigers screens as part of the virtual Fantasia Film Festival on Sunday, August 30 at 9:00 pm and on Tuesday, September 1 at 5:30 pm. Tickets are available here.