DJ Chen is the 24-year-old director of Formula 17, a delightful gay romantic comedy that struck gold in Taiwan's box office last year. APA asks her about her background, her comedic influences, and her experience inadvertantly offending some governments and not really caring.
A young woman director making a romantic comedy about gay boys. A lot of people seem to ask her -- why? But if you're going for light-hearted, innocent entertainment and targeting the female demographic, it makes total sense. Two male leads to stare at, instead of one. Boy-on-boy action gives the illusion of freshness and uniqueness, but you get to follow the frilly formula that we pretend we love to hate, but really, we just hate that we love. As gay males, the characters have intrinsic flair. You get both the adorable, sensitive guy and the magnetic, bad-boy charmer. And while both guys are equally and ridiculously clueless, they can get away with it, because, let's face it, girls adore gay guys and will forgive them for anything. Gay guys epitomize the notion of harmless fun, and they can always be counted on to provide a lift in spirits -- much like the purpose of a romantic comedy. A young woman director making a romantic comedy about gay boys? Sounds like a perfect fit to me.
Formula 17 is DJ Chen's (Chen Yin-jung) first feature film, and she creates an unabashedly candy-coated super-fabulous blissful gay bubble for us to crawl into. Entertaining us is the goal, and entertaining us is what she and her actors do. Let's not overanalyze seems to be the motto. Let's be silly and make each other laugh.
Previous to this, Chen's short film, Sorry Spy (2002), won the Taiwan International Student Golden Lion award. She admires the work of Spielberg, Scorsece, Chaplin, Guy Ritchie, David Fincher, and Stephen Chow. She will soon be working on a follow-up project that reteams her with Tony Yang, her Formula 17 leading man, as she attempts to pave the way for a new generation of young Taiwanese filmmakers. --Ada Tseng
Interview with DJ Chen
April 30, 2004
Interviewed by Ada Tseng
Additional Questions and Research by Jennifer Flinn
Translated by Henry Tseng
APA: It's really impressive that your very first feature film is a big hit in Taiwan, and to top it all off, you're only 24 years old. How did you get here?
DJ Chen: In 2002, I graduated from Yuan Ze University, studying Information Communication, and then spent a year in a production house working as production assistant. When I was in college, I had made two short films for my final graduation projects, which were entered into the Digital Golden Horse film festival. I was the writer for one of them and the director for the other. There, the producer saw the films and then talked to me about working together.
APA: What were your main influences?
DJC: My favorite director and actor is Charlie Chaplin. His work is the best and very difficult to bypass. So, he is my favorite and my most respected director and actor.
APA: What was your impression of Taiwanese cinema growing up?
DJC: When I was little, I watched ---- it was a very moving film. There was point in time when the Taiwanese film industry was blooming, when I was very young. But that was not really my time. Later, when I was growing up, Hollywood films and Hong Kong films were the most popular. In the last 10 years, the art value of Taiwanese new film has been very high, but at the same time, I can also feel that the Taiwanese film market has been in a slump. But you can't blame the films for that new wave. This generation should do something to improve the film market.
APA: How did you prepare for making Formula 17? Did you have any of the actors go out and research the Taipei gay scene?
DJC: Some of the actors were familiar with the gay scene, and I had a solid staff who know the gay life and style. And I personally have gay friends, so I tried to reflect their attitude and lifestyle. We didn't need to do any kind of academic research.
APA: In the US, in Hollywood, we like to think of ourselves as being more liberal when it comes to embracing homosexuality. However, even here, gay comedies are still never, or rarely, considered part of the mainstream. Why do you think it was so embraced by the Taiwanese audience?
DJC: Because when you have an element of humor, a very easy and interesting product, it doesn't matter to the audience whether it's gay or not. Formula 17 attracted people who wanted to see an interesting and easy movie.
APA: How have you gone about distributing the movie internationally?
DJC: The producer handled the distribution. We sold the movie to a very strong Asian distributor in the world market. They sold it to a lot of countries like Israel and Thailand, who were interested in the movie. In Thailand, the response was especially good, and it did well in the box office. I just feel that the love story and the comedy is universal.
APA: The movie was banned in Singapore?
DJC: Yea.
APA: What was your response?
DJC: Cool. [laughs] I feel honored to be forbidden in Singapore. I didn't expect that the movie would be forbidden anywhere. Sure, the Singapore government has its considerations, but I don't really worry about that. If the citizens in Singapore want to see the movie, they can still see it. It's also forbidden in China, but if they want to see the movie, they can still see it -- the pirated versions. [laughs]
APA: You had talked about how you guys analyzed the market and set out to make a film that would be popular and appeal to the mainstream. But despite with the preparation and the research and the goals, when it all came together and ended up being successful, was it still a surprise?
DJC: It was a big surprise. I only expected it to be about 1 million NT dollars, but it did much better than we expected. We didn't expect it to fail; we thought we'd be able to recover the production costs. But after the first weekend, we realized that the conditions were much better than expected. It made over 8 million NT dollars.
APA: Were you guys targeting a younger audience?
DJC: The target audience is certainly the younger generation. For the last several years, the consumer of films have been the younger generation. The film is designed to target the younger audience. In fact, our team is made up of younger people, and I'm also very young myself, so I'm too young to do a very serious, heavy movie. The two producers are also, in average only about 30 years old.
APA: Do you want to concentrate on comedy in your filmmaking?
DJC: For the next few years, I'll be focusing on comedy. Producing a movie is a very long process. I am more entertained and motivated by comedy. But, in the future, I may try out other film genres.
APA: Thank you so much for your time.
Click here to read APA's review of Formula 17.
www.17-movie.com/
Formula 17:Testing a Formula for Mainstream Cinema in Taiwan