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LA Asian Pacific Film Festival 2009: an interview with Whatever it Takes director Christopher Wong

By APA Staff

Christopher Wong's debut documentary -- about a principal that decides to start a school in the South Bronx -- earned him a Grand Prize at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival.

Both director Christopher Wong and his good friend Edward Tom left lucrative careers in order to pursue their respective passions. For Wong, it was a transition from banking to documentary filmmaking; for Tom, it was high fashion to education. The two friends' pursuits converged in 2005 when Tom was tapped to start a new program in the South Bronx, and Wong decided this would be a good opportunity to film the behind-the-scenes story of a new, tough-but-charismatic principal trying to improve the education system from the ground up. APA chats with Whatever it Takes director Christopher Wong about getting full access to his documentary subjects, showcasing a dominant, stereotype-defying Asian American male character, and filming his next project about a priest promoting conversations about gay marriage.

Interview with Christopher Wong
May 1, 2009
Interviewed by Ada Tseng
Camera by Warren Kenji Berkey and Oliver Chien
Video by Warren Kenji Berkey

Asia Pacific Arts: You two have been friends for a while. Can you tell me about how you approached him to be in your documentary?

Christopher Wong: He and I go way back. We were both living in New York City, and we were both doing jobs that were nothing like what we're doing now. Back then, I was in banking, and Tom was in fashion. He was a men's suits buyer for Saks Fifth Ave. And so right around the year 2000, we both had these huge transitions. He decided he wanted to be a teacher in the New York City public school, and I decided I wanted to pursue documentary film. Fast forward five years later: we're still great friends, and he is doing so well as a teacher that they say, "We want you to be a principal in the South Bronx." And at that time, I felt like this is the documentary that I was born to make. So that's when I started filming: August of 2005.

APA: It seems like the friendship allowed you access into his world, but can you talk a little bit about balancing the personal relationship with the objectivity required when you're being a documentarian?

CW: The key thing to Whatever It Takes is the complete access that we have -- to the students, to the principal especially, to their families, to everywhere at school. I actually approached Ed Tom and said, "Look we're friends. You know I want the best of you, but I really want to follow your first year at school." And I said, "You could do tremendously well. You could get fired within your first six months. I want to show whatever happens. Are you ok with that?" And he came back to me and said, "Chris, as long as you show something that's honest, you can shoot wherever you want, anytime, and you have my full permission." And that really was a blessing. He's such an honest person. He doesn't care whether I show him as this great man, or this person with flaws. I really wanted to show someone who was a complete character. And that's what we were able to do because he was so gracious about allowing us to be anywhere and everywhere.

APA: How did you get permission from the students and parents, and what were their reactions to being filmed?

CW: The great thing about the school that I filmed at was that it was a school created specifically by the board of education, to get the kids into college. What they do is they start with the principal, and the principal gives the prospective vision to students and parents, and every student who's there has chosen to be there. They're not just placed. Every teacher has chosen to be there as well. And they're there because they believe in Ed Tom's vision. So getting permission from the students and teachers wasn't hard, because they believed in Ed, so when Ed recommended me to them, they already said no problem. We still had to earn their trust and not betray them in any way, but they were completely open to us filming.

APA: Were either of you familiar with the public school system in the Bronx before you started filming?

CW: When Ed started as a principal in the South Bronx, he didn't know the South Bronx exactly, but he knew the kinds of kids that came from there. He knew the challenges they had to go through, because he himself grew up in a low-income environment not too far away called Washington Heights, which is kind of in upper Manhattan. So he had lived himself with parents who earned minimum wage. He knew the challenges that went on.

For me, I didn't know anything about the South Bronx. I just knew: here's my friend going into this amazing environment. So I learned a ton. One of the things I learned was that the South Bronx is not as bad as the TV and media make it out to be. It's actually a place where you can walk around, no one bothers you, and you're fine. I think the problems come from the cycles of poverty that have been around for decades and decades, and that's what's hard to escape for the people who actually live there.

APA: Can you talk about why you were drawn to Ed Tom as a character for film?

CW: One of the reasons I so much wanted to make this film was not just to see that natural drama that would happen in this school, but I felt, here's my chance to film an Asian American man who is in a role of leadership. He's a powerful presence, he's a visionary in his ideas, and he's also not just in it for himself. He's there, sacrificing all his former dreams for kids who are not even Asian. So I felt, here's a way to break all those stereotypes we see in the media -- of Asians being weak and effeminate and only staying within their community. And I felt like Ed is someone I've always wanted to see in film and never got to see.

APA: How do people generally respond when they meet him? You talk about the stereotype of an effeminate male, but when one sees Ed Tom, he's such a large presence. What do you think people see?

CW: I think whenever someone meets Ed, they're just taken aback by his presence and his power. He's sort of a once-in-a-lifetime personality that you meet. Going into the school year, I thought there would be some drama regarding racial tension because here's this Chinese American man going into a school with 95% black and Latino kids. And there aren't any Chinese people in the South Bronx. They're not there. But actually, there wasn't any racial tension at all, because Ed is such a powerful presence that they forgot; they just said, We're going to respect this man because he has vision and he wants the best for us. So, where I thought we'd have this drama, it wasn't there. Instead we found it in: is this guy going to get these kids into college and on the road to becoming scholars? In really caring about their education. And that was actually a much better place for me to go with my film.

APA: Where did Ed Tom grow up?

CW: He grew up in Washington Heights. It's a primarily Dominican neighborhood. There were some Chinese families in the neighborhood. A lot of people comment on the fact that he speaks the lingo of the Bronx. He doesn't speak this very white, Ivy League kind of English. He's kind of down and dirty with them; his grammar is terrible. [laughs] But he knows how to relate to the kids.

APA: Recently, there have been a lot of documentary films that incorporate animation. And in your film, you show the kids' flashbacks through these animations that look like watercolor. Can you talk about the decision to have that in the film?

CW: From the very beginning with Whatever it Takes, I really wanted to show the backstories of Ed and of our principal student character, Sharifea [a girl who dreams of attending medical school and becoming a pediatrician]. I didn't want to have them sitting behind a table and having these talking-head interviews. I wanted people to really get into the experience of what their lives were like and have it be in a dreamy state. So that's why I chose a watercolor aesthetic, and that's why I wanted to animate it. We're in school, and we're in their homes, and it really took us back to what made them who they are today. For Sharifea, it was a life where she was in foster care, her mother was addicted to drugs. For Ed, it was being in high fashion and dreaming of being a millionaire by the time you're 30. So I felt like the animation sequences would really define and stand as a stark contrast to where they are now.

APA: So of course when you're making a documentary, you just have to follow your subjects to find your story. But I'm wondering -- how aware were you of other films about teachers and high school?

CW: Yeah, I've been well aware of the school genre, in both documentary film and fiction. Because there have been so many: Freedom Writers, Stand and Deliver, Coach Carter -- whatever you want. Every year, there's a film in Hollywood that comes out about school, and a tough guy or tough woman who got them to go somewhere better. And I didn't want our film to be another one of those. You can say that Whatever it Takes is in that basic genre, but I wanted to break out of it by showing something absolutely real. 'Cause I think a lot of people walk out of, let's say, Freedom Writers and say, "Well that was a nice story, but they probably fudged it a bit, because it's Hollywood." For this film, when you walk out of it, whether you like it or not, you can't deny that what went on actually happened. So I feel like that's going to stay with viewers much longer.

APA: I read that you're working on a new documentary, about a pastor in San Gabriel Valley that supports gay marriage. Can you tell us more about that?

CW: My next project is a short documentary, and it's about another amazing Asian American male: Ken Fong, who's pretty well-known in the Asian American circles. He's a pastor at a church in San Gabriel in California. He's the pastor of a church that is mostly conservative in its leanings, but he's trying to bring them out of the conservative theology and say, Look, the Bible says that we need to love everybody. And that includes not only homeless people and drug addicts and people who have problems, but also the people in the gay and lesbian community. And we're not doing that. In fact, we'd rather push them to the side. So he's trying to start a dialogue with Asian American gay and lesbian Christians, and he's saying -- We don't necessarily agree with what you're doing. We're not going to change our theology to fit you. But there can't be this hate that goes on. There has to be a meeting of the souls and of the minds, so let's talk. And obviously this is very controversial. It harks back to the 50s and 60s when white pastors were trying to get some of the congregations to speak with black congregations, and there was so much resistance. So I'm trying to follow that dynamic, getting Asian American Christians to speak to members of the Asian American gay and lesbian community.

Date Posted: 6/19/2009