American Fusion Information Packet

Table of Contents: Synopsis Director’s Statement Frank Lin, Writer/Director Bio Sylvia Chang, Actress Bio Esai Morales, Actor Bio Cast and Crew

AMERICAN FUSION PRODUCTIONS AND WILDCAT RELEASING PRESENTS

A FRANK LIN FILM

“AMERICAN FUSION” IN SELECTED THEATERS AUGUST 17, 2007

LOS ANGELES SAN FRANCISCO

SEATTLE

American Fusion Synopsis Yvonne (Sylvia Chang) is a divorced middle-aged Chinese immigrant who thinks her life is over, and she is doomed to spend the rest of her days as a slave to her large and eccentric family. Suddenly, romance enters her life and Yvonne gets a long deferred chance for true love. However, she falls for the last person a Chinese family would ever accept, Jose (Esai Morales), a Hispanic dentist. To make matters worse, Yvonne’s 70-year-old mother hurts her back in a massage accident, and uses her suffering to guilt all her children into doing her bidding. Now, to find true happiness, Yvonne must overcome her three demanding siblings, 5,000 years of conservative Chinese tradition, and one tyrannical mother who is about to undergo major back surgery!

American Fusion: A Comedy as Diverse as Love Itself. Creation: Last summer, my seventy-seven-year-old grandmother underwent a five-hour spine surgery. It took eight months for her to recover from the ordeal and to regain some of her normal daily routines. This life affirming and changing event put my large and crazy family through an incredible experience as we worked night and day to preserve our grandmother’s sanity and her life. We did it, not only because she survived the Japanese occupation of China, escaped the Communist revolution, begged at refugee camps for rice to feed her family, worked herself to the ground in Taiwan to put her kids through school. It’s not only because she raised all of us: my mom, my aunt, my three uncles, my two cousins, and me. On top of all the love and admiration we have for Grandma, there is one more thing that made every hard enduring task to save Grandma’s life worth while, it is our Chinese culture, 5000 years of filial piety, of honoring the people who brought us life. From this experience and from almost thirty years of living with my insane but lovable family, I came up with a story. A comedy that honors the virtues of a Chinese family, pokes fun at their follies and confirms a lesson learned over and over again by immigrants in America. Here in the biggest melting pot of the world, our color is only as deep as our skin. As people from every nation and culture learn to live closer to one another we slowly realize that we are not so different. We are all made of flesh and blood, we all love our parents, our children, and we all want to better our lives and pursue our own American Dream.

Frank Lin Writer/Director

Frank Lin Bio A graduate from the UCLA film School, Frank's first short film, The Violence Vaccine, won the Peter Stark Award and his senior thesis, The Visit, won both the Peter Stark Award and the Alan Jacobson Memorial Award for best undergraduate film of the year. An Honoree of Film Independent’s Project Involve Program, Frank’s mentors include Arthur Seidelman, Lee Zlotoff (Creator of MacGyver), and Don Cheadle (Crash, Ocean’s Eleven). Frank’s first feature American Fusion, a Chinese American romantic comedy staring Sylvia Chang (The Red Violin, 20:30:40), Esai Morales (NYPD Blue, La Bamba), Collin Chou (Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolution), James Hong (Kung Fu, Blade Runner), and Pat Morita (Karate Kid, Happy Days), won the Audience Award at the Hawaii International Film Festival and broke the record for most sold out screenings. In addition to writing, directing, and producing American Fusion Frank recently complete production on Hysteria, a horror film he directed for producer Rick Fox. Frank is also attached to direct an action/thriller he wrote, Leaving America, with producer Harvey Keitel, starring Joan Chen (The Last Emperor) and Sammo Hung (Around the World in 80 Days, Martial Law).

Sylvia Chang Actress / Director / Producer / Script Writer Sylvia was born in Taiwan in 1953. She began her first job as a disc jockey at the age of 18, her acting career was also started after that. Since then, she has acted in more than 90 feature films. Along with the critical praise, Sylvia has won several prestigious awards and been nominated for many others. In 1976, she earned her first Golden Horse Award in Taiwan for Best Support Actress with “Prosperity and Perplexity”(1976). Following this honor were two Golden Horse Awards for the Best Actress “My Grandpa”(1981) and “Passion”(1986), and 5 Best Actress nominations. She has also earned the Hong Kong Film Awards for the Best Actress with ”Passion” (1986), and the Asia Films Awards for Outstanding Performance. Sylvia was having a good harvest at the beginning of 2002; she won the Best Actress again with “Forever and Ever” (2001) in the Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Bauhinia Awards respectively. Sylvia’s directing career had been well received since her 1979 directorial debut. In 1986, she directed and starred in “Passion” which earned her a Best Director nomination in Golden Horse Award. “Passion” was also nominated for the Best Picture. Other directorial credits include “The Game They Called Sex”(1987),” “Mary from Beijing”(1992), “Conjugal Affairs”(1993). The film, “Siao Yu”, which was directed and written by her in 1995, gained 5 awards in Asia Pacific Film Festival. The 5 awards included the Best Picture, the Best Screenplay, the Best Actress, the Best Production Design and the Best Sound Effect. “Tempting Heart” was released in September 1999. The figure of this movie was the surprise box office champ in Taiwan, reaching the NT$50 million mark and also in Hong Kong it gained HK$13 million. Besides, “Tempting Heart” had earned the Best Script Writer and the Best Art Director in the Hong Kong Film Awards. Her latest directed film is “20:30:40”. Sylvia was also a producer. She has produced seven feature films since 1982. International acclaim has comprised special tribute to Sylvia at both the London Films Festival (1989) and the Toronto Films Festival (1992), as well as participated in the Berlin Films Festival as a member of the jury.

ESAI MORALES

Biography Esai most recently appeared in Richard Linklater’s FAST FOOD NATION and Fox’s VANISHED. He also stared as Cesar Castillo in the San Francisco run of the musical, THE MAMBO KINGS. Esai spent three seasons playing Lt. Tony Rodriguez in the Emmy award-winning ABC drama series NYPD BLUE. He will soon be seen in the independent films, THE VIRGIN OF JUAREZ, with Minnie Driver, and AMERICAN FUSION, directed by Frank Lin, as well as the CBS telefilm HEARTLESS with Melanie Griffith. In 2002, Esai was awarded best actor in a television series at the prestigious ALMA AWARDS and was honored as entertainer of the year at the 17th Annual IMAGEN AWARDS. Esai was nominated again last year for another IMAGEN AWARD in the category of Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series for Gregory Nava’s PBS drama series AMERICAN FAMILY. Born to Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn, New York, Esai ran away from home at the age of 13 because his mother did not approve of his desire to pursue acting. He attended New York's prestigious High School for the Performing Arts while living in a group home as a voluntary ward-of-the-state. Shortly after he finished his studies, Esai debuted on stage in EL HERMANO at the Ensemble Studio Theater and Joe Papp's production of THE TEMPEST with Raul Julia for New York's Shakespeare in the Park festival. Other theater performances include TAMER OF HORSES for the Los Angeles Theater Center for which he was awarded the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, Oscar Wilde's SALOME with Al Pacino at New York's Circle in the Square Theater on Broadway, and THE EXONERATED, directed by Bob Balaban. Esai made his film debut in BAD BOYS with Sean Penn. His next major film role as 50s rock musician Richie Valen's half-brother Bob in the Luis Valdez directed film LA BAMBA (1987) caught the attention of the entertainment industry and stole the hearts of audiences. LA BAMBA remains the most commercially successful Latino-themed motion picture to date. Always conscious of maintaining positive representation of Latinos in entertainment, Esai's portrayals of ordinary men struggling under extraordinary circumstances and conflicts always rise above convention. In RAPA NUI (produced by Kevin Costner), Esai is chosen to represent his servant class tribe to compete in a contest for control of the

island. As an Amazonian rubber tapper, he risks his life in civil disobedience in the award-winning HBO film THE BURNING SEASON - THE CHICO MENDES STORY (with Raul Julia). In the Gregory Nava film MI FAMILIA, he joined an ensemble cast which includes Jimmy Smits and Edward James Olmos as a loving yet troubled son of a working class Mexican American family trying to achieve the American dream. And in THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GARCIA LORCA, Esai starred as a young journalist who returns to Spain in search of the truth behind the death of the famous Spanish poet/playwright. Describing himself as an "actorvist," Esai has combined art and activism to build bridges of understanding. In 1997 Esai co-founded the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts (NHFA), created to advance the presence and quality of Latinos in media, telecommunications and entertainment. He is a founding board member of ECO (Earth Communications Office), a global clearinghouse for environmental information. He's worked for the Wildlife Preservation Fund in Costa Rica and is active with "alternative AIDS" programs such as ALIVE AND WELL and H.E.A.L. (Health Education AIDS Liaison). In the late eighties, Esai used his heightened public profile to organize an Oscar night benefit for El Recate/The Rescue, a Central American refugee service agency. This contributed to the promotion of the concept of benefit events on the film industry's most important night of the year, which led to the current trend of Academy Award night benefits. Currently, he is a Board member of the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) and on the Advisory Board of Women in Film (WIF). Esai resides in Los Angeles.

PRINCPLE CAST AND CREW SYLVIA CHANG YVONNE ESAI MORALES JOSE COLLIN CHOU TONY JAMES HONG DR. WONG PAT MORITA LAO DONG LANG YUN GRANDMA GEORGE CHEUNG ALBERT HIRA AMBROSINO JULIET SUSAN CHUANG SUZY RANDALL PARK JOSHUA JAMES CHANG STEVE PRODUCED, WRITTEN, AND DIRECTED BY FRANK LIN CO-WRITTEN BY RANDALL PARK PRODUCED BY ROBIN RANDAL OLIVER

JASON INOUYE JOHN DUNN

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS ESTHER CHAO SHEREE LIN T.G. WING CHOW

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JASON K. INOUYE EDITED BY JAN LIN

DAYNE TANIOKA PRODUCTION DESIGNER MARGARET MEGUMI MILES COSTUME DESIGNER SUSAN CHAN ORIGINAL MUSIC BY DAVE IWATAKI CASTING BY BRAD WARSHAW