Happiness

Director/writer: Mina Shum – Producers: Stephen Hegyes, Rose Lam Waddell – Diary by: Joanne Morgan

You’re 22, an aspiring actress, looking for love and your place in this messed up world, and like so many other Generation Xers, you’re culture bound. What’s even worse, you still live at home with your Chinese family. Mina Shum’s first feature film, Double Happiness, is conceived as an autobiography. In it, Jade Li, the central character seeks ‘double happiness’ – a way to keep loving her family while exploring the possibilities and pain of a young woman growing up in the ’90s.

May 1991: While on a Canada Council Arts grant, Shum ‘spews out’ her first official draft of the script. With that she applies to the Canadian Film Centre’s first Summer Lab to work on the script. She gets in and heads off to Toronto, her first time without parental guidance in the big city.

August 1991: Shum discovers that she does have a story here that can be financed at a 35mm feature level (she had originally assumed it would be shot as a 16mm art film like John Pozer’s The Grocer’s Wife, which she had worked on as first ad). She returns to Vancouver with high hopes.

November 1991: Shum reworks her latest draft of the script with John Frizzell at a Praxis Screenwriting Workshop. Determined to cover her butt, she hurriedly puts together an application for a Canada Council Film Production grant of $50,000 in time to meet the Nov. 15 deadline. She knows whether it’s 16mm or 35mm, the film’s just got to be made.

January 1992: Stephen Hegyes comes on as producer and they apply to British Columbia Film’s New Views 2, a program that funds 100% of a low-budget feature project by a first-time feature director. They get shortlisted. They fly to Toronto to check out casting possibilities. Canada Council confirms its commitment for $40,000 and $18,000 comes in from the federal government’s Department of Multiculturalism.

April 1992: Rose Lam Waddell, Hegyes and Shum form First Generation Films to produce Double Happiness. Development applications go out to Telefilm Canada, B.C. Film and the National Film Board.

It’s been a year since Shum has made a film and she’s getting antsy. She applies to the B.C. Cultural Film Production Fund for a documentary short called Me, Mom and Mona.

1992: It’s a triple crown: development money comes in from all three funding agencies for Double Happiness. Shum also shoots Me, Mom and Mona with a Kick Start grant (a program administered by the Directors Guild of Canada B.C. district council in conjunction with Telefilm) and a B.C. Cultural Grant. Relationships that begin on Mona carry through to Double Happiness.

September 1992 to June 1993: Shum reworks the script for Double Happiness while posting Me, Mom and Mona. ‘I really had to learn to write better to ensure that it came off the page and onto the screen. It was an expensive education, and thankfully, B.C. Film, Telefilm and the nfb paid for that.’

July 1993: Me, Mom and Mona is invited to the Toronto International Film Festival. Meanwhile, Shum puts the finishing touches on her Double Happiness script in time to apply to B.C. Film’s New Views 3 program.

December 1993: Double Happiness is shortlisted. In their interview with the agencies, the producers take no chances and prepare what is essentially a creative concept meeting – complete with clips, music, art direction and sound design. They win! Shum puts her contract at the nfb in Montreal on hold and heads back to the West Coast.

January 1994: Casting presents a problem. Shum decides that Sandra Oh, whom Shum had met while doing a brief acting stint on cbc’s Runaway: Diary of Evelyn Lau, is perfect for the lead. However, Oh lives in Toronto and they don’t know whether they can afford to bring her to the West Coast.

They begin a massive casting search, problematic because of the shortage of older Asian actors in Canada who can speak English.

Searching through old Kung Fu movies they find an actor to play the father role. His claim to fame is slicing up Sylvester Stallone in Rambo I. Oh is enthusiastic about the role, and along with her agent cuts a sweet deal for the producers. Taking a tip from Martin Scorsese, Shum casts her parents in bit parts.

Feb. 15, 1994: Preproduction begins. Peter Wunstorf, whom Shum had worked with on The Grocer’s Wife, comes on as dop. Along with production designer Michael Bjornson they spend the next three weeks – working all day and meeting at night – going through every detail that can be worked out ahead of time.

With a budget of only $850,000 there is no extra cash for locations. But again they luck out. The sale of a house they had been eyeing doesn’t go through and they are able to shoot in it for three weeks.

March 6, 1994: Production begins. The crew is fantastic. Everyone gives their hearts and souls to the project. After long days, at least half the crew remains behind at night at Alpha Cine Labs to screen the rushes.

Shum’s proud father catches the film bug, snapping pictures of his daughter every time she turns around.

Shum, a non-smoker, takes up the habit.

Three weeks into production, Shum has to contend with a somewhat surprising request for last-minute rewrites – from her father.

The script calls for a scene in which the 22-year-old Jade Li sneaks out of the house one night to sleep with her white boyfriend and then tries to get back home before her parents wake up. But her car breaks down and she’s caught.

Shum’s father thinks the Double Happiness script would be ‘better’ if his 28-year-old daughter has Li out all night performing ‘good deeds.’ While Shum is touched by his concern, the script remains untouched.

April 15, 1994: Production wraps under budget, with 20,000 feet of film left to spare. The extra money goes into post.

June 1, 1994: After 13 weeks in editing, Alison Grace, the picture and dialogue editor, and Shum lock the picture. They fly to Toronto, reels on their laps, to prescreen the film for distributors and programmers at the Toronto International Film Festival. Shum stays behind to work with Double Happiness’ composers, Shadowy Men On a Shadowy Planet (the composers for Kids In The Hall).

July 19,1994: After three weeks for the sound cut, with four sound editors, Double Happiness goes into its final mix with Paul Sharpe. Frank Faugno (sound designer) pulls a few all-nighters trying to squeeze a deep Lynchian soundscape out of a tres tight budget and schedule.

Two hours after the mix is completed, Shum jumps on the red eye to Montreal to oversee subtitling – 20% of the film is in Cantonese.

Double Happiness is invited to the Toronto festival. The Independent Feature Market in New York also calls.

August 1994: One month left to work on the color timing, plan a marketing campaign, cut a trailer, design an exciting media package, line up a distributor, rest up and find a place to live in Vancouver.

During the final mix all her furniture arrives back from Montreal. Oops, still no place to put it.

Says Shum: ‘Practically my every waking thought has been consumed by this film. It’s like a lover that makes your fire burn. I hope when I eventually leave this lover, I’ll have the energy left to fall for my next one.’

September 1994: Double Happiness premiers at the Toronto International Film Festival.