At a screening of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan hosted by the Cinema Society this week, Vulture caught up with director Wayne Wang to discuss his many women-centric films: He’s helmed Eat a Bowl of Tea, The Joy Luck Club, Maid in Manhattan, and now this, an adaptation of Lisa See’s novel about two women in nineteenth-century China who have been friends since childhood. “I’m really a woman in disguise,” he explained to Vulture. “No, it’s sort of coincidence. I try to run away from it all the time. After I did The Joy Luck Club, I did Smoke, which is set in Brooklyn — it’s about guys. So I try to not be boxed into that, but then I keep coming back to it, because I guess, you know, in the Chinese culture you believe you have both the masculine and feminine side, and you’re supposed to balance the yin and the yang. Maybe I’m just a little more in touch with my yin side sometimes, you know?” Perhaps with his yang in mind, then, he’s developing a book called Charlie Chan: The Untold Story. “The original Charlie Chan was portrayed by a Swedish actor called Warner Oland, and he was drunk all the time,” he told us. “So it’ll be interesting to cast, let’s say that.” For more insight from the crowd, click through our slideshow.
