The W Files

Profiling Screenwriters at Work

Eve and the Fire Horse writer-director may be quiet, but Julia Kwan has plenty of bite

By Katharine Montagu

Writer-director Julia Kwan is a Fire Horse. This astrological anomaly occurs twice a century and apparently produces women so independent, gifted and difficult that Asian men traditionally avoid them, in spite of their beauty.

Kwan defies astral and directorial stereotypes by being soft-spoken and very nice.

She wrote and directed the award-winning short films Inflamed, Prized Possessions, 10,000 Delusions and Three Sisters on Moon Lake. In 2001, while at the Canadian Film Centre director’s lab, she won the WGC’s Charles Israel Screenwriting Award for the screenplay that became her feature directorial debut, Eve and the Fire Horse. “It’s nice to be validated and it certainly gave me a lot more confidence,” she says.

Eve and the Fire Horse is about two young sisters who try to improve their family’s luck by introducing Catholicism into their superstitious Buddhist household while their father is away. It won four Leo Awards, the AAIFF Best Emerging Director, the VIFF Most Popular Canadian Feature Film, the CIFF Best First Canadian Feature, the SDIFF Best Narrative Feature, and the Sundance World Cinema Special Jury Prize.

Kwan grew up in East Vancouver with working class parents who accepted her decision to study film with not-so-quiet resignation.

“I told my Mom I was going to study writing and she thought for the longest time that I was studying calligraphy,” laughs Kwan. “That’s indicative of the communication that we have. I’m so Canadianized, whereas my mom lives in the subculture–Chinatown and back–all her friends are Chinese, she only speaks Cantonese. They don’t watch any English shows [except] wrestling.”

A writer since childhood, Kwan first tried directing at Ryerson and instantly loved it. “You don’t have to yell at people on set to get their attention,” she says. “Maybe I’m perpetuating some sort of Asian female stereotype, but I know what I want and that’s my way of getting it.”

Inspired by the humility and eclecticism of famously quiet writer-directors Akira Kurosawa, Ang Lee and Sofia Coppola, Kwan recently started adapting Douglas Coupland’s iconic novel Generation X, which MVP/Panacea also hired her to direct. “I was so relieved that I got his [Coupland’s] approval. The producer sent him a copy of Eve and the Fire Horse and he said within ten minutes he knew I was the right person to make it.”

“It spoke to me, but it’s going to be a challenge because it’s not plot-heavy,” she says. “It’s similar to Eve and the Fire Horse because it’s metaphysical and very episodic. I struggled with finding the structure and the narrative there too.”

“I wish I was more disciplined,” says Kwan. “I have a very long gestation period where I agonize and I’m filled with doubt and anxiety. But I think it’s all part of my process. [Last time] I had a couple of grants and I couldn’t write a word for a year. Then it came together and I wrote my first draft in three days. It takes a while for me to process and germinate ideas. It’s like channeling, when I’m writing.”

Fortunately, as a former data entry clerk, Kwan types 105 words a minute. She’s currently writing a treatment for Generation X, but says, “I’ve never really written a treatment before so it’s a cross between a script and a treatment –a scriptment? Is that wrong?”

Kwan credits Coupland who “is so brilliant at writing dialogue. It’s so filmic and natural and funny.” In contrast, Kwan says, “I’m quite a visual writer. I write in screen directions, camera angles and I know exactly how it’s going to look.”

The Canada Council recently gave Kwan a grant to write a screenplay inspired by her mother’s unlikely obsession with WWWF wrestling in the 1960s. Also, she’s considering an offer to direct a feature in New York. “It would be fun to travel to work. Canada’s my base, but I’m totally open to living in New York for six months, or London. Shan [producer Shan Tam] and I have talked about doing a film in China, which I would love.”

Blockbuster just released Eve and the Fire Horse on DVD.