OVERLOOKED BY OSCAR: (#22) "Gran Torino"

Last year, the number of movies nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture doubled, from five to 10. It got me thinking about what films from the past decade would have, or should have, been nominated for best picture if 10 films were nominated each year. Thus, I'm writing a month-long countdown of these great films that were "Overlooked By Oscar."

#22: "Gran Torino" (2008)

"Gran Torino" is the story of Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), a Korean War veteran who is among the last white people living in his inner city neighborhood. His neighbors all around him are suddenly Hmong natives, and Kowalski is cautious and leery of his new neighbors. His wife has recently died, and Walt is gloomy, jaded, and edgy.

I loved this movie, even more than most critics nationwide. Eastwood's Walt Kowalski is vile in his racist humor, but it is hard NOT to laugh at some of the ridiculous, over-the-top remarks that he says. So, there is a lot of good laughs throughout this film.

This is no comedy, though. The neighbor boy, Thao, tries to steal Walt's prized Gran Torino as a gang initiation, but of course, the theft is halted. Soon, Thao is required to work for Walt to pay off the debt (his sins) for the attempted theft. Walt slowly learns some of the Hmong customs, and it is a great learning tool for movie-goers nationwide who are unfamiliar with the Hmong people and their traditions.

Soon, Walt is seen as the protector of the neighborhood, a title he doesn't want. By the end of the film, he is willing to make a major sacrifice to keep Thao and his sister, Sue, safe from the Hmong gangs that have infiltrated the neighborhood.

The lively Sue is one of the best characters here. Sue is a teenager, perhaps 17 or 18, and she has fun needling Walt for not knowing or understanding the Hmong culture. She stands up for herself and her family. When she is hurt late in the movie, your heart cannot help but break when you see her injured body.

This is a wonderful story. It's a story about overcoming xenophobia and racism. It's a story about redemption and forgiveness and loss of faith. Yet, it's funny and witty, while also dark and troubling. But in the end, I found a sense of hope and optimism I didn't expect. This movie is not for children; the racist language is somehow cute, or passable, coming from a grumpy old man, but would be downright offensive coming from the mouths of youth today.

"Gran Torino" was shot on a mere $33 million budget, and it earned a remarkable $270 million worldwide. Critics at Rottentomatoes.com gave it a solid 80 percent approval rating. About 68 percent of viewers gave it an ‘A' grade, while another 25 percent gave it a ‘B' grade, at Boxofficemojo.com.

Sadly, while the film was named among the 10 best films of the year by the American Film Institute, it was snubbed entirely by the Oscars.

Vetter rating: A

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POP SOAPBOX: Hmong American Senator Mee Moua Dishes on ‘Gran Torino’

Senator Moua from Minnesota was the first Hmong American elected to public office in the United States. She was recently interviewed through an Asian American empowerment forum VisualizAsian.com with Gil Asakawa and Erin Yoshimura and had a few thoughts on Clint Eastwood’s film “Gran Torino.”

It’s the first Hollywood movie to really feature the Hmong people. Clint Eastwood plays an embittered Vietnam vet Walt Kowalski who is dealing with his own demons and a changing neighborhood. The film’s name comes from a scene where Thao Vang, a young neighbor is forced by Hmong gang members to try and steal Kowalski’s prized 1972 Gran Torino. His relationship to this teen and his Hmong family is at the heart of the film.

“I thought the history lessons and dialogue between a young women and the main character were really great. The exchanges were pretty realistic I thought the directors did a really good job of researching the history and bringing it out in the dialogue,” shared Moua. “I thought the cultural themes in the movie could have done a better job… For example, Hmong Americans don’t bring food to someone’s front porch and leave it there as an offering. We just don’t do that…in fact in our culture you make offerings like that to ancestors at their gravesite. We don’t bring offerings to peoples doorsteps. I thought that was odd.”


As for some criticism that the film casts a negative light on Hmong Americans by showing Hmong on Hmong violence. “Sometimes a lot of these pretty harsh crimes are perpetrated in within your own ethnic community. Recently there have been seven homicides in the city of St. Paul, three of these homicides I believe were the victims were Hmong American. Two of these I believe it was Hmong on Hmong. I had a conversation with the police chief in St. Paul and I believe the other four were black on black. So while my heart is a little bit nervous about that portrayal, that is a reality in some of the communities. Not necessarily just unique to the Hmong community but I think that is the reality that other ethnic communities can really identify with — the community person victimizing their own people.”

Senator Moua even shared that when film producers were scouting out locations that she pitched St. Paul as a location since the original script was set in Minnesota. “One of the suggestions I made to them is if they are going to be showing these things about Hmong on Hmong crime, they ought to shoot here and have one of my lawn signs in the front yard of a Hmong American family and I should have a cameo showing me door knocking at one of the homes so that we can have a competing, alternative image of Hmong Americans. They didn’t really buy that,” laughed Moua.

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Larb, a traditional Hmong meat salad

July 17, 10:19 AM


This chicken larb is eatten with lettuce leaves

The Hmong people are from Southeast Asia. There is a sizable Hmong community in Atlanta, though most of us have little information about their culture. For much of America, the film Gran Torino, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, was our first look into this community. The film takes place in Michigan and explores these fascinating people who have fled their homeland and are trying to find a way to fit in without losing their identity.

The largest Hmong population remains in China, but many have left because of persecution. During the Vietnam War, they were recruited by the CIA. Among other duties, they rescued American airmen who had to ditch their planes in the thick rain forest. When the US pulled out, the Hmong were mostly left behind. During the 1980s, many Hmong were housed in Thai refugee camps. Though some have stayed in Thailand, many have resettled in countries such as the United States, French Guiana, and France. Hmong have remained identifiable as a separate group because they have maintained their own language, customs, and ways of life while adopting the ways of the country in which they live. The language was not even written down until the 1950s. There is always fear that as the older generations pass on, the knowledge of the Hmong among Hmong-Americans will die as well.



Few restaurants serve the cuisine exclusively, though a few dishes can be found on Thai menus. Until recently, it was difficult to even find recipes. I recently heard an interview on the NPR program The Splendid Table about a new cookbook that preserves the culinary traditions of the Hmong called Cooking from the Heart. Sami Scripter and Sheng Yang gathered more than 100 recipes from Hmong-American kitchens. The authors worked with all 18 Hmong clans to gather and document, for the very first time, their recipes and traditions.

A typical Hmong dinner might include soup, sticky rice, a spicy chili condiment called simply pepper, a dish with meat and vegetables, plus a dish containing only vegetables. The meat and vegetable dish is often larb, virtually the national dish, since it can be made with any finely chopped meat. Larb is a kind of meat salad containing mint, cilantro and chili. It is eaten with lettuce leaves. To make it, check out this Larb recipe on the Splendid Table site.

The photos are of chicken larb and green papaya salad from Siam Thai located on the square in Decatur.

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Gran Torino

By CassyHavens

June 22nd, 2009

I’m still completely stunned that this film didn’t get as much acclaim as I thought it would. It was virtually shut out of all the major award shows, to the point that I started thinking it was some kind of conspiracy against Clint Eastwood and his phenomenal streak of films. In his last acting role, Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a crusty, racist Korean veteran who becomes involved in the lives of his Hmong neighbors.

After just losing his wife, Walt has to face his life alone. His kids and grandkids are spoiled and selfish, caring more about looting Walt’s home and claiming his vintage Gran Torino. He’s the last white guy in a Detroit neighborhood that has seen better days. The real heart of Walt isn’t his gruff exterior, though. He’s a man who has seen great loss and destruction in war, and has not been able to let go of it. While he derides a young priest for knowing nothing of life or death, Walt himself knows nothing of life, or living. He’s gone through the motions, married, started a family, worked hard, but he now has no emotional ties to this world.

That is, until he meets his neighbors. After he breaks up a fight between young Thao and a gang trying to forcibly recruit him, Walt becomes the reluctant neighborhood hero. People drop off food and flowers, to Walt’s annoyance. Thao’s sister brings Walt out of his seclusion, befriending him and inviting him into her home. Walt discovers he has more in common with these people he has scorned his whole life than his own family. He takes Thao, a wimpy kid with no paternal influence, under his wing and teaches him to be a man.

Thao has a lot to contend with though, and it becomes quickly apparent that left on his own, he will be forced to join his cousin’s gang. After the gang attacks Thao’s family, Walt takes matters into his own hands.

This is where I think the movie transcends from good to great. Yes, if he was Dirty Harry he would go to the gang and shoot them all up to kingdom come. But he’s not. I like to think he’s older and wiser than Harry Callahan. He’s seen more of the world, and he knows that while it does help to walk softly and carry a huge ass gun, he also knows that violence just begets more violence. It’s not the expected, “American” type outcome that people probably expected, which may account for the lack of buzz surrounding the film.

Where other critics have seen exaggerations or parody, all I see is a man trying to find some way to leave the world a better place before he dies. There’s nothing exaggerated about that.

The one part of the film that resonated most with me is that in life sometimes you have to make your own families. It’s not the people who share your blood that are necessarily your only family. It’s the people you connect with, the people who share your life. Eastwood also addressed this issue to a certain degree in “Million Dollar Baby.” In both films the lead’s blood family is just so awful you cringe every time they do something. Maggie’s family visiting Disney Land before visiting her in the hospital, and Walt’s granddaughter more concerned with texting, and scoring the Gran Torino and his couch than in offering her condolences for the loss of his wife.

The DVD release continues this BS Warner Brothers streak of releasing very few special features on the DVD, while including more on the Blu-Ray version. I get it! You want us to switch to Blu-Ray! Man, I still have my damned HD-DVD player and a dozen HDDVDs. You need to make it worth my while first. Anyway, the DVD has two short features about cars as they relate to “Gran Torino” with very little insight or meaningful content. It’s fluff, and not even the good kind.

“Gran Torino” was released on DVD June 9th. You can buy the DVD from Amazon.com or learn more about the movie from .

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Clint Eastwood reveals why he's an old dog who's willing to learn new tricks

Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino"

It’s safe to say that Clint Eastwood has still got it. At an age when most actors and filmmakers are retired, barely working or doing substandard work, Eastwood is an A-lister who’s still making Oscar-worthy films that often become big hits. In 2008, two movies that he directed — "Changeling" and "Gran Torino" — arrived in theaters and got critical acclaim and industry honors. But it was "Gran Torino," which went into wide release in January 2009, that became a blockbuster by topping the box-office charts and grossing more than $148 million in the U.S. box office alone.

In "Gran Torino" (released June 9 on DVD and Blu-ray), Eastwood stars as Walt Kowalski, a cranky widower and Korean war veteran who resents the presence of immigrants in his crime-ridden suburban Detroit neighborhood. When the teenage son of Walt’s Hmong neighbors, Thao Vang Lor (played by Bee Vang), unsuccessfully tries to steal Walt’s beloved Gran Torino car as part of a gang initiation, Walt and Thao form an unexpected friendship. But the gang problem in the neighborhood won’t go away, and it leads to an unforgettable showdown between Walt and the gang members.

Eastwood’s performance in "Gran Torino" earned him the 2008 award for best actor from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. In January 2009, just hours before he attended the ceremony in New York City to receive the award, Eastwood stopped by the Apple store in the Soho neighborhood to talk about "Gran Torino" and his other memorable experiences in filmmaking. During the question-and-answer discussion with a moderator and audience members, the Oscar-winning Eastwood (who was also one of the producers of "Gran Torino" and wrote the Golden Globe-nominated song "Gran Torino" for the film) shared stories about his career (even going back to his "Rawhide" days) and set the record straight about whether or not "Gran Torino" will be his last film as an actor.

How did you end up doing "Gran Torino," which is the first movie from screenwriter Nick Schenk?

Nick Schenk is somebody who tried to get [the script] to my agent, and it didn’t get there. And finally, [producer] Bill Gerber sent it over to my associate and he read it and said, "I think this is an interesting story, but you might not want to do it, because the guy’s kind of a racist and he’s kind of a wild guy. But it’s an interesting story." I said, "It sounds good to me." Not that I particularly want to play those things, but I just thought it sounded like you could take him on a little journey and start on one side of life and move him to the other.

The message of the story is great, because it shows you’re never too old to learn, whether it’s tolerance or anything else for that matter. I’ve always been a big advocate of that. I’m still working at 78 years of age, because I like learning something new all the time. And every time you do a project, you always learn new things. That makes it fun. Also, the Hmong culture was new to me, and I thought it was fun to deal with that.

Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino"

What was it about the Walt Kowalski character that specifically appealed to you so much that you decided this would be your first role as an actor since 2004’s "Million Dollar Baby"?

I didn’t have to worry about dialogue. I just had to sit there and go [he makes a growling noise]. He just sort of growls all the time; you can just fill in a few lines here and there. There’s not a lot of great roles for guys at this age. I was in the military during the Korean War, although I didn’t go to Korea. I knew a lot of guys like this. I grew up with a lot of guys in the ‘30s and ‘40s that were like him — either the uncles or fathers or grandfathers of kids that I knew. So this guy [Walt Kowalski] seemed like a real person that I had seen in my mind somewhere.

What do you think about the fact that the script doesn’t hold back with Walt’s racist rants?

You can’t do that. I think people in general are tired of walking on egg[shells] anyway. That’s what we’ve been doing the last few decades: wandering around on eggshells, because everybody’s worried about being sensitive. And this way, you can sit there and vicariously live through a guy who’s totally insensitive. It’s fun. I think everybody would like to be Walt Kowalski for about 10 minutes and drop it from there.

He is honest in his feelings, but then he goes somewhere and he changes due to the Hmong culture next door. His telling moment is when he says, "I have more in common with these people than I do with my spoiled, rotten family." And it also talks about family and the feeling family has toward the father and the grandfather. They’re always wanting to put him away, in the American style of putting [the elderly] in assisted living and [wanting to] get rid of them, so the family can go on about their lives and people wanting to get their inheritance.

As a director, how do you think about how the film is going to look after you read the script? And can you talk about spacing your shots, as opposed to using close-ups?

It just depends. When I first started directing years ago, I was more interested in close-ups, because I was an actor-turned-director, and actors always love close-ups. But as time goes on, you start realizing that space is very important. And now, when I watch television shows and everything that are shot almost exclusively in close-ups, I think "They’re losing so much out there."

In the old-fashioned days of John Ford and Howard Hawks, they used close-ups also, but they didn’t use them constantly. They give it a chance to breathe and then all of sudden, they punctuate the close-ups. But now, people are almost punctuating almost constantly … And this picture ["Gran Torino"], because it’s in a small neighborhood and only a very few characters, you’ve got the feeling that there’s some open-ness to it; give it some size.

Can you talk about the casting for "Gran Torino"?

Casting is very important. It’s the most important part of a movie, really. It’s just getting the right faces, the right look, the right performers. Now, in the case of the Hmong culture, there were no actors that I knew of. It wasn’t a large array to pick from, so we just started testing new people. These kids [Bee Vang and Ahney Her] were both 16 and 17 when we did the film, so they were very young. [Ahney Her] had done maybe a high-school play. They really were not experienced people, but they just had a look that looked real to me, so eventually we started, and they jumped right into it and got with the program.

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Bee Vang, John Carroll Lynch and Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino"

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Let’s talk about the scene in the barbershop where Walt Kowlaski shows Thao Vang Lor how trading insults is a form of friendly banter.

I grew up in a neighborhood where we did that. Everybody called each other by their names and called each other by their ethnic affiliation. Even Italian people would call themselves by those names. Everybody did it, but they always did it with a smile on their face, of course. If you didn’t, it was another thing again. People weren’t worried about that sort of thing.

Some of the reviews of "Gran Torino" mention your Dirty Harry character in comparison to Walt Kowalski. Did you think about Dirty Harry when you were playing Walt? And what do you think of being described as "iconic"?

I’m not thinking about anything, really. When you’ve been doing a certain job for 55 years, a lot of different generations have come and gone with you. A lot of people made out in front of the TV set to "Rawhide" … I did the Italian Western genre and then up through the detective stories of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Most people associate me with a time in their lives. Maybe it’s senior high school, maybe it’s junior high school, maybe it’s grammar school or whatever. That’s where the "iconic" [description] of me comes from. If nothing else, I just out-stayed my welcome.

You’ve really evolved as a director, ever since 1988’s "Bird," which seemed to be a turning point for you.

You just do different things. The one thing I always fought against back in the ‘60s, when I was doing the dollar films with Sergio Leone — which were great fun, by the way — but at some point, I knew I had to come back into this country and start doing films locally, and I had to start doing films outside the Western genre. As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that and that would’ve been the end of it.

So I just kept expanding the career. And in 1970, I started directing. I directed a film in which I played a disc jockey ["Play Misty for Me"], and against a lot of the advice of the studio. They said, "Nobody wants to see you play a disc jockey." I said, "I love being a disc jockey. I’ve always wanted to play one. Play music and have a good time. Why not?"

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Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino"

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You also sing, and your singing on the song "Gran Torino" can be heard in the end credits of the movie.

[He says sarcastically] Oh yeah, it’s great. I’m not going to lose my day job, I tell you.

What do you think about how "Gran Torino" is a portrait of contemporary America, addressing issues such as the economy, crime and immigration?

I definitely liked the script for that one reason. We’re going into Michigan, where, in the story [Walt Kowalski] had worked in the Ford factory for a number of years. And here we are talking about the depressed business there, the American economy that wants to be bailed out and is having problems. And here this guy’s retired from it, and then the immigration factor — all of these things make this picture contemporary in that sense. Not to mention all of the things about family, about his relationship to religion (or lack thereof) and then finally his decision on the way he decides to rescue this kid.

As an actor, are there any directors you wish you could’ve worked with in your career?

A ton of them. I always admired the two fellows I mentioned earlier: Ford and Hawks. I did get to work with William Wellman once in a very small part in a picture, but not in one of his great pictures in his heyday. Preston Sturges. I did work with John Sturges one time, too. These were all interesting people. I sort of missed that generation of the ‘40s, when a lot of great directors came along.

Because I started in television, there were a lot of television directors coming up. We had a lot of old-time directors that came along and worked on "Rawhide" — Stuart Heisler and Lazlo Benedict and people like that who had done a lot films quite well. So it was a great learning experience.

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Ahney Her and Clint Eastwood in "Gran Turino"

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Howard Hawks had a similar directing theme that you have, which is about the movie’s characters making their own family.

He did, and he also did a lot of different genres, too. He’d do "Red River" on the one hand, and then he’d do "His Girl Friday" — two completely opposite styles. It’s what made those guys fascinating, I think. They weren’t mired down in just one thing. And Ford, even though he was very well-known for the Western genre, some of his biggest hits were other types of films.

What directors did you learn from the most?

I’d have to say all of them, whether I worked with them or not. I just ended up watching the films. You kind of learn a lot about them and you learn what their thoughts are. But I did learn a lot from Sergio Leone, because even though it was an American genre, it was an Italian’s take on it. So that was great fun. Don Siegel, of course, was a close friend of mine and a mentor. I worked on four or five films with him. Maybe more. I can’t remember now. I have to flip the file.

You’re an actor, director, composer, singer and artist. Is there any part of filmmaking you enjoy the most?

I don’t know. I started out as an actor although the ‘50s and ’60. But I wanted to become a director, and I started in 1970 with "Play Misty for Me." I wanted to become [a director], because I felt that someday, I would not want to be an actor anymore. So I started working my way into that. I figured that you’ve got to look up on the screen someday and say, "That’s enough of that." I’ve said that many times, but I still end up doing it, so I have a masochistic streak somewhere.

I think I like directing the best, at least at this point in life. My ego maybe would’ve liked to see my golden locks, which are no longer golden, when I was younger. Who knows? I can’t remember that far back.

You’re known for being a very efficient director who does very few takes. How much time do you spend rehearsing with you actors?

It just depends; sometimes none, sometimes a lot. For example, in "Mystic River," the actors all wanted to rehearse, because they were all sort of an ensemble, and they had a lot of scenes together. And also they were [concerned] about using the Boston accent. So the actors all got together and they rehearsed at night, and I encouraged that. But I didn’t sit in with tem. I let them go. I let them work it all out.

In this particular picture ["Gran Torino"] in which I used new actors, I just got them in the situation and just let them go. I tried to keep them relaxed and feeling free about it. And once in a while, you’d go back and remind them that they have to listen more intently and you have to make certain transition points, but just basically, let everybody be.

I find that a lot of directors who talk a lot are trying to talk themselves into the scenes; they’re not doing much favors for the actor. It depends on the experience of an actor. Some of them just like to jump right in. I like to see what they’re going to bring, too. That’s one of the fun things about directing a film, is to watch and see what the actor’s imagination is going to bring, because they’ve read the same material and are working from it, as you are. And if they’re on track, you encourage them to stay on track. And if they’re off track, you encourage them to get on the track that you would like.

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Clint Eastwood directing on the set of "Gran Torino"

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As a director, you have a very relaxed atmosphere on your sets. Is it true you don’t like to say, "Action"?

I find that [saying], "Action!" gets everybody tense. I learned that years ago when working on a Western series. The directors would always want to scream, "Action!" And I remember four or five of us were out there on horseback and we were going to come back in and ride up to the camera and say a few lines and that was the end of the sequence. We we’d come riding up, the director would yell, "Action!" at the top of his lungs, and the horses would go every which way. They’d scatter out, and the horses didn’t like boom [microphones] coming down for sound.

Finally, I went to the director and suggested, "Why don’t you just not say ‘Action!’? Why don’t you just stand there and go [he points his fingers], because we’re not stupid. And we’ll just ride up there and say the lines." It seemed to work, at least that one time. So we did that, and I felt very proud of myself. So that started a style.

Do you have plans to write a book or work in other film genres in other countries?

Actually, I sort of became known as a director in Europe before here [in the United States] — at least I was accepted there [as a director] before I was in this country, back in the ‘70s, so I’m sort of partial to all kinds of genres and all kinds of philosophies that come from different societies.

To write a book, I’m not sure about that. I never felt that I had to spill my guts. I’ve been kind of an introvert at times and I don’t feel it’s necessary to share everything in the world. I cooperated with a book [1997’s "Clint Eastwood: A Biography"] that Richard Schickel wrote. I don’t know what else I’d say. I don’t have any plans [to write a book].

What about writing music?

I love songs. I love music. I started out in music when I was a kid. I was interested in that and I kind of lost direction there and then I came back to it, so that’s been great fun.

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Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino"

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Is it true that "Gran Torino" will be your last film as an actor?

You know, I don’t know that. I think I was musing in front of a British journalist, "I don’t know I think this might be the last one." I think I’ve been saying that for years. When I did "Million Dollar Baby," I said, "This is the last film." When I did "Unforgiven," I said, "This would be the perfect last Western." And it has been so far.

And with "Million Dollar Baby," I thought this would be the perfect last film to act in, because [my character] wanders off … and that would be a perfect way to go into the sunset. However, you never know. You never say never. So I was musing in front of this journalist, and he put it out as the gospel, and so there we are.

It might be [my last film] … I don’t know if they have any kind of roles for guys my age. I could play butlers and stuff like that and become the Clifton Webb of modern-day times.

You don’t look your age.

[He says jokingly] It’s amazing what a belt sander will do. And we’ll send you to an opthamologist.

Are there any actors or actresses you’d like to work with that you haven’t worked with yet?

A ton of them. They’re too numerous to nail down, but there are so many wonderful talents coming along and existing talents who are working. I’d love to work with them. I got to work with a lot of great actors. Angelina [Jolie], who of course is easy to look at and she’s extremely talented. In "Gran Torino," I got to work with new people. It’s always evolving. Everything’s evolving and that’s the fun part of the job.

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Bee Vang and Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino"

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You mentioned that Don Siegel was a mentor to you. Are you currently or have been a mentor to anyone?

I’ve worked with a lot of actors over and over again, but not quite as much as Don and I did. I’d like to think I leave some impression with actors and I suppose you become that. I’m a mentor to anybody who’s interested. If they’re interested, then I’m interested, but I don’t have any specific person [I’ve regularly mentored].

What advice would you have for aspiring actors and aspiring directors?

I would just say, "Keep after it. Keep working. Keep learning new things every day, and eventually, when a great break happens (hopefully it happens to everyone), be ready for it, jump on it and beat it into the ground."

What made you comfortable when you first started directing? Because when you started, there weren’t many actors-turned-directors.

I know it. I first tried to direct in the ‘50s or ‘60s. On "Rawhide," I wanted to direct an episode of that. They promised me that I would be able to do one, and then they reneged on the deal. I guess because some other series had an actor-turned-director and he had gone way over schedule. I just don’t know.

What do you think of Italian movies?

I grew up watching "Bitter Rice" with Silvana Mangano and all those few Italian films that would be released in the States. I liked Vittorio De Sica a lot, and I got to work with him once in a segment movie. He was a great director. He was a very charismatic character and a guy I watched a lot when he was directing. I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the ‘60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.

Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Brooke Chia Thao, Chee Thao and Ahney Her in "Gran Torino"

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How long did it take to make "Gran Torino," from the time you got the script?

"Gran Torino" was very fast. We were doing post-production, editing "Changeling," which we’d done earlier in the year, and we started preparing "Gran Torino" almost immediately. Rob Lorenz, my associate, he took off for Michigan and put the deal together. It just came together really fast.

And then we found the Hmong communities. There’s a large group in Fresno, California, and St. Paul in Minnesota, and a smaller group in Michigan. So we ended up sending the casting people out into the Hmong community and found the various people who would be in the film. We shot the film in 32 days around Detroit.

Wasn’t the film’s story originally supposed to take place in Minneapolis?

Yeah, he [screenwriter Nick Schenk] had it in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area, and I suppose he had it there because there’s a very large group of Hmongs there. But the story plotline was about a guy who worked in the Ford factory, so it seemed to make more sense for it to be in Michigan. Plus they had a tax-rebate deal that made it really attractive. So we had a little bit of the W-H-O-R-E [about the budget] …We went with the economics of it all. It was actually very practical to do that, rather than do it in St. Paul or something like that. Our leading lady [Ahney Her] was from Michigan. Everything worked out quite well.

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Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino"

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How did you find the Gran Torino that’s in the movie?

We found the car in Utah or somewhere. Some guy had one he had restored and wanted to sell, so we bought it hauled it over to Michigan.

What specific things do you look for in the casting process?

It’s just a look and a sound. And naturally, you want the person to be good and have a certain experience as an actor — or unless you’re doing a film like this one, where you’re willing to go with less-experienced actors. But the main thing is the look, the sound, what have you. With "Bird," I remember looking at Diane Venora on a tape, and they had about six or eight actresses on it. And when I saw Diane Venora, I said, "No, we’ll just stop right there." And the guy said, "Don’t you want to look at the rest of them" I said, "On the next picture." It was an inspirational thing. She did a wonderful test on it and she was great in the film.

It changes all the time, but mostly, it’s the look, the sound, how a cast fits in, the overall ensemble and how it’s going to appear in the film. The casting is the most important thing, because if you cast a film well, you’re 80 percent there. And if you cast a film poorly, then you’re never there. You may get up to "fair," but not much better. But it’s no insult for a person if they don’t get a role, because most of the time it’s just a different look that the director’s looking for.

Do you prefer doing a film on location or on a soundstage?

This film ["Gran Torino"] is all location. "Changeling," because it was a period film, there was some interior work on soundstages, and some of it was on location. My first film I ever directed, "Play Misty for Me," I did all on location, and that’s exactly what we did on this film here. But some films are different. If you’re doing a space film, you have to be on sets, because there’s no way you can go on location — maybe in some other time frame in history. [With] science-fiction movies, you can make the location what you want it to be.

"Changeling" was difficult, because we had to put Los Angeles back to 1928. And in 1928, there were no buildings of any great size, except City Hall. It was very, very sprawling. It was a much smaller city than it is now. And they have street cars and stuff that they don’t have now and they shouldn’t have gotten rid of, but they did.

Location dictates a lot. When you get there, it colors the picture. The way you look at everything is different when you get on location. You can scout locations and look at them, but I like first impressions. Sometimes I don’t like going to locations too early. That could be laziness or it could be that you like to get the inspiration of a new look.

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'Gran Torino' dvd out!!

Just in case you didn't know.

My review is posted here.



Recently widowed senior Walt Kowalski speaks his mind no matter who he offends, and growls under his breath whenever he disagrees with those around him. Much of his personal values are shaped from his time in the Korean War. He doesn't understand his family, nor they him. As such, they tolerate each other more than love each other. He has lived in the same house for much of his adult life, in an older working class suburban neighborhood of Detroit. It is slowly transforming into an immigrant neighborhood. The Lor family, of ethnic Hmong descent, move in next door to Walt, the family which includes two teenagers: outspoken Sue, and brooding and passive Thao. The neighbors' initial "don't speak to me" relationship changes when, out of circumstance, Walt saves Thao from a potentially violent incident with a Vietnamese youth gang. This incident, only the latest of run-in's Thao has had with them, sparks the neighbors to get to know each other. This new relationship with his neighbors extends to an antagonistic relationship with the Vietnamese gang. Walt realizes that neither Thao or Sue will ever be able to live in peace as long as the gang exists. Written by Huggo

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Beyond Clint Eastwood: Tribal Justice for the Hmong by Roger Warner

January 8th, 2009

Director-actor Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Gran Torino, is the gritty story of an old racist (played by Eastwood) and what he does when Asians from an obscure immigrant group, the Hmong, move in next door. An inner-city gang tries to get the neighbor’s teenage son to steal Eastwood’s prize car, a Ford Gran Torino. The old coot bonds with his Hmong neighbors, but the gang keeps making trouble, and Clint takes justice into his own hands – with a rifle, a pistol, and bare-knuckled moral outrage.

It’s a good Hollywood movie about vengeance and justice, an updated Dirty Harry. But in the real world, there are 200,000 Hmong in this country, and although they face a serious and deep crisis they don’t need an old white vigilante to save them. They need help from their government, and they aren’t getting it.

The Hmong are a tribe from the mountains of Laos, in Southeast Asia. They fought for the C.I.A. in a little-known sideshow to the Vietnam war. For a people that didn’t even use the wheel in their old country, the Hmong have done phenomenally well as immigrants to America. A solid Hmong-American middle class – soldiers, lawyers, accountants, chicken farmers, store owners and college students – far outnumbers the urban hoodlums. What haunts Hmong-Americans as an ethnic group is that the war they left behind in Laos has never entirely ended. And what frustrates them is that the U.S. government, while occasionally pretending to care, has made the problem worse instead of solving it.

A third of a century after the U.S. armed forces pulled out of Southeast Asia, Laotian soldiers of the old-line communist regime still hunt and kill men, women, and children belonging to the last few Hmong resistance bands. The leaders of the resistance bands were all trained by the C.I.A. when they were young. Most of them are grandfathers now. They have satellite phones, gifts from their American relatives. From remote jungle mountainsides, they call family members in Minnesota, or Wisconsin, or California, and forlornly ask when the U.S. military is going to come back and save them from their enemies.

This poignant leftover conflict in Laos has also spawned subsidiary conflicts in two other countries. Thousands of Hmong have fled from Laos to next-door Thailand, but the Thai government is forcibly repatriating them. And in the U.S. itself, the Justice Department has brought terrorism charges against a group of Hmong-Americans for allegedly planning to overthrow the Laotian regime. What’s going on? Why are Hmong – generally likable and industrious people – getting in so much trouble?

While the Hmong are famous for their stubbornness, and a few of them are real troublemakers, most of the harm done to them has come from national governments. The Lao People’s Democratic Republic, one of the last communist regimes in the world, tops the list, followed by the government of Thailand. But the U.S. government also plays a huge unacknowledged role in perpetuating this tribal crisis.

When I visited the U.S. embassy in Laos in August 2008, for example, the staffers there told me they were deeply concerned about human rights violations against the Hmong. But it turned out they weren’t keeping track of Hmong resistance factions systematically, nor had they mapped out any strategies for ending this decades-long conflict through negotiations with the Lao regime. In fact, the embassy people eventually admitted that their proudest achievement was an exchange of military attachés with the Lao regime. This new program will allow the U.S. government to aid the Lao army – the same force that is hunting the C.I.A.-trained resistance leaders. That’s right: The U.S. government has not only abandoned its old tribal allies but is helping those who are trying to kill them. It’s hard to see how a reputation for this kind of betrayal can help us recruit new tribal allies in our current wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The same kind of State Department doublespeak can be heard in Thailand, the country that is sending Hmong refugees back to Laos in violation of international law. When I visited the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, a diplomat working in an elegant, high-ceilinged office told me that human rights for the Hmong was terribly important to him, both personally and professionally . In fact, he said, he’d heard from a lot of congressmen about it. But he also admitted that he’d spent several days with the Thai general directly in charge of the repatriations without raising the subject of the Hmong even once. And why not? “Because he’s not at the same level,” the embassy official said. In other words, rank and protocol were more important to this diplomat than rolling up his sleeves and protecting the Hmong refugees he’d promised congressmen he would help.

To see the practical effects of this State Department neglect I visited Hmong refugees in a detention center in Nong Khai, Thailand. The 150 refugees there are the remnants from two resistance bands that stayed loyal to their old U.S. mentors and stayed on the run for more than thirty years before fleeing Laos for Thailand. They showed me their bullet scars. Their stories checked out. Now these refugees sleep like sardines on a floor of a windowless cell and are let outdoors two hours a day. They are going half-crazy from the confinement and from fear of being tortured when they are returned to Laos. Perhaps if the U.S. embassy officials lived on “the same level” as the Hmong in this detention center they’d try a little harder to improve conditions.

The State Department’s unwillingness to help the Hmong of Laos has set off a curious and self-perpetuating cycle. Historically, the cycle began when Hmong started arriving as refugees in the U.S. thirty years ago: Because the U.S. government wasn’t doing anything to stop the violence against Hmong in Laos, Hmong-Americans matter-of-factly undertook their own ethnic self-defense. Beginning in the 1980s, they raised money in their own communities and sent it to the resistance in Laos along with a few Hmong-Americans to help with the fighting. All of this violated U.S. laws, but the Justice Department didn’t crack down, because the Hmong were old allies, and because American interests weren’t being hurt, or so it seemed.

As time went by without U.S. law enforcement pressure, or any meaningful contact from the federal government, however, the Hmong-American support network grew bolder and less scrupulous. Fundraisers developed sticky fingers and lived off the money they collected. Hmong-Americans factions competed for the loyalties of resistance factions, promising U.S. military help that would never arrive. A succession of white Americans – Lawrence of Arabia wannabees, and military veterans suffering from “lost honor” syndrome – joined the Hmong cause, made promises, then drifted away. And Hmong-Americans started paying fees to smugglers so their relatives could enter Thai refugee camps, in hopes of free rides to America. Nobody was telling the Hmong-Americans they couldn’t. They were like investment bankers and mortgage brokers – under-regulated and opportunistic.

By the beginning of this decade, it was hard to tell how much of the Hmong resistance in Laos and the Hmong refugee influx to Thailand was indigenous and legitimate, and how much was being bought and paid for by Hmong exiles in America. Hmong-Americans funding had enlarged the Hmong phenomenon in Southeast Asia, and this made the State Department’s task of dealing with the Hmong overseas even more difficult. The cycle of futility was complete. Nobody was in charge, and nobody was getting what they wanted, not even the Hmong-Americans, because after all, their relatives were still being hunted down and shot in the mountains of Laos.

By 2007, after repeated offensives by the Laotian army, the Hmong resistance in the mountains of Laos was down to its last thousand or so members, most of them women and children. It had no offensive capability and controlled only a few villages in the boondocks. Resistance leaders spoke openly of wanting to surrender, if only their safety could be guaranteed. But in June 2007, when Justice Department finally acted, it didn’t have their interests in mind.

In Sacramento California, a federal anti-terror task force that needed to justify its existence and couldn’t find any al Qaeda sleeper cells to bust helped create an improbable $26 million plot to overthrow the entire country of Laos. The undercover agent in the case tried to lure nine Hmong-Americans and one U.S. military veteran – a Lawrence of Arabia wannabe named Harrison Jack – into signing up with the plot. (The case is known as U.S. vs. Harrison Jack et. al.) Though the defendants never committed to the plot, the prosecution is seeking multiple life sentences for those who nibbled at the bait.This poorly-timed and sloppy attempt at government entrapment has so outraged retired CIA operatives who worked with the Hmong in Laos long ago that these spooks have promised to testify for the defense if the case goes to trial. That’s right – the C.I.A. versus the Justice Department in a terrorism trial. Convictions seem unlikely, but the case has already had an international effect. The U.S. Justice Department’s branding the Hmong with the “terrorist” label has hardened the resolve of the governments of Laos and Thailand to get rid of their Hmong problem once and for all. It has given these governments yet another excuse to treat tribesmen there as sub-humans, to be hunted down or repatriated at whim. And so the Hmong crisis goes around and around, with nobody in charge.

Back to the new Clint Eastwood film, Gran Torino. Movies are satisfying because they distill broad social trends into small, tight human dramas. A family is threatened. A neighbor responds. We are wired to appreciate those neat, concise stories. The real-life Hmong crisis is much bigger and messier. It cannot be solved Hollywood style by an old white guy with a gun, even a cool old white guy like Clint Eastwood. But in real life, there is a son of tribesman – a Kenyan tribesman – who could bring justice to the Hmong, or at least give it an honest try.

The Obama administration has a lot on its plate, but it could certainly diminish and probably end the Hmong crisis if it chose. Basically, it could offer the Laotian government a deal: The U.S. government would guarantee an end to Hmong-American meddling in exchange for Laos’ guarantee that the last Hmong resistance forces could surrender peacefully – without punishment, under the watchful eyes of international monitors. And the most deserving Hmong refugees in Thailand could be resettled in western countries that have already expressed interest in taking them in.

Would this work? Well, it sure wouldn’t hurt to try. Conditions for an overall settlement are better now than they have been in the last thirty years. So let’s hope President Obama can hit the re-set button. Start fresh, with new thinking. If he and his national security council could knock sense into the State Department and Department of Justice, and get these bureaucracies to work together on a sensible peacemongering policy, this leftover insurgency, which is in nobody’s interests, could be brought to a peaceful end.

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My thoughts on Gran Torino

A few days ago, I finally saw Gran Torino. Now, I've heard mixed reviews. The American audience generally loved the movie. While, the Hmong critics bashed it. I went in watching the film with a clear head. I didn't want any of their views to influence my thoughts. After watching the movie, I can see both sides. For me, I did like the movie. Me, being Hmong myself, I am not dumb to not know all my traditions. However, I do know that it is just a movie. I am proud and greatly honored by Clint Eastwood to have a movie that will show my people - the Hmong people - in a positive, yet negative light as well.

I am sure after watching this movie, for those who did know who Hmong people are went on Google to search Hmong people. People probably did not even know how to spell Hmong and google the ethnicity or nationality of the people in Gran Torino. I'm sure of this because this blog itself has gotten a lot of hits at one time about Gran Torino.

No one can argue the acting ability of Clint Eastwood. He's a legend and one of the best ever in Hollywood. What I find it more amazing is he gave Hmong people a place to shine in the movie. There are no professional Hmong stars, yet he gave two amateur Hmong actors a place in Hollywood -- Anhey Her who plays Sue & Bee Vang who plays Tao.

Walt is a grumpy, old man. He is a Viet veteran who has served his country but feels alienated in his own family. For some reason, he is unhappy with his life. Besides his kids who does not care for him. The only person who loves him so much is his wife but she is no longer living.

Who ever thought that a minority ethnic group called Hmong would open Walt's eyes up? Like many people who are ignorant about other people's cultures, Walt was eagered to shut his heart on these "chinks" who live next door to him.

He locked himself of the outside world, not knowing that times have changed. The best scene to portray this is when he had to visit his doctor.

Eastwood chose to show the good and bad of the Hmong people, which I thought was brilliant. You have Sue and Tao's family living next door. Then also have Tao's gangster cousin and his gangster friends.

To me, Ahney was very natural and really liked her. Plus I am so glad that she did not have a weak character. She had me laughing when she was sticking up for herself.

Bee Vang has the quiet role. He plays Tao, a boy who needs to man up in the house. A good kid with a kind heart but does not know where to go. His gangster cousin wants him to be in the gang with them.

The movie is titled Gran Torino for the car that Walt drives. The gangsters wanted Tao to steal the car to prove his macho-ness.

Another interesting point is the failing automotive industry. The film was shot in Michigan, where 80% of the automotive business lives.

Being a Hmong, there are some scenes in which I know isn't true. However, you have to watch the movie knowing it's just a movie. It is not a freaking documentary on Hmong people. If you want that, go watch PBS.

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‘Gran Torino’ Opens as Top Movie With $29 Million

By Michael White and Jim Efstathiou Jr.

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Clint Eastwood drama “Gran Torino” opened in first place at U.S. and Canadian theaters this weekend, taking in $29 million for Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros.
The film beat out the Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson comedy “Bride Wars,” which made $21.5 million, Media By Numbers LLC said today in an e-mailed statement.

“Gran Torino” is the latest successful collaboration between the 78-year-old Eastwood and Warner Bros., which has produced hits “Million Dollar Baby” and “Mystic River” in collaboration with the actor. Warner Bros. was the top grossing movie studio with $1.77 billion in sales last year, according to Burbank, California-based Box Office Mojo LLC.

“It’s Clint Eastwood in the type of movie people want to see him in,” said Brandon Gray, publisher of Box Office Mojo, in an interview today. “Rough and down to business, and he’s in action. It’s not surprising that it did very well.”

In “Gran Torino,” Eastwood plays an aging Korean War veteran who must overcome his prejudice to help Hmong neighbors battle a violent gang. Eastwood, who also directed the film, won the best-actor award from the National Board of Review for his performance.
‘Bride Wars’

Warner Bros. released “Gran Torino” five weeks ago in a limited number of theaters. This week, the studio expanded distribution by 2,724 movie houses.

“The release pattern and the strategy behind ‘Gran Torino’ was pitch perfect,” Media By Numbers President Paul Dergarabedian said in an interview. “Warner’s coming off a terrific ‘08 and now they’re kicking off ‘09 in great fashion.”

In “Bride Wars,” Hathaway and Hudson play best friends who become rivals after learning their wedding dates conflict. Audiences ignored the film’s critics, most of whom gave the picture low ratings. Of 92 reviews posted on Rottentomatoes.com, 81 were negative.

Among other new releases, Rogue Pictures’ horror film “The Unborn” was third with sales of $21.1 million. “The Unborn” follows the travails of a young woman tormented by a demon intent on taking over her body. The film stars Odette Yustman and Gary Oldman.
‘Benjamin Button’

“Marley & Me” dropped to fourth place from first with sales of $11.4 million. The film starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston has earned $123.7 million to date in the U.S. and Canada. The movie is based on a memoir by former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John Grogan.

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” fell to fifth from third with $9.5 million. The film, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, has made $94.3 million in three weeks of release.
Receipts for the top 12 movies rose 22 percent to $129.8 million from a year earlier, Los Angeles-based Media By Numbers said.

The following table has figures provided by studios to Media By Numbers. The amounts are based on actual ticket sales from Jan. 9 and yesterday and estimates for today. Movie Rev. Theaters Wks Avg./ Pct. Total
($mln) Theater Chg. ($mln)
1. Gran Torino $29.0 2,808 5 $10,337 888 $40.1
2. Bride Wars 21.5 3,226 1 6,665 - 21.5
3. The Unborn 21.1 2,357 1 8,950 - 21.1
4. Marley & Me 11.4 3,478 3 3,263 -53 123.7
5. Benjamin Button 9.45 2,947 3 3,207 -49 94.3
6. Bedtime Stories 8.55 3,511 3 2,435 -58 97.2
7. Valkyrie 6.66 2,838 3 2,347 -53 71.5
8. Yes Man 6.16 2,955 4 2,083 -56 89.4
9. Not Easily 5.6 724 1 7,735 - 5.6
10. Seven Pounds 3.9 2,456 4 1,588 -61 66.8

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael White in Los Angeles at mwhite@bloomberg.net. and To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aOsnhwk6yNq4&refer=home

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Eastwood recognizes Hmong immigrants with new film

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Back in the early 1990s, Nick Schenk was working the night shift at a factory in Bloomington, Minn., packaging VHS tapes. It seemed like a lousy job at the time, but it would lead him to the biggest break of his career.

Many of his co-workers were Hmong , an Asian people from the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia and China who fled to the U.S. in the wake of the communist takeover of Laos in 1975. "We had a lot of time to talk," Schenk recalls. "They'd ask us stuff like, 'Why do you guys eat so much?' And we'd ask them things like, 'Why do you have the same first name as last name?'"

Schenk also learned deeper things about the Hmong, such as how they had sided with the U.S. in the Vietnam War , only to wind up in refugee camps, at the mercy of communist forces, when American troops pulled out. And he learned about how they came to the U.S. thinking they'd be seen as heroes, only to find nobody knew they existed. But that was as far as it went. When the job ended, the plight of the Hmong slipped to the back of his mind.

Years later, however, after Schenk found himself stuck trying to develop a story about a recently widowed Korean War vet who is embittered by the changes he sees in his neighborhood, he stumbled upon the idea of putting a Hmong family next door to his main character, setting up a clash of cultures. Schenk bounced the idea around with his brother's roommate, Dave Johannson, and by the mid-2000s, they had pounded out an outline for the story.

Insiders told him, "You can't write a movie with old people in it. It's not sellable." But through a friend, he was able to get the screenplay to Bill Gerber, a producer and former studio executive based at Warner Bros . Then, in late 2007, Gerber set up a meeting with Clint Eastwood and producer Rob Lorenz.

Eastwood was in the final weeks of shooting Universal's " Changeling ." Work on "Changeling" was on track to wrap in May, but then the actor-director planned to segue to " The Human Factor ," with Morgan Freeman starring as Nelson Mandela. Even if he liked Gerber's pitch, he was thoroughly committed for the next year or more.

Luckily for Schenk and Johannson, production on "Human Factor" was pushed back to early 2009, leaving Eastwood just enough time to squeeze in a summer shoot for " Gran Torino ," which opens in theaters on December 12.

Quite quickly, he announced that it would be his next project. Better still, despite having claimed he would no longer act, Eastwood now said he would play the lead role of Walt Kowalski, as well as direct.

"I've kinda been slowly withdrawing (from acting)," Eastwood acknowledges. "But every time I say I am not going to, somebody gives me a role. That's what happened with (2004's) "Million Dollar Baby,' and that was four years ago now. When 'Gran Torino' came along, it was a fun and challenging role, and it's an oddball story."

With Eastwood attached, the film rapidly got a greenlight from Warners . The studio suggested he consider shooting in Michigan, which had just enacted a generous tax rebate in an effort to lure film and TV productions to the state.

"The script was written for Minnesota , but it was well-suited to Michigan because Clint's character is a retired auto worker from a Ford plant," notes Lorenz. "So we went to the Midwest and looked around at a number of different locations in Minnesota, Chicago and Michigan. We brought back the pictures, and Clint chose Michigan," specifically the Detroit suburb Highland Park .

If finding the right location was easy, casting was a whole other matter, a task made more daunting by Eastwood's determination to cast actual Hmong . Casting director Ellen Chenoweth set up open casting calls in Detroit -- and in Fresno, Calif., and St. Paul, Minn., the cities with the nation's two largest Hmong communities. She also enlisted the help of various Hmong organizations.

In St. Paul, she found Bee Vang to fill the key role of Tao, a teenage boy who tries to steal Walt's prized 1972 Gran Torino, initiating an unlikely friendship; and in Detroit, she found Ahney Her to play Tao's older sister, Sue.

"When Rob and I sat down with them, it didn't seem like they totally grasped the enormity of what had happened," Gerber says. "They hadn't really seen that many of Clint's movies, so they weren't intimidated by his oeuvre."

Her, who had studied acting for a short time, had never been in a movie before, so she was understandably nervous when she showed up on the set in July. But Eastwood immediately put her at ease. Indeed, one of the surprising things about the star is how quickly he elicits a feeling of comfort in those who work with him.

"The first time I was going to shoot, he said, 'Be yourself and do what you have to do,'" Her recalls. "And it applied to all the scenes that I did."

Filming commenced in Highland Park in July. Even though most of the Hmong cast members had little or no acting experience, Eastwood stuck to his policy of no rehearsals. "Clint likes things to be fresh and spontaneous and not overly rehearsed, because then they become stale, particularly with someone who's new at it," Lorenz observes. "He doesn't want them to formulate specific performances that they will be unwilling to change, so he'd rather do it on the day."

Eastwood has a reputation for working swiftly, but on "Gran Torino," he outdid himself. With the action restricted largely to two neighboring houses, he was able to shoot most of the film in sequence and wrap principal photography two days shy of the scheduled 35 days.

The older Hmong on the set were deeply appreciative of his efforts. "I was sitting at lunch with Clint one day and I remember the Hmong extras coming up and saying to him how much they appreciated him making a movie that included their culture," Gerber recalls.

Whether that culture will draw a wide audience remains to be seen. But Warners ' decision to release "Torino" in awards season, just when Eastwood is also out with " Changeling ," bears similarities to two years ago, when " Letters From Iwo Jima " bowed just after " Flags of Our Fathers ." In the end, it was the smaller picture that had legs.

Much attention will be paid to Eastwood, who may finally stand a real chance of being recognized for his work as an actor, as well as director. But just as important, the movie will also draw attention to the plight of the Hmong.

"To (Eastwood's character) Walt, all Asians are the same," Schenk says. The Hmong just happened to be the prevalent Asian ethnic group living in the sort of community he envisioned Walt living in. "But I did my best to make sure everything was true to them, because I respect those people. And the Hmong people I talked to on the set say I nailed it pretty well."

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Finally - Gran Torino's trailer

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First Look: Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino Poster and More

First Look: Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino Poster and More
October 23, 2008

Source: USA Todayby Alex Billington



After finally figuring out what Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino was about last week, we've got our first look at Eastwood as well as the official poster. This update comes from USA Today, where a full feature article can also be found. Gran Torino follows Walt Kowalski (played by Eastwood), a racist Korean War veteran whose prized possession is a classic car that catches the eye of local gangs in his Detroit neighborhood. The story is really about two important "objects", both of which can be seen on the poster: Kowalski's 1972 Ford muscle car and his M-1 rifle - "the weapon he has had left over since being in the service."

Eastwood elaborates on the plot and the inciting incident. "The young kid, as part of a gang initiation, tries to steal it, and the old guy gets him at the end of the M-1, which becomes kind of a big deal," he explains. "The kid has to do penance because of the pride of the Asian group. They make him do penance. He has to come over, and the old guy doesn't want anything to do with him, doesn't want him anywhere around." So what does Kowalski make him do if he doesn't want him around? "Walt helps him get a job and helps him toughen up a bit… They take him in and try to show him how to handle himself in life."

Eastwood adds that "it's got a lot of twists and turns in the story" but "also has some good laughs." I'm very interested based on that brief description alone. The trailer debuts this weekend in front of Changeling and will be online soon. Speaking of which, has any other director had a trailer for their next movie in front of the theatrical opening of another one of their movies? This may be a first!

Gran Torino is directed by the legendary Clint Eastwood, of Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Changeling. The screenplay was written by newcomer Nick Schenk (I Shot Myself) with story assistance from first-timer Dave Johannson. Warner Brothers has scheduled a limited December 17th release for Gran Torino, which puts Eastwood and company into Oscar consideration again. Will audiences be able to appreciate two Eastwood films in one year?

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HMONG ACTORS MAKING HISTORY PART 1: THE BAD GUYS OF EASTWOOD’S GRAN TORINO

Legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood is making history in the Hmong community with his upcoming film Gran Torino. But this is not only Hmong news. By creating a mainstream Hollywood film that features mostly Hmong leads and supporting actors (other than Eastwood’s character), he’s giving unprecedented visibility to Hmong Americans. Says veteran Hollywood actor Wa Yang, who worked with Eastwood through a small role in Letters from Iwo Jima, “It’s creating exposure in Hollywood, where no one knows who the Hmong are. Hopefully it will pique interest and one day the story of how we came to the US can be told.”

The film is being shot in and around Detroit this month. From the publicity so far, it centers on a grumpy Korean war veteran (Eastwood), who is estranged from his family after his wife dies. He meets his new Hmong neighbors, especially teens Tao and Sue, and eventually gets involved in trying to shield them from the Hmong gang that wants to recruit Tao. Whether he succeeds is the best kept secret, but in the process his friendships with Hmong transform and soften him.

How did this production get off the ground? After open casting calls were held in Fresno, Detroit and Minnesota, interested Hmong Americans waited with baited breath to see who would be cast. As days turned into weeks, fear spread that Hmong would be passed over for more experienced Asian actors. But then, in early July, people who least expected it started getting the calls. Elation spread with the news that ten key roles had gone to mostly first-time Hmong actors, and that Hmong extras, production assistants and others were also going to be on set. Eastwood seems to be putting a mountain of faith in Hmong talent, and it looks like he will be well rewarded for it. Working on Gran Torino is stretching the actors - many of whom have backgrounds in other art forms like music - to reach potentials they didn’t know they had.

This article is the first of two to introduce the people behind the characters in the production that everyone is following. In this issue, get to know the five guys in the Hmong gang. In the September 1 issue, watch for leads Bee Vang (Tao) and Ahney (Formerly known as Whitney) Her (Sue) plus other cast members.

The Boys of Gran Torino

Who are the bad guys of Gran Torino? Five Hmong actors, chosen from several states and from five different clans, make up the gang that is menacing Tao. Most of them have little experience acting. Sonny Vue, born in Fresno and now from St. Paul, plays the ringleader, “Smokie.” At 19 years old and only 5’5” tall, he was a surprise pick for the gang’s toughest guy. Even he was surprised. He’d taken an acting class at Vessey Leadership Academy but never been in front of the camera before. He even confesses he has stage fright.

Sonny was playing around with his cousin when they found the casting call on the internet. He boasted that he thought he could get Smokie. He describes driving by the HAP open auditions that weekend in May. It was Friday night and the guy was there. “I got a private audition.” They were looking for a Hmong American look. He was wearing a brown t-shirt that said ‘I’m hiding from the cops.’ Everyone was trying out for Tao, the good guy. Instead, he showcased his bad boy persona. “I think it’s the way I talk,” he explains in a familiar Hmong street voice. He sounds like he still can’t believe it.

“Exhilarating” is how Lee Mong Vang, Gangster No. 3, describes the experience of Gran Torino. The 26-year-old was born in Dallas, moved to Toledo, then spent most of his childhood in rough neighborhoods on the east side of Detroit. “You grow up all your life thinking you’d never be able to do anything like this. Going on set, seeing Clint Eastwood…it’s really awesome.” Lee Mong ended up in the show because a friend who studied acting told him he was “personable and talented and should give it a try.” An outdoorsman, he remembers with amusement that he skipped the first open call. “I went fishing,” he chuckles. But the second audition reeled him in. He was cast without even a callback. He knows this had to be a blessing from his deceased grandma who had just passed away before the audition. “I’m her oldest grandchild,” he muses, “She loves me.”

Lee Mong had no acting experience but he had done some singing so he had no stage fright. As a self-described jokester, he hopes to introduce some humor onto the set. He says he’s the muscle of the gang since he’s 5’7” and a brawny, heavier guy. Before this experience, he’d been working in manufacturing and studying to do auto cab design. Now he wants to go back to his music and maybe even pursue acting. “Live your life like it’s your last,” he wants to tell the young people out there, “You can’t predict the future, so go for it.”

Doua Moua, 21, hails from New York City, where he moved when he was 18 to pursue his acting career. A towering 5’11”, Doua plays Fong, aka Spider, Tao and Sue’s older cousin and an ambivalent member of Smokie’s gang. Born in Thailand, he grew up in Minnesota where he got into acting in middle school. He started college, but dropped out in order to refocus his heart and energy. He got a manager, and started auditioning around New York for both theater and film. His success rate speaks for itself: He’s been in numerous films and theater shows holding large and small parts.

“My dream is happening,” says a thrilled Doua, “I have to appreciate every moment that I’m riding this ride.” He wants to be part of a new generation that will make strides in getting Hmong people and Hmong art known. But even as he wants to impact the mainstream, he remembers the sacrifices and hard work of his parents. He wants to give back to his community. No matter where else his career takes him in the future, he affirms, he’d love to have a chance to work with Hmong filmmakers making movies for Hmong audiences.

Jerry Lee, 22, 5’9 ½” is a native of Chico, California who moved to St. Paul only in 2002. He’d done choir and acted in a play and a musical in high school and later in a 48-hour film festival short. When his girlfriend told him about the casting call, he’d already moved on. He had studied Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement and was going on to do Business Administration. But he decided to try out. He thought about Smokie, his off-the-chart pride. “I can portray myself as someone else,” he recalls. It happened: He got the part of Gangster No. 2. Jerry treasures all his time on set, “Eastwood’s a real humble guy, not what I expected,” he says with reverence. “I’m picking up things from other cast members. And what’s most important is building networks and friends….Kids, never stop chasing your dreams. And hold on to your contacts.

Jerry’s personal passion is writing stories and screenplays. He’s written a comedy short to be posted on Youtube. Now he’s working on a feature-length screenplay about sexuality. It focuses on how Hmong culture adapts to the modern world by looking at lesbian and gay Hmong and how hard it is for them to come out.

Elvis Thao, 26, plays Gangster No. 1. Born in Kansas, he moved to Modesto and then Milwaukee. “I’m very passionate about my city,” he says, “My heart is set on community issues.” The bald-headed, 5’6” powerhouse burns the candle at both ends. A member of the hip hop group RARE, he is co-owner of Shaolin Entertainment and a veteran of the Hmong music industry. Meanwhile, he takes philanthropy courses, lectures to youth at universities, and runs summer programs for kids.

“I’m based on revolution,” says Elvis. He is critical of corporate control in the music industry and “not too fond of Hollywood.” “What I hate is stardom.” If you call his cell phone the voicemail recording taunts: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what? So I’m shootin a movie with Clint Eastwood. Woo woo. What’s all the fussin for?” Instead he is inspired by Michael Moore and Don Cheadle, and sees the potential for real life documentary to create change. He almost didn’t audition for Gran Torino, but people in his network kept calling him. At 8PM on the Friday night before the Minnesota auditions his head was pounding. He got in the car and said “Let’s go or I’ll regret it forever.” And he has no regrets despite the gangster image he’s been hired to recreate. His vision is that audiences will see that they are actors playing characters, that they are examples of professional excellence, at being who they are while they create someone else. The income he makes will be used to promote awareness of the issues he cares most about – from police brutality in Milwaukee to human rights in Laos… “I’m going to be speaking out against gang violence after this,” he adds with determination.

Remaking the Image?

One of the things that makes this production so historic is that Hmong have been targets of others’ negative images for as long as they’ve been in the United States (or even much longer). Hmong gangbangers…Chai Soua Vang’s killings…Guerilla warriors in Asia…Uncooperative new immigrants in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. These are the kind of images that Hmong have had to deal with as newcomers to the American scene. The presence of these actors will make audiences see that there is somebody behind the role…and that somebody is a person of substance.

In Gran Torino, much of the dialogue is being created through improvising even though the original lines were written by white Minnesotan Nick Schenk (with Hmong input). Hmong actors describe ad-libbing their own lines on camera. They talk about drawing on their own grassroots experiences to make their characters authentic. They’re advocating for cultural accuracy, even when the Hollywood spectacle might be producing distortions. With so many talented Hmong working together, the ground is laid for the creation of three-dimensional people, a much more realistic portrayal of Hmong by Hmong for American audiences. Will it work? We’ll have to wait for the movie release…

Louisa Schein teaches Anthropology and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She is writing a book about Hmong media. She can be reached at louisaschein@gmail.com

Stay tuned for Part II where we meet the star teens, Bee Vang and Ahney Her, along with others.

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Clint Eastwood movie with Hmong people

Based on character breakdowns, it's apparently a coming-of-age drama about the unlikely friendship that forms between an old, disgruntled Korean War vet (Eastwood, presumably), who cherishes his titular muscle car, and the troubled young Hmong teen who tries to steal the car to impress a street gang. Here are detailed descriptions of the characters:

GRAN TORINO
Feature Film
Warner Brothers
SAG

Producer: Clint Eastwood, Rob Lorenz, Bill Gerber
Director: Clint Eastwood
[TAO VANG LOR] A 15-19 year old Hmong (Southeast Asian) boy, Tao is slight, with long hair and long lashes, but he is very good looking, like an Asian Johnny Depp. His father is dead, and he lives in the house next door to Walt, a house full of women who disrespect him because he has no inner strength and resilience. A boy who would rather be a bookworm and be left alone, he's pressured to join his cousin's street gang, and he's brutally humiliated when he tries to steal Walt's Gran Torino. Intent on making amends to Walt, who has been befriended by his sister Sue, Tao works for Walt around the house for two weeks - and in the process, earns a smidgen of respect from Walt for his stoicism. Very protective of his family, and desperately in need of a male role model, Tao is pleasantly surprised when his odd friend pays him back for his labor - by helping Tao get both a job and a girlfriend. When Sue is raped by a pack of Hmong punks, Tao wants to get revenge - but Walt decides to carry that burden himself alone. HMONG LANGUAGE SKILLS A PLUS... LEAD (6)

[SUE] Tao's younger sister, 15 - 19, Sue is smarter than her brother when it comes to social skills and emotional IQ. A charmer, expert at using her communication skills to build bridges, Sue is contemptuous of local gang recruiters, Spider and Smokie - but she views Walt with wary interest. All too aware that her brother could use a masculine influence in his life to teach him the basics, Sue gently nudges Walt and Tao together, hoping for the best, and quite pleased when Tao acquires both a father figure and a few much-needed callouses. But when the local gang decides to punish Walt for his aggressive insolence by kidnapping Sue and raping her, she fears that the two strong men in her life will die avenging her honor. HMONG LANGUAGE SKILLS A PLUS... LEAD (16)

[F Ashley and Josh. Treated with contempt by his father, who regards Mitch and his family as yuppie scum, Mitch returns the favor and then some, ducking his dad's rare calls and not realizing that when Walt asserts that everything at home is "fine," that he's a bald-faced liar. He shuts Walt out of his life completely after Walt refuses to go into a home...LEAD (1)

[PHONG] The grandmother of Tao and Sue, Phong speaks only in her native language of Hmong. Utterly contemptuous of Tao because he's bullied by the women in the house, Phong has an active, blistering hatred for Walt, the “stupid, hairy white man” who lives next door. A woman who chews betel juice and spits at Walt whenever he comes into view, Phong is outraged when Sue invites him to the house. Protective of her grandchildren in spite of her caustic manner (which precisely mirrors Walt's), she knows something is drastically wrong when Walt asks her to care for his ancient dog. MUST SPEAK HMONG...LEAD (9)

[SMOKIE] The 18 - 20 year old leader of a local gang of Hmong teenagers, Smokie intervenes when he sees Tao being bullied by some black kids, and tries to talk Tao into joining the gang. But Tao's initiation (stealing Walt's Gran Torino) is a botched disaster, and he's furious when Tao backs out of the gang. Believing he's being disrespected, Smokie is intent on punishing both Walt and Tao, and he begins a war of nerves that quickly escalates. When he opts to strafe Tao's home and rape his sister Sue, it's a declaration of war that Walt intends to answer alone...LEAD (14)

[VU] The mother of Tao and Sue, this 40s - 50s Asian woman speaks only in her native language of Hmong. She is profoundly grateful to Walt from intervening when her son is threatened by Smokie. MUST SPEAK HMONG... several scenes (27)

[KOR SHUE] This old Hmong man is a shaman, who only speaks in his native language of Hmong, and who asks to give a reading of Walt's character. His reading is painfully close to the bone. MUST SPEAK HMONG...1 speech & 1 line, 1 scene (49)

STORY LINE: Walt Kowalski is a widower, a grumpy, tough-minded, borderline-hateful, unhappy man who can't get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in cherry condition. Drawn against his will into the lives of the Hmong family that lives next door to him, Walt grows increasingly fond of TAO and his sister SUE, and takes steps to protect them from the gangs that foul his neighborhood with their strutting presence...

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