TRIPLE THREAT
Producer/Writer/Actor Grace Rowe talks About AMERICAN SEOUL
Interview with Celia Shen
Los Angeles-based actress Grace Rowe collaborated with director Jason Moore to adapt her multifaceted stage play of Korean women and identity in El Lay, “The Grid Life,” to the big screen. In this chat, Rowe talks about the film and her plans to expand it into a full-length feature.
What inspired you to write AMERICAN SEOUL? Was this film informed by your personal experiences?
AMERICAN SEOUL is based around a one-woman show I performed from 1999 to 2001. The show was called "The Grid Life," and I portrayed seven different women dealing with identity issues in Los Angeles. After the critical success of the play, I decided to adapt the story into a feature-length screenplay. The director and I decided to produce the short AMERICAN SEOUL in order to show financiers what the film would look like. All of the characters in AMERICAN SEOUL and “The Grid Life” are inspired by people I knew growing up or people I saw living in Los Angeles.
Why did you choose those four women portrayed in the short film to focus mainly on? (you had seven in your play " The Grid Life")
I chose those four characters because they were my favorite and they were the ones that were most developed. Some of the characters like Rose and Jane have combined characteristics from some of the other characters in the one-woman show.
Why did you choose to play the character who aspires to be an actress?
When we originally thought of casting the film, we toyed with the idea that I might play all of the characters (except for the narrator, Young-sun.) We decided against it, thinking that although it worked well for the one-woman show, it might not be as good in a film version. We held auditions for all of the roles, and it was agreed that whichever character we found hardest to cast, I would play that role. It became much more about finding the right cast for the film and then finding out where I fit in, since we wanted the film to be as best as it could be.
Is there a reason you chose to use only women in your film?
Since the film is based on a one-woman show of all female characters, it was logical that the main characters in the script were also female.
Is there a reason you chose to use the F.O.B character as the narrator of your film?
I created Young-sun to be a narrator of the film so that she could act as a tie between the other Asian American characters. There's also a specific perspective that one has when they are a foreigner, and it allowed me to make comment on some of the things I find difficult when you are Asian American. Certainly when I went to Korea for the first time, I definitely had a better perspective of how Koreans differ from Korean Americans. Most of us live in a world of not really knowing how other people see us, so an outsider who has no reason for bias can help us examine who we are and give us another perspective.
