Daniel Henney, producer Janet Yang, Eliza Coupe, and director Daniel Hsia

May 18 – SHANGHAI CALLING, a new feature film starring DANIEL HENNEY, ELIZA COUPE, and BILL PAXTON, capped off its southern California festival debut with the “Outstanding First Feature” prize awarded to director DANIEL HSIA by the 2012 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.  The prize is bestowed annually to the best new director whose feature film debut is exhibited at the Festival.

“I’m incredibly honored to be selected for this award,” said Hsia.  ”I’d like to thank the Festival organizers, producer Janet Yang for her unwavering dedication, our amazing cast and crew for their talent and hard work, and my wife for her patience during the three years it took to make SHANGHAI CALLING.”

SHANGHAI CALLING premiered at the 2012 Newport Beach Film Festival on May 3, where lead actor DANIEL HENNEY won the Festival’s Best Actor prize.  The film travels to the east coast in July, where it will play the Stony Brook Film Festival and New York Asian American International Film Festival on July 21 and 25, respectively.

Following sellout Southern California premieres at Newport Beach Film Festival and Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, SHANGHAI CALLING is now proud to announce our first two New York festival dates!

On Saturday, July 21, SHANGHAI CALLING will be the SPOTLIGHT SELECTION of the 2012 STONY BROOK FILM FESTIVAL in Long Island.

On Wednesday, July 25, SHANGHAI CALLING will be the OPENING NIGHT SELECTION of the 2012 ASIAN AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in Manhattan.

New York fans: Start spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter, and share the SHANGHAI CALLING Trailer with your friends.  We’ll see you soon!

It finally happened — SHANGHAI CALLING had its WORLD PREMIERE on Thursday, May 3, to sold-out crowds at Closing Night of the 2012 Newport Beach Film Festival!  In attendance were our stars DANIEL HENNEY and BILL PAXTON, Producer JANET YANG, and many others.

The event was spectacular.  SHANGHAI CALLING screened in the historic Lido Theater, a movie palace from the 1930s that has been renovated for comfort, picture, and sound.  Every ticket had had been snatched up before the Festival had even begun, so the audience probably had some high expectations.  We did not disappoint — the crowd laughed, applauded, ooh’d and ahh’d at just the right moments, and stayed to ask questions afterward.

Something I didn’t know until two weeks ago: the Newport Beach Film Festival is known for throwing legendary parties, and Closing Night was no exception.  It was just like an episode of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” — beautiful people everywhere, great food, and plenty of Absolut and Stella Artois to go around.  At one point I even got hit by a confetti cannon.

My favorite part of the night was meeting fans who stopped me to tell me how much they loved the film.  For me, that was the most satisfying part of the night — hearing that real people (not just movie industry professionals) enjoy the movie and can’t wait to see SHANGHAI CALLING again in theaters.

Oh, and did you hear that Daniel Henney won a Festival award for his performance in the movie?  That’s right, you can now refer to us as “award winning film SHANGHAI CALLING.”

A big shout out to everyone at NBFF for their hard work, hospitality, and support of SHANGHAI CALLING.  I can’t wait to come back to Newport Beach for next year’s festival.

Now, on to our Los Angeles premiere at the Director’s Guild!  Opening Night of the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, May 10!

@danielhsia

The 2012 Newport Beach Film Festival announced today that DANIEL HENNEY, star of the Closing Night film SHANGHAI CALLING, has won the Festival’s OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT ACTING AWARD for his work on the film.  The award was given by the Festival’s selection committee, who reviewed more than 2,000 films submitted for competition this year.

“I just want to say that I’m so humbled to receive this award,” said Henney. “Thank you so much to the wonderful cast and crew of SHANGHAI CALLING, to Daniel Hsia for his incredible energy and direction, and to Janet Yang for having faith in me. Let’s hope this is the first of many to come for this amazing little film!”

SHANGHAI CALLING will open the Los Angeles Pacific Film Festival on May 10 at the Director’s Guild of America and will soon announce additional festival dates around the world.

In SHANGHAI CALLING, Geng Le plays a Shanghai journalist called upon to help Sam (DANIEL HENNEY).  This was a key role, so we needed to cast a well-known actor who was completely bilingual and, most importantly, unafraid to play a character I wrote as being “nondescript, someone you would never notice in a crowd.”

Geng Le is anything but nondescript.  Just look at him:

ZOMG he’s so handsome!

The truth is, Geng Le almost always gets cast in movies as a dashing, single man.  He also does a lot of print work as a model.

Now here is how Geng Le decided to look in our movie:

He’s practically in disguise.  It takes a lot of confidence for an actor known for his good looks to intentionally obscure those looks for a movie role.  The best part: everything about Geng Le’s appearance in SHANGHAI CALLING — from the haircut to the glasses to that pen and notepad in his shirt pocket — was his idea.

But the biggest contribution that Geng Le made to the movie was one that nobody will ever see.  I did at least twenty rewrites on SHANGHAI CALLING, largely to satisfy the notes of our Chinese partners.  Early on, the biggest problem the Chinese had was with the journalist character.  They just didn’t get him, and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why.  Geng Le had problems with him, too — so he met me at a Beijing café, where we spent two hours discussing the role and the fundamental differences between Chinese and American movie heroes.  That conversation led me to completely overhaul every scene involving the journalist character… which, in turn, led to securing our co-production partner and getting the movie made.

@danielhsia

The Wall Street Journal has published reporter Jonathan Landreth’s profile on SHANGHAI CALLING, along with an in-depth interview with legendary Producer JANET YANG.  Check it out!

Tickets to the May 10 Los Angeles premiere of SHANGHAI CALLING are now on sale at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival website!  We are honored to have SHANGHAI CALLING featured as the Opening Night Selection of this year’s LAAPFF at the Director’s Guild of America.

This screening is expected to sell out, so buy your tickets now!

ELIZA COUPE!

Comedy fans need no introduction to Eliza, the most talked-about cast member on the hit ABC television series “Happy Endings.”  If you haven’t seen this show, do yourself a favor and watch a few episodes online, it’s great.  As a former TV comedy writer, I know how difficult it is to find actors who are both beautiful and funny.  Eliza is a rare gem — she’s tall, gorgeous, and has incredible comic instincts.  In fact, some of the best jokes in SHANGHAI CALLING were lines that she improvised on the spot.  (I’m not going to tell you what they are, in order to preserve the impression that I am a COMEDY GENIUS.)

Like all hilarious people, Eliza is also a little nutty, which led to great outtakes as well as an occasional halt in production because she couldn’t stop laughing at something happening inside of her brain.  That’s OK — we needed someone nutty to fly to China and star in our movie on one day’s notice.

The thing I appreciated most about Eliza was how hard she worked on learning her Chinese lines.  No, Eliza does not actually speak Chinese.  But she had to speak a ton of it in SHANGHAI CALLING, and she did so well that after our private screenings in China, a couple of audience members asked me Eliza got the part because she was bilingual.  (That’s a real compliment.)  Regretfully, I had to cut one of my favorite scenes from the movie, a big comedy scene in which Eliza argues with two other Chinese-speaking women over who should get a new luxury apartment.  It’s hard to explain.  Hopefully we’ll get to put out a DVD and Blu-Ray so that Eliza’s fans can see the deleted scene.

Speaking of which, all of you Eliza Coupe fans must come and see her in SHANGHAI CALLING.  (Premiering May 3 at the Newport Beach Film Festival!  Tickets on sale now!  And May 10 at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival!  Tickets on sale soon!)  I believe that this is Eliza’s first significant movie role, so support her by watching it!   This will help me, too — making SHANGHAI CALLING a success is probably the only way I’ll get to work with Eliza again!

@danielhsia

Tickets for the May 3 world premiere of SHANGHAI CALLING, the Official Closing Night Selection of the 2012 Newport Beach Film Festival, are now on sale at the festival website.  Ticket price includes SHANGHAI CALLING screening + Closing Night Party.

UPDATE 4/26: Tickets to May 3 are SOLD OUT!  Please call the box office for information on possible rush tickets.

Morning Edition, the flagship morning news program of National Public Radio, featured an in-depth profile of SHANGHAI CALLING, including audio clips from the movie and an interview with Writer / Director DANIEL HSIA.

Listen to the story on npr.org.