[on financing
Hotel Dallas (2016)] I received a grant [Alice Kimball English Travel Fellowship] from Yale, where I was attending graduate school. That covered eight weeks of travel in Romania, during which we shot most of the movie. Another grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts helped us complete post-production and get us to our premiere in Berlin. The budget was lean. Sherng-Lee did most of the shooting, and we split the editing. I played the lead, and Sherng-Lee and my parents played major roles as well. None of us had ever acted before. Landing
Patrick Duffy was a big piece of the puzzle. We approached him with a rough cut after the Romania shoot. We found his manager's email on IMDB and wrote to him cold. We never thought he would agree, as we obviously could not pay the fees that he deserved. But less than a month later, we were shooting with Patrick in L.A. He was so brave to take a chance on this crazy project made by complete unknowns. And, of course, his performance was flawless. [2016]
