Alice Wu is an American film director and screenwriter. In both of her films, the main characters are Taiwanese American. It is known that in Saving Face, many production companies offered to buy the script for the film, but Wu opted not to sell it in order to uphold an authentic portrayal of the Taiwanese-American community. Aside from Asian protagonists, there is also a common theme of intellectual, non-heterosexual female characters.
While working at Microsoft, Wu began writing a novel. Deciding the story would work better as a film, she signed up for a 12-week screenwriting class at the University of Washington in which she penned the script for her first feature film. She then left the corporate world and eventually moved to New York City to pursue a filmmaking career full-time.
''Saving Face'' (2005)
Encouraged by her screenwriting teacher, she left Microsoft in the late 1990s to try to turn the script for her first feature film Saving Face into a film, giving herself a five-year window. Production had begun when she reached the fifth year. In 2001, the script for Saving Face won the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment screenwriting award. Saving Face was released in 2005. The film was inspired by her own experiences coming out as a lesbian in the Taiwanese American community. She has said that she would like the audience to come away from it "with this feeling that, no matter who they are, whether they are gay or straight, or whatever their cultural make-up is, that if there is something that they secretly wanted, whether it's this feeling that they could actually have that great love or whatever it is, that it's never too late to have that. I want them to leave the theater feeling a sense of hope and possibility." Alice struggled with her sexual identity and when she came out as a lesbian she had a difference of opinions with her mother which led to a fall out between the . In an interview with Jan Lisa Huttner, Wu noted that not all of her audience was female, Asian, or lesbian. She found it "highly unusual" that "you can take a group that seems so specific, and make them universally human". The film has been influential within both lesbian and Chinese communities. It heavily focuses on the challenges faced within the Chinese-American community, dealing with issues of the role of women and lesbian identity. Wu also explores relationships between mothers and daughters in the Chinese-American community through her portrayal of the relationship between the film's main character and her mother. Although she claims that the film's main character is not an autobiographical portrayal of her real life, it was partially a way to provide positive representation for her own mother.
Interim
After working on her first feature film, Wu subsequently worked on a film based on Rachel DeWoskin's memoir, Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China. The movie, however, did not make it past pre-production. In 2008, she sold a pitch to ABC called "Foobar" based on her experiences working as a woman in the tech world.
''The Half of It'' (2020)
Wu is the writer, director, and producer of the Netflix film The Half of It. The feature script appeared on The Black List in 2018. The film is a romantic comedy which follows a Chinese-American teenager as she helps a boy win over his crush, who she also has a romantic interest in. The film stars Charmed actress Leah Lewis, Daniel Diemer, and Alexxis Lemire in the leading roles. It is Wu's first major film since the release of Saving Face in 2005. The film was announced in April 2020 as the winner of the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival.
Awards and honors
In March 2005, Wu's film Saving Face was the opening film at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Later that year, she received the Visionary award at the San Diego Asian Film Festival to celebrate her directorial debut for Saving Face, and was nominated in the breakthrough director category at the Gotham Independent Film Awards, although she did not win. In 2006, Saving Face received a nomination at the GLAAD Media Awards. In April 2020, Wu's film The Half of It won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, Queerty named her among the fifty heroes “leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people”.
Personal life
Wu is gay, and came to this realization while taking a gender studies class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wu came out to her mother during a conversation with her about the class.
