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Writer/composer H.P. Mendoza and director Richard Wong, the creators of Colma: The Musical, studied film together at College of San Mateo, south of San Francisco. Wong later found TV work in Los Angeles and Mendoza spent a few years on the East Coast playing in bands and putting together a solo album, Everything is Pop. They came back together to make their ode to the San Francisco suburb where Mendoza spent his teen years. Shortly after its jubilant premiere at SFIAAFF, they sat down with me to talk about the movie and other endeavors. Here's some of what they had to say.
Globality.org: It's a musical about Colma. How does something like that come about?
Mendoza: This was in 2004, when I was living on the East Coast, and every year I'd buy a birthday gift for my best friend here in Colma, and I just didn't have the money to buy a video game that year, so I needed to figure out something. I thought, 'I'll write a song!' So I wrote a song about Colma. So the next day I wrote another song, and everybody said, 'OK, you either write him one or you write him ten, because two is a weird number. So it became this thing called "Colma, The Musical," this concept album.
Wong: And then, like a month later, (H.P.) e-mailed me ... and we started writing these crazy long e-mails to each other ... just reconnecting. And then one day he was like, 'Hey, dude, I wrote this song.' And I was like, 'Dude, that song would be such an awesome scene!' And then he told me it was a whole album. (I asked him) 'How much do you think it would cost to make a movie (out of) that?' But then by the time I said, 'movie,' i seriously was (thinking) 'Dude, we're gonna make this movie.' And then the next day, I was just like, 'Let's just do it.'
Globality.org: Did it come together pretty quickly after that?
Wong: After that, I was like, 'Dude, well, write a script,' and then quite literally seven days later, he had a draft. That was the first week of May. By the end of May, we had a script that we were confident to shoot.
Mendoza: Nine drafts, right?
Wong: Something like that.
Globality.org: Had you been interested in making musicals before that?
Wong: I always have been. My dad used to moonlight as an usher at (San Francisco's Curran Theater) just so he could see free plays. He's always been this big musical advocate. And so, by nature, I'd always loved musicals. And (H.P.) and I, when we first met, that was one of the major things that was part of our friendship, especially since we were surrounded by people who hated musicals.
Mendoza: Yeah, every film school you go to, every year everyone's making the current popular film. So all the students that year were making Reservoir Dogs.
Wong: Including me.
Mendoza: But ... we would just be talking about movies, and people would ask, 'What are you talking about?' 'Oh, West Side Story.' And people would look at you like, 'Oh yeah, OK, that fruity stuff.' And so I ended up scoring his two shorts.
Wong: Why weren't those musicals? I really don't know.
Mendoza: We said that after we'd done the shorts. And they were gangster films. Anything can be turned into a musical as long as you treat it with respect.
Globality.org: There's a lot of power pop in the score, but there's also quite a bit of musical theater. Talk a little about your musical influences.
Mendoza: I started writing music in 2004, because (until then) I was never confident enough to call myself a musician. And I remember the first song I wrote ... was actually a lullaby for my niece in Philadelphia. And it was kind of a cute little Everly Brothers-sounding number, but the lyrics got a little caustic and kind of sad, and my brother and his wife were like, 'This is really sweet ... in that sarcastic They Might Be Giants way.' ... which, of course, flattered me, because I love They Might Be Giants.
Globality.org: The movie's been described as the first Asian-American musical since Flower Drum Song. Two of the main characters are Asian-American, it takes place in one of the most Asian-American places in the country, and yet this isn't brought out explicitly much at all in the film. Did you think about that?
Mendoza: It wasn't an active choice. We weren't actively trying to NOT make an Asian-American musical. We're Asian, but we just wanted to tell the story.
Globality.org: Along the same lines, Rodel's an interesting character. He's gay, yet except for the plot developments involving his father, there isn't a lot of gay identity material in the film. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Mendoza: The simplest and plainest point I can make is that I was really writing from my perspective. I wanted to get across this point that there are three friends that really exist with each other. They do everything together. They are each others' lives. I also didn't want to do the typical gay character. All I can do is write what I know. I identify as gay, but I really didn't think I was writing a gay screenplay.
Wong: It's just a story. We had a story to tell, and we weren't focused on things like ethnicity or race. The story is about three friends.
Globality.org: There are some pretty big production numbers in the movie. I'm thinking of the party scene and a long, choreographed scene that takes place on a street. I believe those were both single shots. Was that hard to do?
Wong: Yeah, it was hard to do. I always am fascinated with "oners," because there's just so much going on. First of all, technically it's such a huge challenge. Those oners are both ideas that I had way early on. The party scene is a oner because you're not supposed to really think, 'Omigod, this is one long shot! It's still going!' It's more like you're following (the characters) around, like you're at a party. I never want photography to pay too much attention to itself, because if it does, you're not watching the movie, you're watching the photography. (Continues...)
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