By Stephane Gauger (writer/director of Owl and the Sparrow)
I have the odd distinction of being Vietnamese-American, but not looking very Vietnamese with my German bloodline and 6-foot-3 stature. Cruising around the streets of Saigon speaking the native tongue fluently, most people assume that I'm a European who's been living in Vietnam for a long, long time. This allows me to relate with people at all levels, from the high-salaried ex-pats who frequent posh night spots, to the man on the corner fixing the flat tire of my motorbike in the dead of night under one dangling 40-watt bulb. I saw up front the changes in the country from the mid-'90's till today. Red dirt roads were paved with cement, taxi cabs and hotels sprouted like mushrooms over the cityscape, and mobile phones became the rage. The government opened its doors, waiting for the flurry of tourists and backpackers arriving in group tours. Foreign investment poured in and the country moved forward, not looking back.
The genesis of story begins from all sorts of inspiration that artists have to grab before it leaves, forgotten. The process of filmmaking for me is about instinct and intuition. I was numb from the city noise one day, with the constant buzz of motorbikes, cargo trucks blaring their horns, and bad karaoke spilling out of windows. I knew the city zoo existed, but I had never been there. I was introducing my girlfriend at the time to the land of my roots, so I thought the zoo would be a good diversion off the beaten path of Lonely Planet books. Little did I know that the zoo would be an oasis, hidden behind the walls of the city and roaming with exotic animals. After we had marveled at elephants and fed them sugar cane, the clouds above grew angry and, with a clap of thunder, the Saigon rain showered down on us. We took refuge in a little café on the zoo grounds, drying off, and ordered beer from the nice ladies who ran the place.
As we listened to raindrops pounding on the tin roof, a boy came out of the family room. He couldn't have been more than seven years old. The thing that struck us about this little boy was that he didn't behave like a normal seven-year-old kid. He hopped and lurched around the room and latched onto posts, swinging upside down like a trapeze artist. When the ladies asked him something, he only grunted back. Our eyes followed him outside as he hopped to the cages to see apes and orangutans, grunting to them in monkey talk. He was a chimp trapped in a little Asian boy's body. "Is this what would become of someone who grows up around the animals their whole life?" I thought. Nine months later, I had a script in hand ready to shoot, in the city I was born in, in a country I wanted to write a love letter to.
It's one thing to work with elephants. It's another thing to work with elephants in conjunction with kids. It's another thing altogether to shoot with kids and animals on your first feature, in fifteen days with very little money. I decided to throw away the rule books for Owl and the Sparrow and just shoot maverick-style, guns blazing. I truly believe that casting is one half of a film's success. The other half can be debated, whether it's a director's vision or a compelling screenplay. But emotional truth in a film comes from the faces that we watch onscreen, whether it's from a child actor or an untrained animal. We had five elephants to choose from, and we chose Charlie, the baby elephant, who we thought would be the least likely to attack any of the actors. The Vietnamese animal wranglers assured us that Charlie would cooperate and wouldn't have to be chained down. Still, shooting with wild animals doesn't come without issues. Charlie had a habit of spraying spittle on Le The Lu, who plays zookeeper Hai. It's hard for a serious actor to have dialogue with an elephant when he showers you with liquid affection. It's hard to shoot a scene when you have to constantly wipe animal fluids off the camera lens. His trunk was a restless tentacle, slapping Lu when he was too close, taking down the sound mike hovering above it.
So what happens when you have a ten-year-old child actress act with an elephant? Hopefully, you cast someone smart. It was only a week before we began shooting when we starting seeing girls for the part of Thuy, the spirited orphan. We saw ten girls, and half of them were fresh-faced and spunky, perfect for toothpaste commercials but not for a country bumpkin like Thuy. Pham Thi Han had never acted before, but she had done traditional dance on stages, so she knew something about rehearsal and repetition. She was pint-sized, but had sort of an old soul to her. She was gracious and respectful on set, always trying to give the best performance, never being aware of film cameras on set, always in the moment. In her scenes with the elephant, we kept Han at a distance, knowing full well that Charlie might randomly swing his trunk around haphazardly. The chimp was another story. In the one scene we shot with the monkey, he was a loose cannon, clamoring over the little girl like an octopus and wreaking havoc on set. I thought for a beat, using instinct and intuition, and decided to cut two additional scenes with the chimp and send him away so we could make our schedule for the day.
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