Actress Chuti Tiu. Photo Credit: "Pretty Rosebud."

Actress Chuti Tiu. Photo Credit: “Pretty Rosebud.”

Luckily, I’ve worked with a lot of directors — some who were very good, and others who were not as good — and I really learned from both. With the ones that I felt, for whatever reason, it wasn’t working that well, you always learn from that more than from the good ones. So when things went wrong, I would ask, “How come I don’t feel comfortable around this director, or how comes things are not flowing nicely?” I started taking mental notes. And as an actor, I know how I like to be directed and I know the type of communication I like to have with a director, so I tried bringing that onto the set. [Also], knowing when to give notes and knowing when to step away [is important]. That’s what I tried bringing to the film.

GALO: Chuti, you’ve said that your inspiration for the film came from the conflict between immigrant parents and first generation American born children, who may find later in life that upholding tradition goes against their personal wishes. Did you draw inspiration for this theme from your own personal experiences?

CT: I definitely drew inspiration from my, my siblings’ and also my friends’ experiences — not necessarily in either my Filipino or Chinese community, [but also in] other ethnicities like Persians, Pakistanis and Africans, etc. It’s a very universal theme where we as children want to please our parents. Gosh, make your father proud; make your mother proud, things like that. I think that particular bond or compelling feeling is even stronger when you have a case when your parents have these old world traditional values, and then we’re here in the United States where there’s the “American dream” you want to fulfill. Those are all positive things.

The thing is there can be a conflict between what parents think one should do and what children think that they should do. And when they come up against one another, wow, I think it’s one of the most basic or primal conflicts. I see it in August: Osage County, for example. In films and television, you see basic drive and conflict between human beings, and so often it’s that parental-child relationship. And I wanted to give it the framework, especially as an American but as an Asian American, how it has fit within my life, and share that particular viewpoint. I don’t see it in mainstream America as much — the Asian American/US citizen versus the immigrant parents and their values — so I definitely wanted to explore that.

GALO: Pretty Rosebud breaks boundaries in terms of stereotypes of other cultures and for women as well. What do you both hope viewers take away from the film?

CT: The stories and the themes are universal, so I’m hoping viewers take away from the film, for one, that Asian Americans on TV and in film aren’t just nurses or lab techs or computer geeks, or something like that.

OT: Or all speak with accents.

CT: And also for women and their roles — I think we’re seeing it more and more, which is amazing — what I’ve always found is the hypocritical approach to sex and adultery. It’s unequal in terms of the treatment of how men are viewed and how women are viewed. Men can play around and seem like a stud, but if a woman plays around, she seems like a slut. To me that’s very unfair.

By no means is the film supposed to condone adultery or lasciviousness, but just to say that if a person cheats — whether they be male or female — they’re a cheater. A guy’s not a stud. And for a woman, of course, it’s a betrayal, but she shouldn’t be ostracized even more so than men. That’s something that Oscar and I were saying — that in Asian, Latino and many other cultures, it’s almost accepted that men cheat and people just turn a blind eye. But if a woman cheats, she gets literally stoned or something. That’s not fair, it’s not just. We’re just illuminating that something wrong is wrong, whether it’s a man or a woman.

OT: And I would add that what I hope people take away from the film is that it’s not easy to find your own happiness. If you try to make somebody else happy and you’re not happy, things are going to break down and there’s going to be issues in the relationship. Sooner or later, you’re going to regret it or you’re going to blame the other person. In this film in particular both the man and woman are not happy. He’s escaping his own way — he plays games, goes golfing, sleeps in, and she starts sleeping around — they’re both hurting themselves first before they hurt the other person. I hope people realize [they need to find] what makes them happy and find their own voice, because [otherwise] you start losing yourself.

CT: Just to extrapolate that further, to communicate it so that people understand where you’re coming from, especially within the relationship. What Oscar was saying [about] how he was directing, that’s what made this film so successful. He kept on communicating not just with me and the other actors, but with the cinematographer and the costume designers, what the vision was. And he wasn’t just barking; it was an integrative process. I think that’s a great takeaway for everyone — if you communicate constantly every step of the way that’s how you avoid pitfalls. You make sure everyone’s on the same side and there are no secrets.

Film director Oscar Torre. Photo Credit: "Pretty Rosebud."

Film director Oscar Torre. Photo Credit: “Pretty Rosebud.”

GALO: Going along with what you were just talking about in terms of cinematography, did you also find that you both approached the film differently in a stylistic sense? Did the film end up being how you first thought it would be, or did it end up becoming something entirely different?

OT: Like I said before, we had a lot of conversations beforehand about how she saw the film and the characters as a writer, and how I saw them. We were on the same page. There are things we don’t need to see the same way, [for example], stuff for her character and her process that don’t affect the vision of the film. But the vision of the film itself with the themes we’re touching upon, we were clear beforehand.

I think — and many directors will tell you this — there are different films that you make. One is the one that’s written on paper. And the one that you actually shoot is not always what’s written on paper because then you have to deal with real issues, sometimes it’s location or time, so that’s a whole different film. And then there’s the film that you edit. Sometimes it’s better than the way you expected, sometimes it’s not. But at the end, I think the themes are all there; it’s a story that we wanted to tell, but in many ways it’s better. We don’t have any kids, but I imagine it’s what raising a child is. Everybody thinks his or her baby is beautiful, even if the baby is not. And many directors tell me how it feels good because it’s their baby. So we were raising the child as best we could, this film. But you really don’t know what the child is going to be until it’s grown up. Once you edit the film, you know that this is it. So, at the end, the film ended up being what we hoped for and more.

GALO: What are some other projects that you are currently working on?

CT: It’s kind of funny because we both juggle acting, writing, and then in Oscar’s case, directing. I don’t know if I will, I might at some point. But we both are doing projects together and apart. One we’re working on is a short with a working title, Man Woman, which has very much to do with relationship issues. That’s something Oscar and I are very drawn to — projects that have a very deep message and an underlying lesson that we can all learn from or be inspired by, and [this project] has a number of twists and turns. That’s one that Oscar piloted himself and will direct. We also have another one that Oscar and I both wrote in conjunction with another writer, and [this one is] more like a thriller called Lunarticking, with an Office Space meets American Psycho kind of feel [to it].

We also have another project that’s more of a sci-fi thriller that a writer/director friend of ours came up with that we are helping to write and will both star in.

GALO: So it’s safe to say that your experiences in making Pretty Rosebud have definitely made you guys want to continue working together.

OT: Totally!

CT: Absolutely!

OT: I’m looking for any excuse for her to listen to me [both laugh].

For more information about the film, please visit the official Web site. The film will become available on cable VOD on February 3. You can currently purchase the film on iTunes for $19.99.