‘Charlotte Sometimes’

One APA film’s journey

On the morning of Dec. 11, Eric Byler was sitting in a hotel room in Hawai‘i — for the Cinema Paradise Film Festival where his debut feature Charlotte Sometimes would screen as the closing night film — when he received the good news. Charlotte Sometimes, a look at four young Asian Pacific American characters as they navigate the waters of sex and modern relationships, had been nominated for two IFP Independent Spirit Awards. One of the film’s stars, Jacqueline Kim, had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress and the film itself was nominated for the John Cassavettes Award, given to “the best feature under $500,000.”

The Spirit Awards are the equivalent of the Oscars in the world of independent filmmaking. What’s amazing wasn’t that Charlotte Sometimes received multiple nominations for these prestigious awards, but that it received multiple nominations without ever having had a theatrical release.

The three other nominees for the John Cassavettes Award (Dahmer, ivans xtc and Personal Velocity) all received theatrical releases and were well-received by the independent film community and audiences. Charlotte Sometimes somehow made its way in without a release and without any real publicity or buzz. So how did that happen?

I first met and became friends with Charlotte Sometimes writer/director Eric Byler (who is hapa) in the mid-90s, when he was working on the script that would eventually evolve into Charlotte Sometimes.

With the script done, Eric faced another hurdle. No one thought a character-driven APA drama with no stars had any commercial potential. “Everyone told me to get rid of the Asian cast so I could get name actors and justify the financiers’ investment,” Eric remembers. “At one point, I was actually desperate enough to imagine an all white cast, but the thought of losing the nuances of an APA love story made me want to kill myself.”

After years of getting nowhere, Eric decided the only way he could make the film with his vision intact was to produce and shoot it himself using ultra-low budget “guerrilla” filmmaking tactics. Although he had the backing of Visionbox, a production company that specializes in low-budget digital films, Eric had to finance the movie with his own money. In the spring of 2001, Eric shot his film on digital video over two weeks in and around Los Angeles and completed post-production in early 2002.

Then things got worse.

By spring 2002, Eric had submitted Charlotte Sometimes to two APA film festivals and was rejected by both. “That was probably the all-time low,” Eric says. Potential distributors who liked the film passed because they said it would be “impossible to market” (which essentially means: it’s an APA drama with no stars, therefore there will be no audience). On the website IMDB, Charlotte Sometimes was rated the worst film of all-time based on negative reviews posted by disgruntled viewers.

But then things started to change for the better. Charlotte Sometimes was accepted into the prestigious South by Southwest film festival and shocked everyone (including Eric) by winning the audience award. Soon other festivals booked the movie (including the Los Angeles Film Festival and the San Diego Asian American Film Festival, where it once again surprised everyone by winning “Best Dramatic Feature” over the higher-profile Better Luck Tomorrow). More glowing reviews followed from the likes of Variety and Roger Ebert. And then came the two IFP Spirit Award nominations.

But so far none of the positive accolades has had any direct impact on the theatrical release of the film (though the film will air on the Sundance Channel at the end of the year as part of its “New Voices for the New Year” program). “As far as the distributors are concerned, strong reviews, awards and nominations really mean nothing in terms of what’s marketable and what isn’t,” Eric says. “The truth is, I didn’t make the film with marketing in mind. So, when the film is honored by a prestigious organization like IFP, it means a lot to me personally, regardless of whether it affects the business side of things.”

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For more info on Charlotte Sometimes check out: www.charlottesometimesthemovie.com.

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Philip W. Chung is a writer and the co-artistic director of Lodestone Theatre Ensemble in L.A. His next project will be the APA horror film Children in the Mirror: www.childreninthemirror.com.