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‘Cardinal X’ interview with director Angie Wang

Cardinal X is a film that you may not have heard of yet. The film is currently touring the US festival circuit; it is a compelling and engaging eighties-set tale about a college student who starts manufacturing and dealing drugs to pay her way through school. Shockingly, the story is actually a semi-autobiographical tale of writer/director Angie Wang’s actual life-story.

We caught the film when it was premiering at the CAAMFEST, and were hooked within the opening moments. Ahead of its wider festival jaunt, we caught up with Angie to talk about the project.

Cardinal X is described as being a semi-autobiographical story, how much of what is in the film is taken from real life?

I would say what I really tried to do was write from a very true and authentic emotional place. I would say the events that happened really did occur to me, they might just not have happened in that time frame. It’s kinda like thirty years of experience smooshed into a one-year narrative. I would say it’s probably forty to fifty percent true. Some of it is bullshit, some of it I just made up because, you know, I was telling a story. But some of it is very near and dear to me, and definitely happened. All the flashbacks to her childhood are a dead lift from my own childhood, but some of the people I had to mush like five different people into one.

What made you decide on this story, such a personal one, for your first feature?

I came to film making on a very winding path. I think that initially – I founded this non-profit after working in Silicon Valley and I found very gratifying work working with these, they call them ‘at risk’, which is a stupid fucking term, but ‘at risk’ middle school kids. We allowed them a venue for them to be able to share their stories and my own thinking was – if you’re coming from an environment that isn’t supportive in the least – your mom is strung out, or your dad’s in jail, your brother got shot, you’re not going to have the fortitude to perform that well in school. The point of my non-profit was to be able to be really honest and open up about what was really going on in their lives.

I found that when I went out fundraising there was a lot of ‘just shut the fuck up, we’ll write you a cheque’, but they didn’t really want to go to that place emotionally and really have that much empathy for these kids because it was just too painful. I thought we’re really at a critical point in terms of our development and we’ve got a total fucking jackass in office, we’re as divided as we have been I believe. It’s really empathy that’s going to bind us together. I thought – how can I really inspire empathy in people? How can I make them be able to stand in this kid’s shoes? Initially I wanted to write a script about the kids, but this voice just said, ‘if you don’t have the courage to tell your own story, you really don’t have the cause to tell anyone else’s story’. There were also certain salacious aspects to my own story that I thought would sell well from a marketing perspective also. A Lot of it was… What I did with the group with the kids was that I had just opened up with my story first and I thought that gave them permission to own their own stories. What I wanted to do with my first film was just give other people permission to own their demons and face them.

Angie has a very tumultuous past in the movie, usually characters with these sort of upbringings are portrayed as being broken, they’re never shown as being strong like in Cardinal X

No, particularly not women, and it’s infuriating to me. Some of the most bad-ass people I know are women. It infuriates me when we’re represented in the media and in stories as these cowering, crumbled, completely broken ways. Always relying on some man, or looking for some outside validation, someone else to validate who they are. I think with this character, I really wanted her to be strong and to be able to own who she was, and kinda kick the door down.

Horror films are especially bad –  an abusive or toxic childhood equals horrible villain. With that in mind, Cardinal X has a really important message to get out there to young people.

Thank you. I think so. We all have our demons. We’re all damaged in some way, I tried to highlight that also. What looks perfect on paper or on the surface, if you just scratch a bit or you explore it a little bit, it isn’t always perfect. I think that rather than trying to put on a bullshit smile and just… I know a lot of people who are in denial about a lot of aspects of themselves. I think it’s a…first of all I think it’s sad because then there’s an aspect of yourself that is always sort of hiding and there’s a certain type of self-loathing that comes from that. I think it’s really empowering just to own your shit! To be like ‘you know what, this did fucking happen, it was really fucked up, but it made me a stronger person and it made me more empathetic. It’s going to allow me to relate to other people in a much more profound way’. I think it’s important for us all to just sort of own our shit.

In a way, you were essentially casting yourself. How hard was it finding Angie, and what was it about Annie that made you believe she could inhabit the character?

She actually reached out to me. The whole process was one of defying convention. She reached out to me, I’m sure her manager was like – ‘what the fuck are you doing?! You never reach out to the director!!’ I think I had my email on the cover of the script on the title page. So she actually wrote me this really well-thought out and passionate, very thoughtful email and just told me – ‘this story just really spoke to me. My experience isn’t exactly the same – I was never a drug dealer – but I could definitely relate to this character’s sense of self-loathing of how she tried to almost self-medicate herself and make her feel something different than her own reality.’ She definitely got the character’s pain and she said ‘I’ll fly myself out to read for you.’ She was in New York and I was casting in LA. She flew herself out, she was actually my first audition of the day. She did a beautiful job.

Initially I was going to pass on her because she’s so tiny and vulnerable and I’ve never really viewed myself in that way, but I think that’s my own baggage. Then I was sitting across the dinner table from my step-daughter and my daughter, and I was looking at them and they were like sixteen/seventeen years old and I thought, ‘Oh My God, this character is really more their peer than Hollywood college age’. I just kept thinking about Annie and we had been in contact and had gotten to know each other a little bit. I just thought it was so gutsy for her to fly herself out and to reach out to me. I just remember waking up in the middle of the night and just being like ‘it’s Annie.’ I’d read like every Asian American actress up and down the Western and Eastern seaboard and she was the one. It just took me a while to come to it. She’s a gutsy, really passionate and smart girl.

There’s great chemistry with the cast, especially between Annie and Francesca. How much time did they have to work on that relationship?

That was something that was really critical and really important to me. I kept saying ‘I want the chemistry to be real’, because I can read it. If I see bullshit on the screen I’m like – ‘I don’t believe this. I don’t believe they’re in love. I don’t believe that there’s any real profound bound between these two characters.’ So I really wanted the two of them to get to know each other, and they did. I told them to go out and get drunk, have dinner together, take a road trip, you know, really get to know each other so that there’s that level of comfort with each other. They did do that and then they were also housed in the same apartment and shared laundry experiences and dinners, and really got to know each other, and supported each other through the process. The shoot was pretty intense. They did really get to know each other and are great women, but I think it was really critical for them to form a real friendship that translated beautifully on screen for me.

You also had THN favourite Noah Segan in the film, how did he come on-board?

So Noah had worked with my producer Rick Bosner before and so Rick reached out to him. We had a few conversations about the character. Noah’s a very thoughtful actor as well and really wanted to understand where this character was coming from. He wanted to play more than just the average bad guy. So we talked about the backstory of this character, his disdain for women and where that came from, and yeah he was all in. I was very excited to have him.

Usually films set within the eighties feature a lot of the more ‘cheesy’ songs of the decade. Cardinal X definitely has a cooler set list, you had me as soon as Billy Idol’s Flesh for Fantasy started playing, how did you pick these tracks?

(laughs) They were all tracks that spoke to me, that I loved. Unfortunately we can’t use Flesh for Fantasy in the final product, because we couldn’t get the clearance.

Damn

I know!! Kat you have no idea, I cried over that. But I really just chose songs that moved me, that I remembered from that era, that I remember dancing to. I love Billy Idol! I chose the music based off of my own personal tastes. It doesn’t match up to everyone, but I felt those songs envibed the type of spirit I wanted to convey.

The film’s currently playing the festival circuit, what’s the reaction been?

You know I think we’ve gotten good responses. The audience seem to really get it. I’m always looking for people to see if they’re bored or whipping out their phones, and they seem to be very engaged. We’ve gotten positive reviews, it seems like we’ve got some good momentum. It’s been two years and now I just want people to fucking see it, for better or worse, I just want it to get out there. It’s gotta breathe, it’s gotta live. So far we’ve been having a great run so I feel very blessed.

Where can people see it next?

So we’re playing the LA Asian Pacific festival at the end of this month. We play April 30th and then on May 3rd. Then we fly out to New York and we play the New York City Independent Film Festival. That’ll be very exciting to go home to my old home town, we play that May 7th. We’ve got a few others that we’re engaged with and talking to, but we can’t announce it yet.

Any plans to screen in the UK?

I’d love to play in London. I love that city, I love the people. I have some good friends there, so yeah if you know of any programmers (laughs) who are looking for an edgy Asian lead, put them in touch with me.

What’s next? Or are you focusing on getting Cardinal X out into the world?

I’m always writing so I have two sort of on the burners right now that I’m ready to go out and pitch. The first is called Madame Mommy and it’s about a Stepford wife who, through her daughter’s trials and tribulations, has to really take a deep look at herself. So she basically takes her kid out of this very idyllic situation because she’s gotten very anxious and suicidal, and she has to find help for her. Then she decides that she doesn’t want any part of that old life anymore and she becomes a madam in order to be self-sufficient. She runs this high-class prostitution ring. It’s her daughter’s journey to recovery and her own journey to try and be an independent female and also find some meaning to her life.

Sounds interesting, similar in a way to Cardinal X

(Laughs) Yeah, like a grown up Angie. I’m also writing a gritty cop, indie drama, which is pretty different from the others. I think all my work will always focus on the solidarity of the human experience and how we really have to look beyond superficial shit to really get to the truth. To get to the truth that binds us all, I think that’s really important these days.

If you’re based Stateside we highly recommend that you check out Cardinal X at either the LA Asian Pacific Festival or New York Independent Film Festival.

Kat Hughes is a UK born film critic and interviewer who has a passion for horror films. An editor for THN, Kat is also a Rotten Tomatoes Approved Critic. She has bylines with Ghouls Magazine, Arrow Video, Film Stories, Certified Forgotten and FILMHOUNDS and has had essays published in home entertainment releases by Vinegar Syndrome and Second Sight. When not writing about horror, Kat hosts micro podcast Movies with Mummy along with her five-year-old daughter.

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