Amy Wang Goes Under the Skin

Photo: Robby Klein

If you had the power to change your ethnicity, would you?

That is the question filmmaker Amy Wang poses in her debut feature, Slanted. 

She introduces us to Joan Huang [Shirley Chen], a Chinese American teen who desires nothing more than to be elected prom queen. However, wherever she looks and whatever she does, she cannot escape the reminder that she is unlike the majority of girls at her high school. She doesn't have the blonde hair, fair skin, and blue eyes of those who have previously worn the crown and who certainly didn't endure the stigmatism she encounters daily. All that changes, though, when her discontent leads her to an organisation that proclaims they can give her what she wants. They can reshape Joan Huang into Jo Hunt [Mckenna Grace] by way of racial transformation surgery. But while she believes this is a dream come true, various complications rapidly begin to fester.

It is an utterly wild endeavour from Wang, who administers horror and humour in equal supply. She and I spoke in detail before she made the journey to its Australian premiere at this year's Sydney Film Festival. We discussed her marriage of moods, the influence of tragedy and childhood, and creating the whitest of white tunes. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

This story contains spoilers for the film Slanted.

CONNOR DALTON: You're an experienced writer and director for television, but Slanted serves as a first on both fronts in features. What made you want to tell this story at your outset?

AMY WANG:  I have always wanted to make films. I kind of used screenwriting as a way to get Slanted made. The initial idea came during the pandemic when there was this spa shooting in Atlanta. A bunch of Asian American spa workers were murdered, and for the first time in America, I felt confronted by something so dangerous. It was racially charged, and it made me reflect on myself and my childhood in Sydney. I grew up in the Inner West around Croydon and Burwood; I went to school in Hornsby. It was a tough time. It was great most of the time, but I think Sydney has its history with [figures] like Pauline Hanson and the racist mentality, especially in the '90s and early 2000s. That's where the concept came from because when I was a teenager, I would wake up every morning and think, 'Wouldn't life just be easier if I were white?' So I was like, 'Why don't I make a movie where that actually comes true and show what that's like!' 

DALTON: It has a strong U.S. complexion, and I'm not meaning strictly setting. Joan views the prize of prom queen as a fairy tale, and you depict it as an American dream. That's in great contrast to our formals, where such titles aren't given. How did it land as the character's core pursuit?

WANG: During the script phase, I definitely flirted with a couple of different versions, but it was always going to be set in high school. I remember brainstorming with my producers, and I started talking about prom. To me, it felt so perfect because I feel like the prom king and queen really represent the All-American guy and girl. And when you think of an All-American girl, you think of the blonde-haired, white-skinned girl from the south. That's where it came from. It was just such a strong representation of what my main character wanted to be. 

DALTON: The film is an often saddening dissection of racism and assimilation, but it is also significantly heightened, very satirical, and pleasurably indulges in the absurd. What went into balancing these dual tones?

WANG: We shot the movie in a grounded, gritty, almost Andrea Arnold style, which is normally the style that I like to function in my short films. But it was my first time doing a satire and doing something that was a little out of this world. Thankfully, me and my DP, [Ed Wu], had a shorthand. We would be like, 'Is this more Andrea Arnold or Eternal Sunshine or Sorry to Bother You?' We would look at each scene and figure out where it fit along that line. And not to spoil anything — we all know she turns white — the scene when she comes home to confront her parents, in particular, was a really interesting blend of the two. It was very serious at times, but then there are moments that are comedic. I always get excited when I've been in screenings and people roll with laughter, but then immediately after, it's a serious moment. So sometimes scenes would be both, which would be even more difficult to find a balance. I have to credit Shirley Song, my composer — she's also an Aussie who lives out in L.A. — I think she completed the tone and made it feel unique. She pushed the comedy when it needed to be pushed and pushed the drama when it needed to be pushed. 

DALTON: What I adore about that scene is that it grapples with the realistic implications of the procedure. In the body swap genre, to which Slanted could be labelled a cousin, the focus is primarily set on comedy. When Joan faces her parents, you go through the whole five stages of grief. What was your approach to capturing that sequence? 

WANG: All three actors are phenomenal. I cannot speak more highly of the three. That was one of the few scenes we actually did rehearse before we shot, and what was scripted was slightly different. I encouraged the actors, especially at the beginning, to improvise a little bit because how do we fucking shoot a scene where none of us could ever imagine something like this happening? (laughs) It's the most extreme thing possible. We played a lot of games. We really workshopped that scene together. Then afterwards, I took the best parts that we figured out and I rewrote it into the script, and that's what ended up on the screen. Initially, I shot the scene in a oner, but the reactions from Vivian Wu, who plays the mother, and Fang Du, who plays the father, were so good that I was like, 'I can't just focus on Mckenna and get only glimpses of the parents. I have to cut it up.' That was cool to figure out in post, and I'm so glad I got coverage.

DALTON: Your heart breaks for her family, but then it cuts to Mckenna speaking in Mandarin, which feels so ludicrous in the moment. It's another testament to your union of light and dark. 

WANG: Absolutely, and she nailed the Mandarin. She was perfect.

DALTON: And just prior to that, she hears an original song titled 'It's Good to Be White'. Fittingly, it is the whitest song to ever grace my ears.

WANG: (laughs) Initially, I had filmed something completely different to play there. I came up with that idea much later on. I wrote all the lyrics, and my brilliant composer came up with the music. She recorded it with a great recording artist; her name is Malvika. I always knew I wanted to have this dream of celebration because Joan was transitioning to the other side. I wanted her to feel excited to be a part of it, but her version of that is obviously very comical. I'm so happy that you found it amusing. 

DALTON: Mckenna receives the baton from Shirley Chen, who plays the role until the transformation. Was there an aim to make sure specific characteristics carried over from one to the other, or was there a push to play things disparately to emphasise the metamorphosis?

WANG: There was definitely always going to be a bit of that because Mckenna is a different person, but when I was casting, I was very aware of their energies. I cast Shirley first, and I had seen all of Mckenna's stuff even before I had thought of her for this role. She's really good at imitating. She was the young Brie Larson in Captain Marvel and the young Margot Robbie in I, Tonya. That was a skill I knew she had. Then, after I cast her, we did a couple of sessions with the two girls where I had them imitate each other. Again, I played a lot of games. Then we talked about mannerisms, and we all came up with the [peg on the] nose thing, which is something I used to do as a teenager to make my nose look smaller. That was something that carried on even after she changed. But the idea was to have the two girls physically imitate each other. You know, the way they walked, the way they ate.

DALTON: Once the side effects kick in, the markings and deterioration of her face are pretty unsettling. How did you determine that design?

WANG: I worked with an incredible prosthetic maker who works a lot in Atlanta, where we shot. He had done a lot of DC Comics movies and The Walking Dead. We talked about what I wanted it to feel like, and I had said I wanted it to feel like The Persistence of Memory, the melting clocks painting by Salvador Dali, eventually melt off. He took that, and he sent me a couple of designs. We tweaked it, and we had different levels of intensity. The initial peeling is almost like dandruff on a face, then it gets way more graphic towards the end. So we had different levels that we talked about in terms of placement and design. A lot of credit goes to him and his team. 

DALTON: Many have drawn comparisons to works like The Substance and Mean Girls for your usage of body horror and examination of schooling. But as we witness the skin start shedding in the mirror, I caught shades of Poltergeist, and the stature of prom brought me back to Carrie. Does that cover the scope of your antecedents?

WANG: There's an incredible film called Sick of Myself by Kristoffer Borgli. He did Dream Scenario as well. I remember watching Sick of Myself and being like, 'Oh, my God! This is brilliant! It's pure satire.' There's body horror in there, but it really pushes the satire to the limit in a very deadpan kind of way, which is different from my movie. But that was a big influence when I was initially thinking about visuals and style and tone. Sorry to Bother You, as mentioned, was definitely an OG movie that I've always loved and is so funny and is also about race. There are not many that are satirical and about race. I feel like Spike Lee and Boots Riley are probably the only two who have really led the charge. 

There was also a book called Black No More. It was funny; I think a Hollywood Reporter reviewer had mentioned they could see elements of it. I was like, 'Yes! That's true because I read it when I was writing the script.' It's a book about a group of black Americans who switched into white people through surgery. It's a very different story, but it definitely had elements of satire. There's a joke in my movie that directly references the book. I don't think anybody has got it except for that person; it's one of the testimonials. 

DALTON: For those who have had the chance to see this film, droves are coming away with emotional reactions. A consistent response is that it forced them to reckon with their own suppression of heritage due to living abroad. Are you aware of this?

WANG: Yes, I am aware. I haven't recently looked at Letterboxd, but when we first screened it at SXSW, I remember the amount of support and people who could relate to this feeling of shame. It was so overwhelming. In fact, when we were walking from the premiere to the afterparty, several people stopped me in the streets, some of them were crying. I make movies for this reason. I feel emotional now talking about it because it is exactly why I made this film. It's exactly why I think it's important. I love to make movies that talk about things that people don't normally like to confront or face. I feel like, especially in our current world, of course, we want to feel proud of our heritage and say, 'Yes, I'm so proud to be Asian American or Asian Australian or African American.' But I think there's always that little voice, especially when you're a teenager growing up, that voices shame and wants to assimilate and belong, whether it's to do with your race or sexuality or whatever it is. So I'm so touched and so grateful that so many people have felt this way, I truly am. 

This article was originally published by The Curb