Thrilling CBC miniseries, 'Dragon Boys,' delves into Asian organized crime
LEE-ANNE GOODMAN
January 1st, 2007
TORONTO (CP) - Byron Mann, the star of the CBC miniseries "Dragon Boys," said he knew there was something extraordinary in the making as soon as he read the script that delved into the dark underworld of Asian organized crime in Vancouver.
"It is a total gem, and everyone knew it was a gem while we were making it," says Mann, who plays RCMP Det. Tommy Jiang in the edge-of-your-seat two-part miniseries airing Sunday, Jan. 7 and Monday, Jan. 8 at 8 p.m. EST.
"It has a fantastic cast from all over the place - Canada, the U.S. and Asia - and the script is really remarkable," says Mann, who was born and raised in Hong Kong before attending college in the U.S., where he had roles in American movies like "Catwoman," "Red Corner" and "Street Fighter."
"It doesn't happen very often. As an actor, you get maybe one out of the 10 or 15 things that you do that you know, you just know, is really phenomenally good. I just knew the stars were aligned on 'Dragon Boys."'
Mann's Jiang is a sweet-faced cop whose marriage is in trouble due to his determination to bring down senior Asian gangsters by turning one of them against the others.
The actor, who moved to Vancouver seven years ago from the U.S. after falling in love with the city filming a movie there, spent weeks hanging out with real-life RCMP detectives to prepare for the role. He was surprised by what he saw.
"These are guys who just want to help people," Mann says. "They want to get the bad guys off the streets but they also want to help a lot of the young kids who are drawn to these gangs for various reasons and then can't get out of them. I was really blown away by how respectful the detectives were towards the people they were investigating. There's a lot of understanding and compassion there."
"Dragon Boys" was a labour of love for Ian Weir, the movie's writer and executive producer.
Weir says he feared he was too slow off the mark when he pitched the idea of a drama about Asian organized crime to the public broadcaster four years ago.
After all, he points out, Asian gangs were emerging as a big news story, especially on the West Coast, and Weir figured a lot of other writers and producers had beat him to the punch.
"When we went to them with a very general idea, to be honest, I was expecting them to say we already have four projects just like this already in development because it seemed like such a rich topic for drama," Weir says on the line from his home in Vancouver.
"But they got back to us and they were very excited and they said 'no, we've got nothing like this, so go ahead and start developing the story.' I was delighted."
Four years later - a year of it spent researching Asian gangs in Vancouver with the help of the RCMP and exploring all aspects of Chinese-Canadian culture - Weir has turned out one truly thrilling miniseries that's made even better by the script's decided air of authenticity.
Before sitting down to write the script, Weir spent months immersing himself in the world of Asian organized crime and also learning as much about Chinese-Canadians as possible. How? He constantly picked the brains of his Chinese-Canadians friends about their experiences and he read every Chinese-Canadian or Chinese-American novel he could get his hands on.
Once Weir started work on the script, he got advisers in the Chinese community to read it and let him know what worked and what didn't.
The movie at times touches on some of the ridiculous stereotypes some Canadians have about the Chinese - moments that provide a bit of comic relief in the taut and suspense-filled "Dragon Boys."
"I guess it's just one of those Chinese things, like eating your cat," Jiang says at one point to a buffoonish observer at a crime scene who suggests the Chinese are killing one another due to age-old disputes that go back to "the village" in China.
It's that sort of information Weir says he gleaned from Chinese-Canadians, who told him what it was like growing up in Canada as an ethnic minority.
"I had to climb the mountain of having to write a story about a culture that was not my culture, and I did everything I could to learn as much as I could, because it became very clear that far from this being just a crime story, it was also a human story."
© 2007 CanadaEast Interactive
January 1st, 2007
TORONTO (CP) - Byron Mann, the star of the CBC miniseries "Dragon Boys," said he knew there was something extraordinary in the making as soon as he read the script that delved into the dark underworld of Asian organized crime in Vancouver.
"It is a total gem, and everyone knew it was a gem while we were making it," says Mann, who plays RCMP Det. Tommy Jiang in the edge-of-your-seat two-part miniseries airing Sunday, Jan. 7 and Monday, Jan. 8 at 8 p.m. EST.
"It has a fantastic cast from all over the place - Canada, the U.S. and Asia - and the script is really remarkable," says Mann, who was born and raised in Hong Kong before attending college in the U.S., where he had roles in American movies like "Catwoman," "Red Corner" and "Street Fighter."
"It doesn't happen very often. As an actor, you get maybe one out of the 10 or 15 things that you do that you know, you just know, is really phenomenally good. I just knew the stars were aligned on 'Dragon Boys."'
Mann's Jiang is a sweet-faced cop whose marriage is in trouble due to his determination to bring down senior Asian gangsters by turning one of them against the others.
The actor, who moved to Vancouver seven years ago from the U.S. after falling in love with the city filming a movie there, spent weeks hanging out with real-life RCMP detectives to prepare for the role. He was surprised by what he saw.
"These are guys who just want to help people," Mann says. "They want to get the bad guys off the streets but they also want to help a lot of the young kids who are drawn to these gangs for various reasons and then can't get out of them. I was really blown away by how respectful the detectives were towards the people they were investigating. There's a lot of understanding and compassion there."
"Dragon Boys" was a labour of love for Ian Weir, the movie's writer and executive producer.
Weir says he feared he was too slow off the mark when he pitched the idea of a drama about Asian organized crime to the public broadcaster four years ago.
After all, he points out, Asian gangs were emerging as a big news story, especially on the West Coast, and Weir figured a lot of other writers and producers had beat him to the punch.
"When we went to them with a very general idea, to be honest, I was expecting them to say we already have four projects just like this already in development because it seemed like such a rich topic for drama," Weir says on the line from his home in Vancouver.
"But they got back to us and they were very excited and they said 'no, we've got nothing like this, so go ahead and start developing the story.' I was delighted."
Four years later - a year of it spent researching Asian gangs in Vancouver with the help of the RCMP and exploring all aspects of Chinese-Canadian culture - Weir has turned out one truly thrilling miniseries that's made even better by the script's decided air of authenticity.
Before sitting down to write the script, Weir spent months immersing himself in the world of Asian organized crime and also learning as much about Chinese-Canadians as possible. How? He constantly picked the brains of his Chinese-Canadians friends about their experiences and he read every Chinese-Canadian or Chinese-American novel he could get his hands on.
Once Weir started work on the script, he got advisers in the Chinese community to read it and let him know what worked and what didn't.
The movie at times touches on some of the ridiculous stereotypes some Canadians have about the Chinese - moments that provide a bit of comic relief in the taut and suspense-filled "Dragon Boys."
"I guess it's just one of those Chinese things, like eating your cat," Jiang says at one point to a buffoonish observer at a crime scene who suggests the Chinese are killing one another due to age-old disputes that go back to "the village" in China.
It's that sort of information Weir says he gleaned from Chinese-Canadians, who told him what it was like growing up in Canada as an ethnic minority.
"I had to climb the mountain of having to write a story about a culture that was not my culture, and I did everything I could to learn as much as I could, because it became very clear that far from this being just a crime story, it was also a human story."
© 2007 CanadaEast Interactive
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