The controversial material of Dragon Boys

By Craig Takeuchi
Straight.com
January 8, 2007

Though criminal activity, drugs, violence, and prostitution are far from complimentary subjects to depict about any culture or community, the CBC crime drama miniseries Dragon Boys (which aired tonight and will continue on Monday night), about Asian Canadian organized crime in the Lower Mainland, is one of the few Asian Canadian dramas to hit our television airwaves.

As scriptwriter Ian Weir pointed out in an interview with me for the feature I wrote about Dragon Boys, the crime drama genre lends itself well to the TV format (which is why there are popular American crime dramas like CSI as well as Canadian shows like DaVinci's and Intelligence).

Also, after I reviewed the screener, and interviewed Weir and lead actor Byron Mann, it was clear that the filmmakers, cast, and crew had gone to great lengths to ensure cultural and factual accuracy.

They may not have originally intended to set out for the show to represent the Asian Canadian community, probably hoping to simply make a crime drama set in the community. However, due to the lack of visibility of Asian Canadians, the show is being perceived by some as an all-encompassing representation of the community. It's understandable, as this is the first time such a large Chinese Canadian cast has been assembled for TV.

Although it only shows a fragment of Asian Canadian urban life, for many viewers across Canada, it may be one of their few views of Asian Canadians.

Yet there was a racially balanced portrayal of characters. The lead character is a Chinese Canadian RCMP officer, and there is also a Chinese Canadian couple who run a restaurant and are concerned about the well-being of their son.

There are also Caucasian characters who are on either side of the law as well (one of them gets constantly beaten up), but are all side characters whose primary relationships are with Chinese Canadians.

I think Vancouverites are a very Asian-savvy bunch due to the high level of interaction with Asian Canadians on a daily basis. What would be of some concern would be with Canadians who live outside cosmopolitan areas that don't have much interaction with Asians and would misinterpret some of the depictions in the miniseries.

Nonetheless, I have far less concern about this show than films like Memoirs of a Geisha in which there were gross cultural errors and no attempt to maintain accuracy.

I should also point out that in Dragon Boys, there are two characters played by actresses who aren't the same ethnicity as their character. Korean Canadian Jean Yoon plays the massage parlour businesswoman wife. However, she did live for several years in China and was able to improvise her Mandarin dialogue. Steph Song plays a Cambodian character. Her character was originally Chinese when she was cast, but it was then changed to Cambodian when it was pointed out that a character like hers are currently coming from countries like Cambodia and not China. In both cases, the actresses made concerted efforts to speak the language or accents of the characters, unlike the cast of Memoirs of a Geisha.

What is of concern to me is whether or not there will be more Asian Canadian dramas made after this series. I hope that this miniseries sets an example to Canadian broadcasters of the unexplored possibilites of Asian Canadian talent (as well as other ethnicities). This can't be the final word on Asian Canada or Chinese Canadians.

Something to keep in mind is that the volume of Canadian TV drama productions are currently at a seven year low. Canadian TV productions also have a significantly smaller budget than American TV studios, who dominate our own airwaves.

American studios spend as much as $12 million on a pilot, and about $4 million on a one-hour drama. The average production budget for English Canadian TV was $1.3 million in 2006.

And as I've said before in previous blogs, American shows benefit from the daily gossip sheets that advertise their stars in our papers, sometimes to the exclusion of coverage of Canadian stars and their projects.

Canadians weaned on (and unconsciously biased towards) American TV often put down Canadian productions in comparison. Yet it's a vicious circle: if Canadians don't support Canadian shows, then it's harder for Canadian productions to be competitive, and then produce inferior quality work, which in turn fare poorly against American productions. And so on and so on.

But when is the last time you've watched an Asian American TV show? All-American Girl by Margaret Cho? It is commendable that the CBC has made the attempt to make some effort to employ Asian Canadian actors, particularly at such a difficult time in the Canadian TV drama industry.

Also, CBC has featured Asian Canadian characters in shows such as This is Wonderland and the short-lived These Arms of Mine.

If there is criticism of the show from viewers within the Asian Canadian community, I hope that is expressed in a constructive way that will encourage or help the CBC and other broadcasters to make better projects in the future, rather than discourage or deter them. The Dragon Boys series is an opportunity for the community.

Let's hope it's only just the beginning.

Signs of the Dragon Boy

January 08, 2007
Vinay Menon
vmenon@thestar.ca

Jerry Ciccoritti, here's my unsolicited blurb:

"The miniseries crackles with attitude, atmosphere and style. This frantic action-thriller about Asian gangs in Vancouver will grab you by the throat, yank you to the edge of your seat and transport you to another world."

If the rest of you are confused, well, you obviously missed last night's premiere of CBC's Dragon Boys, a hypnotic, high-octane romp through the savage underworld of organized crime on the West Coast (Part II airs tonight at 8).

What can I tell you? Sometimes, all the cathode stars line up – writing, casting, directing, acting, camera work, lighting, set design, soundtrack, post-production – and a television project twinkles with undeniable greatness.

Written by Ian Weir, who executive-produced with Michael Chechik, Dragon Boys follows Tommy Jiang (Byron Mann), an RCMP detective investigating increasingly treacherous factions within an Asian crime syndicate.

The four-hour project – which also stars Steph Song, Tzi Ma, Lawrence Chou and Eric Tsang, Simon Wong and Darryl Quon – is a veritable clinic in narrative pacing.

But Dragon Boys is more than just an action ride; it's anchored by subtle yet powerful insights into cultural assimilation, generational conflict, personal identity and, most of all, the need to be an insider when you're seen as an outsider.

It is, in short, outstanding television.

I know, I know. Mondays are quickly becoming "gushing praise" days.

That said – and because I can't spoil tonight's conclusion – let's completely change gears and conclude this dispatch with a list of random observations inspired by last night's premiere.

Here now, 30 Signs You May Have Accidentally Joined an Asian Gang:

1. Thugs kick down your door to give you a gift box that contains a meat cleaver; it's promptly used to cut off your face.

2. "I thought we were friends" roughly translates into "I'm so going to terrorize your family."

3. The most important people in your life have names like "Movie Star" and "Willie the Duck."

4. Your new "modelling" job is actually at a "massage parlour" where VIPs pay $120 per hour for happy endings.

5. Whenever you're asked to grab a briefcase from the back of a Mercedes, your head is repeatedly slammed in the door for no apparent reason.

6. You are sworn to secrecy at least twice a day under the threat of brutal violence.

7. Your old peer group enjoyed video games; your new peer group enjoys swarmings.

8. New associates refer to you as "Eggroll."

9. Inexplicably, the bullies who tormented you in gym class have been hospitalized.

10. You meet this new girl who seems really, really nice – until she bludgeons an elderly couple with a phone.

11. Local strippers know you by name.

12. In your world, there are more males than females who dye their hair blonde.

13. You can calculate the street value of heroin while doing your homework.

14. You can't go to a karaoke bar without getting recruited into another violent scheme.

15. The thought of "school detention" makes you giggle.

16. Your new best friend knows more about the Young Offenders Act than most judges.

17. You now have a "Dai Lo."

18. You're encouraged to kill. You're also encouraged to get a teardrop tattooed on your cheek after each kill.

19. You root around the bathroom each morning, searching for your mom's cosmetics so you might hide the bruises that cover your face.

20. Just before he serves afternoon tea, your brother pummels you with the kettle.

21. Submerging your arm in a cauldron of boiling cooking oil now seems like the only way out.

22. In casual conversations, the word "triad" always follows the words "Hong Kong."

23. You have a parole officer.

24. You're learning new domestic tricks. For example, an orange concealed in a hand towel can be used as a weapon.

25. The wisest person in your life is a junkie.

26. You often sneak home with a garbage bag full of bloody clothing.

27. One day you're flirting with a girl from school, the next you're face down in the woods with a pistol to your head.

28. You can't even check into a seedy motel without bumping into a psychopath who's determined to kill you.

29. Your new friends smoke and drive very bright cars.

30. After-school activities now include robbery, assault and home invasion.

Enter the Dragon

For once, CBC gets it right with this high-intensity mini-series
By BILL HARRIS
Toronto Sun

Do not make the mistake of thinking you're tuning into Dragons' Den when you tune into Dragon Boys.

Dragons' Den is a CBC reality series through which would-be inventors beg for money from investors. It got decent ratings on at least one night last fall (translation: nothing good on the other major networks).

But CBC can be more proud of Dragon Boys, a slick, four-hour drama about Asian gangs on Canada's West Coast. Part one is tonight (8 p.m.), with part two tomorrow at the same time.

Dragon Boys is set in Vancouver, as is Chris Haddock's high-quality CBC series Intelligence, and there are atmospheric similarities. There is some crossover from the Haddock stable of actors with a few of the smaller roles in Dragon Boys, too.

But as a made-for-TV movie rather than a series, Dragon Boys moves far faster than Intelligence, and it's considerably more violent. Let's just say the first few minutes tonight will grab your attention in a hurry.

Directed by eight-time Gemini Award-winner Jerry Ciccoritti and written by Ian Weir, Dragon Boys isn't merely a crime story. It also examines how the existence of Asian gangs impacts the wider community, and how some members of that community struggle to break free from the stereotypes the gangs help to cement.

Dragon Boys has two excellent performances at its core.

Byron Mann plays RCMP Det. Tommy Jiang, whose own self-image is tied up in his attempts to put a dent in the Asian crime hierarchy.

And Lawrence Chou plays a long-haired loan shark nicknamed Movie Star, whose reckless ambition throws the Asian gang world -- which includes many of his own blood relatives -- into chaos.

Dragon Boys boils down to a battle of wits between Tommy and Movie Star, but there are several intriguing side-stories that tie into the main plot.

For example, Steph Song plays Chavy Pahn, who comes to Canada from Cambodia with the promise of a modelling career but is forced to work in an erotic massage parlour; and Simon Wong plays Jason, a mild-mannered high-school kid of Asian descent who casually is attracted to the gang lifestyle but is stunned by how quickly his own life can be ruined.

There are several gripping scenes in part one tonight, including the one in which Tommy is arguing with his estranged wife Andrea (Stefanie von Pfetten). She accuses him of pursuing the gangs like a "samurai warrior," at the expense of his own family life, because of some psychological need to separate his Hong Kong roots from cookie-cutter criminality.

"You know, you could say something if you really wanted," Andrea pleads. "This is our lives we're talking about."

Tommy stares back blankly. "Samurais are Japanese," he says before walking away.

Part two tomorrow can get a little confusing, with so many twists and turns that it's easy to lose track of who is siding with whom. But if you're patient, it all sort of works itself out in the end.

Dragon Boys is no Dragons' Den. But there is an inventors' element to Dragon Boys, too.

For a change, CBC has "invented" some high-intensity TV.

Will Dragon Boys fall to stereotypes?

A thriller set in Vancouver about triad gang violence has Asian Canadians watching closely, but producers of the miniseries insist they have made every effort to make sure concerns about racism have been addressed, ALEXANDRA GILL (Globe and Mail) writes

VANCOUVER -- A group of thugs gun their way into a dingy Vancouver apartment. They have been sent by Movie Star, a ruthless drug dealer with connections to a Hong Kong triad. When the low-life apartment dweller fails to come up with the money he owes, they savagely carve his face with a butcher's knife.

The gruesome segment is the opening scene of /Dragon Boys/, a gripping two-part miniseries that premieres tomorrow night on CBC Television. Directed with pulsing momentum by Jerry Ciccoritti and written with layered complexity by Ian Weir, the series has been hailed for its depth and realism by some of the most celebrated Asian stars in Canada, Hong Kong and Hollywood, who leapt to be part of it.

The executives at CBC Television are so pleased with the miniseries they have already told the producers at Omni Film to go ahead with /Dragon Boys II/, a movie, and are now touting it as a "prime example" of their network's new programming strategy to reach untapped audiences and rake in higher ratings.

But some members of the Chinese community are warning the series could face a backlash. Critics have argued that a drama in which the criminals are
Chinese-Canadian can be nothing but racist, but others say the series could be the beginning of a new era of complexity in depictions of Asian Canadians on television.

Executive producer Michael Chechik was not prepared to concede that as Caucasians, he, Weir and Ciccoritti had no right to make the series, as some have been saying.

"If Ang Lee, a heterosexual Chinese director, could win an Academy Award for /Brokeback Mountain/, a movie about homosexual cowboys, why shouldn't we be allowed to make a television drama about another racial group in Canada?" he said last month, at an advance Vancouver screening for cast and crew.

Weir, an English-speaking Canadian of Scottish descent, stresses that the series isn't just a crime story. It's a human story, he says, about families, the immigrant experience and Canada's West Coast.

"When I moved to Vancouver in 1978, it was essentially a small town. Now, it's a world-class Pacific Rim city. It has been completely transformed, for the better. More than any, it's the Chinese culture that has transformed it. And if you're looking to tell a story about the West Coast today, you need to look at Chinese culture as an absolutely dominant part of that story because it's had such a big impact on shaping the community we live in."

The negative response to the miniseries could be muted by the pre-emptive efforts of the producers to address concerns raised early in the production's life. As soon as /Dragon Boys/ was added to the CBC lineup in June 2005, Colleen Leung, a Vancouver documentary producer and community activist, took it upon herself to track down the producers and warn them about the negative buzz that was already building.

To answer such charges, the producers hired Leung and historian Jim Wong-Chu as cultural advisers to look over the script and highlight what rang true or what might be insulting.

The subsequent changes were small and subtle, but powerful, says Weir, who had already spent years researching Asian gangs with the help of the local RCMP and learning as much as he could about the Chinese-Canadian experience by picking the brains of his friends and reading contemporary literature.

For example, when Wong-Chu read an early draft, he took an extreme dislike to Inspector Buckles, a lunkheaded -- white -- senior RCMP officer.

"You're not getting it," Wong-Chu complained to Weir. "Why is the boss always white? Why can't it be a Chinese asshole in power?"

Weir later added a second senior RCMP officer, who was Chinese, and added a new layer of complexity to a subplot about generational differences.

As helpful as the community advisers may have been, Weir says his greatest resources, as far as cultural content is concerned, were Byron Mann and Tzi Ma, the show's lead actors.

Ma, a familiar face who has starred in countless Hollywood productions including /The Quiet American/ and/ The Ladykillers/, was so impressed with an early script he simply presumed it was written by a Chinese Canadian or American.

"It rang so true to me," Ma explained by phone, while shooting /Rush Hour 3/ with Jackie Chan in Vancouver.

"It reminded me of the seventies in New York, when a huge influx of Asian immigrants flooded the city," says Ma, who was doing some social work in Chinatown at the time.

"The city infrastructure couldn't absorb it. The kids were bored because they couldn't communicate. It was easy for gangs to recruit them," says Ma, who plays a father whose son falls in with a gang.

Ma says /Dragon Boys/ is a "seminal" project because it was the first script (or at least the first that he had read) about Asian crime that fully addressed the victims and their families.

"Every character is flawed. It represents us well. It gives us three-dimensionality."

What everyone wants to avoid is a repeat of 1991. That year, CBC Radio aired a miniseries entitled /Dim Sum Diaries/. Its fifth episode sees a new immigrant from Hong Kong cut down two rare sequoia trees in his front yard because they interfere with his property's/ feng shui/ (design harmony). The episode, narrated by a fictional white speaker, was based on a nearly identical incident which had occurred in the tony neighbourhood of Kerrisdale. The aim of the episode had been to combat
racist preconceptions. By the end of the segment, written for Morningside by Mark Leiren-Young, the narrator's racist preconceptions undergo a complete sea change.

In real life, however, the drama only heightened racial tensions and sparked an explosion of protest that ricocheted from Vancouver to the House of Commons and back to the CBC in British Columbia, where an apology was eventually issued to representatives of the Chinese-Canadian community, who alleged that the production was racist.

For all its gritty realism, and precisely because of it, /Dragon Boys/obviously won't please everyone.

Steph Song, the Canadian actress who plays a Southern Cambodian factory worker who is forced into prostitution after coming to Canada, says she, for one, was actually relieved when she heard that the miniseries was being written and directed by Caucasians.

"I was worried that if it were directed or written by Chinese Canadians, there would be too much sympathy," she explained at the preview screening. "I was worried that they would sweep all the drugs under the carpet, that it would be too sanitized, that they might not expose the truths. The truth is what makes a good story."

Dragon Boys gets serious about action

JOHN DOYLE
Globe and Mail
January 5, 2007

Don't always believe what you read.

If you've read somewhere that Dragon Boys (CBC, Sunday and Monday, 8 p.m.) explores "themes relating to the immigrant experience, social dislocation, generational conflict within families . . .," don't be put off.

This is definitely not some worthy, earnest drama about multiculturalism in Canada today.

Well, it is about Canada today and the immigrant experience, sort of.

But it sure isn't earnest. Dragon Boys is a thriller. It's all action, all gloss and verve. It's a crisp, tough-minded roller-coaster drama about cops, criminals, dumb punks and ruthless no-goodniks. It's entertainment.

At the core of the two-part miniseries is a Chinese-Canadian RCMP detective, Tommy Jiang (Byron Mann), and an immigrant family who are drawn into a deadly confrontation with an Asian organized-crime gang. But that's just the core. There are numerous characters on the sidelines, all looking for an edge, revenge or just survival in a nasty gang war.

From the get-go, we are into the action. A creepy-looking guy turns up at some hoser's apartment, with a box of something to deliver. He says it's from somebody named "Movie Star" (Lawrence Chou) and, wouldn't you know it, all hell breaks loose. It turns out that Movie Star is a nasty piece of work, but far from the worst in the motley crew of bad guys.

One of Movie Star's favourite games is taunting Tommy Jiang. Meanwhile, Tommy has his own problems. His wife is angry and his ethnicity, his Chinese-Canadian status, seems to come to the surface in every personal and professional encounter. His wife sneers at him, "So you're out there like a Samurai warrior, taking them all on?" And Tommy can only reply, coldly: "Samurais are Japanese."

Tommy sees an opportunity to bring down a large part of the Asian-crime empire and play off one gangster, Movie Star, against the more established, more ruthless Willie the Duck (Eric Tsang). It's a slippery game, but not the only one that's going on. A Chinese-Canadian businessman, Tzi Ma (Henry Wah, from 24 and the films The Ladykillers and The Quiet American), wants a quiet life but his restless son has been drawn into gang warfare and he's desperate to save him. And then there's Steph (Chavy Pahn), a young woman who has paid money to get into Canada and then finds herself enslaved in a brothel. She's determined to get out.

Dragon Boys was written by Ian Weir and directed by Jerry Ciccoritti, who has enormous flair for potent television material. He made the original Trudeau miniseries and again, on Dragon Boys, he's very inventive. Famous for insisting on a particular "beat" to a production, Ciccoritti is a dab hand at keeping a pulsating rhythm going strong.

This miniseries is only to be taken seriously as a thriller. Yes, it has a state-of-Canada aspect, but it's about the action, not the solemnity that others might impose on it.

CBC breaks new ground with Dragon Boys

Thursday January 04 2007
/by George Zicarelli, Driven magazine/

Armed with one of Canada’s most accomplished directors guiding a
star-laden cast, the CBC mini-series Dragon Boys
thrusts Asian gangs into the national spotlight.

The two-part, four-hour thriller gives viewers a rare glimpse into
Vancouver’s organized crime world and shines a light on the struggles of
Asian immigrants trying to forge lives in Canada.

Such a seminal project couldn’t be trusted to just anyone. With eight
Gemini Awards to his credit (as well as
having directed Paris, France – known as one of the 50 most erotic films
of all time), few Canadian directors have the pedigree of Jerry
Ciccoritti (Trudeau, Lives of the Saints). As the son of immigrant
parents, he also brought an intimate understanding of the motivation
behind the characters in Dragon Boys.

“One of the main reasons I took this gig was because it appeals to my
passions,” he said. “I always try to do work that reflects the…state of
mind of being either an immigrant or the children of immigrants in this
country. We’re a very special breed.”

A Triad of storylines

Dragon Boys expertly weaves three stories of Vancouver’s Asian community
in a style reminiscent of Traffic. Tommy Jiang, (Byron Mann,
Streetfighter, The Corruptor, Catwoman), an ambitious cop on the RCMP
Asian-Gang Squad, struggles to keep his marriage together as he plots to
bring down Vancouver’s top gangsters. When a plan to turn rival gangs
against each other backfires, Jiang faces decisions that can ruin
everything he’s worked for.

Henry Wah (Tzi Ma, The Quiet American and The Ladykillers) came to
Canada to build an honest life as a restaurant owner. When his
17-year-old son Jason (Simon Wong) gets mixed up with the wrong crowd,
Wah, in a frantic attempt to save his son, crosses lines he never
thought possible.

Chavy Pahn (Steph Song, named one of the 10 Sexiest Women in the World
by Asian FHM readers) thought she arrived in
Canada with a modelling career ahead of her. Instead, she’s forced to
work as a prostitute in a massage parlour to pay off a huge debt. Pahn’s
beauty wins the favour of a brutal gang henchman and she schemes of ways
to use him and win her escape.

The real deal

Based on extensive research with cultural consultants, historians and
cops, writer and executive producer Ian Weir (Edgemont) created an
authenticity to the story and its characters. Ciccoritti knew how
important the project would be to Asian-Canadians and the creators took
care not to “screw it up.”

“The Chinese community was really shocked when they would meet with
me…and sit down and talk about the experience of these characters. They
would say 'Oh my God! That’s exactly right. How did you know? You don’t
even look Chinese,'” he said. “You don’t have to be Chinese. You fight
the same battles. You meet the same enemies. You experience the same
joys. All that stuff is the same.”

Mann jumped at the chance to play the lead-role of Jiang after reading
the script. He loved the multi-dimensional characters, gripping plot
lines and the care Weir took to make the story believable.

“If there’s any social responsibility, it’s portraying the characters
correctly,” he said. “Whether you’re going to show bad guys, good guys
or show character flaws.”

Both Ciccoritti and Mann are excited to bring the Asian-Canadian
experience to a national audience for the first time. Early indications
are that the show will be a huge success. A screening of Dragon Boys
last month in Vancouver drew capacity crowds. Mann, who attended the
screening and answered questions afterwards, said the response was
overwhelmingly positive.

“Not one person has said this is bad,” he said. “Instead, they say it’s
really educational, interesting and fascinating.”

The buzz around the series has even extended south of the border. San
Francisco’s International Asian American Film Festival
, scheduled for March,
has made Dragon Boys an official selection, a rarity for a
made-for-television movie.

Dragon Boys shoot for truth

By Craig Takeuchi
Georgia Straight
January 4, 2007

Two Chinese seniors are bludgeoned to death in a violent suburban home
invasion; a Caucasian drug dealer is hacked up by an Asian gang; a
Chinese Canadian teenager goes missing under suspicious circumstances.
Are these news headlines? A Hollywood movie? While they could be either,
these scenarios are from a new CBC TV miniseries called Dragon Boys
(www.dragonboys.ca/ ). The two-part drama
about Asian organized crime in the Lower Mainland, which airs Sunday and
Monday (January 7 and 8 at 8 p.m.), follows multiple story lines and
covers everything from Triads to seedy massage parlours and employs
multilingual dialogue (English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Khmer, the
language of Cambodia).

A riveting script is what attracted an international slate of film and
TV stars to the project. Hong Kong luminaries Lawrence Chou and Eric
Tsang are gangsters who face off against the Richmond RCMP anti-gang
squad’s Tommy Jiang, played by Byron Mann (Dark Angel, Red Corner); The
Quiet American’s Tzi Ma and Christina Ma of Long Life, Happiness &
Prosperity are the parents of a troubled teenager (Simon Wong) headed
down the wrong path; and Saskatoon-raised Steph Song (Everything’s Gone
Green) plays a Cambodian girl forced into prostitution.

In a phone interview with the Straight, screenwriter Ian Weir describes
the casting process as “a huge eye-opener” and says it is “jaw-dropping
how deep and broad that [Asian Canadian talent] pool now is.”

Not everyone, however, was as enthusiastic, Weir says. “When the project
was first announced by CBC, there was real concern in the Chinese
community in Vancouver. They’d been burned before, and they’re looking
at a situation where you’ve got a white producer, a white writer: ‘Are
we looking at insulting, two-dimensional stereotypes of Asian characters
that we’ve seen before? Is this what the whole project is going to be
about?’”

Weir describes the learning curve as akin to “climbing Mount Everest”.
He spent two years researching not just Asian organized crime but
Chinese culture as well. To ensure authenticity, Weir worked with
cultural consultants Jim Wong-Chu of the Asian Canadian Writers’
Workshop and journalist-filmmaker Colleen Leung. With such controversial
material, the scriptwriting process became an exercise in the politics
of representation. “What I discovered,” Weir says, “is it’s so easy for
a member of the dominant culture to have one set of assumptions about
power relationships and power structures which is completely skewed
towards my perspective, which is the middle-aged white guy.” He points
out, for example, that the character of a Chinese Canadian RCMP
superintendent was originally Caucasian until Wong-Chu objected, asking
“‘Why can’t he be a Chinese asshole? Why is the boss always white?’”

Cantonese and Khmer translators assisted with the script (the Mandarin
dialogue was improvised by actors Eric Tsang and Jean Yoon). When the
character of Chavy Pahn was changed from Chinese to Cambodian to reflect
current immigration patterns, Steph Song, who had already been cast in
the role, had to learn to deliver lines in Khmer. Chavy’s isolation is
intensified by the language barrier—she can’t speak English, Cantonese,
or Mandarin—and magnifies her helplessness.

Both Weir and director Jerry Ciccoritti (Trudeau; Paris, France)
actively ?solicited input from the actors. Weir says, “As a white guy, I
would never have attempted this if I were a novelist because a novelist
is flying solo, but as a dramatist, you’re working hand in hand with
actors. I was working all the way along with actors who themselves are
Chinese Canadian and were able to go to places which on my own I could
never have gone to.”

Over coffee at a Broadway restaurant, part-time Vancouverite Byron Mann
emphasizes that “the intention of the film was to ‘get it right’, to be
as accurate as possible.” Mann, however, ensured the filmmakers didn’t
shy away from gritty material. “Very early on, one of the things that I
encouraged the producers to do was [to] not go soft on the subject
matter, don’t water it down, don’t be afraid to go all the way to the
truth.’” Accordingly, Mann spent time with RCMP officers and learned
about how they deal with gangs in order to prepare for his role.
Meanwhile, Weir worked with Cpl. David Au of the Richmond RCMP anti-gang
squad on the script.

Mann also objected to his character’s wife being changed to Chinese
because he saw his character as a banana who “grew up thinking he’s a
white man…a guy who has never dated Asian girls.” From the start, Mann’s
character is working through a strained relationship with his Caucasian
wife, and the gangsters hook up with Caucasian women. Unlike most
Hollywood depictions of Asian males as monklike, these Dragon Boys, both
good and bad, are definitely “getting some”.

They’ll also be getting more. Weir says CBC has already commissioned a
two-hour movie-of-the-week sequel that picks up the story three years
later. Work on the script has already begun, with the hope of shooting
this fall. Although it’s the year of the pig, it may also prove to be
the year of the Dragon.

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

BOYS ON FILM, by Jen Sookfong Lee

/As you may already know, *Jen Sookfong Lee
* is about to become one of the most
celebrated newly published Canadian authors -- with her first novel,
/The End of East/ coming out in March (Knopf Canada), and the second in
the works ... we were all really curious to know what she thought. Jen
posted her response to the film on her blog
. /

/"... easily the best-acted and best-written television movie I've seen
in years." More here . /

/From Jen Sookfong Lee's blog :/
*
BOYS ON FILM* | DECEMBER 19, 2006

Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend an advance screening of
Dragon Boys, a new mini-series set to air on CBC television on January 7
and 8. You see, this is the thing: I heard about this project some time
ago and knew long before I saw it that it would be a two-part film that
fictionalizes the world (and underworld) of Chinese Canadian gangs.
"Hold up," I thought, "haven't we all heard enough about that?"

When I was a teenager in the early 90s, Asian youth gangs were big news.
Terms like dai lo, snakehead and triad were being bandied about in the
media everyday. One night, I was sitting in my friend's parked car,
outside my own house when a police officer pulled up and demanded to see
our identification, not trusting, of course, that I actually lived where
I said I dd and suspecting that we were home invaders. To me, this was a
lot of fear without a lot of substance.

Sure, we all knew one or two bad seeds who swaggered through the
hallways at school or waited for their grilfriends across the street
leaning on their sports cars. But I emerged from my youth, as did all of
my friends, totally untouched by the gang experience. So, I had mixed
feelings going into the Dragon Boys screening, fearing that I was going
to watch three and a half hours of well-produced gang hysteria.

As it turns out, I was totally unprepared.

Dragon Boys is easily the best-acted and best-written television movie
I've seen in years. The actors (including Byron Mann, Tzi Ma, Lawrence
Chou, Eric Tsang, Steph Song, Michael Adamthwaite and my two favourites,
Jean Yoon and Simon Wong) were so great at giving their characters the
kind of depth most television shows can only dream of. The screenwriter
and producer, Ian Weir (who, incidentally, taught me my very first term
of creative writing at UBC, but I'm sure he has no memory of my crappy,
crappy screenplay), wrote a sensitive and far-reaching script with
multiple narratives, a little like Steven Soderbergh's Traffic.

Chinese Canadian gang activity is a sensitive topic, especially here in
Vancouver where gangs are often linked to ethnicity in the media. Dragon
Boys is about gangs, sure, but in the same way that The Sopranos is
about the mafia. The gang thing is really a landscape, a kind of stage
where all the characters and their plotlines converge.

(I should mention that Vancouver and Richmond play a huge role and are
almost characters in and of themselves. The accuracy of how these two
cities feed and play off each other is really very incisive.)

Am I gushing? Yes. Listen, I'm not a film critic and never will be. All
I know is that this movie, which I expected to be either pedantic or
hysterical, was neither of these things and is, in fact, something far
greater. Flawed characters who sometimes rise to the occassion and
sometimes fail miserably. Plotlines that reveal we are all connected.
And a particularly Canadian cinematic portrayal of violence: few guns,
no car chases, just suggestion. Brilliant.

DRAGON BOYS - WontonGuru approved

WontonGuru gives DRAGON BOYS a big thumbs up!

8 full bowls of rice out of 8!

Dragon Boys is scheduled to air on CBC on January 7th and 8th at 8 pm ET/PT

Official Dragon Boys website: www.dragonboys.ca

DRAGON BOYS

Dragon Boys is a high-octane thriller and an extraordinary human drama, and features one of the most star-studded casts ever assembled for a Canadian production. Byron Mann, Steph Song, Tzi Ma, Lawrence Chou and Eric Tsang star in this four-hour CBC mini-series that centers on a Chinese Canadian RCMP detective and an immigrant family who confront a deadly threat from Asian organized crime. Dragon Boys is written by Ian Weir and directed by Jerry Ciccoritti. Ian Weir and Michael Chechik are executive producers; Howard Dancyger is producer.

Set in Richmond and Vancouver, British Columbia, Dragon Boys is a sensational thrill-ride that weaves together three stories of contemporary West Coast life. Though fictional, it is based on meticulous research. Opening a window onto the world of Asian organized crime in West Coast Canada, the mini-series examines how the impact of organized crime ripples through the wider community, both in terms of the social and economic toll it takes and the stereotypes it propagates. Along the way, it explores themes relating to the immigrant experience, social dislocation, and personal and cultural identity.

The creative team behind the camera is as stellar as the cast. Director Jerry Ciccoritti (Trudeau, The Many Trials of One Jane Doe) has won a slate of awards, including seven Gemini Awards for Best Director. Writer and executive producer Ian Weir is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter and creator of the long-running teen drama, Edgemont. President of Omni Film Productions, executive producer Michael Chechik’s many credits include Edgemont, Champions of the Wild and The Odyssey.

Dragon Boys is scheduled to air on CBC on January 7th and 8th at 8 pm ET/PT
Official Dragon Boys website: www.dragonboys.ca

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

When Tzi Ma, the Chinese American actor who starred opposite Michael Caine in The Quiet American and Tom Hanks in The Ladykillers, was first sent the Dragon Boys script, the title page was missing. He read Part One, marvelling at the Asian Canadian writer who must have created it. When he found out the writer was in fact non-Asian Canadian Ian Weir, he was very surprised. The actor and writer had a lengthy telephone discussion, during which the actor offered his insights into the character, even though he had not yet been offered the part.

“I wanted the project to work, whether I was involved or not,” says Ma. The story in Dragon Boys reminded him of his experiences in New York City in the 1970’s, even though it was set in present-day Vancouver. “It rang very true for me,” he says. He’d been a social worker in Chinatown and understood how kids became involved in gangs. “I felt it was the only script that had ever talked about how this affects the victims and families. Normally, in such stories, they only talk about the gangs themselves. There is seldom an opportunity to look into the minds and hearts of the people who are affected. This was telling the other side.”

The only non-Canadian member of the cast, Ma is incredibly passionate about the project. He has strong opinions on how Western media portrays Asian North Americans. “We’re perpetual foreigners, always seen as that, no matter how many generations we’ve been here. We always have the opportunity to play Asians, but very seldom do we get a chance to play Asian Americans – or Canadians.”

Ma feels that Dragon Boys is a seminal project because “it represents us well, giving us three dimensionality and it examines the depth of complexity of who we are as human beings.”

With scads of research, a small army of cultural advisors and an amazing cast of Asian Canadian movie stars, writer Ian Weir and his fellow executive producer Michael Chechik set out to make the most ambitious television project ever about Asian North Americans.

Several years ago, Weir’s fascination with organized crime on the West Coast led him to research Asian organized crime. He read everything he could by Chinese Canadians and Americans. “Very quickly, it became a story about the culture, about human beings rather than crime per se,” he says. “Crime was a way in. Once immersed in that, questions of culture took over.” Weir read many novels by Chinese Canadian writers and thus began the lengthy, two-year process of immersing himself in another culture.

As the story of Dragon Boys came together, Weir worked intensively with two cultural consultants, historian and writer Jim Wong-Chu and journalist/filmmaker Colleen Leung. Also crucial to the development of the miniseries was Corporal David Au, an actual member of the Richmond RCMP Anti-Gang Squad. Au’s work with the production began early on and he worked closely with Byron Mann and the actors playing his fellow officers. “David ensured that the gang/crime and police elements were timely and realistic, and he also provided very valuable cultural feedback,” says Weir.
The production also worked with an array of Cantonese and Cambodian translators. The work of Cantonese translator and co-producer Hoi Bing Mo was key in pre-production as well as during principal photography. She assisted with Cantonese dialogue on set and her presence was required by the producers for many of their overseas calls to Hong Kong. “She was instrumental in some of those negotiations,” Chechik recalls.

The key characters were also developed in close consultation with the actors portraying them, bringing their reality and perspective to the story. Weir spent many hours with Ma and Byron Mann, discussing their characters, backgrounds, opinions and experiences.

“Crime drama works well on television,” says Weir. “It’s simply friendly to the medium. It gives you high stakes and characters in a crucible, having to make decisions, which is when character is revealed. So it’s a fertile backdrop against which to set a human story.”

Weir says Dragon Boys is an intensely personal story for him. “I’ve always been fascinated by questions of self definition. I think we all are. The themes are universal. And as I went along and the characters began emerging, I simply fell in love with them. And once you’ve fallen in love with the characters, you need to tell their story.”

Ian Weir was thrilled with Jerry Ciccoritti’s response to Dragon Boys. “I think he’s the best director in Canada and he was first on our wish list. He responded the same way I did,” Weir says. “He talked very eloquently about how he himself was the child of immigrants. He saw the themes of generational conflict within families, and the defining issues of the child being different from the parents. He was responding to all those things, exactly what I saw as the heart and soul of the script.

“Jerry said, ‘The issue isn’t about being able to deliver a good thriller, it’s what’s the human truth that makes the human story compelling.’ Once I heard him say that, I knew he was perfect. Not merely the best, he also saw the project from the best possible angle.”

For his part, Ciccoritti admits he jumped at the chance to get involved. The child of Italian immigrants, he knew the immigrant experience in Canada. “It’s a fundamental part of my makeup. Almost everything I do, deals with these issues to a greater or lesser degree: the question of identity. There’s a split between here and there, and because of the split, there’s a lack of healing. And until they’re healed, they belong to neither place.”

Ciccoritti says it’s not a Chinese story, it’s a Canadian story. “And there are three cultures in every immigrant situation: the foreign, the landed and the in-between. Dragon Boys is the in-between culture.”

When executive producers Ian Weir and Michael Chechik set out to cast Dragon Boys, they never dreamed they’d end up with a slate of international stars. “The cast is well beyond anything we dared to hope for when we started this process,” says Chechik.

Having cast several projects in Vancouver, they knew of a number of great actors, but wondered how deep the Asian Canadian talent pool was in Vancouver and Toronto. “Our first few casting sessions were punctuated by the sounds of jaws bouncing off tables,” enthuses Weir. “The Asian Canadian acting pool has grown incredibly rich and deep in Vancouver. We could have easily cast the show four times over with tremendous people.”

Television productions don’t usually have access to many people on the level of feature stars. So when Byron Mann’s name came across their desk the executive producers were elated. “He’s a movie star,” says Weir. “It had never occurred to me that someone like him would want to do this.”

Mann loved the script. “It had a lot of heart and a heartbeat, and it didn’t shy away from being realistic,” he says. Mann stars as Tommy Jiang, a detective on the Richmond RCMP Anti-Gang Squad. While Mann feels that many Asians in North American stories are portrayed simplistically or one-dimensionally, he found the characters in Dragon Boys were “portrayed more realistically and sophisticatedly.”

And then Mann’s agent, Andrew Ooi, asked the producers if they would consider Tzi Ma for the role of Henry, the entrepreneur and family man. Weir laughed, sure the star would not accept a role that wasn’t the lead. But the writer and the actor connected via a three-hour telephone conversation, during which Ma offered his perspective on the script and character.

During that fateful phone call, the character and storyline of Henry Wah was reshaped. Weir had not yet written Part Two and with Ma’s input, a major story line for the second half began to emerge.

Needless to say, Ma got the role, and he was delighted to get the part. “I know where the script is coming from: a place that is a lot deeper than someone writing a script per se. There’s a connection, love and compassion about what he’s written.”

Talent agent and co-producer Andrew Ooi was instrumental in helping cast the mini-series. Chechik recalls searching for the actor to play the role of gangster kingpin Willie the Duck. “I told Andrew, ‘What we need is an Asian “Joe Pesci.”’ Andrew said, ‘You want Eric Tsang. Give me half an hour.’” One of the most celebrated stars in Asia, Tsang has appeared in 150 movies, including the Hong Kong box-office sensation Infernal Affairs. Chechik says, “Andrew called back promptly with fantastic news. He said Eric was available and added, ‘Guess what? He’s Canadian!’”

From there, the casting process snowballed. Tsang’s son, hot newcomer Derek Tsang, was also interested, and he was cast as gang member Fox Boy. And his best friend, film star and pop music sensation Lawrence Chou, came on board to star as the ambitious Movie Star. While the Tsangs and Chou all live in Hong Kong, they are Canadian citizens. Both Chou and Derek Tsang attended high school in Vancouver. In fact, with the exception of American Tzi Ma, the entire, star-studded cast of Dragon Boys is Canadian.

“The whole casting process was a wonderful revelation,” says Weir. “The sheer number of wonderful actors we have in Vancouver in the Asian Canadian community. And we have a cast full of international movie stars, which doesn’t happen in Canadian projects.”

Canadian actress and Asian star, Steph Song was recently voted the "#1 Sexiest in the World" by readers of FHM Singapore magazine. In Dragon Boys, Song stars as Chavy Pan, a beautiful young woman who buys her way, illegally, to Canada only to have her dreams of becoming a model shattered by having to work as a prostitute to pay off her debt. While Song was already fluent in English, Hokkien and Spanish, she added a fourth language to her repertoire, learning Cambodian to play the part of Chavy.

“I love my cast,” says director Jerry Ciccoritti. “There’s a lot of kismet. Individually, they’re all great, but when an entire cast coalesces they all vibrate on the same tone, they all fit, and that’s what makes a great movie.”

Ian Weir equates being a dramatist with digging a mine shaft. “You create the shaft for the actor to go into, but it’s the actor who, working with the director, finds the gold.”

Ian Weir discusses the phenomenon of Vancouver’s recent emergence as a world-class Pacific Rim city “as opposed to the essentially small town it was 25 years ago. It was a small, Anglo post-colonial outpost. And more than any other, it’s the Chinese culture which has reshaped that in extraordinarily positive ways. And if you’re looking to tell a story about the West Coast today, you need to look at Chinese culture as an absolutely dominant part of that story because it’s had such a big impact on shaping the community we live in.”

While 10 per cent of the population of British Columbia is Chinese Canadian, Chinese is the mother tongue of 15 per cent of the people living in the Lower Mainland, the area in and around Vancouver. And 60 per cent of the population of Richmond, the large suburb south of Vancouver where Dragon Boys is set, is Chinese Canadian.
Nonetheless, “It’s very rare for Asian Canadian actors to play roles in which we see our private lives,” says Jean Yoon, who plays massage parlour doyenne Belinda Lok. She says that in TV and films, she usually plays “normal, assimilated Asian Canadians: reporters, doctors, nurses, there to advance the plot. It’s unusual to actually be part of the plot, with a beginning, middle and end to my story. It’s very satisfying.”

Weir says he was very heartened to hear from his cast of Chinese Canadian actors that they were thrilled by the project. “For once, it was a project in which all the leads are Asian Canadian, with three dimensional characters with full and compelling lives. As artists, they were being given a chance to do what they as artists do best, which is create vibrant, powerful, strong characters, as opposed to being trapped into the stereotypical secondary and tertiary roles traditionally offered.”

Byron Mann enjoyed his collaboration with Weir. “Ian was open to ideas and suggestions. And he wasn’t afraid to go dark and tell the truth.”

Mann also enjoyed working with Ciccoritti. “Jerry’s very intense and adheres to a high level of creativity and he encourages you to be on that level, too. It’s a very high level of performance and you feel kind of safe. He understands the immigrant experience and family. He understands what these people are going through and what their story’s about.”

Jean Yoon agrees, and was especially impressed by Ciccoritti’s wanting to get together during pre-production. “I had never had a director want to meet before hand to discuss the role and that makes a huge difference. We’re all doing better work than we’re used to doing,” she laughs.


For 40 days, from October through December 2005, Dragon Boys filmed on location in the City of Langley, 40 minutes southeast of Vancouver.

“Dragon Boys is about family and community, but mostly, it’s about love,” says Tzi Ma. “It’s a dangerous script. It has so many characters that are so good and so rewarding to play. I don’t know when the actors will get another chance to play such interesting characters again.”

Dragon Boys is produced by Anchor Point Pictures Inc. with the participation of the Canadian Television Fund, created by the Government of Canada and the Canadian cable industry; Telefilm Canada: Equity Investment Program; and CTF: License Fee Program; in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; with the participation of the Province of British Columbia Film Incentive BC; Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit; the CanWest Western Independent Producers Fund; and the COGECO Program Development Fund. Dragon Boys is produced in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

ABOUT THE CAST

BYRON MANN (Tommy Jiang) first burst onto the Hollywood radar in the action-adventure Streetfighter, starring opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme and the late Raul Julia. A month after Streetfighter wrapped, Mann segued into another starring role in Crying Freeman, an action-thriller cult film based on one of the world's most popular anime comic-book by renowned illustrator Ryoichi Ikegami.

In the courtroom thriller Red Corner, directed by Jon Avnet, Mann starred opposite Richard Gere as a charismatic Beijing princeling who holds the secret to the film's murder mystery. Shortly afterward, Mann played the sexy villain opposite Mark Wahlberg and Chow Yun-Fat in the Oliver Stone-produced cop drama, The Corruptor, directed by James Foley. Returning to his roots, Mann worked for renowned Hong Kong director Tony Ching in Invincible, a state-of-the-art martial arts action film, starring opposite Billy Zane, and produced by Mel Gibson and Jet Li. During that time, Mann also co-starred in James Cameron's hit TV series, Dark Angel, recurring as Detective Matt Sung, a sympathetic detective protecting the series' heroine, played by Jessica Alba.

In early 2003, Mann rejoined director Tony Ching and starred opposite Steven Seagal in Belly of the Beast, playing a CIA operative who risks his life to save Seagal's character in the political thriller set in Thailand. That fall, Mann co-starred with Halley Berry and Sharon Stone in Warner Brothers' Catwoman playing a corporate executive who works with Stone's character to battle against Catwoman. In 2004, Mann starred opposite Oscar-nominee Tom Berenger in Sniper 3, playing a Vietnamese undercover detective who partners with Berenger's character to hunt down a renegade American G.I. in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. Mann and Berenger develop a father-son relationship through the course of the film. Mann most-recently top-lined the Italian horror film The Counting House, the first co-production between Italy and Hong Kong, directed by well-known Italian commercial director duo Dipertos - Carlo Giudice and Paolo Marcellini. He is currently filming the feature film Blond and Blonder opposite Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards.

A child of a cosmopolitan upbringing, Mann was brought up by an American-Chinese mother and attended a British boarding school in Hong Kong where he spent much of his youth. Having won many theatre awards in high-school, Mann attended the University of California in Los Angeles where he graduated Magna Cum Laude in philosophy with Phi Beta Kappa honours. He then attended law school at the University of Southern California, but soon realized that the legal profession was not his cup of tea. He returned to Hong Kong to soul-search, only to find himself acting in commercials and films there. Within weeks, he was hired for the NBC telefilm The Last Flight Out, which was shot in Thailand and cast out of Hong Kong; the producer of that film suggested that Mann return to Los Angeles where he could study acting and develop as an actor. He took his advice, returned to Los Angeles, and never looked back.

An accomplished martial artist, Mann is fluent in Chinese and has a solid fan base both in Asia and the U.S. He is a championship-calibre tennis player, having won many junior-circuit tennis tournaments. He is also an avid golfer, and resides in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Hong Kong.




STEPH SONG (Chavy Pahn) was recently voted by readers of FHM Singapore as the "#1 Sexiest in the World" on the magazine's list of the 100 Sexiest Women 2006. Other accolades include Singapore’s New Paper heralding her as “the breakout star of 2003.” In just three years, Song has starred in a phenomenal nine TV series and three features. Her sitcom, Achar! was a winner at the New York Worldwide Television Awards, second only to the American comedy, Frasier.

In 2004, Asian FHM readers voted Song as one of the 10 sexiest women in the world. A rough and tumble tomboy at heart, she found that result highly amusing.

Raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Steph returned to Canada for the breakthrough role opposite Paulo Costanzo in the feature, Everything’s Gone Green. Penned by author Douglas Coupland, the film is slated for release early next year. She is currently filming the pilot JPod, for CBC Television, also co-written by Douglas Coupland based on his best-selling book. Other upcoming roles include Rogue, starring Jet Li.

For her role in Dragon Boys, Song learned Cambodian from scratch, adding it to her language list of English, Hokkien and Spanish.




TZI MA (Henry Wa) -- An endlessly imaginative and compelling actor, Tzi Ma has created a score of memorable film, television and stage characters. From his recent roles as Hinh, a deadly efficient assassin and nationalist spy masquerading as Michael Caine’s ever-invaluable assistant in The Quiet American, to his hilarious, lit-cigarette swallowing take on The General in Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ladykillers, Ma always delivers the unexpected.

2005 offered Ma even more opportunities to brand his indelible stamp on widely diverse projects, with a slate of shows including: a multi-episode cliffhanger for the critically acclaimed hit series 24; the inspirational family drama Akeelah & The Bee; Nick Cassavetes’ Alpha Dog; the Indie experimental film by new filmmaker Juwan Chung, Baby, on which Ma also undertook the role of associate producer; an episode of JAG that aired in the spring, and the Indie movie Red Doors, which premieres at the 4th Annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York and was closing film for the L.A. VC Filmfest.

Tzi Ma was born in Hong Kong and raised in New York City. Surrounded by music, diverse cultures and an eclectic lifestyle, he defied tradition to study classical theatre and dance. Drive and versatility resulted in steady stage and film work and since that time he has appeared in such television series as The Practice, Jag, The Bernie Mac Show, Chicago Hope, Millennium, Jake 2.0, Martial Law, ER, Law & Order, Boomtown, as the star of the series Yellowthread Street, and in the popular recurring role of Det. Harold Ng on NYPD Blue. His numerous feature films include Rush Hour, Golden Gate, Dante’s Peak, Rapid Fire, Chain Reaction, and the acclaimed Indie feature Catfish in Black Bean Sauce.

On stage he garnered critical and popular acclaim with his starring role of Master Wang/Sammy Fong in the revised version of Flower Drum Song by David Henry Hwang, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Ma also appeared in two plays written especially for him, The Dance and the Railroad, by Tony award-winning playwright Hwang (M. Butterfly) and In Perpetuity Throughout The Universe by Eric Overmyer.
Ma has received numerous awards and nominations for his work, including the Cine Golden Eagle Award for Best Actor and a Dramalogue Best Choreographer /Best Director Award for The Dance And The Railroad; an Ace Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in the MOW The Forgotten; and a Garland Award nomination for Best Actor, as well as a Los Angeles City Council Citation, for Flower Drum Song. Ma maintains homes in New York and Los Angeles.




CHRISTINA MA (Mae Wah) began her film career on the other side of the camera as a hair and make up designer. She has gone on to appear in a slate of films, television series and theatrical productions.

Ma’s features include Mina Shum’s Long Life, Prosperity and Happiness, Close Call, The White Fox, Kiss the Girls, The Best Revenge and Good-bye Hong Kong. Her numerous television credits include recurring roles on Martial Law, Crossroads Café, Yellowthread Street and The Young and the Restless and guest starring on Poltergeist: The Legacy, Nightman, Madison Heights, Burning Zone, ER, Touched by an Angel, The Profiler and Day of Reckoning. She has starred in an array of plays, including playing the title role in Hanako and Judy in Duke Kahanamoku, both directed by actor Tzi Ma.




LAWRENCE CHOU (Movie Star/Simon Au) -- Born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, Lawrence Chou first developed his strong passion for music when he was a child. With his exceptional vocal talent, Chou won numerous singing contests in Vancouver and eventually earned a record deal with BMG in 1998. With two EPs and three LPs to his name, Chou quickly established himself as one of the brightest young singers in Taiwan, and was awarded the Best Male Newcomer award in 1998 by Channel V - the equivalent of MTV in Asia.

Chou further revealed his musical talent as a producer (or co-producer) on four albums by other artists since 1999 including Mavis Fan's highly acclaimed Jazz album.

Chou made his debut cameo in an omnibus film Hero in Love in 2001 and quickly won the heart of the Hong Kong audience. Immediately afterwards, he collaborated with the film’s director (radio celebrity Gi See Gu Bi) once more and played the lead character in Merry Go Round, earning himself a nomination for Best Newcomer at the Hong Kong Academy Awards 2002. His recent films include the sensational The Eye, A.V. and Dragon Squad.




SIMON WONG (Jason Wah) was born in Hong Kong and moved to Vancouver with his family when he was 10. His first acting job was a recurring role in the Family Channel series, The Adventures of Nilus the Sandman. Since then, Wong has appeared in the horror movie for television, Saint Sinner, been a series regular on Beggars and Choosers, lent his voice to the video game, Rise to Honor, with Jet Li, and been seen in the motion picture Antitrust.

Wong has guest-starred on a slate of episodic television series, including Queer as Folk, Kevin Hill, Da Vinci’s Inquest, Smallville, The Chris Isaak Show, The Twilight Zone, Millennium and he has had recurring roles on Jeremiah and The Immortal.




DARRYL QUON (Sorrows) began his career in the mid-1990s as a stunt performer in Crying Freeman. After a number of industry professionals told him that he had a unique look and screen presence, Quon got himself an agent. Since then, he’s divided his time between acting and stunts, in addition to performing stunt acting roles, which require both skill sets.

As an actor and stunt performer, Quon has appeared in such major features as The Chronicles of Riddick, The Corruptor, Romeo Must Die, I Robot, X Men 2 as well as television shows such as Smallville, Andromeda, Dark Angel and Millennium to name a few.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Quon is considered one of the local industry’s main "wire techs" when it comes to doing Hong Kong style wire stunts. He has practiced an array of martial arts, including kung fu, karate, tae kwon do, kick boxing and muay thai.




ERIC TSANG (William Lok/Willie the Duck) – One of the most celebrated stars in Asia, Eric Tsang is a dramatic actor who has appeared in over 130 movies – he also moonlights as a TV gameshow host. Tsang began his career as a martial arts stuntman in the movies. He then went on to direct such Kung Fu classics as The Challenger and The Loot before establishing himself as one of Hong Kong’s most gifted comedians.
His performance in Peter Chan’s Comrades: Almost A Love Story earned him a Best Supporting Actor trophy at the Hong Kong Film Awards. In 1989, he was cast in director Wayne Wang’s film Eat A Bowl Of Tea, which received a worldwide release. His many acting credits include the Hong Kong and international box office sensation, Infernal Affairs.

The multi-talented Tsang has also written and produced numerous Chinese films.




JEAN YOON (Belinda Lok) is an actor, playwright, writer, theatre artist and arts advocate. Born in Illinois and raised in Toronto, she has lived and worked in Vancouver, Edmonton, Harbin City and Yanji City in North Eastern China, and makes Toronto her home.

Yoon’s screen credits include the social worker June Kim in This is Wonderland, Liang Marlowe in L’Or, Officer Lau in Verdict in Blood, as well as The 9/11 History Project, Train 48, Chasing Cain II: Face, Blue Murder, Odyssey 5 and independent Asian-Canadian films such as Jane Luk’s How to be More Chinese and Jane Kim’s Wide-Eyed.

Yoon is known in the Toronto theatre community as the writer/creator of The Yoko Ono Project, a multimedia performance art comedy, produced by Loud Mouth Asian Babes and Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto 2000, at the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver 2001 and published by Broken Jaw Press in 2002. Her comically magical adaptation of a Korean folktale Hongbu & Nolbu: The Tale of the Magic Pumpkins premiered at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People last spring to great response from Korean and mainstream audiences alike.

She recently returned to the stage in the role of Fumiko Ishioka in the premiere production of Hana’s Suitcase at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People; and on screen in CBC’s This Is Wonderland.


CHANG TSENG (Mr. Yen) is a major star, respected director, and extravagantly successful producer in his native Hong Kong. After more than 50 years of working in virtually every area of film and television, Chang packed his bags, moved to Canada, and began working as an actor on North American screens, small and large.

Here since 1994, he has landed colourful character roles on such films as Shanghai Noon and Romeo Must Die. Meanwhile, he writes a column for a Vancouver paper, and has a regular spot on Chinese Radio, for which he also does Mandarin language programming. To top it off, he has also authored several non-fiction books.

The Beijing-born actor made a name for himself by starring in what are now considered classics -- The Family and Ming Fong. With new found fame, he moved on to bigger features, Rose Cliff, Romance of Snow Land, Golden Eagle and South Sea Surf. By the late 60s, he forged a deal writing, directing and producing for the Great Wall Movie Entertainment Company. He starred in his directorial debut, The Whirlpool, which sold out in theatres, and he followed this hit by directing a A Pregnant Crisis and The Cuckoo Flower. He also directed documentaries, such as The National Minority Sports Games of China and some travelogue-type films.

His many television credits include Chameleon, March to Tiger Mountain, Reefer Madness, Murdoch Mysteries, Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital, L’Or and These Arms of Mine. Recent features include Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde, Cheaters with Mary Tyler Moore and Martin Lawrence, Mina Shum’s Long Life, Prosperity, and Happiness, for which he received a nomination for a 2003 Best Supporting Actor Leo Award, Agent Cody Banks ; The Inlaws with Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks, Rage to Reason, and the Chinese film Bamboo Shoot opposite John Lone and Coco Lee.


DEREK TSANG (Fox Boy) is the son of actor and filmmaker, Eric Tsang. His film credits include A.V., It Had to be You!, The Park and Shadow.


LAUREN LEE SMITH (Kath) was born in Vancouver. At the age of 13, while living in Los Angeles, she was discovered by a fashion scout and thus embarked on a six-year career as a professional model. At 19, when she returned to Vancouver, she began her acting career by being cast in Get Carter. Her television career then took off with MTV’s 2Gether, and the pilot for James Cameron’s Dark Angel.

Her first leading role for television was in the title role of the mini-series, Christy : Choice of the Heart, opposite Diane Ladd. Recently, she has been recurring in SHOWTIME’s The L-Word, and stars in Clement Virgo’s Lie With Me. She’ll next be seen in Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential opposite John Malkovitch.


MICHAEL ADAMTHWAITE (Fat Ass) was born in North York, Toronto, and attended various schools across Canada and in England. While in England, Michael won the role of a streetwise bully in the BBC mini-series Little Lord Fauntleroy. Later, in Victoria, B.C., he participated in community theatre. In 2000, he moved to Vancouver where he has concentrated on film and television.

Recent feature credits include Chaos, Eight Below, Like Mike 2: Streetbal, and Wild Guys, while on television he has appeared in episodes of Stargate SG-1, Kingdom Hospital, Saved, The Evidence, Dead Like Me and Smallville. He also starred as the voice of Colossus on the animated series X-Men: Evolution.

SYNOPSIS

Tommy Jiang (BYRON MANN, Red Corner, Catwoman) is a tough, smart detective on the RCMP Asian Gang Squad, a rising star whose career success stands in stark contrast to strains and tensions in his personal life. When he’s seconded to an elite Task Force in the midst of a community uproar over organized crime, Tommy sees a chance to bring down senior gangsters (ERIC TSANG, Infernal Affairs) by turning one of them against the others. But there are wheels within wheels, and Tommy is soon drawn into a high-stakes game of bluff and double-bluff. As tensions rise, Tommy must grapple with a master manipulator (LAWRENCE CHOU, The Eye) who’s pursuing a ruthless agenda – and with his own conflicted sense of personal and cultural identity. Ultimately, Tommy risks losing everything as he faces an irrevocable choice about who he is and how far he is willing to go.

Henry Wah (TZI MA, The Quiet American) emigrated from China 20 years ago, fell in love, and worked doggedly to build a new life with his wife Mae (CHRISTINA MA, Long Life, Prosperity and Happiness). They’ve finally succeeded in opening their own business, but in the process Henry has grown distant from his son. Now 17, Jason (SIMON WONG) is a vulnerable kid with a chip on his shoulder. The target of racial bullying at school, Jason is helped out by a Chinese-Canadian student with gang connections, and Henry realizes too late what his son is being drawn into. When a robbery goes horrifically wrong, Jason runs for his life, and Henry launches a desperate attempt to save him.

A factory worker in southern Cambodia, Chavy Pahn (STEPH SONG, Everything’s Gone Green) dreamed that she could parlay her good looks into a modeling career, and arranged with a Snakehead for documents and a plane ticket to Vancouver. Arriving, she discovers she’s trapped. With no friends, no passport and no way to pay off a $30,000 debt, she is warehoused with 10 other girls in a one-bedroom apartment and forced to work as a prostitute in a massage parlour owned by the wife (JEAN YOON) of a senior gangster. Chavy sees a chance for escape when she catches the eye of a much-feared gang enforcer whose status could protect her. But it’s a desperate gamble, for Sorrows (DARRYL QUON) is the most dangerous man she will ever meet.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

JERRY CICCORITTI (Director) -- One of Canada’s most provocative and in-demand directors, Jerry Ciccoritti has directed feature films, television movies, and mini-series, and garnered accolades in all mediums over the course of his career. His features have consistently been invited to film festivals throughout the world and, for television, he has been awarded a Gemini for Best Film, seven Gemini Awards for Best Director, two Directors Guild of Canada Awards and a Genie nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

A second-generation Italian-Canadian, Ciccoritti has always made telling Canadian stories, particularly stories that reflect issues of the immigrant experience in Canada, a career priority. He has directed biographies of some of our most influential and inspiring citizens, including the critically acclaimed Trudeau mini-series: with Trudeau, Ciccoritti made exciting and dynamic television about a Canadian for Canadians, and changed the face of home-grown television in the process. In the recent past he directed the adaptation of the beloved novel Lives of the Saints, recounting the personal story of an Italian family that immigrated to Canada; the harrowing true story of a woman’s fight for justice in The Many Trials of One Jane Doe; a true account of the murder of Nancy Eaton; and, most recently for CBC, the emotional bio-pic Shania Twain: A Life in Eight Albums.

Ciccoritti first began working in film in his 20’s, writing and directing low-budget indie horror films including Psycho Girls and Graveyard Shift I and II establishing himself as a genre cult figure.

Ciccoritti turned his hand to television in the early 90’s, where he quickly earned critical acclaim and awards working on projects including The Hitchhiker, La Femme Nikita, CatWalk, Due South, and the groundbreaking mini-series Straight Up I and II. It was his work on television movies, however, that brought him the greatest degree of recognition. Ciccoritti was awarded Gemini Awards for Best Direction for Net Worth (1997), Chasing Cain I: Vows (2001), and for both Trudeau (2002) and The Many Trials of One Jane Doe (2003).

While honing his distinctive style in television, Ciccoritti continued making feature films such as the controversial, Paris, France (1993), a box-office hit and included in the collection “The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time.” His 1999 feature The Life Before This was selected for the Toronto and Berlin film festivals and earned Catherine O’Hara a Genie Award as Best Supporting Actress. Boy Meets Girl (1998), which also premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, was named Best Film at the Cologne Film Festival.

In 2004 Ciccoritti brought a very personal film, Blood, adapted from the stage play of the same name, to the Toronto International Film Festival. A highly experimental work that challenges notions of singular perception and truth, Blood became a festival favourite, won him a Genie nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and, most recently won him a Director’s Guild of Canada award nomination for Best Achievement in Direction for a feature film.

Alongside his nomination for Blood, Ciccoritti has also been nominated by the Directors Guild for Best Achievement in Direction in the TV movie/mini-series category, for Lives of the Saints. It is the first time Ciccoritti has been nominated for television and feature film simultaneously; a very fitting acknowledgement for a man who has worked so fluidly in both mediums.

His most recent TV movies include CBC’s Shania: a Life in Eight Chapters, and CTV’s Murder in the Hamptons, which broadcast to record numbers in the US last July.




IAN WEIR (Writer, Executive Producer) is an award-winning screenwriter, playwright and novelist. Prior to Dragon Boys, he was creator and executive producer of the long-running CBC teen drama Edgemont. Other TV credits include more than 100 episodes for nearly two dozen series, ranging from Nothing Too Good For a Cowboy, Cold Squad and Odyssey to ReBoot, Beachcombers and One Life to Live.
Weir's stage plays, which include St. George, Bloody Business and The Idler, have been produced across Canada, as well as in the U.S. and England. Other credits include nine radio plays (three produced by the BBC, and six by the CBC) and three young adult novels. Current screen projects include Troll, a raucous comic mini-series about Death and a never-quite-made-it rock ‘n’ roller, and Reflections of Eden, the Birute Galdikas story. Ian Weir lives in Langley, British Columbia, with his wife Jude and their daughter Amy.




MICHAEL CHECHIK (Executive Producer) has been an independent producer of documentaries, television series and dramatic productions since 1975. Chechik started his career by making environmental films including the award winning Greenpeace - Voyages To Save The Whales. He then executive produced the children's fantasy/adventure television series The Odyssey for CBC. This series has aired in over 60 countries, was nominated for an International Emmy Award and has won numerous awards, including a Gemini for Best Youth Program. Chechik’s work has included several factual television series including Quiet Places, Ancient Clues, and two full commissions for Animal Planet U.S., Spidermania and The Man Who Would Be Moose. He was executive producer and creator of Champions of the Wild for Discovery Canada, a 65-part natural history series filmed world-wide featuring experts in animal research and protection.

More recently, Chechik was the executive producer of 70 episodes of the popular teen drama Edgemont for the CBC, as well as the first season of the hit adult comedy series for CTV, Robson Arms. Other recent productions include the 26-episode high-definition yoga series Namaste and Cantata for the King, an innovative performing arts special for CBC.

Chechik is president of Omni Film Productions, a versatile, growing Vancouver company with a reputation for quality and integrity.

BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfnVmNjg-vg

DRAGON BOYS TRAILER on YouTube

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fpQkgVwh32o

DRAGON BOYS on IMDb.com

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0494187/maindetails

Asian crime drama Dragon Boys aims for realistic depiction of race relations

Amy Carmichael
Canadian Press
Thursday, December 08, 2005



Byron Mann stars as an RCMP investigator in the CBC mini-series Dragon Boys, currently filming in and around Vancouver. (CP/HO/Katie Yu)

VANCOUVER (CP) - An edgy CBC show about Asian organized crime in British Columbia is trying to take race relations to a new level of realism on Canada's small screen.

Shooting in Vancouver, star Byron Mann says Dragon Boys goes well beyond what most TV productions deliver. "Usually, the race issue is tiptoed around very cautiously," said Mann, who plays a Chinese-Canadian RCMP detective trying to bring down a senior gang leader.

Or it's serious, painful and dramatic, he added.

In the multi-plot Dragon Boys, cops casually crack racial jokes.

"In one scene, the police superintendent gives me a pep talk," says Mann (Red Corner, Catwoman). "My Caucasian partner asks me what it's about. He says, 'So, what were you and the superintendent talking about? Trading noodle recipes?'

"I say 'No, we were trying to come up with a way to convince you guys to build us a railroad.' "

Mann says that's how people on the street, and people from different cultures who work long days with each other, actually speak.

The stories in Dragon Boys are also real, says writer Ian Weir (Edgemont).

The show, directed by Jerry Ciccoritti (Shania, Trudeau), weaves together the lives of Asian-Canadians living in B.C.'s Lower Mainland. One story focuses on a family: the son has been targeted by young criminals and his father struggles to connect with him.

Another plot involves a Cambodian woman who is an illegal immigrant, trapped working as a prostitute in a massage parlour.

Other subplots intersect these dramas, which all come together in the style of the thriller Traffic, says Mann.

Weir said CBC jumped on the project immediately, excited to see a drama driven by Asian-Canadians.

"They are here and on the street, but they're not represented on TV in the same way," he said.

Celebrated Asian star Eric Tsang, who has appeared in about 150 films, plays a crime boss, while his son Derek Tsang has also come from Hong Kong to act in the drama.

"I was absolutely blown away by the reaction from really big Asian stars who have just flown so far to do this," says Weir. "They are saying to me, this is the role I've been waiting for my whole life."

The two-part four-hour drama, which will air on CBC next September, presents Asians in lead roles very different from than the minor stereotypical characters that pepper North American TV today.

Weir, who's white, asked his Chinese-Canadian friends to help him draw the characters.

"My friend Derek said, 'I grew up in North Vancouver, I'm just as white as you are,' " Weir said.

"But as we kept talking he started remembering things. He remembered being on the bus one day and having an elderly Caucasian man sit down beside him and start speaking Cantonese, thinking Derek would be pleased.

"Derek said, 'Sorry man, I'm from North Vancouver, I don't speak Cantonese.' "

Weir dug deeper and spoke to community leaders, rode with the Richmond RCMP gang squad, and brought in Chinese-Canadian advisers.

And when the actors were hired, he let them shape the characters.

"When I first read the script, it was more generic. We've put a lot of time into making it more authentic," said Mann.

In fact, the line about the noodle recipes and the railroad came from a real cop who has been working as a consultant.

"I actually called him up . . . and said, 'What would you say in this environment,' " Mann said.

Mann isn't a household name in the white world, but he and many of the show's other stars constantly appear in Vancouver's Chinese language media outlets.

Filming in a suburban Asian mall, he was mobbed by fans.

"This, quite frankly, is a cast far above the level of anything you could expect to get on a Canadian television production. We were in this mall shooting and in the video store, there's a huge poster of Byron promoting his latest movie. Everyone in the mall wanted to talk to him," said Weir.

Dragon Boys is produced by Anchor Point Pictures with the CBC.

© The Canadian Press 2005

CBC drama on Asian crime in B.C.

CBC NEWS RELEASE
November 4, 2005

PRODUCTION BEGINS ON CBC MINISERIES “DRAGON BOYS” STARRING BYRON MANN, STEPH SONG, TZI MA AND ERIC TSANG, DIRECTED BY JERRY CICCORITTI

Featuring one of the most star-studded casts ever assembled for a Canadian production, DRAGON BOYS, a four-hour mini-series for CBC Television, is currently filming in and around Vancouver.

Byron Mann, Steph Song, Tzi Ma, Lawrence Chou and Eric Tsang star in DRAGON BOYS, an extraordinary human drama which centres on a Chinese Canadian RCMP detective and an immigrant family who confront a deadly threat from Asian organized crime. DRAGON BOYS is written by Ian Weir and directed by Jerry Ciccoritti. Ian Weir and Michael Chechik are executive producers; Howard Dancyger is producer.

Set in Richmond and Vancouver, British Columbia, DRAGON BOYS is both compelling family drama and a high-octane thriller that weaves together four stories that evoke a rich tapestry of contemporary West Coast life.

Byron Mann (Red Corner, Catwoman) stars as RCMP Detective Tommy Jiang who sees a chance to bring down senior gangsters (Eric Tsang, Lawrence Chou) by turning one of them against the others. But as he’s drawn into a high-stakes game of bluff and double-bluff, he risks losing everything as he faces an irrevocable choice about who he is and how far he is willing to go.

Since emigrating from China, Henry Wah (Tzi Ma, The Quiet American) and his wife (Christina Ma, Long Life, Prosperity and Happiness) have worked doggedly to build a life for themselves, but in the process he has grown distant from his son, Jason (Simon Wong). Now 17 and the target of racial bullying, Jason is helped by a Chinese-Canadian student with gang connections. When a robbery goes horrifically wrong, Jason runs for his life and Henry desperately tries to save him.

A factory worker in southern Cambodia, Chavy Pahn (Steph Song, Everything’s Gone Green), arranges for documents and a plane ticket to Vancouver. But instead of a modelling career, she discovers she’s trapped with no friends, no passport and no way to pay off a $30,000 debt. Warehoused with 10 other girls and forced into prostitution, she sees a chance for escape when she catches the eye of a much-feared gang enforcer (Darryl Quon), the most dangerous man she will ever meet.

Examining the tensions and complexities within the multi-ethnic fabric of contemporary Vancouver, DRAGON BOYS explores the immigrant experience, social dislocation, generational conflict within families and personal and cultural identity. Based on meticulous research, it opens a window onto the world of Asian organized crime in West Coast Canada. It also examines how the impact of organized crime ripples through the wider community, both in terms of the social and economic toll it takes and the stereotypes it propagates.

One of the most celebrated stars in Asia, Eric Tsang stars as crime boss William Lok. Tsang has appeared in some 150 films, including the Hong Kong box-office sensation Infernal Affairs. His son, Derek Tsang, is also journeying from Hong Kong to play a key role.

“The cast is well beyond anything we dared to hope for when we started this process,” says Ian Weir. “The local Asian-Canadian acting pool has grown tremendously rich and deep over the past decade and, in addition, the project has attracted international stars.”

The creative team behind the camera is as stellar as the cast. Director Jerry Ciccoritti (Shania, Trudeau, The Many Trials of One Jane Doe) has won a slate of awards, including seven Geminis for Best Director. Writer and executive producer Ian Weir is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter and creator of the long-running teen drama, Edgemont. President of Omni Film Productions, executive producer Michael Chechik’s many credits include Edgemont, Champions of the Wild and The Odyssey.

DRAGON BOYS is produced by Anchor Point Pictures Inc. in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. DRAGON BOYS will film for 40 days until mid December. The two-part, four-hour mini-series will be broadcast on the CBC on March 12 and 13, 2006.

(NOTE: Dragon Boys will air on CBC on January 7th and 8th, 2007 at 8 pm ET/PT)