We are living in an era where video production has been so democratized, and so much of daily life is uploaded onto the internet at such high quality, that the once bedrock lines between Hollywood, television, indie films and family movies — like a money and tech based hierarchy — are mostly long gone, and many don’t bother with TV or going to the theater anymore. But then an honest-to-God-feature film gets made about your hometown, and the old sparkle of big movies comes back into stark relief like an old friend surprising
you by coming back to town for your birthday.
Trevor Zhou is doing just that with his new feature film, Ann Arbor. If you are reading this in A2, you might very well be sitting across the street from where a scene in this story — about reconnecting with old friends and figuring out the mixed bag of your expectations versus where your life has led you — is going to be shot.
Zhou grew up in Ann Arbor, after arriving here from China at five. Now based in California, Zhou spoke to Current about his film project set in Treetown over Zoom. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Current: How far along are you with this film?
Zhou: We were about to raise money through crowd funding, and that meant we were able to get green lit, which means that we were able to secure the funds that we raised and get some development funds. So, we were able to get a producer, and we are currently in the process of finding the lead actress.
Current: Will you be doing any casting locally in Ann Arbor?
Zhou: We will, but not for the leading roles. There are going to be eight or nine small day player roles. What’s really exciting is that one of the roles is going to be Jim Robert, who used to teach at Pioneer High School. A little bit of the story is these two lead characters really connected in his philosophy class, which I took as a student.
The story is about nostalgia, reconnecting and he really resonated with the story. So, he is going to be playing himself in the film, which is really exciting.
Current: How much of this piece is semi-autobiographical, or it is more about the Asian American experience in Ann Arbor?
Zhou: As a writer, it’s write-what-you-know. So, I am pulling from my own personal life and putting people that I have known together, but also putting together story concepts. Because if you put together literal life experiences, it is a bit boring to put it all in one story, but I am including parts of things that happened to me, as well as a sense of story with an act structure, wants and desires, to properly tell a narrative story.
I went to elementary, middle, high school in Ann Arbor and got a degree at the U of M. I actually worked at the U of M for a little bit before moving out to New Jersey. I was in New Jersey for a year before moving to New York, and that’s also how I got into the industry. I auditioned for a commercial and didn’t think much of it, and then got a phone call a month later and found out that they wanted to use me in their commercial. I ended up being in the commercial – I said the word ‘trains’ – and I didn’t realize how much money a union commercial would do, because every time it plays you get paid. So, I moved to thinking I was going to be an actor, not realizing that that is something that almost never happens, so I got really lucky and tried being an actor for about 10 years.
During that time, I realized that there weren’t many roles for people who look like me. My agent even asked me to learn an Asian accent to get more roles, which I did. It offered me a lot of opportunities. I worked with Ben Afleck on Batman v. Superman, I was in Law & Order a couple of times – I had an accent in The Sitter with Jonah Hill – and they’re all great opportunities, but I wanted to have more of my experience and the experiences that I see other people have, who are Asian American or People of Color around me. Not everything is accented – I’m not speaking to you in a Chinese accent. That led me down to story telling and sharing the sort of stories that I wanted to on the screen.
Current: In the last ten years, the powers that be in Hollywood have been making a lot of noise about increasing diversity across all sectors behind and in front of the camera, and how it is all getting so much better. But how much of that is actually true and how much of it is hot air?
Zhou: In my experience, opportunities for POC are few and far between. I find that the majority of roles are still available for the legacy players. If you look at a studio film, they’re most likely to be a white cast with a white, male, heterosexual director. I feel personally that a lot of it is branding and a lot of it is great for your company to say you want to promote POC or diversity initiatives, but if you look at what’s cut immediately after a contraction in the industry, it’s the DEI programs. A lot of the fellowship programs were put on hiatus, a lot of the diversity initiatives were let go of.
I have people I know get into these programs and do well for themselves. But I think their bottom line as a major corporation is always profit. There are programs that are trying to uplift these voices, but unfortunately, a lot of the capital is going to other things.
I have been doing a lot of research because I‘m trying to make my first feature film. And I found this one producer who is in distribution. One of her key takeaways was that the biggest predictor of a successful filmmaker is a preexisting access to capital. It’s not talent, good schooling, or a great schooling – it is having access to money early on in the endeavor. That’s a very privileged subset of our society, especially with how expensive movies are.
Current: People are socializing less and less and watching shorter and shorter content. How do you make a feature film that appeals?
Zhou: This is one of the arguments in the industry. YouTube is free. TikTok is free. Instagram is free. But I don’t think that people who are watching YouTube or TikTok aren’t also watching movies, because there is something to following characters and being fully immersed for an hour and a half to two hours verses scrolling and watching 30 second videos. I think that both can be appealing to this generation and past generations.
My film is going to be more focused towards Millennials. The story is about someone who went to college in the early 2000s, they have families now, are wrestling with the meaning in their lives, and are thinking about the what ifs. It does speak to a certain demographic, but it also shares a Midwestern story, the Asian American experience, 35 years in, versus the immediate immigration experience.
And it’s also about care taking too. During Covid I had to take care of my grandma. She’s not my blood grandma, but she helped our family move to America, and it just so happened that when I moved back to LA, I stayed in the same house that my mom first stayed in when she first came to America on a nursing exchange. So, I felt a little indebted to Grandma Laurie, and stayed there for a year.
Initially I was supposed to stay there for a month and find my own place, but Covid hit. We thought it would be a month or two, but it turned into a year. I’m not a nurse, but she had health issues, and it was lovely to connect to her, but I felt not able to socialize because I was scared to give her Covid. At 90, it’s not a good prognosis, so I felt a sense of burden, so that’s a part of the film.
I am not overly concerned in the age of short form media that long form can’t also co-exist. I think as long as you have a strong story that people can connect with emotionally, you’ll have something that can keep people’s attention and keep them thinking about it after the fact.
Current: Without giving too much away, are there any Ann Arbor-specifics that we can look forward to?
Zhou: I literally already shot a B roll of Graffiti Alley. The reason I made the film is that during Covid I couldn’t return home, so it was my way to go back and see my favorite places, my parents. I missed Fleetwood, so that’s definitely in there. There’s these interspaced shots of the city throughout the film.
I made sure that this film that’s a love letter to the town. And Ann Arbor is a third character in the film, alongside the main two.
Current: But how do you actually make the town a character?
Zhou: I really wanted to ground the story in Ann Arbor, as an Ann Arborite. If you live in town, you have those places you go to.
Current: How much has Ann Arbor changed since you left? Ann Arbor has always been a hard place to afford, and it’s only gotten more so – downtown has Manhattanized significantly. Are you in any way documenting the changes?
Zhou: It’s more narrative driven, not documentary based. It’s not speaking to these issues specifically, but it is speaking to nostalgia and change. This one character is returning to Ann Arbor after 20 years so he’s noting all the different, and places popping up that he doesn’t recognize.
Part of the story is income inequality. The female lead character comes from a very poor background.
I grew up quite poor. And I saw different friends….We knew the neighborhoods that gave full size candy bars, so we would get driven down there for trick or treating.
I still remember this one conversation I had after immigrating from China to Ann Arbor. I had my first ever birthday party – I didn’t even know that birthday parties were a thing – until I went to one, so I thought I’ll have one. So, I went to this guy who had the birthday party – I changed schools because of bullying – and I didn’t see him again until college. And when I was in college, we were driving around, and we passed Pauline, where I used to live, and I remember he said ‘That’s where you used to live. I remember your birthday party. My mom said when she dropped me off, she said ‘be careful because that’s where poor people live.’’
And when you grow up poor, you don’t know that you’re poor. You just know what is around you, and that’s just life, until you can have that comparison when other people comment on it, you realize how differently you grew up – looking at their houses, cars, clothes – I was shopping at TJ Max all the time and we got a lot of toy from garage sales. Going to the university – the out-of-staters were definitely more well off than the in-towners. Throughout the film, privilege is commented on – white privilege, economic privilege, privilege from having both parents.
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The film is well underway in the sponsor search and in finding cast members, but more is still to be done. You can find out more about casting calls and the fundraising process for Zhou’s film by visiting annarbormovie.com or seedandspark.com/fund/annarbor#story. You can also follow the production on Instagram, and Facebook.
Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up just outside of Ann Arbor. He covers local business developments, embraces his foodie side with reviews restaurants, obsesses over Michigan's environmental state, loves movies, and feels spoiled by the music he gets to review for Ann Arbor!
