The Pragmatic Dreamers

Their life story is good movie material itself.

Colin Goh was a shipping lawyer in a top law firm. He was also a writer/cartoonist. Woo Yen Yen was a teacher who invited him to give a talk at the all-girls school she was teaching in. Their meeting sparked off a relationship which led to marriage. They left for New York to pursue their graduate degrees at Columbia University and stayed on in the US. Yen is now an assistant professor at a university, while Colin has turned to multimedia production and writing full-time, with regular columns in The Sunday Times, The New Paper, 8Days and other periodicals. Colin also runs a satirical humour website, www.talkingcock.com, which was referred to by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his recent National Day Rally Speech. Their latest venture is Singapore-made movies.

Their second and latest movie, Singapore Dreaming, is currently in the final weeks of its seven-week theatrical release, an extreme rarity for a local film. At the prestigious San Sebastian International Film Festival, Colin and Yen won the Montblanc New Screenwriters Award – the first Singaporeans to win an international screenwriting prize at a tier ‘A’ festival.

Singapore Dreaming is a simple movie about the life of a typical Chinese heartlander family. Yet another movie about heartlanders’ lives, but as Colin says, ‘80 per cent of our citizens live in HDB flats, and they have plenty of stories to tell which don’t make it to the official media’.

The movie’s cinematography is straightforward, with the usual display of Singapore landmarks and aspects of life you would catch in any documentary made of Singapore, and it does not adhere to the usual Hollywood success formulae of action, violence and sex.

‘Both Yen and I wanted Singapore Dreaming to tell a story. A good movie must have a good story. That’s very important to us. It’s no use having a string of beautifully shot scenes with an empty narrative. At best, that’s a beautifully done Powerpoint presentation,’ declared Colin, who also directed and produced the film together with Yen.

The film originated from an article they had written for the Singapore International Foundation’s 10th anniversary book, about how the Singapore Dream had somehow become a Singapore Plan, with prescribed paths to happiness. The couple soon received hundreds of e-mails, often very long and confessional, from fellow Singaporeans. ‘It was a real surprise as Singaporeans are often seen as very reticent,’ said Yen. ‘We felt like Oprah.’

They then channelled elements of these shared stories, as well as their own experiences, into crafting the characters of the film. ‘Everything in the film is based on a true incident except winning the lottery,’ laughed Colin. ‘We don’t know anyone who’s won!’

The film is about a family struggling with their aspirations, especially in an increasingly globalised and capitalistic world. For instance, the character Seng, who has just returned from studies in America, tells his girlfriend Irene that ‘If you want to make it, you’ve got to look like you’ve already made it!’ According to Colin, this is a very common mantra amongst American motivational speakers and he feels its perpetuation is somewhat less than honest.

While the couple says they have tried their best not to be didactic, they admit there is a message to the film. Said Yen, ‘It’s asking people to examine where their dreams come from. Do you personally believe in your dreams, or are you just accepting what others say should make you happy?’ Also, she says that our drive to attain our dreams, wherever they may originate, often causes us to miss the little human connections that are in fact of greater value.

Colin and Yen’s foray into movie-making started in 2001 when their friend lent them a video camera. With it, they shot a short film over two days, which unexpectedly won an award at the Singapore International Film Festival. That spurred them on to make their first full-length movie, Talkingcock The Movie, based on the website. The film was nominated for the Altadis New Directors Award, the world’s largest prize for new directors.

Over lunch, Yen told me, ‘We don’t see ourselves as occupying a fixed role, whether as director or producer or whatever. We’re just storytellers who will do whatever it takes to translate our stories into the most suitable medium.’

Colin added that they got into directing movies because they hadn’t seen the work of any other director whom they felt could translate their film authentically onto the big screen. ‘Boh pian, kena ownself do,’ he chuckled.

Colin and Yen are people-orientated individuals who enjoy connecting with people and bringing out the best in them. They attribute the success of Singapore Dreaming largely to their talented and supportive ensemble cast: Richard Low, Alice Lim, Lim Yu-Beng, Serene Chen, Yeo Yann Yann, and Dick Su. 

‘They put a little bit of their own souls into the characters,’ says Yen. ‘And audiences have really responded to it.’

My wife and I were struck by Singapore Dreaming. It was a very raw, honest portrayal of human beings and their relationships. Something within me was moved gently by this movie – a feeling I cannot describe in words. At the end of the movie, my wife wondered if there would be a sequel.

I later learnt from Yen that we were not the only ones who were touched by the movie. According to her, there were many other moviegoers who e-mailed them to say they were still talking and thinking about the movie three days after they’d seen it.

How did this simple Singapore movie, shot over 24 days and on a low budget of under S$1 million, become so popular? The husband and wife team would like to know the answer as well. ‘It was just mind blowing to see the movie playing to full houses at the San Sebastian Film Festival. The Spanish audience were also responding to the film as a new perspective on life in Asia,’ said Yen. ‘Many Asian films have fallen into a stereotype to pander to certain fetishes of the West. Long takes of beautiful women in a cheongsam, smoking a cigarette as a ceiling fan casts slow shadows on rococo wallpaper … we didn’t want to perpetuate such caricatures.’

Colin added that they wanted to make a 100 per cent Singaporean film. ‘To me, there is no honour if a French person likes your film but Singaporeans don’t find it authentic.’

But they lament that Singapore audiences still retain a bias against Singaporean films, preferring Hollywood or Hong Kong and even Korean fare. They find this cultural diffidence very disturbing. Said Yen, ‘If we do not value our own culture and history or consider it inferior to foreign culture, what does that say about us?’

Of the local movie industry, Colin feels that it is still in the embryonic stage. ‘I personally do not think that we have a film industry yet. We are merely at the start-up phase, which will last for at least five to seven more years. We’ll only have a mature film industry when one can actually make a living from feature films rather than having to do commercials and corporate videos to pay the rent.’

I asked what is next for both of them. They laughed and said the first thing on the agenda is getting much-needed rest and quiet time to think and consider the lessons they have learnt from this project. 

‘We have some movie scripts which we are interested to turn into movies and other projects,’ said Yen. ‘But we need to process what we’ve gone through so that the next project won’t be so punishing personally.’

They describe their current lifestyle as ‘having made our hobby our lives’.

‘In this field, there is no distinction between work and leisure,’ said Colin, describing how they keep very long hours and hardly have any restful weekends. Even what they do in their spare time seems geared towards feeding their work – whether it’s watching other movies or writing.

Colin is quick to dismiss any myths about the glamorous lives of filmmakers. ‘I met my former secretary recently. She now earns more than I do! The one good thing about this line compared to the law is I can dress like this every day!’ he chuckles, and points to his bermudas and loud batik shirt. ‘Making movies is the most difficult thing that I have ever done.’

They also struggle with doing personally fulfilling artistic work, and needing some kind of decent, steady income. ‘It’s the eternal struggle,’ said Colin. ‘The arts is more fun, but it doesn’t pay nearly as well as the law. Yet, when I was in practice, I had no time to do the fun stuff. We’re striving to see if a balance can be achieved.’

Does Colin miss law? ‘I miss the income, but I still get the occasional “bundling” (preparing bundles of documents for trials) flashback,’ he laughs. ‘But there’s a lot of law in filmmaking as well, from cast and crew contracts, corporate work, intellectual property, and the occasional arguments with the authorities. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’ve left at all.’

The couple divides their time between New York and Singapore. To them, the time away in New York gives them ‘a critical distance for a few months’, which is important for their creative process. Yen thinks that their latest movie might have been an ‘angrier’ film if it had been written in Singapore, but being in New York added a certain ‘fondness and objectivity’. 

Colin clarifies that life in the United States is complicated, and not necessarily better than Singapore, as many Singaporeans might think. ‘New York is not representative of the rest of America, especially under the bizarre policies of the current Republican administration. We like New York for its intellectual, cultural and ethnic diversity, and its acceptance of alternative lifestyles and career paths. But it also has its own share 
of issues.’

For them, the concept of home is not static. ‘We’re both Singaporeans and New Yorkers,’ says Yen. ‘We’re at home as long as we’re together and get to speak Singlish and Hokkien.’

Rajan Chettiar

Rajan Chettiar & Co

E-mail: rajan@rajanchettiar.com