Director Barney Cheng sat down with InCinemas to talk about his directorial debut feature film ‘Baby Steps’, a Taiwan-US Co-production starring himself, one of Taiwan’s most accomplished actress Ah-Leh Gua, and Michael Adam Hamilton.
Inspired by his real life story, Cheng hopes that ‘Baby Steps’ is able to ‘change hearts and minds’ of the LGBT community.
Screened as part of Golden Village’s ‘Love & Pride’ festival, ‘Baby Steps’ tells a story about a gay couple that longs to have a baby, but the journey becomes more complicated when Danny’s well-intentioned but meddlesome mother wants to control every aspect of the process from Taipei.
“The idea to write a movie about my life story came about four years ago. I was watching this documentary called ‘Google Baby’, about an Israeli gay couple desiring to have a baby, but due to surrogacy issues in Israel, the couple had to travel across the globe to pick up their baby. I was inspired by them to adapt it to a Chinese couple, or a Chinese-American couple and their mother.
For the first draft, I focused on the couple and their desire for a family, so the focus was on them, but through discussions with the leading actress Ah-Leh Gua, I discovered that it should be a mother's story. I just felt like how the mother came to terms with her son (being gay) and her family is crucial, so Baby Steps is essentially about her growth.”
(Find out other film festivals happening these coming months!)
He added: “I’ve seen a lot of LGBT-themed movies and there are a lot about the couples coming out and all. It has all been done and we're beyond that now. It's about the family and it's about a non-traditional family that we are building together. It’s also about the older generation embracing it. From that perspective, the film steered in a newer direction - it’s fresher and more relevant.”
Golden Horse winner Ah-Leh Gua resides in Los Angeles, but flew to Taipei to meet Cheng’s mother when she heard that she would be playing Cheng’s mother in the movie. “She basically wanted to study my mother. My mom is kind of like her - very powerful, strong-willed, crazy but adorable…. They are best friends now,” quipped Cheng.
Juggling between being an actor and director on set, Cheng felt it especially tiring to wear both hats during the filming of his scenes. Describing it as ‘intense’ and ‘schizophrenic’, he cited not having enough time as the most challenging aspect throughout his shoot.
“I became very good at compartmentalising. After each scene, I just had to really focus as a director and to give directions to the cast and crew. And then the next thing is to put aside all that - to be open and be in the scene as an actor. It’s a lot of back-and-forth, but it has taught me a lot of things.”
“Directing was relatively easy for me because I had a good cast. Working with Woody Allen (Hollywood Ending) taught me that you have to hire good actors. If you have good casting, you don’t have to do much; so I made sure we cast good actors who knew what they were doing and understood the story.”
Baby Steps will be having two additional screenings at the Love and Pride Festival:
- Sunday (11 Oct): 6.30pm
- Friday (16 Oct): 9pm