From Smith to Lopez, every ethnicity has its version of the
everyman name ““ monikers people come across and don’t
think twice about. For UCLA alumna Grace Lee, however, the
commonness of her name among Asian Americans inspired a film. Lee
refers to “The Grace Lee Project” as a personal-journey
documentary that explores identity and the stereotypes associated
with her name.
“I grew up in the Midwest, where there aren’t a lot
of Asian people, so I thought I had a special name,” Lee
said.
But upon arriving in New York and California, she soon observed
that after introducing herself, people would inevitably comment
that they knew another Grace Lee.
“When I asked about the other Grace Lees that these people
knew, they would always describe these seemingly perfect people
““ straight-A students, violin prodigies … but then no one
would know what had happened to this other Grace Lee they had
known. To me, Grace Lee became this mysterious persona ““
someone incredibly impressive, yet forgettable,” Lee
said.
These experiences paralleled Lee’s previous work at UCLA.
Her thesis film, “Barrier Device,” starred Sandra Oh
(“Sideways”) as a character similarly viewed by society
as just another impressive yet forgettable Asian American woman.
The film won a 2002 Student Academy Award and a Directors Guild of
America Student Award. As a film student, Lee’s idea to find
out who Grace Lee really is also came into fruition.
“The way people talked about Grace often was the way
people stereotype Asians. I wanted to see if what people said about
Grace Lee was really true,” Lee said.
Lee embarked on her project by sending out a mass e-mail asking
anyone who knew a Grace Lee to send them to a Web site created to
locate subjects. On the site, Lee posted a survey for fellow Grace
Lees to fill out ““ including humorous tidbits like
“Years of Piano” (average: 3.22) ““ and then
contacted those who submitted especially interesting responses.
“I know what my Grace Lee experience is like, and I wanted
to know what it was like for a Grace Lee in 1920 or a Grace Lee
that was adopted into a white family. I talked to everyone from a
14-year-old teenager who is into painting to a 90-year-old from
Detroit who is an activist in the black community,” Lee
said.
During the course of her research, about 250 Grace Lees visited
the Web site and filled out the survey, 30 of whom Lee met in
person. “The Grace Lee Project” focuses on five or six
of these women, with glimpses of many others.
Lee’s film has garnered a very positive response and has
been screened in numerous festivals, including the Los Angeles Film
Festival and last week’s Los Angeles Korean International
Film Festival at the Egyptian. Though specific in focus, Lee
believes the message of her film is universal.
“While Asian American audiences tend to know about the
Grace Lee phenomenon, it’s still a film for everyone. I think
everyone has gone through the same questions ““ everyone has
Googled their own name and wondered about the other people who pop
up,” Lee said.
For Lee, making “The Grace Lee Project” has given
her a new perspective on the issue of identity and answered her
questions about who those other Grace Lees really are. Certainly
this Grace Lee is anything but a stereotype, recently named one of
Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent
Film” and set to re-team with Oh for her next feature-length
film, “Smells Like Butter,” a romantic comedy set in
Los Angeles and Seoul, Korea.
“In the beginning I was miffed I was sharing my name with
all these other people, but now I see that Grace Lee can be anybody
and there are an infinite number of possibilities of what she can
be rather than the quiet, over-achieving Asian.
“Even though there are certain characteristics that Grace
Lees share, once you dig, you sort of realize that everybody is
interesting if you bother to spend enough time with them,”
Lee said.