Entrepreneur ... Filmmaker ... and Space Tourguide
Local filmmaker James Nguyen is explaining the premise of his next film, Birdemic (it's about a bird epidemic) to us over lunch. "I want it to make the audience think," he says, "America is the most powerful nation on Earth. What if a flock of birds attack me -- how would I feel? How would I feel?" A few sentences later, he reveals that Tippi Hedren, star of The Birds and Satan's Harvest, agreed to appear in his movie, and that he's planning to make a film about space tourism next. And a few sentences after that, he announces that in 2007 he has plans to send people up into space -- for real! Not as part of his nascent film, but in real freakin' life. He's a busy guy.
"Master of the Romantic Thriller -- that's what I'm known for," James tells us. And indeed, it is difficult to think of any cinematic peers to his films, including Julie and Jack (tagline: "Can There be Love Without Sex?"), Replica (partial synopsis: "the world of miraculuous [sic], amazing and wonderful biotechnology ... is also filled with uncertainty, danger and dilemma."), Space Tourist (synopsis: "Two space tourists went on a space odyssey where they found adventure, remembrance, happiness, encountered the unexpected & more.") and Love in the Wind (partial synopsis: "Princess Jane is beautiful, glamorous, graceful, kind ... Dave Hawass is a successful Hollywood Oscar winning movie producer. ... will they survive the dark forces that will never allow their love to be?"). Every tale a compelling yarn. Now, about that rocket ship.
"I was always interested in space in the movies," James tells us. "2001, Star Wars, Star Trek, Captain Kirk, James T. Kirk, all that." In fact, the website for his company, Odyssey Spacelines, quotes Captain Kirk directly, as well as JFK and Dennis Tito, who says, reportedly, "I love space." A bumper sticker is born! Although he is a Spaceship Designer, James isn't building the rocket ship himself -- that's being handled by a company called Space Plane, which takes advantage of the Oklahoma Space Authority (which, in turn, is modeled after the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority). Oh, didn't you hear that Oklahoma has its own spaceport now? Get with the times. It's got a golf course and everything.
But anyway. James says tickets are running at $200,000 right now, and you'll get to go up about 63 miles, which is high enough to see stars and the curve of the Earth. In 10 or 20 years, he plans to send tourists to the moon. "Virgin Galactic -- they're behind us," he says. Odyssey Spacelines will be sending people up long before anyone else, according to James, "and that has cinematic relevance." Wait, what? Cinematic relevance? Oh, yeah, right -- he makes movies, too. It's easy to forget about that with all this talk about Captain Kirk and spaceports and golf.
In fact, James prefers not to talk about space; he's much rather discuss movies. He brought his videocamera to lunch with him, swaddled in bathtowels and tucked into a duffel bag. His company, Moviehead Productions, shoots all over the bay area, including the Palace of Fine Arts, Fort Point, The Legion of Honor, Muir Woods, and Mission Dolores. They're a low-budget group, often shooting without permits or the support of the SF Film Commission, an agency that James says his company can't afford to work with. (For their part, when we called the film commission to ask them about that, they told us that they don't actually charge anything; they work with filmmakers to facilitate shooting, and that any permit fees are collected by the city, not by them. A fee schedule is hidden away under "Use Agreement" on their "Forms and Documents" page, in, urgh, Word format -- what is it with city entities refusing to follow Web conventions?) It's important for Moviehead to keep costs under control, since Odyssey Spacelines, which is offering 10,000,000 shares at $10 a pop, is their primary revenue source.
Filming on Birdemic starts in January; James promises that it'll be "much more sophisticated than my previous films," and that "if you look beyond what I'm telling you, it's about more than a flock of birds attacking a small town." Fair enough; what then, we asked, is it about? But James was coy, and refused to say more than that the story was inspired by The Birds and, thrillingly, his anger at the state of the world today. We are beside ourselves with anticipation; we cannot possibly wait to see how it all -- the bird epidemic, the spaceship, the Tippi Hedren -- goes down.