SFIAAFF: Pretty To Think So

Before the world premiere screening of Pretty To Think So at the Clay Theatre on Friday night for the SFIAAFF, one of the directors of the movie, Francis Hsueh, walked the ticket holders line handing out free DVD copies of Party, a documentary from 2006 about the Korean party scene in New York City. "Party" was the first foray into film making by directors Hsueh and Steven Hahn, Wall Street attorneys turned independent filmmakers. What would possess a person to abandon financial security for the precarious life of indie filmmaker you ask? "Being an attorney sucks," said one of the directors during the Q&A after the film.

"Pretty to Think So" is the story of a gal who goes from her immigrant parents' Canal Street handbag store to corporate America only to become torn between her fancy pants lawyer boyfriend and the street hustler kid from her past. "Oh is it kinda like that Reese Witherspoon movie?" asked our plus-one before the show, referencing "Sweet Home Alabama." Well, not quite. This movie is a lot less perky than that and the fact that the female lead is South East Asian and the two male leads are East Asian, means it's the type of film that you might never see in wide distribution.

After the jump: Where's that title come from? And how was that Party DVD?

SFist Mihi, contributing.

The directors seemed more optimistic about the distribution possibilities for their first feature film though, because when one of the audience members questioned why there were so many flashbacks of one of the male leads, the directors stated quite frankly that while most of the largely Asian American audience in attendance could distinguish between the two Asian-American male leads, most of America might not be able to without the assistance of the flashback.

The directors also talked about their admiration for Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven," a movie that speaks to the immutability of human nature, which one of the directors noted was a very Korean philosophy. This was the first feature film by these two directors and they capture New York during a pre-9/11 period just as the dot com bubble is winding down.

We popped in the free DVD of "Party" after the "Pretty To Think So" screening and noticed one of the male leads from "Pretty" had the same name of one of the party promoters from "Party." We also noticed that the female lead in "Pretty" used to date a fireman with rough hands much like one of the party goers in "Party." We ran into the directors the next day at the Kabuki and they acknowledged that these were small insider nods to their first film. We also asked the directors where the title of the film comes from. The title sounded vaguely pidgin English-y to us, so we were afraid this had something to do with the characters being Asian, (which made even less sense to us after we saw the movie since this is a pretty modern story). Apparently the title comes from the last line of Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" and speaks to the inability of escaping one's past.

Pretty To Think So plays again on Tuesday, March 18 at the Kabuki in San Francisco (rush tickets only) and on Sunday, March 23 at the Camera 12 Cinema in San Jose.