Interview: ‘Left-Handed Girl’ (左撇子女孩) Writer/Director Shih-Ching Tsou Reflects on Her 20-Year Collaboration with Sean Baker and Making the Film She Wanted to Make
One of the best films I saw out of TIFF was Left-Handed Girl, the solo directorial debut by Shih-Ching Tsou, a Taiwanese-American producer and longtime collaborator with Sean Baker (she co-directed Take Out with Baker and produced films like Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket). The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this summer where it was picked up by Netflix.
But Left-Handed Girl was a story Tsou wanted to tell for a long time. In fact, it was one of the first story ideas Tsou and Baker worked together on, but was put aside during pre-production. More than a decade later, the finished film was selected as the Taiwanese entry for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards.
As an Asian-American who grew up going to Taiwan since childhood, I couldn’t wait to speak to Tsou and talk about the film’s exploration of culture and tradition. But before we started our conversation, she recognized my virtual background immediately. Wanting to display some sort of Taiwanese representation, I couldn’t resist selecting the Raohe Street Night Market (饒河街觀光夜市) for my background.
Kevin L Lee: First of all, congratulations on the film. I thought it was just so incredible. I loved it to pieces. I want to start by sharing a little bit that my parents are from Taiwan. And growing up, I used to fly back every summer. So literally minutes into your movie, I already recognized certain things and it brought me so much joy. You have no idea how happy I was watching the family eat 來一客 (a Taiwanese brand of instant noodles).
Shih-Ching Tsou: [laughs]
KL: And you hear that garbage truck jingle in the background.
SCT: Right!
KL: It made me so happy. My friend sat next to me and was like, “What’s going on? Why is he so happy?” So a minute into your movie, I already thought, “Oh my God, I am in safe hands.” So I guess my question to you I want to start with is, when you were developing this movie, what was the most important part of Taipei that you knew you wanted to capture?
SCT: Oh my God. Everything. I wanted to put everything about… everything Taiwanese in a film. You can tell from all the sound, little sound, every little piece. I’m trying so hard. All the music, all the Taiwanese music in the night market. Every little corner, dark alleyway. I mean, just the energy, just the spirit of Taipei, all the… I can’t really pick one. I think everything is so, so important. Anything Taiwanese, everything that shows Taipei is essential. But obviously the night market is one of the most colorful characters in this film. So that’s obviously the centerpiece.
KL: I’m going to be honest, I’ve never heard of the cultural taboo of left-handedness in Taiwan. So out of curiosity, I asked my mom about it and she actually did confirm to me that it was a thing that was frowned upon and that she did grow up in a culture where parents would actively try to correct that.
SCT: Mhm.
KL: And you mentioned, I think it was at TIFF, that you did a lot of research into that subject. Maybe some of it was inspired by your own personal experience. Can you talk a little bit about that?
SCT: Yeah! Well, the idea of this film is basically from what my grandfather told me. When I was in high school, he saw me use a knife with my left hand. So he scolded me. He was really angry. He’s like, “You cannot use your left hand. It’s the devil’s hand.”
And then I wasn’t even left-handed in high school because I got corrected very, very early on, probably in kindergarten. I didn’t know I was left-handed. Not until I heard him say that, I was like, “Oh, wow. Maybe I was left-handed.” So I talked to my mom. I asked my mom, and she didn’t even remember. She said, “Oh, maybe the kindergarten teacher corrected you.”
So that was just really people, I think at that time, people just thought, “You cannot do that.” Everybody has to be right-handed.
KL: So not only was your grandfather trying to correct you, but maybe your teacher also corrected you.
SCT: It’s a whole collective, like a custom, like a society thing. And then the funny thing is throughout the years before I really made the film, I talked to other Taiwanese people about Left-Handed Girl. I told them about this story and a lot of people told me… Like what you said, you never heard about it. So a lot of people told me, “Oh, that is really old. That does not exist anymore.”
But I always tell them, I said, “Well, that’s my story.” I’m going to tell my story. After I cast Nina, who played the little girl, her mom on the first day on set told me Nina was left-handed and she got corrected by her grandma.
KL: Oh my God.
Shih-Ching: And that was 2022 and she was six. So it’s crazy. She got corrected and we had to retrain her, use her left hand. So a lot of time after every take, we’ll have to… We all look at each other like, “Okay. Did she use right hand or left hand?” And we had to reconfirm that because she got corrected and then we trained her and so she can use the left hand to do some few simple tests.
KL: Wow.
SCT: So this past summer when I went back home, we had a playdate because my daughter is the same age as Nina’s. So we had a playdate. I asked her mom, I said, “So how is the left-handed situation?”
Her mom told me, her grandmother heard that she made the film. She was in the Left-Handed Girl movie and she was like, “Wow, I didn’t know you could make a movie about a left-handed girl.” Since then, she stopped correcting her. So now Nina found her left-hand back. So it’s great.
KL: That’s so beautiful. I had no idea. I thought it was because she’s right-handed and you had to train her to use left hand. But no, you gave it back to her.
SCT: Exactly! And I just feel so happy because that’s the intention I wanted the audience to know! That’s the intention for this film. So people can stop correcting other people and also get rid of those outdated traditions. One family at a time.
KL: Well, that brings me to one of the things I really loved about your movie, which is just the way it explores tradition and family values. Having been born and raised in the US, this is something that I have to come to terms with all the time. What do I keep and what do I not keep?
SCT: Right.
KL: And so I’m just curious to get a little bit of your perspective on tradition. When do you think it’s important for us to hold on to some of it, and when do you think tradition gets in the way of personal growth?
SCT: Oh my god, there are so many. I don’t know where to start, but there was this new story. It’s so big in Taiwan right now because they have those priority seats on the Metro and now they have this huge fight over who can sit on the priority seat.
It’s huge news because a lot of older people, elderly people, think they have the right. But obviously there are a lot of younger people. They have some kind of… maybe they have some problem with their body. You can’t really tell. But sometimes they need to sit on the seat. So there’s a huge fight.
I feel like sometimes that’s tradition because you had to give the seat to the elderly people. You have to respect elderly people. But a lot of time this tradition, it’s not 100% right. Because for that kind of situation, if there’s a pregnant woman or somebody who’s using a cane who has problems with their legs, they also have the right to sit down on the priority seat.
So I think sometimes that kind of tradition cannot get in the way because people think that you just have to respect the elderly. You have to give them the seat. You have to always put them on the top because they’re elderly. So I think sometimes that’s kind of… it’s really rigid. You need to have some flexibility in those traditions. It’s meant to be good. It started as a good thing, but when you are too rigid, it always turns into disaster.
KL: It’s a really fascinating story because I feel like that touches on the same kind of generational divide that your movie talks about. I wanted to know that idea of… when the film gets to the point where we learn the truth about the family secret, where did that idea come from?
SCT: Oh, the secret. Well, the secret is actually… I think I probably heard it from somewhere. I don’t even remember where, but I think I heard it because that situation is always… people always want to hide it because it’s shameful, you know? You have a kid before you get married, especially for a teenage girl. I don’t even remember where I heard it, but actually it exists in so many different cultures and countries.
I remember I told one of my friends from Brazil and then he told me, “That’s my story. My mom is actually my grandmother and my sister is my mom.” It’s so universal. So I feel like that’s why we put it into the story because teenage mothers always get shame. It becomes a shameful thing in every culture.
KL: You’ve produced so many other amazing films and this is your first time doing a solo directorial debut. And the movie is also shot completely in Taiwan. I wanted to know just out of curiosity, what’s the difference between making an indie film in Taiwan versus making an indie film in the US?
SCT: Oh wow. Well, in the US, there are a lot of unions like SAG and PGA, but in Taiwan we don’t have that many organizations, like unions. So I think that’s the main difference. In the US, when you make a film, you always have to worry about if you work with a SAG actor, you have to follow the SAG rules. Even if it’s an ultra low budget, let’s say. But you still have to follow all the rules because there’s a union. It’s there to impose the rules on even the independent film.
But in Taiwan, we don’t really have that many unions. So it’s actually more flexible. Of course, I didn’t go crazy because there’s no union. No, we have very, very short shooting hours and shooting days because we have Nina, who was six. And we also have an animal, so we can’t really go too long. So we are always between… I think it’s usually six to eight hours.
So now the Taiwanese crew, they were not used to this short shooting day. They were always like, “Are you sure? Can we go now?” It was really funny! Everybody was like, “Oh my god, this is so, it’s so short.” So in Taiwan we have less limitations for sure.
KL: I’ve heard so many stories about how the movie industry in Taiwan is so small. I once spoke to a Taiwanese filmmaker and Taiwanese actress about advice on how to get a movie made in Taiwan, and both of them jokingly told me, “Don’t do it.”
SCT: [laughs] Why?
KL: Where would you think that sentiment is coming from?
SCT: Did they tell you the reason not to do that?
KL: I think it’s exploring this idea that the Taiwanese movie industry is really small, so it’s hard to get funding. And it’s also hard for the movie to make money back, especially if it’s solely a Taiwanese production.
SCT: Ah.
KL: I think that’s where they’re coming from.
Shih-Ching: Interesting. But that’s very interesting… because when I first started trying to form the crew, a lot of crew members actually went to China to work before. Not currently, but before I made the film. I think that kind of stopped when the pandemic happened, right?
KL: Of course.
SCT: Everybody stopped doing that. But before that, a lot of people went to China to work in film or TV. And they were so used to big crews because in China they have… I don’t know the budget, but they always have a huge crew because they have more people and then the minimum wage is lower. So they are able to hire a lot of people to work on film. So they are so used to that.
And then they have four or five assistants just working for them. They don’t even need to lift their finger because they are so used to that. So when I first tried to find a crew member, it was really, really hard because everybody wants to hire three or four assistants.
KL: I see.
SCT: I’m like, “No, we can’t do that because we’re working at real locations.” On top of that, the budget is going to go over the roof because you have to hire so many more assistants along with the head. So thank God I found this line producer. She was so good. She knows everybody in the film industry and she’s really good at producing low budget films. So she helped me to form this very small team. We had 20 people all together.
KL: Right, 20 people. I remember you mentioned even that was a little hard.
SCT: Oh, yeah. That’s too many.
KL: Because people would notice you.
SCT: Yeah. So we had to strip down to five to six people.
KL: That’s amazing.
SCT: Especially in the night market, we’ll have five to six people on set with our actors. So that’s the only way. We hide ourselves inside the night market so nobody knows we’re shooting films. And in the end, we even had a customer come to the noodle stand to order a noodle from our actress. That was really fun.
KL: [laughs]
SCT: Yes. They couldn’t tell anymore.
KL: Well, thank you so much for this movie. I adore it. It’s one of the best of the year.
SCT: Thank you.
KL: I know it’s taken you a really long time to make this movie because you first collaborated back in 2010, if I’m right. Well, 15 years later your movie is finally here and it’s incredible.
SCT: Thank you. Thank you so much. By the way, the idea actually started in 2001. Before Take Out actually. We wanted to make Left-Handed Girl first, but we couldn’t because of the funding. So we made Take Out with $3,000, with the two of us.
KL: Wow. That’s amazing. I wish you all the luck and joy and happiness in the world. And thank you. I can’t wait to show this to my family.
SCT: Thank you so much. Nice talking to you.
Left-Handed Girl will be in select theaters on November 14 and on Netflix November 28.
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