Keith Kamisugi

Asian American writer/director Fay Ann Lee’s movie, “Falling for Grace,” opens July 20 at Sundance Kabuki Theater in San Francisco’s Japantown.  David Sohn forwarded to us an email from Alec Chang, whose brother is one of the movie’s investors.

Alec has arranged a Q&A with Fay Ann after the July 28, 4:30 p.m., showing.

Falling for Grace is a new romantic comedy about Grace Tang, an up and coming investment banker from New York Chinatown, who wants more than anything to be part of the Upper East Side socialite world.  Grace finally gets that elusive invitation to join the Opera’s prestigious junior committee when she’s mistaken as an heiress from Hong Kong. When Grace also falls for Andrew Barrington, Jr., one of the most eligible bachelors of New York City, Grace decides to run with her new-found identity.

Falling for Grace, starring Gale Harold, Fay Ann Lee, Margaret Cho, Christine Baranski and Lewis Black was a sold out hit at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.  Logan Hill of New York Magazine picked it as one of the two best films in competition.

FallingForGrace.com | myspace.com/FallingForGraceMovie

More from Alec’s email:

Falling for Grace is a new romantic comedy about Grace Tang, an up and coming investment banker from New York’s Chinatown, who wants more than anything to be part of the Upper East Side socialite world.  Grace finally gets that elusive invitation to join the Opera’s prestigious junior committee when she’s mistaken as an heiress from Hong Kong. When Grace also falls for Andrew Barrington, Jr., one of the most eligible bachelors of New York City, Grace decides to run with her new-found identity. The movie stars Gale Harold, Fay Ann Lee, Margaret Cho, Christine Baranski and Lewis Black and was a sold out hit at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.  Logan Hill of New York Magazine picked it as one of the two best films in competition, Scott Hoffman of moviepicturefilm.com <http://moviepicturefilm.com/>  described it as “Tribeca’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding”  and Premiere Magazine wrote that Falling for Grace “brings a fresh twist” to romantic comedies.

But what may be even more compelling is that the filmmaker, Fay Ann Lee, the Asian American writer/director of this project, against all odds, took years to raise the money to turn her passion into reality.  It is truly an American dream at work.   Falling for Grace, originally titled East Broadway, was a screenplay that placed in major screenwriting competitions.  When Hollywood producers started noticing this screenplay, many had asked that Fay change the ethnicity of the leading character, Grace, to a Hispanic one for someone like Jennifer Lopez, because Hollywood did not feel that a film starring an Asian American woman or man (other than Kung Fu films) would be popular with an American audience.  Fay believed in the strength of her story and decided to stick to the original plot of the film and keep the lead character from Chinatown.  This was obviously the correct choice since Falling for Grace has been popular with test audiences in many states including, California, Texas, Pennsylvania and of course, New York.  It’s taken Fay a decade to bring her script to the big screen.

Fay’s tenacity and dedication to bringing her vision to fruition has been an inspiration to young men and women across many college campuses who are preparing to pursue their own dreams.  Fay was an invited speaker just last semester at Yale (three times in one semester), University of Pennsylvania, Temple, Boston U, UMass – Amherst and Johns Hopkins.