Maegan Houang: Affirming our Histories in Film

Mixed Asian Media - July 30, 2024

By Angela Wong Carbone

Maegan Houang’s work is stunningly transportative and distinguishes her as one of the most exciting up-and-coming filmmakers on the scene. But she didn’t always imagine herself in film. On the heels of her latest film release, Astonishing Little Feet, Houang sits down with Mixed Asian Media’s Angela Wong Carbone to discuss her journey to filmmaking, how the strength of many and a stable working environment keep the indie spirit alive, and how she hopes her voice continues to evolve and grow for years to come.

This interview is part of the 5 Filmmakers to Watch series. Check out our interviews with Chelsie Pennello, Emily Jampel, Alexandra Qin, and the team behind FutureProof!

*THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN EDITED FOR CLARITY AND LENGTH.

You direct, you write, you were a prolific voice during the writers’ strike. How did your filmmaking journey come to be?

I didn’t want to be a filmmaker growing up. That’s not something I thought women or Asian people could do. When Ang Lee won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars and he said “Happy New Year” in Mandarin, I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s different.” I didn’t understand that being a director or writer was a job. 

When I got to L.A., it became really clear to me that no one was ever gonna hand me a script, and I needed to learn how to write in order to ever direct a movie.

Instead of assisting a director, like friends who would be on one movie for three to four years, I wanted to be a writer’s assistant. So, in two to three years I’d see 10 hours of content get made. That’s how I got onto Counterpart. 

I had a really nice boss who promoted me from writer’s assistant to staff writer on Season 2, and brought me onto Shōgun. A TV writing career has allowed me to continue making my own projects. We don’t talk enough about the necessity for filmmakers to have a stable income.

A lot of the work that I do is for free or I'm even helping pay for it because there’s not enough money. I’m only able to do that because I have a job that keeps me alive. 

You became such a champion during the WGA strike because you speak honestly about filmmaking as a career. On your social media, you include every single person working with you. It helps us appreciate what it takes to make films.

It’s really important to me to ensure that people feel seen. The least I can do is to appreciate the effort that they put in. I think most filmmakers feel that way. We're doing this with a lot of people who work really hard, and should be fighting for everyone to have their basic standards of living met. The strike was important to me too because I don't have a career without the protections the Writers Guild offers me. Health insurance, minimums, pension, all the things that our unions give us are really important to having the mental stability to create work.

Astonishing Little Feet has such a transportative texture. You can almost feel like the silk, the coal that has been burning outside. How did you decide to make this film? 

I was reading The Making of Asia America by Erika Lee. And I think she mentions Afong Moy in one line. And I was immediately curious. “The first documented Chinese woman to come to the United States was brought by merchants to sell goods because people wanted to look at her peculiar bound feet.” When I read it, I just felt a deep affinity with her, like, “This is how people in the West are taught to view Asian-looking women.” They’re taught to see them as a commodity, exotify them, and hypersexualize them. 

We learn so little about Asian American history, not only from school, but within our own community and families. It hinders our ability to feel safe. The more we understand that terrible things happened, the more we understand that those terrible things are part of a larger system, and not so much to do with us personally, as people.

I felt pretty different growing up in a predominantly white place. Race is a social construct. I am mixed race, but my last name is Asian and I look Asian American. I always felt I was being treated differently. I thought it was my own fault, I really internalized what is really a systemic presumption from society. So I partially wanted to make this film for my younger self as an affirmation that much of the way I was perceived didn’t really have anything to do with me.

I have a friend who’s Black, and she told me that when she was going to a predominantly white high school, her mom pulled her aside and said, “Look, a lot of the boys aren’t gonna like you here.”

I really could have used that kind of context as a kid for why people are thinking of me in a different way instead of me assuming that like, I smell bad? That’s a really big reason I wanted to make the film because I think it’s important to honor what I believe is our historical subconscious.

I feel it now, in the physical distance of how Afong is sitting on the throne. Almost like she’s in a trompe-l’œil. What was your process for creating such an effective moment? 

On the one hand, there’s the version of the film that’s very simplistic, which is that she’s the ultimate victim of her circumstance, it’s horrible. I wanted to keep the men’s point of view, because the thing that makes it absurdly horrible to me is that the white merchant men are just trying to make money. It’s an instinct that most of us live in our normal daily lives. We’re all trying to capitalize on what we can do. I wanted the audience to feel a bit of identification with them.

I think most people watching do have their own curiosity to see her foot. It’s a human desire to be curious, but when you get what you subconsciously want, it feels terrible. Every person is so capable of doing horrible, evil things. It’s the moment that we convince ourselves that we’re not capable of doing evil, we commit it and hurt others. I wanted the audience to feel complicit. Then at the end of the movie, I have her directly look into the camera like, “Isn’t this also what you wanted to see?”

I also wanted to ask about the visual effects in the film. The “texture” comes back at the end.

I always knew I wanted to end the film with her fully dissociating, and it made sense to me that she would dissociate into her home.

The thing I like most about film is that it is the best medium to blend reality and surreality. In order to achieve that effect, we establish her memory of home. That’s why we begin with something that she’s clearly traveled with from China that she can lose herself in. When people enter your personal space and assault you, there’s a degree to which there’s not much you can do but bring yourself to a different place.

Do you have any words of wisdom, or a moment that you could capture about filmmaking? As a sort of time capsule we can open when we look back at your career?  

I think the more we look outside ourselves as filmmakers, the more we can meaningfully explore and discover the truth of life. That’s really what the goal is, to create moments in time where people feel seen or learn something new about their human experience. I also think that we can all spend less time online trying to develop brands that convey a depiction of who we are. Right now, there’s a lot of trying to make a checklist of who I am or what I’m trying to do. I always long for more experimentation and exploration. I hope that if I am allowed and able to make films until I’m quite elderly that my work is really different from the work I’m making now.

Astonishing Little Feet is now playing on shortoftheweek and Nowness Asia. Catch up with Maegan’s work: Stream FX’s Shōgun on Hulu and catch The Sympathizer on Max April 14, 2024.

Angela Wong Carbone (she/her) is a decorated actor and writer. Her writing has been recognized by AT&T Hello Lab, Hillman Grad’s mentorship program, The Gotham, Slamdance and others. Raised in New York by an immigrant Chinese mother and Italian American father, Wong Carbone’s personal curiosity toward identity saturates her writing and she has contributed to Eileen Kelly’s Killer and a Sweet Thang and Lulu Gioiello’s Far Near. As an actor, Wong Carbone has starred in NBC’s Chicago Med, AppleTV+’s WeCrashed and IFC Films’ Resurrection. In 2020, she was selected for the 19th annual ABC Talent Showcase. Wong Carbone holds a degree in architecture from Cornell University and makes a mean lasagna.