Formosa Betrayed
Formosa Foundation Newsletter, Summer 2006
(漢文)
"Hollywood loves a true story," says Taiwanese-American filmmaker Will Tiao, "even better if it has murder and political intrigue—which is why this film will have a powerful effect on how the world views the struggle of the Taiwanese people."
The film he is talking about, Formosa Betrayed, is the first ever Hollywood movie to be made about the struggle of Taiwanese democracy and independence activists during the 1970s and 80s.
Inspired by the murders of Professor Chen Wen-Chen and journalist Henry Liu, as well as countless other Taiwanese democracy and independence activists and their struggles during the "White Terror "period, Tiao along with a team of Hollywood screenwriters created a fictional story based on the real events of that period.
Set in 1982, the film follows the story of an American detective who is investigating the murder of a Taiwanese professor in the United States. As the detective investigates, he finds out that the professor was spied upon by his Chinese students, and that those students were hired by the KMT Government in Taiwan. The detective goes to Taiwan to catch the assassin, only to realize that the murder is part of a larger political conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of the Chinese Nationalist regime, a conspiracy to quell the nascent Taiwanese Independence Movement.
Tiao is no stranger to political subjects. He worked for a decade in politics before coming to Hollywood. He is a magna cum laude graduate of international relations from Tufts University, and holds a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University. He is a Fulbright Scholar, and was a Presidential Management Fellow under President Clinton, before becoming an international economist under President Bush.
He has also been deeply involved in Taiwan-U.S. relations for many years. His first job was as an intern for the Formosa Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), where he lobbied for Taiwan's entrance into the United Nations. He then went on to work for Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS) on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was a staff member of the Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee on International Trade which authored the bill to grant permanent normal trade relations with China—and he personally penned the provision which granted permanent normal trade relations to Taiwan.
In 2002, Tiao left his government position to pursue a career in entertainment, with the intention of creating a project to support Taiwan. After acting for several years in independent television and film projects, he had a breakthrough hit as the producer and lead actor on the award-winning film A Starbucks Story.
This film won the 2005 FAIF Los Angeles Film Festival audience awards for Best Short Film and Best Film of Festival, and sold out three screenings at the world famous Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. It has also been an official selection of the Queens International Film Festival, the Kansas City Jubilee Film Festival, the Austin Movie Show, and most recently, the Hollywood Shorts Film Festival.
His acting career has taken off, as he has appeared recently on The Learning Channel's Untold Stories of the ER, the CBS sitcom Yes, Dear, and most recently as a Taiwanese mafioso on the hit FOX series Mad TV. He has also produced a feature film, Stan, a dark comedy which is now in post-production.
Even with all his other projects, Tiao considers Formosa Betrayed his most important work to date, and hopes that the film will open doors for other Taiwanese stories to be told through the Hollywood system. In order to get Formosa Betrayed from the page to the movie screen, Tiao formed Formosa Films, LLC, a film production company specifically designed to develop and produce Taiwanese stories.
Two years ago, Tiao met with Li-Pei Wu, founder of the Formosa Foundation Mr. Wu told Tiao that it was his dream to have a movie made on Taiwan. After that, Tiao developed an outline for the story that would become Formosa Betrayed, and hired a Hollywood screenwriter to polish the treatment. He formed Formosa Films, LLC and set out to win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese-American community by encouraging them to invest in the film.
His first major fundraiser was in December 2005 at the FAPA Annual Board Meeting in Dallas, Texas. From this initial meeting, Tiao raised 20% of the pre-production budget of the film. Since that time, he has held 23 fundraisers in 20 cities throughout the United States and Canada. His efforts have already made a mark on the Taiwanese community throughout North America. He is scheduled to speak at the Taiwanese-American East Coast Conference (TAC-EC) in Connecticut as well as the World Taiwanese Congress in Toronto, Canada.
The goal is to raise the money for Formosa Betrayed this year, shoot the film in 2007, and release the film in 2008 in time for the Taiwanese Presidential Elections in March, and the Beijing Summer Olympics in August of the same year.
Tiao has hired veteran Hollywood producer David Allen Cluck to produce Formosa Betrayed. Cluck has worked on over 30 major feature films and television shows, including the Academy Award winning movie, Monster, starring Charlize Theron. He has also hired director Dominique Forma, whose previous movie, Scenes of the Crime was released by Sony Pictures and starred Jeff Bridges and Noah Wyle.
"For many years, the Taiwanese community has said that it wanted a film, like what Schindler's List did for the Jewish community, to represent the Taiwanese struggle for identity," says Tiao. "This film, Formosa Betrayed, is about two themes—justice and identity—themes that the Taiwanese community understands thoroughly."
"This is a test for the Taiwanese community. Unlike South Africa or the former Soviet Union, Taiwan has never dealt with its authoritarian past. It is time for us to come together and make this film so that the world can understand what it really means to be Taiwanese."