IHT: Film - Andrew Ooi

Photo Courtesy of Andrew Ooi

Andrew Ooi's talent for placement

By Alexandra A. Seno

Thursday, August 21, 2008

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/22/arts/seno.php

HONG KONG: Very late one recent evening at a fashionable Hong Kong bar, Andrew Ooi excused himself from a group of local film executives to find a quiet corner and take a phone call. And then another. Returning to his sympathetic friends some 20 minutes later, he sheepishly apologized, mumbling about how people were just starting work in Los Angeles and how a deal was about to be closed.

In several time zones these days, the Singapore-born talent manager is quite the man of the hour, with a lot of people in The Industry wanting to speak to him. If you have recently noticed an Asian actor playing a meaty supporting role in a big Hollywood film, chances are that he or she is represented by Ooi through his Vancouver company, Echelon Talent Management. His best clients not only get good work, but do so regularly, an unusual situation for Asian actors in the United States.

Meeting a few days later at a hotel lobby, Ooi, who is in his mid-thirties, fiddled with his ubiquitous cellphone between sips of hot mint tea. During the interview he took only two calls, one about a client and another from his sister who lives in Hong Kong and was due to give birth. ("It's a nephew!," he later e-mailed.)

Ooi has a gentle, boy-next-door demeanor, and his Singapore staccato picked up when he talked about the success of "The Dark Knight," Warner Brother's latest Batman summer blockbuster. To date it has grossed an astonishing $470 million in the United States. One of Ooi's clients, Chin Han, plays the mob accountant, a pivotal supporting character. "We worked very hard to get him that role," the manager said, evidently pleased.

With Dark Knight's success, the Singaporean actor won a lead part in "2012." A doomsday thriller backed by Sony Pictures, it is directed by Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day") and touted as a major movie for summer 2009. Echelon has four actors in that project. In "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li," a big action film based on the hit video game and due in cinemas next year, three plum roles went to Ooi's actors, including the Hong Kong indie film star Josie Ho Chiu-yi. Valerie Tian was in last year's quirky drama "Juno."

Today John Woo, Chow Yun-fat and Tsui Hark are back in China making movies. But more than a decade ago, many articles about a so-called "Hong Kong Invasion" were inspired by Asians getting top-billing in Hollywood fare. "That's when I first came on the scene, so full of idealism," Ooi chuckled.

And now? He's become pragmatic. "It is still a lot easier for an Asian actress to break into Hollywood" than it is for an Asian actor, he said. "As much as Hollywood is global, they have to sell tickets and in the U.S., which is their big market, it is about middle America. They need an actor who can help open at theaters and sell DVDs; an Asian actress can get a good support role or be the love interest."

One of Echelon's top talents is Maggie Q, the Hong Kong model-actress. She starred with Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible 3" (2006), with Bruce Willis in "Live Free or Die Hard" (2007) as well as with the Chinese superstar Andy Lau Tak-wah in this year's "Three Kingdoms." Last week, the video gaming behemoth Electronic Arts announced that she would feature as a lead character in "Need for Speed: Undercover," due at the end of the year.

The actress, who is currently shooting "Rogue's Gallery" with Ving Rhames and Ellen Barkin, replied to questions by e-mail, saying: "Your manager is your ring leader, one who brings everyone together on the same page, and pushes what's necessary to the forefront. For me, I need eyes on the East and the West. So for that reason alone, my manager has an incredibly complex and big job."

Up against the big agencies like William Morris and CAA, Echelon - which has only five employees, including Ooi - has held its own specializing in Asian talents with Ooi's own brand of personal attention, wise counsel and multicultural sensitivity. According to Raymond Pathanavirangoon, the Southeast Asia and Hong Kong programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, Ooi is "not very Hollywood. He doesn't just think about how much he can get but he thinks of the long-term."

A 1994 graduate of the University of British Columbia's chemistry department, Ooi originally planned to become a doctor. Doing volunteer work in a geriatrics ward, however, he took deaths very hard, making him realize he wasn't cut out for medicine.

He comes from a family of bankers, and his conservative parents in Singapore were horrified when, on top of ditching medical school, he sold his car to take over a friend's small company that supplied Asian extras for television shows and films in Canada. By the third year he closed that division to concentrate on actors, and has never looked back. As the management company, Echelon takes a standard 15 percent commission. Ooi won't reveal what his clients command now, and will only say, "they are holding their rates and they are comfortable."

Ooi spends most of his time in North America, visiting Asia every month. "We are very busy," he said. "Now, more films are looking for Asian casts" as big-budget productions covet revenues from overseas, which can sometimes account for two-thirds of total sales. "They want to appeal to the Asian market, so they cast Asians," he said.

The trend has caught the eye of other Hollywood veterans. The actress Michelle Yeoh just launched an agency to promote Asian actors in international films.

There is certainly no shortage of wannabe Maggie Qs and others who track down Ooi, seeking Hollywood fame. "Maybe one, two dozen a day? I get approached all the time," he said. For those who he feels have strong potential, he tells them what to work on, including improving their American accents. He also needs clients to know how to audition, a standard requirement in Hollywood but not in Asia, even for minor actors.

"It has to be a partnership and talents have to want to work hard," he said. After more than a decade of networking, studios often approach Echelon when they are casting Asians. Ooi usually knows what directors are looking for, and only sends a client who might be suitable.

Speaking of the Echelon office in Vancouver, Ooi seems rather proud that it does not have a sign. "People know where to find us," he said with a smile.

Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

Newsweek: Jesuits and Social Justice

The Classroom Reality

The Jesuits are educating the rich about the poor in their expanding network of private schools.

Alexandra A. Seno

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 2:53 PM ET Aug 9, 2008

Over the past four centuries, the Jesuits have built a formidable global education enterprise. The storied, 19,000-plus-strong Society of Jesus, as the organization is formally known, is today the world's biggest Roman Catholic male religious order. It is also one of the world's largest private-school operators, with 2.9 million students, mostly in developing countries. Indeed, in January, at one of the first masses following his election, the Jesuit leader, Father Adolfo Nicolás, a Spanish priest who has spent most of his life in Asia, underscored the group's main focus on helping "the poor, the marginalized and the excluded." Though he didn't say it then, to achieve that goal, the Jesuits are accelerating the effort to educate the rich in developing countries about their poor.

The Society, which runs U.S. universities like Georgetown and Boston College, is most famous for educating key historical figures in power capitals—including Hapsburg emperors, French literary giants Molière and Voltaire, and the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. But with a new superior general in Nicolás, who has made migrant workers and globalization's "new poor" a career focus, the Jesuits' work in emerging markets has taken on a fresh urgency. One of the order's most important education missions is the cultivation of empathy among the haves in poor countries for the have-nots.

In addition to establishing schools for underprivileged children, the Society also runs top private schools, attended by the children of some of the world's most influential leaders. Through these institutions the Jesuits aim to uphold academic standards while actively preparing graduates to be agents of social change. Father Bienvenido Nebres, a member of the board of trustees at Georgetown and the president of the elite Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, believes that quality education in a population with a wide income gap presents a unique set of challenges. "The poor are not an isolated group," he says. "In the U.S. you have poor sections in a city but the rest is pretty OK. In the developing world, it is the other way around because the majority is poor. Thinking of helping the poor in terms of soup kitchens or tutoring cannot be enough. You have to change the status quo."

The lingo may seem familiar. Three decades ago in Latin America, many Jesuit schools became contentious hotbeds of liberation theology, the Marxist-inspired thought advocating political and economic reforms. For the most part, the Society appears to have moved on. "Over time, we realized that liberation theology has its limits because it did not believe in markets," says Nebres, who earned a Ph.D. in math from Stanford in 1970. "We don't need to be taking down those at the top; what we need to do is be a bridge."

At Ateneo, this has translated into a greater emphasis on academic requirements geared toward social entrepreneurship, like helping poor urban groups start small businesses, and experiencing poverty more directly. For example, in order to graduate, students must serve up to four hours a week in menial jobs like bagging groceries or toiling alongside fisher folk. For those coming from privileged backgrounds, such experiences are completely new and eye-opening.

Developing empathy for one's poor compatriots is a concept the Jesuits have rolled out in their schools in Africa and Latin America as well as Asia. "We are a very centralized order," says Nebres. It has also become a very international one. Founded in Paris in 1534 by the Spanish former soldier Ignatius of Loyola, only about 10 percent of Jesuits reside in Western Europe. About 15 percent live in the United States, with the biggest proportion—20 percent—operating in South Asia.

In Indonesia, the Society runs 81-year-old Canisius College, one of Jakarta's top high schools. Its alumni include several major business tycoons and top politicians. Part of the current curriculum requires students to live with poor families for a week, says Father Joannes Heruhendarto, the country's Jesuit education coordinator. "For the sake of study, it is quite effective," he says. "The papers they have to write show that they learn compassion for the poor." Whether these programs will actually bring about positive social change remains to be seen. As Heruhendarto puts it, "We will see with the kind of graduates we produce." For better or worse, there's no denying that living Jesuit-school alumni already include many determined to change the world. Among them: India-born Hotmail creator Sabeer Bhatia, Raúl and Fidel Castro, French anti-globalization sheep farmer José Bové, and three former Iraqi candidates for prime minister.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/151702

© 2008