Chances are if you’ve seen any number of nouveau Western films in the last decade or so, you’ve caught a performance from actor Ricky Lee (Cree and Lakota). Lee has appeared in mainstream films like that Magnificent Seven redo, and Adam Sandler’s Ridiculous 6; plus he popped up in indies like Hell or High Water and Apache Junction. Not only that, but Lee came up in the American Indian Theater Company in Oklahoma along with greats like Gary Farmer, Graham Greene and Wes Studi. These days, however, Lee is a little more focused behind the camera. As we speak, Lee is shopping around a pilot for a supernatural Indigenous-forward cop thriller series called Coyo and, come this year, he’s slated to begin production on Midnight Shanghai, a drama where martial arts meets the story of the Chinese railroad workers so often forgotten by history.
With production scheduled to begin at Eaves Movie Ranch this September, we caught up with Lee, who serves as executive producer for Midnight Shanghai and will play a sheriff role, to learn why he’s so passionate about his newest project. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
SFR: Obviously it’s in-process, but what can you tell us about your new project and why you wanted to make Midnight Shanghai?
Ricky Lee: OK, so back in the ’80s and ’90s…I mean, I lived here in Santa Fe for a long time, but my parents got sick and I moved back home to Kansas for a time, but I came back here 11 years ago and found a place out near Lamy and stayed there, off the grid, for years. And I used to do a lot of walking out there, so one day I was out walking and came across this kind of mound thing, and I thought…I knew there was an old pueblo out there called Manzano Pueblo that hasn’t been excavated, and I knew there were a lot of pottery shards around there, and I’m walking and come across this mound and these pottery shards. But I also found Chinese pottery, and suddenly I was wondering how in the hell that happened. I mean, there’s old foundations near Lamy that are pretty large, but Chinese pottery shards? I went to the [Lamy] historian, and she said it was because of the Chinese railroad workers’ camp.
I did some research and found out that back in the day, when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad was being built, this was at the same time the Union Pacific was building its transcontinental, the same time period. Cyrus Holliday owned the AT&SF—and he was the uncle to Doc Holliday, too—and he was friends with people at Union Pacific, so Union Pacific sent 1,500 (or) 2,000 Chinese workers to help finish. That’s where our story starts up.
You’re focusing on the Chinese workers?
We are, yes. And I’ve been working on telling that story for, like, 10 years. We did a pilot that wasn’t very good, but we got to screen it for Sony execs years ago, and they said to do this and do that and get back to them. People get busy, I got busy, and it sort of went by the wayside. But then a couple years ago, I got a new script by an Emmy-winning writer named Kyle Kauwika Harris, which was killer. And we’ve been sitting on that script for three years, and we decided we need to do something with it. It’s a combination of different cultures coming together, almost in collisions, but we wanted to focus mostly on Chinese workers. A lot of Americans still don’t realize that the railroads were built by Chinese workers.
Yeah, I’ve seen some of Hell on Wheels, but I’m not sure I’ve seen something that specifically centers on the Chinese people.
Right.
So what drew you to that story?
When I started digging into those shards back then—and I mean, knew about the Chinese people and the railroad—I didn’t grasp the depth of the story. I found out that all this stuff happened, and that all of these Chinese people were buried along the railroad, and their remains never found. An ex-girlfriend’s grandfather was one of those railroad workers, and her father spent his whole life and fortune trying to find his body. The last they saw any record of him was in Nevada someplace, and her dad ended up going to his grave never finding his father. At one point, we were in touch with the National Museum of China, and when we were corresponding with them, they wanted to support our project and they have a group of 300 or 400 descendants of the railroad workers, but records aren’t always complete and we don’t know exactly how many people died..
Adam Ferguson
Can you tell me about some of the roles, some of the characters through which you’ll tell the story?
Wu Chen is the main character, and we were lucky, so fortunate, to get Charlie Kersh. When she was 10, she was on Broadway. When she was 13, she discovered martial arts and film. By the time she was 15, she was a world champion. The short story is that her character and her character’s brother live in China, and a warlord is after their land. So she meets and talks with him and uses martial arts skills, but she accidentally kills him. So she makes a vow she’s never going to use martial arts again, and that gives her incentive to leave the country. At the same time, her brother sees a flier looking for workers willing to go to America, so she disguises herself as a man, they end up in San Francisco, they meet with a railroad recruiter and he ships them off to Nevada and New Mexico.
We also have Max Gale from Barney Miller and General Hospital, which is so lucky. He’s an amazing actor, and he’ll play this railroad foreman. My old friend Wes Studi is going to make a cameo, as is Rodney Grant, and they were in that Geronimo movie together, which I think was the last time they were onscreen together.
You’ve been pretty public about your search for funding. How is that going?
Right now a lot of our funding is coming from Chinese people themselves, through private donations, which I think is very cool.
Interesting, how did you get that going?
Just word of mouth, really. I mean, I’ve been hitting the street for years. And we’ve been talking to Saban Films about distribution. It doesn’t hurt that Charlie Kersh…she’s the newest Power Ranger, the one with the sabretooth tiger. Oh, and Deren HInkey from Dark Winds and American Primeval.
You keep saying “we.” Whom do you mean?
I have two partners here—Gary Hall and Julienne Marcus. We have an LLC together, Santa Fe Film Company.
Ah. OK. So are you all shooting for streaming platform release or theatrical?
We’re shooting for theatrical release.
You’ve been making movies and acting for a long time. We keep hearing that as the industry grows in New Mexico, it gets easier to make films here. Is that true in your experience?
I think as far as picking up crew and production people, it’s easier. But it’s not any easier trying to find the funding. A lot of that is coming in from Los Angeles, and I mean, there’s a lot of production people coming in from LA, too, and crew people. When you go out to a set, I don’t see as many New Mexico people as I think there should be.
Does that mean you're leaning into New Mexico workers for your Midnight Shanghai crew?
Oh, yeah. We’re going for that rebate! Ha! Almost all the crew is from New Mexico, except for the director.
Who’s the director?
His name is Hal Haixu Liu, and he’s a recent NYU film school grad. He’s a young Chinese director, and I met him years ago at the Santa Fe Film Festival—not the International Film Festival, but the Santa Fe Film Festival—when he won Best Director for this movie Beyond the Red Door. It was a short, and it was cool as hell. He has such a great eye.
This is his first feature?
I hope so! Otherwise, most of the crew has worked for Netflix and we have a lot of New Mexico actors. One person I’m proud to have is Michelle Ng. In Singapore, Japan, China and The Philippines, she’s a household name. I’ve worked with her on several films; she was the first assistant director on Apache Junction, and she’s gonna be our first AD. Oh yeah, and she’s playing the role of a Chinese assassin, because our main character has these assassins sent after her, but we don’t know when or how they’re going to pop up, y’know?
I hear you had a setback with funding recently. How’s that going?
I don’t want to say what the circumstances were, but I’m on the phone 24/7 trying to find money, and I know the right person is gonna come. I’m trying to hold off on crowdfunding, because it’s kind of cheesy. Besides, everybody involved in this believes in the story from the crew to the cast. Otherwise I couldn’t afford them.
Your start date is in just a couple months. Are you worried about the funding?
A little bit. I mean, I’m always a little worried, but I’m not going to take no for an answer. The thing that weighs on me the most is that I’ve got this great crew and great cast lined up, so I’m not going to just let it not happen. It’ll happen.
