Movie by man raised in Uniontown premieres in Miami
a publicity poster for "The Shanghai Hote."
Marking the premiere of "The Shanghai Hotel" (from left) are Uniontown native Jerry Davis, cameraman Keith Sherer, Dan Marino and Dan Marino's agent, Ralph Stringer.
Jerry Davis
?More than a decade of struggling to bring a story to the big screen finally came to fruition last week for a man raised in Uniontown.
Jerry Davis, who grew up in Uniontown in the 1960s and 1970s, said his film “The Shanghai Hotel,” was a featured entry in the American Black Film Festival held July 8-10 in Miami.
“We sold out,” Davis said of his film’s premiere. “We had to turn several hundred people away. It was awesome.”
The film debuted July 8 at the Miami Beach Cinema Tech.
“It was my movie’s worldwide premier. This was a long time coming.” Davis said, noting that the his primary goal at the festival was for his film to be seen and for a distributor to pick up the film. “That is our goal, to land a distribution deal. Everyone really liked it. It was well received. Now we’ll see what happens.”
Waiting and seeing has had little to do with Davis’ journey into film making, which has been a long and arduous task.
After becoming friends with Ralph Stringer in the early 1990s, the agent of former Miami Dolphins and Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino, Davis said he began working as an agent and went on to represent one of the most recognizable athletes of the decade, former football and baseball star Deion Sanders.
From there he went on to produce his own television show on the Black Entertainment Network.
Davis said he also worked in public relations for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Washington, D.C.; in public relations for Fleishman Hilliard, where he focused his creative talents on one of the firms larger customers, Anheuser Busch Co.; and produced commercials for Pizza Hut.
Whether he was finding ways to help sell beer and pizza or looking for financial support for cancer research, Davis said he always was looking to take that proverbial next step, and when he penned “The Shanghai Hotel” in the late 1990s, he happened to take the right step and mentioned the manuscript to Marino, whom he had met through Stringer.
Marino also was a standout football player at Pitt.
Davis said the television work helped him get into the film industry, where he wrote and directed a short documentary piece called “On the Verge of 15.”
That film, which depicts the trials and tribulations of a teenager on his 15th birthday, was a success, earning a spot in the New York Latino Film Festival.
In 2007, it appeared that Davis’ career was peaking as he was set to release his first major motion picture, “The Shanghai Hotel” — a project he has worked on for nearly a decade.
Davis said when he wrote “The Shanghai Hotel” he wanted to create a movie that viewers would be talking about after they left the theater instead of discussing what they were going to do next.
Davis said it was a learning experience for him noting that most people don’t realize what goes into making a movie.
“You have to get the money. You have to get people on board. Fortunately, Dan (Marino) and Ralph (Stringer) really liked the film. Many people don’t know that Dan adopted two Chinese girls and the story really made him think about what could happen,” Davis said in an interview a few years ago with HeraldStandard.com.
“The Shanghai Hotel” focuses on a young Asian woman sold into the sex-slave trade in the United States. Davis said the woman named Yin Yin and played by actress Eugenia Yuan, who starred in “Memoirs of a Geisha”, is linked to the outside world only by a window in her room.
The plot revolves around Yin Yin’s desire to simply escape through the window and her battle with internal and cultural shame as well as threats made against her and her family.
“She is in a whole different country,” Davis said of Yin Yin.
“This is how her captors keep her in fear. She is in a world she doesn’t know.”
Davis said he got the idea for the film after a brothel was discovered running a similar operation in Atlanta, Ga., where Davis lives.
Davis said he met with the federal attorney who prosecuted the case and discussed human trafficking at length.
Davis said he also has talked to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about trafficking and the horrors of the sex slave trade.
The cast includes Yuan; Jade Fox, who appeared in the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon;” Hill Harper of the hit television show “CSI: New York;” Peter Green, who appeared in “Pulp Fiction” and the “Usual Suspects;” and J.D. Williams who starred in the show “Liar” on HBO.
But Davis said that after shooting wrapped on the film he struggled to find a distributor. He said that when the movie was selected for the film festival it was the break he had been waiting for.
Now Davis said he is hoping that the film’s success at the festival is the final stepping stone he needs to broker a distribution deal for “The Shanghai Hotel” and that the movie will be released sometime in the coming years at theaters nationwide.
“It has been a long road but to think that I came all the way from Uniontown to this point. T this is for everyone trying to make it from nothing. This is for all of them,” Davis said.