Michelle Lee of 'Trailer Park of Terror'

By Stacie Ponder

This has been a very big year for me, kids- it's a year I'll always cherish and remember as the year I lost my San Diego Comic-Con cherry. Yes, it's true, I am a woman now; don't be afraid. I'm still almost just like you.

For those of you who've yet to attend SDCC, the best way I can think to describe the experience is thusly: you know those trains in, like, Calcutta that are so crowded that passengers are hanging out of the windows and riding on the roof and clinging to the sides of the speeding train for dear life? It's like that. Except instead of being wall to wall with Indian dudes, it's wall to wall with nerds. There's miles of aisles, crammed full people, noise, and stuff you might want to look at if only there wasn't 2000 other people wanting to look at the same thing that very same moment and besides you don't want to lose your spot in the line of flowing traffic because once you step out it takes like ten minutes to get back in and then you'll have to steer a wide berth around the crowd that's stopped and formed a large circle to gawk and take pictures of the guy in the Spider-Man spandex who, well, should consider material other than spandex for his next outfit choice if you know what I mean but anyway my feet are killing me like nobody's business and I just want to stop for a minute and relax but there's nowhere to do so and I'm 15 minutes from the exit and why the fuck are pretzels six dollars why why WHYYYYYYY?..


"You know that Margaret Cho joke? "When I grow up, someday if I work hard, I can be an extra on MASH!"- Michelle Lee

Yeah, it's kinda like that. I probably could have just written "overwhelming" and been done with it, but oh, I DO like to go on.

Anyway, in the midst of all this madness I stopped by the booth for the upcoming film Trailer Park of Terror to have a chat with Michelle Lee, who stars as Miss China, an eeeevil denizen of an eeeevil trailer park. Miss China runs an "oriental spa" out of her trailer, where one can assume the "happy endings" are decidedly UNhappy. Judging by the clips I've seen, the film (based on Imperium comic book of the same name) looks to be a gory, balls-out good time, and I'm anticipating the 2008 release. The Trailer Park booth, at any rate, was seriously hoppin' during my time there. Lee and co-star Ed Corbin (Sgt Stank) were signing photos as fast as they could, as Corbin engaged the crowd with a booming voice and a mouth full of gross novelty teeth. It was an elaborate setup, as well: the booth was made to look like the inside of a trailer, and there were various life-sized models of the film's more corpse-ish inhabitants. The effects for the booth and the film are courtesy of famed Drac Studios, and they're as impressive as you'd expect them to be. The Trailer Park of Terror crew certainly made an impression at Comic-Con.

The point of all that is while a booming booth in the middle of the con floor in the middle of the con's busiest day is GREAT for both the film and independent horror, it's lousy when you're trying to conduct an interview. Transcribing the tape of our interview was more of a nightmare than usual (listening to myself on tape is about as pleasurable as punching myself in the face), and a good 80% of my conversation with Michelle Lee was trashed. All that talk of Cynthia Rothrock? Now it's but a sweet memory. Sigh.

I considered simply making some stuff up to fill out this interview, like:

STACIE: Let's talk a bit about your role in Pirates of the Caribbean 3

MICHELLE: Pirates shmirates! Let's talk about YOU and what you've been up to.

STACIE: Aw, that's sweet, but I'm just a humble writer while you're spending your days utilizing your black belt skills on movie sets- that's much cooler.

MICHELLE: Don't downplay yourself! I know I've only just met you, but I can say in all honesty that you're the coolest person I've ever met, or that I'll EVER meet, most likely. YOU'VE got a black belt in AWESOME.

-and so on and so on. I don't know, after writing that way for a while, I started to feel like that approach was -umm - what's the word - Unethical, that's it. I've thus resorted to attributing words to Michelle that she actually said, and though our ruminations on Cynthia Rothrock are lost to history (I can tell you that we agreed: Cynthia is kickass), you might still get an impression of how cool she is.

Michelle Lee does indeed have a black belt in Wushu style kungfu and she's parlayed her skills into a career in film, including stunt work and onscreen roles in such films as Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Ninja Cheerleaders. These two great tastes tasting great together is fortunate for Lee, who didn't originally intend to become an action star. "I've always wanted to be an actor, and martial-arts was kinda my personal thing, but I didn't even think to relate the two, you know? I just did it because I liked it and it was good exercise- I hate going to the gym and this is such a great way for me to get in shape without dragging my ass to the gym."

Once she made the connection, however, Michelle embraced the idea of combining her love of martial arts and her love of acting. In 2004, she appeared on the short-lived reality show "The Next Action Star", wherein multitudes of good-looking young wannabes competed weekly in brief action-n-acting sequences, all vying to win a role in a cheesy made-for-TV action flick co-starring Billy Zane. Shock of all shocks, the experience wasn't a great one for Michelle, who's already gone on to bigger and better things that whoever it was that won the competition. "Reality shows are something else," she says. "Reality shows, I think, are not me."

Michelle had another brush with reality TV in the upcoming Ninja Cheerleaders, however. "It's a great little movie! I double the lead "bad girl". It's gonna be fun. It's got the girl from The Real World; her name is Trishelle; she's the uh - the slutty one. Wait, I didn't mean that!" I point out that calling someone on The Real World "the slutty one" doesn't really narrow it down all that much. Which one was Trishelle? Was she the one who got drunk and made out with another girl in the hot tub? "And then made out with a different guy every night? Made out with ALL the guys? Yeah. Uh, she's a really pretty blonde girl."

We go on to talk about the roles that are usually afforded to Asian women in films: generally, Asian women are either the submissive geisha-types or they're dragon lady ninjas, experts in kung fu with icy hearts of ice-cold ice. I ask Michelle if this bothers her. While she acknowledges that there weren't much Asian visibility as she was growing up ("You know that Margaret Cho joke? 'When I grow up, someday if I work hard, I can be an extra on MASH!'"), "It's getting better; but I actually love the action. Do I want to do other roles? Yeah, I do, but it's what I am." Now, at least, there are other successful women she can look to for inspiration. "I am the biggest fan of Uma Thurman- I think she's badass. She isn't someone who really knows how to fight but she pulled off Kill Bill. You know, I'm definitely a big fan of Lucy Liu and Kelly Hu. They're great at showing the strength of Asian women- the same with Michelle Yeoh. They're all really strong females that I just love."

Portraying Miss China in Trailer Park of Terror gave Michelle a chance not only to branch out a bit from her usual roles, but also to poke fun at the very stereotypes we discussed. "It makes fun of everything. The trailer park, all the trailer park people, the Asian part; she's a masseuse, she's got the accent; so everybody was making fun of everybody, but that's why it works. If you can't laugh at yourself sometimes, then--"

While the physicality of the role certainly interested Lee ("There's no martial-arts fighting, but I did wire-work. I was up on wires flying!"), it was the chance to play an undead demon monster zombie creature from a hellish trailer park that really gave her a thrill. "There's some scary parts to this movie- to be honest, I saw myself and I got scared! When you're into it, you can't see yourself. You're screaming your ass off and trying to move your body in weird ways; but then with the lighting and the music and everything, you're like 'Oh my God! That's really scary!'"

In fact, making the film turned Michelle Lee into a true horror lover. "I never was afraid- I'd always watch scary movies, but now I'm a FAN. Now I get it. Making a horror film is so fun! It's fun being slashed, and all the blood; it's really physical. You really get into it- it's not like most acting where it's talk talk talk. There's fighting, there's scratching and blood, everything is a mess. I went all out for it, and it was fun."

See? I told you she was cool. Michelle is about to begin shooting her first lead role in the sci-fi action flick The Vanquishers, co-starring Ray "Darth Maul" Park. So who's laughing NOW, Next Action Star? Huh? Yeah, that's right.

For more info on Michelle Lee, visit her website: http://www.actressmichellelee.com

For more info on Trailer Park of Terror, visit http://www.trailerparkofterror.com