Starring Jerry As Himself Director and Producer on Bringing Jerry’s Long-Held Dreams to Life

In this piece, Starring Jerry as Himself producer Jonathan Hsu describes making the beloved documentary about his father Jerry's assertion that he was working as a spy for the Chinese government. And director Law Chen describes how they crafted a documentary using reenactments — and casting Jerry to play himself.

Part 1: My Father the Spy, by Jonathan Hsu 

Starring Jerry as Himself, my first feature as a producer, began with a phone call from my father, Jerry, that went something like this:  

“Jonathan, I have something I need to tell you. For the past two months, I’ve been working as an undercover agent for the Chinese police."

And from that moment there was no going back. Jerry was no longer an ordinary immigrant dad living a quiet, retired life in Florida. He was now an international man of mystery, but only because I was no longer certain if he was telling me the truth.  

The first thing I did was call my close friend Law Chen, a director I had worked with for many years. We decided to get to the bottom of this wild story and flew down to Orlando with a camera and a list of questions to ask my father.  

My father told us a fantastical tale about his exciting and at times terrifying experience as a spy in an international money laundering investigation for the Chinese government. He staked out his local Chase bank in Orlando and took albums of poorly framed surveillance photos. He wore a wire into the bank to listen in on bankers and try to uncover information about a Chinese suspect running an illegal operation on American soil. And the entire time, he kept his mission a?secret from his family.  

After Jerry showed us the text conversations, photos, recordings, police identification cards, and arrest warrants, Law turned to me and said:  

“There’s a movie here.” 

Part 2: Starring Jerry, by Law Chen 

But how do you make that movie? Everything has already happened, so a documentary would rely on a series of recreations. If it were a scripted feature, we’d need months to write the screenplay and then attach one of the very few working Chinese-American stars over 60. 

I looked at Jerry, who was blissfully unaware of the lights and cameras, and thought to myself: “You remind me of my dad," says director Law Chen.

So I asked him: “How would you like to play yourself in your own movie?” 

“Only if it’s a spy film,” he replied. “Because I felt like James Bond. I felt like Jason Bourne. And I want the audience to feel the same way.” 

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Then Jerry took out his phone, and texted something to his son. Jonathan and I opened it up and discovered pages of dialogue, formatted like a Hollywood screenplay, of every conversation he’d ever had with the Chinese police. We were dumbfounded. How did he know how to write a script?  

And for the first time, Jonathan learned that his father moved to America 40 years ago from Taiwan with hopes of becoming an actor and writer, only to give up his dreams and become a civil engineer in order to support his family.  

We realized this was Jerry’s chance to tell his story and reclaim his narrative of a dangerous, traumatic, and defining moment of his life. And so Starring Jerry as Himself was born: half documentary, half spy thriller, starring the subject as himself, in a deeply personal film about identity, family, and Jerry’s pursuit of the American Dream.  

Part 3: Home Video, by Jonathan Hsu 

Starring Jerry as Himself is the most personal film I’ll ever make, and producing it was a true test of creativity and resolve. I had been scraping together savings since my time as a freelance PA to eventually self-fund my first indie feature, and that day had finally arrived. But since this was far from a studio budget, we had to get creative.  

At times it was just Law and I filming intimate family moments. At other times we called in favors from crew and actor friends, people we had worked with on short films like the immensely talented actors Nicholas Bailey, Yoni Lotan, Fang Du and Haosong Yang. We collaborated with our longtime cinematographer, Tinx Chan, and composer Eric Holljes to recreate Jerry’s world of espionage and intrigue. 

My mother, two brothers, and I played ourselves in the film, to support Jerry. They say working with non-actors is a challenge, but making a film with your family is an entirely different beast. I had to walk the fine line of protecting my family and allowing Law to tell the best story. Documentaries are a glimpse into a moment of time in people’s lives, but those lives go on well after the film has finished, as I can now attest. 

Part 4: An Unending Search for the Truth, by Law Chen 

Some call it metafiction, others call it docufiction, but we just decided to throw all the rules out the window and make something surreal and true.  

And yet I myself got lost in what was “true.” With every take, I couldn’t tell where acting began and reality ended as Jerry recreated the emotions and events of his own life. There were times outside of “Action!” and “Cut!” where we captured intimate, vérité moments of Jerry that completely reshaped the narrative.  

We created a visual language for the film that blends cinema and realism through a dynamic handheld camera. We transition between different aspect ratios depending on the degree of truth: from 4:3 archival VHS footage, to 16:9 traditional documentary moments. We shift to 2.39:1 anamorphic during Jerry’s spy-thriller journey.  

The genre bending nature of Starring Jerry as Himself didn’t end there. The film was accepted as both a narrative and documentary at Slamdance, where it won the Grand Jury, Audience, and Best Actor awards for Jerry’s performance. It premiered in both narrative and doc categories at 30 other festivals around the world, including Busan, where hundreds of fans lined up to get Jerry’s autograph, thinking he was a Taiwanese celebrity. 

But what emerged out of the fascinating gray area between “Based on a True Story” and docufiction was a deeper truth about Jerry that none of us were prepared for. And now as Starring Jerry as Himself approaches its theatrical release, I’m reminded of the importance of stories like Jerry’s. Even in the face of challenges, it is possible to transform pain into art, and tragedy into triumph. Truly. 

Starring Jerry as Himself is now streaming  anywhere you rent movies from Greenwich Entertainment. 

Main Image: Jerry Hsu starring in Starring Jerry as Himself.