The Lounge Chair Interview: 10 Questions with Tzang Merwyn Tong

By Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé 

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do you write?

What a beautiful question to start. I write to put things on paper so it doesn’t just get trapped in my mind. I write to understand myself, to help me make sense of my hopes, my fears and my dreams for the world.

Tell us about your most recent film or writing project. What were you trying to say or achieve with it?

That would be the Screenplay for Faeryville, an independent film which I also directed and produced. It’s common knowledge now that I took 8 years to complete the film, but a lot of people didn’t know that I took 14 rewrites for the Faeryville Screenplay.

I was looking at the world and wondering what had happened to us. Post 9-11, post-columbine, with bombings and shootings, extremism, charismatic influencers and self-styled martyrdom, idealism and ideology have suddenly become dangerous things. I realize how in this day and age, nothing seems to be right or wrong anymore, just how you choose to intellectualise it.

I wondered what it’s like growing up as a teenager, where it is no longer safe to fight for what you believe in, or take a stand on anything.

These are questions. Not answers.

I wrote and rewrote the Screenplay of Faeryville, draft after draft, to find answers for myself.