As he sipped his iced tea outside of a Starbucks in Foster City, Tony Nguyen, 34, tried to contain his black and white Chihuahua, Minnie, who had spotted another dog and was trying relentlessly to escape the confines of the brown messenger bag she was toted around in.

“It’s OK, Minnie, that big dog won’t hurt you,” said Nguyen, whose love for animals led him to study veterinary medicine at UC Davis in 1992.

Although Nguyen said he would do anything for an animal, he realized that after working at a veterinary clinic for a short time he didn’t want to become a veterinarian.
“I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life sticking thermometers up cow’s butts,” he said. What had always interested Nguyen was the art of film making.

In June, Nguyen had an opportunity to hone his movie making skills. Along with his mentor Evan Donn—and eight others he met last year in Donn’s film class at the College of San Mateo—he competed in the San Francisco “48 Hour Film Project,” a global film making contest that takes place in various cities and allows local filmmakers only two days to devise, shoot and produce a short film.

“I was the instigator behind it,” said Nguyen. “As a team we had gone to the 2006 48 Hour Film Project as spectators and I really felt that we could do it.”

The result was a seven-minute short film titled “Urgent Care.” The Landmark Century Cinema Theater in San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center held the screening on June 27.
Visa, sponsor of the “48 Hour Film Project,” notified Nguyen in July that his team was selected to compete in the Visa “Life Takes” Invitational. They will receive $500 from Visa to complete a one to three minute film the weekend of September 7 - 9. On September 29, Visa judges will pick a grand prize winner to receive $10,000.

“I wanted to do this project because I thought it would be a lot of fun,” said Nguyen. “I never thought it would take us this far.”

Born in Vietnam as Quang Khoi, Nguyen, the youngest of five, immigrated with his family to the United States on a boat in 1974 at the height of the Vietnam War. After being held in a refugee camp in Pennsylvania, Nguyen’s parents eventually settled in the in Bay Area a year later. At a time when assimilation was expected of immigrants, Nguyen was not allowed to speak English at home.

“Not too many Vietnamese Americans in my age group speak Vietnamese fluently like I do,” he said.

And although Nguyen did not utter English words at home, he learned the language through television shows and old movies. His mother, Jeanne, introduced him to stars like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. “Psycho” is their favorite Hitchcock film.

“My mother wanted to give us American names and it’s never been confirmed or denied, but I’m pretty sure my mom named me after Anthony Perkins from ‘Psycho’,” said Nguyen. “But she couldn’t spell Anthony so she just named me Tony.”

Watching old movies gave Nguyen a love of film. He began making short movies with his parents video recorder when he was a small child.

“I look back at some of those films and laugh my ass off,” said Nguyen. “This, of course, was way before editing software was available.”

To delay paying off his student loans after UC Davis, Nguyen moved back to the Bay Area and enrolled in SF State to study Speech Communications. Nguyen said that as an Asian immigrant, it was expected of him to become a doctor or a lawyer, but he always knew he was more artistic and decided to meet the cultural expectations halfway.
“While at SF State I specifically chose speech communications as a major because I could be creative and still have a legitimate job,” he said.

After graduating in 1998, Nguyen got a job with Dolby Laboratories Inc., the San Francisco audio technology pioneer, where he is the Senior Licensing Administrator.
Today, Nguyen still likes to explore his creative side with his love of film. Later this year he intends to take another one of Donn’s film classes, where he will be required to create five short films every three weeks.

Nguyen, who uses the name Quang Khoi when he is acting in front of the camera, finds that he prefers to stay on the production side.

“With modern technology it’s so easy for anyone to become a filmmaker,” said Nguyen. “But just because you have all the tools doesn’t mean you’re any good at it. You have to have the passion for it also.”