An Asian in Hollywood

2009-10-19T15:27:00.001-07:00

Wish I Saw This 20 Years Ago

2009-10-19T15:22:00.001-07:00

About 20 Halloweens ago, I dressed up as Michael Jackson, complete with white glove and jerry curl wig. I must've practiced those Thriller moves a million times, prepping for my Halloween debut. But the one move I never seemed to master was the most famous of MJ's moves, the Moonwalk. Ah, if only.

My New Hero

2009-08-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

My new hero, Roger Fan, airs his complaints about the Hollywood Establishment (HE) in a blog he and some colleagues have been maintaining. It's a must-read for any Asian looking to start a career in Hollywood as an actor. If you're already here, you already know this stuff, but it's enjoyable nevertheless. Of course, most of you actors will continue to take what little scraps are fed you anyway, but at least we can join along in the tirade. In fact, many of the comments are by other Asian actors.

Roger, by the way, was the one who helped me find my way in this business originally. He told me how to take a headshot, how to locate agents to send my headshot, and what to generally expect in this business. I totally respect Roger's path in this business, as he has done whatever it takes to achieve his level of success.

It does ring familiar, however. Back about a decade ago, an old friend, Steve Park, wrote a mission statement to the HE after a rather insensitive (and subtly racist) comment by an assistant director on the set of Friends.

Steve's statement was subsequently reprinted and rementioned about a million times until Mr. Park was forced to walk his talk by quitting the whole Hollywood thing and moving to New York. I miss Steve and his friendship, and I also miss his acting. He once asked me to write an editorial about his role in the movie Fargo, and I quickly obliged.

I just hope that Roger will retain some anonymity through his blog, as I doubt he intended for this commentary to reach as far as Mr. Park's did. Then again, maybe he had finally reached his limit.

This Sulu Sucks

2009-05-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

OK, why the Asian guy gotta be gay?

Beam Me Up, Hotties - Watch more Funny Videos

Nasal Wash Addiction

2009-03-25T17:21:00.000-07:00

This is less gross than you might think. Then again, maybe it's because my old roommate used to wash his nasal passages with a neti pot every day in the kitchen sink. Now that's gross.

Oddly Mesmerizing

2009-03-17T17:33:00.001-07:00

I don't know the entire story on this, but some Japanese guy attaches electrodes to his face and syncs it with electronic music, at least that's what he decided to do with four of his friends. See their reaction at the end.

I can see this sort of thing catching on at a club, for some reason. Maybe it already has. I haven't been to a club in ages.

Not So Stupid Today

2009-03-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

What's amazing about today's Amazing Race is that all the white people are the dumb ones, both intellectually and skillfully. I mean, who doesn't know who Chekhov is? Two attempts at spelling it, tops, and you're done. Do I feel sorry for the deaf kid and his mother? No, because they're not at a disadvantage here. In fact, reading should be his strength. And after he and his mom put a U-Turn on that dating couple? I gotta say they get no sympathy points.

By the way, did you see the Chevy Traverse commercial that aired during the show? The one where the little girl points her finger, just to the left of Howie Long's crotch, and says, "That's a big girl car!" Ah, heck, I'll post it.

Was the intent here to be viral? I gotta wonder. Otherwise, it's just sick, and I guess that makes me sick for catching it.

Back to Amazing Race. This one, the Asians were on their best behavior, and they finished well above last place. Education, that great equalizer, put them back in the race, and good behavior kept them from falling out of it.

So, yeah, my people made me proud. Today, at least. ;)

Stupid Asian People

2009-03-01T20:40:00.000-08:00

Watching The Amazing Race in utter amazement. I love this show, by the way. They pick some interesting participants. Last season featured a mother and her son, two annoying frat brothers, two blonde bimbos, and an older husband and wife who were separated. The mother and son were great in how supportive and patient they were to each other, while the frat boys got more irritating each show, culminating with the most ridiculous military training attempt in history.

This season features an Asian brother and sister who are also lawyers. Clearly Americanized, they appear either Vietnamese or Chinese. As I watch, the Asian guy, Victor, is insisting on continuing to go up the wrong path and follow the wrong signs. "I think we would be making a serious mistake if we don't continue on this path," he says. Meanwhile, his sister, Tammy, is being as patient and mature as she can, and finally just relents, "Okay, Victor, let's keep doing it your way."

Unfortunately, we get to see this team another week as they finished second to last place.

In other news, I went to my writing class, "Movies & Memoir," on Saturday and went through some short 6-minute writing exercises. Afterward, we all read our work and get some comments by the teacher and, later, by the other class attendees.

I had some resistance to going to this class, but only because I've had some bad experiences in the past with going to writing classes. I realize now it's probably because those classes were taught by Asians. I know that's a big statement, but I'm standing behind it.

First of all, if you take a class and see an Asian female playwright named Judy Soohoo, get the hell out of the class. I suspected she had "borrowed" from my work, but when I later interviewed her for a news article on a play she was debuting for a new theatre company, she admitted to borrowing heavily from more famous playwrights, both living and dead. Apparently, she is in the habit of doing this, and it doesn't matter if you've published your work or not. There's just too much of this kind of "borrowing" going around in the publishing world to walk into a class and just give it away to someone who admits to using others for inspiration.

The class I went to on Saturday was filled with white folks, including both instructors in the program. They find terms such as katas and samurai to be exotic, which makes me smile. They are also very good when it comes to analyzing the work.

In regards to my earlier statement on Asian instructors, I also don't recommend going to a class where the instructor says that you "flush" out your work and its characters. You don't flush those things out unless you got shit for brains or are writing about shit.

One last note before I head down to the gym. I got a reuse/holding fee for the commercial I did back in October of 1997. In fact, I'll be getting another in a week or so as it seems the previous reuse/holding check got lost in the mail. I called my old agency and they confirmed there was an outstanding check mailed to me.

So, anyway, at least I'm still in the game. Hardly, but I'll take what I can get. Cheers!

Clearing the Dust

2009-01-31T21:30:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted here. Call it laziness and ennui (with the site and the topic, hence my life). It's been so long since I've auditioned for anything that I think it's useless to keep writing about it.

But then there's this... I've decided to explore fiction writing again. In fact, I signed up for my first writing class since, like, forever!

I don't know what inspiration is left in the well, to be frank. But perhaps I'll blog about what it means for me to be a struggling Asian writer in Hollywood. (Boy, sounds fun already!)

I suppose I'll mention the many bottles of wine I've been uncorking for ideas. Just hope the genies will be gentle at first. I've got a lot of rust to shake off.

In regards to the wine, I'll recommend one of my latest inspirations. Montepulciano. It's a deeply purple red wine with very few tannins that goes great with burgers and such. You can try one at Blue Dahlia for about $7 a glass. They serve what I think is a 2007 Farnese. But for a real treat, go out to your nearest wine store and locate a bottle of 2005 Kurni.

OK, happy 2009 everyone, and happy year of the ox to everyone else. ;)

We'll See How Long This Link Lasts

2008-12-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

So to speak.

Awesome Commercial

2008-11-23T01:47:00.000-08:00

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Alec Baldwin Says 'Ai-ya'

2008-10-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

Alec Baldwin is a pretty fun guy, actually. But the reason I'm posting this is he says "ai-ya" towards the end of this. The significance? Well, Asians tend to say it a lot, so I found it amusing to hear.

The Palin Interview You Haven't Seen

2008-10-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

Crazy Protester Interrupts Palin Interview - Watch more free videos

Bad Hangover

2008-10-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

This, of course, begs the question, "Would you really want to play the woman?" But in Hollywood, apparently so.

See Bruce Live...Live!

2008-09-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

This Takes Skill

2008-09-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

Impressive improv, or at least it looks like he's improvising. (Saw this, by the way, in a comparison to the recent Sarah Palin interview with Katie Couric.)

Cow Tipping

2008-08-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

It was a slow day at work so got to talking, somehow, about cow tipping and whether it was a myth or not. My school, Washington State University, is known for being a party school as well as a cow-tipper's paradise.

But have you ever seen video of a cow tipping? This will now put that question to rest.

Triumph at Comic-con

2008-08-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

Helms on Colbert

2008-08-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

This item comes from GQ's comedy issue featuring Seth, uh, what's his name? The Jewish guy with the 'fro in that movie Pineapple Express. Is it Rogen? Anyway, he's on the cover. Inside was this short interview with Ed Helms about his start on "The Daily Show" and his experience with fellow correspondent Stephen Colbert:

"When I started on 'The Daily Show,' I was so nervous that I asked him if he had any pointers. He said, 'You’re gonna be great. Oh, and don’t forget to hang your soul up in the closet and come back for it later.'

"Whenever we were backstage before a taping, Steve would do this pantomime. He would pretend he was the trumpet player in the band, getting ready for his part in 'The Daily Show' theme song. He’s miming that he’s warming up his trumpet, blowing in the spit valve, getting ready to go. And then he raises it to his mouth right when the guitar part kicks in. He would take down his fake trumpet and act surprised, like, 'What the fuck? Where’s the trumpet part?' I must’ve seen him do that 300 times, and it always made me laugh."

Blockbuster by Mail

2008-08-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, while working for Lions Gate Entertainment, I came across a little-known company called Netflix. It seemed like a great little start-up, and so I asked my cousin's stockbroker husband if it was a good investment.

He never got back to me, and I sort of wrote the investment off as a silly idea. Then a year later, the stock doubled or tripled. By that time, I saw my cousin's husband who thanked me for the stock tip. Turns out, he invested a few thousand into Netflix and came away a winner.

Am I bitter? More like sour and rotting, to be more precise. That little lesson turned out to be the last time I asked for or gave any stock advice from anyone.

But now I'm thinking of asking the guy about Blockbuster, since while it looks way undervalued, with a price-to-book ratio under 1, I really don't know if they can survive in this evolving industry.

Regardless, I signed up for a trial of Blockbuster's home delivery service. About a year ago, I became rather frustrated by Netflix's lack of predictability. Plus, it was possible the mailman was watching my movies, because I often missed deliveries. Netflix was pretty good about apologizing and providing replacements, but when I asked them if their online delivery would soon work for Mac users, they just told me, "Sorry, probably won't happen." That was the proverbial straw.

So here I am, trying out the new service and... so far, so good. The first discs arrived in one day. I dropped off one of them at the Blockbuster store down the street from the office yesterday, and I might stop in today for an in-store exchange. Call it the dumbed-down version of Netflix, but I kinda like it.

Currently, at the office, I'm working on the old Batman collection for Blu-ray. This includes Batman, Batman Returns, Batman & Robin and Batman Forever. And, boy, do these films look dated. Sure, Batman with Nicholson and Keaton and Basinger came out in 1989, but this was surely a different pre-9/11, pre-Lady Di, pre-Heath time and place.

For those who haven't read about Jack getting upset for not being included in the story-forming process of Dark Knight, click here. But just looking at his picture on the back of the disc packaging, I have to say that even then, he was just too old and too out of shape for the part.

Still, I did love watching him then. I just have no interest in watching him now. As for Val Kilmer and George Clooney in their turns as the Caped One, well, I missed it the first time, so maybe now I'll take a look. Heck, how much worse can it get after watching Spider-man 3?

Weekend Entertainment

2008-08-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

I grew up a big fan of the TV series, "Monty Python's Flying Circus," which aired many decades ago on public TV here in the States. Consequently, after hearing a segment on NPR about Eric Idle's "Not the Messiah (He's a very naughty boy)," performing live last weekend at the Hollywood Bowl, I just had to place a bid on eBay for a pair of tix.

It was a fun show, with reminiscences of Life of Brian and, I think, Meaning of Life as well. The reason I'm confused about the latter is that Eric Idle came out for a planned encore and sang what I think is the closing song for Meaning of Life, with lyrics about earth and the planets in the universe.

Monty Python has so infected my life that I even watched the TV series "Fawlty Towers" starring John Cleese for a while, and completely loved Michael Palin's travel series, particularly his "Hemingway Adventures" where he visited all of the author's famous haunts in Europe and Cuba. In one episode, he sat in Hemingway's chair at the bar and got completely inebriated on double Margaritas, then wobbled down the street, cameras rolling, to another bar where he consumed double Mojitos until he blacked out. The very next morning, Palin continued the documentary while hung over and nauseated. It was hilarious!

Two summers ago, after dating my wife-to-be for 3 weeks, we went on a quick jaunt to New York to catch "Spamalot" at the Shubert Theatre where, to my delight, I found out that my wife was a big fan of the movie Monty Python & The Holy Grail.

It's my wife's birthday this week, and the Hollywood Bowl was sort of an early surprise celebration. We picked up sandwiches from Blue Dahlia and brought a chilled bottle of La Crema Pinot Noir for a makeshift picnic dinner.

On Sunday night, we went to Shane Sato's photography studio for a sushi party where I got to indulge my fantasy of being a sushi chef. Shane goes fishing for all sorts of good stuff during the summer, so my fantasy often gets extended and occasionally abused to the point where I feel like I'm working instead of indulging. But, ah, that's another story.

Now, it would've been a fantastic weekend if it weren't for the fact that I had rented Spider-man 3, which is probably the worst superhero movie I have ever seen. What possessed me and the wife to watch the bloopers reel in the Special Features, I have no idea. But man, that was like adding turpentine to an already throbbing and pus-ing wound.

Dark Knight vs. Wall-E

2008-07-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, the wife and I saw two movies: Dark Knight and Wall-E. After watching Dark Knight at midnight, we couldn't get to sleep until 5AM. It was deeply disturbing, even to the most jaded of observers. Even David Denby, New Yorker film critic, couldn't seem to get past the "darkness" to enjoy the movie. He did, however, gush over Wall-E, which I can understand, but in my humble opinion, Denby's a putz. The guy should've waited for the made-for-TV version of Dark Knight, or change to reviewing films for Boy's Life.

I'm not saying Dark Knight is the best movie of all time, but Heath Ledger's performance is, well, heroic. It's what happens when you inhabit a character, and not just play it. It truly raises the bar for other actors, which might prove to be a dangerous temptation, but for the glory of greatness.

I liken Mr. Ledger's performance to a shaman term called "grokking," where you mimic the energy of something down to its imagined biological level. Imagine, if you will, the energy of a rock, then change it to a bird's. But don't just visualize the energy, become the energy and display it in all its stillness, as in the rock. Then become the bird, down to the lightness of its bones, the wind stimulating the individual hairs on its feathers, the sounds all around and their distinctness so that everything, from a car's horn to a distant cawing of a crow, give you a picture that denotes image and distance.

Mr. Ledger's performance will probably send the likes of Robert Downey, Jr. to the insane asylum, as he, like Mr. Denby pointed out about Mr. Ledger's performance, also is one to stare into the abyss.

Sean Penn. Will he even watch the movie? Doubtful, as I doubt he watches anything any living actor does. Oh, but there lies the difference, doesn't it?

And what about Christian Bale? Isn't he one of those actors, ala American Psycho and The Machinist, who would also inhabit the character at its most extreme level?

My point is, from this moment on, for any actor worth his salt, this is now the After Heath era. I predict that every movie made will feature some actor's attempt to access the DNA of a character, much like how Brando and Dean redefined the solo performance several decades ago.

Last Sunday, the wife and I had lunch with Chin Han and then went to a couple of theaters in search of something to lighten the mood. We stopped by Landmark at Westside Pavilion but they were sold out on everything worth watching, so we all headed over to Century City. We bought tickets for Wall-E and he got tickets for something else.

But before going in, he was curious about why I thought Mr. Ledger's performance stood out. After seeing it at both the New York and Chicago premieres, he still wondered why the Joker was so interesting to watch. And I can't blame him. For all the darkness of the character, he overshadowed pretty much everything else playing last weekend, both in the movie and everywhere else.

Not even Wall-E could clear away the clouds.

I'll Admit It...

2008-07-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

I have a sick sense of humor.

When in Rome

2008-07-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

Happened to see the photo below in a news story on the Web. Apparently, in Naples, Italy, a couple of teenage girls (ages 13 and 15) got swept up by the waves while playing in the water and drowned. For a couple of hours, their bodies were laid on the beach and covered with towels after a failed rescue attempt.

See the people around the bodies? Yeah, they're laying out on the beach as usual, many just strolling casually by within a few feet of the bodies. Why? Apparently, the girls were "Gypsies."

The wife and I were in Naples a couple of months ago; and while we did think the city was indeed seedy, we didn't think the Italians could be so indifferent to an immigrant. But it was on the way to the Rome airport in a tour bus where the tour director pointed out a Gypsy girl on the street, flagging down cars on the street to wash their windows.

The tour director mentioned that the Italians were having problems with these "undocumented immigrants," and many were blaming them for the increase in petty street crime and worsening the bad economy by deterring tourism. I guess she was saying that these immigrants were responsible for all the bad folks ripping off your cameras and pocketbooks.

Yeah, I'd say that the petty crime is my main reason for not wanting to go back to Italy very often. But a couple of bodies rotting on the beach while people walk indifferently by? Highly doubt it now.

Dark Knight at Arclight

2008-07-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna catch Dark Knight at the Arclight in Hollywood tonight, 12:15am showing. We're all pretty excited to catch Chin Han's big moment on the big screen. Really, it's an opportunity of a lifetime for him, both as an experience and as a career move. I couldn't be more happy for him, and even found this interview with him just before the premiere.

He left me a voicemail just after he got back from Singapore, before heading to New York. I've always tried to imagine what it was like for him to visit Singapore and listen to folks who just don't realize how big something is like a blockbuster Hollywood film. You can star in 10 films in Asia, but it won't compare to just one principal role in a Hollywood blockbuster, either in fame or money.

I have another friend currently in Singapore who left L.A. to be in a TV series there. I realized, after a while, that all he really wanted was to be famous, albeit locally and on a much more microscopic level.

I don't mean to dis Singapore, but it is a very small pond. I came from the small pond of Seattle and, believe me, there is a difference.

The other friend in Singapore will be coming back to the States soon to promote a film he did with David Carradine. He called me last week to tell me about it.

It's a very small movie, but I'm very happy for him as well. But when it comes to the price of fame, I think Chin Han got the deal of the century.