"I went out for a McDonald's commercial, and I was asked by the casting director to eat a Big Mac the way a Chinese person would," says Tim Dang, producing artistic director for the Los Angeles–based theatre company East West Players. "And I said, 'What do you mean, like, with a chopstick?' I don't know that the casting director was even aware of what he said, but it was, like, 'Do you know how funny that sounds?' Like we have different ways of eating other than through our mouths."
Asian Americans have been in the United States since the 1800s, and yet their portrayal on film, TV, and the stage has continued to be presented as more foreign and less American. No Asian American has ever won an Academy Award for acting, although Pat Morita was nominated in 1985 and non-American actors Sir Ben Kingsley, Haing S. Ngor, and Miyoshi Umeki have taken home Oscar gold. Reports released in 2002 by SAG lumped Asian/Pacific Islanders with Native Americans and the disabled as the least represented. Their 2.5 percent share of total roles cast decreased from the previous year. Meanwhile the number of roles for Latin and African-Americans in SAG reached record highs.
"I don't know that the general American public is even thinking about Asian American actors," confesses Keiko Agena, who won a Young Artist Award for her role on Gilmore Girls. "I don't know if they have an opinion about us, really, one way or another. I think we're kind of unseen and unheard as a group, and probably that's what the people who are involved with [the community] are trying to prove—to kind of establish a presence and say that we're here. Basically, there are a lot of talented, creative people out there, and there are a lot more of us than I think people are aware of."
The recent trend of remaking Japanese films such as Shall We Dance, The Ring, Dark Water, and The Grudge with Caucasian, Hollywood casts, to make them more "sellable," insults many in the Asian American community and leaves Asian American actors in the dust. Meanwhile new shows such as FOX's North Shore, NBC's Hawaii, and WB's Rocky Point are all set in a state that is a whopping 64 percent Asian, yet these series have almost entirely Caucasian casts. With recent releases such as Lost in Translation and The Matrix and Kill Bill films, there's no doubt that all things Asian are hot right now, so why have these new shows and remakes left out the Asian actors?
"When I was growing up, I could relate to Goodfellas, Schindler's List," Better Luck Tomorrow writer/director Justin Lin told AsianConnections.com. "The one thing I could not relate to was Asians or Asian Americans on screen. I was neither Bruce Lee nor [the Sixteen Candles' character] Long Duk Dong. But I can relate to all of the other characters because they are fully developed human beings. I feel like cinema is so behind the times. We are so conditioned. Every time we see an Asian face, you have to explain why they have to be there. We need to go beyond that. I also know that no one else is going to do it. I just don't see it. That is what independent cinema is about. It's to say: OK. I might go into six-figure debt, but I'm going to try something here. I want this perspective. I want people to see these human beings."
Some of today's Asian American actors are portraying dynamic roles that will help bury the age-old stereotypes of what an Asian actor is capable of in a film. But, more often than not, the men find in auditions that they are not considered for romantic leading men and generally end up playing foreigners, villainous martial artists, professionals (doctors, scientists, etc.), or fatherly sages. Likewise the women get similarly typecast in the "dragon lady" femme fatale roles, the "China doll" subservient types, the dry cleaner/manicurist, or the newscaster. Misconceptions such as the idea that all Asian American actors can do Asian accents and martial arts are a source of constant frustration.
"If it's not the dragon lady, then it's the funny dragon lady," says Jodi Long, who played nosy office receptionist Claire in NBC's Miss Match last year. "They're usually still somewhat stereotypical. Because of Connie Chung, I played so many newscasters at one point, it was like I couldn't play another newscaster. My first agent that I ever went to see in New York looked at me and said, 'Honey, I know you're talented but you're going to have to work 10 times harder than the average blond-haired, blue-eyed actor that walks into my office.' And I know that's true. It's been true for me and my Asian American actor friends who have worked and eked out a living in this business. That's the reality. Maybe next year or five years from now it will be different. I'm hoping that it will be, but it's a long, slow process." Long is currently developing a one-woman show based on her life and her family, called Surfing DNA.
Where Are the Writers?
Established in 1992 as founder and former president Guy Aoki's brainchild, L.A.–based Media Action Network for Asian Americans (www.manaa.org) has grown to be the leading media watch group that crusades for a more realistic portrayal of Asian Americans on-screen. "Things have not come very far," says Aoki. "It's just been these little blips on the radar screen. They don't make a trend. They haven't coalesced into any kind of popular movement. They just kind of appear here and there, and we get hopeful, but then nothing really builds up steam. It can be extremely frustrating. For instance, when Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle came out recently, people were saying this is the first time we've had two Asian American men as stars of a mainstream Hollywood movie. You're thinking, 'Now isn't that sad that, in this day and age, it's only now that it's happened?' That just speaks volumes.
"Hollywood rarely gives us a chance to star in anything, whether it's a movie or a TV show," continues Aoki, "and if it doesn't do well, not only is it hard on the actors who played those roles [in terms of] getting future work, but it's also hard on the entire community because people erroneously figure, 'Well, that proves that white people don't want to see Asians in lead roles.' And there are so many factors that go into why something is popular or not…. Between 1993 and 2001, the Writers Guild statistics were the same: 70 percent of all primetime series are written by white males, and 80 percent of all motion pictures are written by white males. So we're at their mercy to include us, and most times they don't want to include us."
According to the Writers Guild's 1998 report, 11 Asian or Asian American feature film screenwriters and only 14 television writers were employed in 1997. Meanwhile, there are close to 12 million Asian American citizens living in this country who are waiting for their stories to be told. East West Players' Dang is doing his part to change those numbers.
"It's according to the life experience of writers," Dang says. "I think we hear from the Writers Guild that 93 percent of the writers in Hollywood are Caucasian, and if those writers don't necessarily come into contact or have knowledge about specific cultures, then they're not necessarily going to write about them. So if I'm a Caucasian and I go to a Chinese restaurant to eat, I might only see Chinese people as waiters, which is why a lot of the roles played by Asians are waiters, or gang members, or the dragon lady prostitute. So one of things we want to do is encourage writers to get to know us. We've invited writers from the WGA, we've had CBS and ABC host panels for us with writers, show runners, and producers, so that when the audience comes in, which is mainly our constituency, they face 150 Asian artists looking at them. So there is this reality that hits them that this is a very big population that they have to get to know."
Two such Caucasian writers are Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, who are the team behind this summer's surprisingly smart and funny landmark film Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. In this all-American buddy flick from the director of Dude, Where's My Car?, a Korean-American (John Cho) and an Indian-American (Kal Penn) go on a pot-fueled adventure while trying to reach the small, tasty burgers of White Castle. On their journey, they encounter many things related and unrelated to their ethnicity. At the very least, this wacky film presents an accessible, lighthearted look at two American guys who just happen to be Asian.
"When Hayden and I decided to write this movie, the reason we chose Asian American leads was just because we grew up with a very diverse group of friends. There were a lot of Asian/Indian guys and they were just like us," recalls Hurwitz. "None of them had accents. They were not necessarily stoners. They were definitely people who were intelligent but liked to have fun. We were scared the whole time we would sell it to a major studio and it would end up being two white guys or a white guy and a black guy." By purposely sprinkling in cultural references throughout the film, Hurwitz and Schlossberg made it more difficult for studios to change the characters. However, the film's two biggest skeptics were the film's stars. "We were, like, 'Good luck, guys,'" says John Cho, who also starred in the equally groundbreaking 2002 feature Better Luck Tomorrow, which depicted overachieving Asian American teens in Southern California dipping into extracurricular criminal activities.
Penn was equally doubtful that the film would ever get made. "I met these guys at a mutual friend's party, and they told me about the script and asked if I'd read it, and I said, 'Yeah … uh, good luck getting it made. You know you're not going to sell it, right?'" Penn recalls. "You don't train to be an Asian American actor; you train to be an actor. It's not until you start acting that you realize people want to quantify you like that. I remember moving [to L.A.] and picking up Back Stage West the second it came out and trying to send my resumé out that day so I would be seen first, but I had very little luck. I was going through the same process as many friends of mine—we were all the same age, the same training—and they would get a lot of auditions, so really the only difference was the ethnicity. I realized really early on the kind of racism that exists, even in very small independent and student films. People just seem to have no desire to tell a realistic story.… There's no affirmative action. There's nothing to level the playing field. So, unfortunately, you just have to work much, much harder for the same opportunity."
Asian Nation
Not all the news is bad, though. Sara Tanaka was a sophomore studying pre-med at Brown University when she was cast as Jason Schwartzman's love interest in Wes Anderson's comedy Rushmore—a breakout role that had nothing to do with her ethnicity. "If I were blonde and blue-eyed, who knows if I would have ever had a career," she says. "I remember my manager telling me that she would have never guessed that her first client to be bumped up to feature films would have been an Asian female. But it's like a trade-off. Being a minority in this industry, you have your parts, but you also have less competition, potentially. The problem is even when you do succeed it's hard to maintain that career, because if there's no other part available for you to jump onto, you're kind of stuck." In the fall, she'll begin work on writer/director Patrick Read Johnson's coming-of-age biopic 5-25-77, in which she'll play the lead's half-Asian girlfriend.
Dante Basco began his career as a dancer along with his brothers Dion, Darion, and Derek (also actors) before landing a role as the memorable Rufio, King of the Lost Boys, in Steven Spielberg's Hook. The blockbuster provided Basco with a fantastic breakout role, but he was told early on that had he been Caucasian, he would have a completely different career. "I had a different agent after Hook, and they were, like, 'We don't know where to go with you. It's like you've already gone to the top of what's out there for a young Asian actor.' No one had done anything higher profile than that. And I'm, like, 'OK, but I'm only 15.'"
Being of Filipino descent, which is an inherently mixed culture after being colonized by so many countries, Basco has been able to play roles that were Latin, Native American, Vietnamese, and Chinese. "Anything but Filipino," he says, laughing. "It's very strange, maybe I'm not the typical Asian people think of. When someone [like me] comes into the room that's likeable and good but maybe not exactly what they were thinking, it's always a fight to change their minds." Often Basco hears the same complaint whenever he's not cast in Asian roles—that he's "not Asian enough." However, he has been accepted with open arms by another minority group. "Within the black community, I'm definitely a neighborhood celebrity," says Basco. "People always say [Filipinos] are 'Asians with soul' or 'Black Asians,' or whatever. And it's ironic that in my career I've done the black shows from Moesha to Fresh Prince to Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, and then a lot of black films like Biker Boyz and Love Don't Cost a Thing." Coming up, he'll be voicing the Asian lead in an animated series called The American Dragon, which he calls "a cross between Teen Wolf and Harry Potter." The Basco brothers are in a rap group called Slap-On Dragons and they just co-produced and starred in their first hip-hop comedy called Naked Brown Men.
Rick Yune hasn't had what you would call a typical Asian American actor's experience. His first acting job was playing a guy picking up Cindy Crawford in a European commercial. He was the first Asian model to grace ads for Versace and Polo Sport before making his feature debut as a framed man in the Scott Hicks–directed Snow Falling on Cedars. He followed that up with memorable, villainous roles in The Fast and the Furious and Die Another Day. Part of what gets him through silly stereotypes is his more international perspective.
"This type of thinking is very domestic. Asian and black and white; it's just not like that around the rest of the world," Yune says. "Two-thirds of the business as far as revenues for film is concerned comes from foreign markets. There are 3.6 billion Asians in the world. People say it's a very artistic endeavor to make a film, but in the end it's show business. It's not show friends. And in the beginning when Goldwyn and Mayer and all these guys got together, they were trying to sell tickets. I just got an offer to do a film called Run over in England. Now, the name of this character is Perry MacElway and they were thinking about Justin Timberlake and Heath Ledger for it, and they offered it to me. Because obviously the character was American, and stereotypically wasn't an Asian name, why would they think about me? In my mind, logically, I think they're trying to appeal to a certain market. As producers they're trying to think about how well financially the film could do." Yune's next endeavor is producing and starring in a film called The Fifth Commandment that he says is "The Professional meets The Bodyguard." Yune will play the romantic lead opposite "a well known singer."
Surpassing Stereotypes
One experience that left many Asian Americans cold was comic Margaret Cho's 1994 TV series All-American Girl. The show revolved around the second-ever (the first was in 1976's Mr. T and Tina) Asian American family on television. Unfortunately, it arrived during the un-cool era of political correctness, and there was backlash from the Asian community. To them, Cho was not the model Korean-American. "It was so unfair to have to really define the ultimate Asian American experience," Cho told BSW in 2001. "It's to say that we aren't capable of the vast variety of experience just because of our race. It's really racist in itself to assume that. It's a politically correct way of being racist." The show went so far as to hire an Asian consultant to make the show more "authentic," but it was ultimately canceled.
So what happens when actors take on stereotypical types of roles? Easily the most famous Asian American actor working today, Lucy Liu has reached new heights with her sex appeal, martial arts ability, and on-screen charisma beginning with Ally McBeal and more recently with high-profile parts in Chicago, Kill Bill, and the Charlie's Angels films. Even Liu has received her share of backlash involving her earlier "dragon lady" parts.
"For me, you say, 'You choose these things; don't you know you're going to perpetuate a stereotype?'" Liu told Static Multimedia in 2002. "The reality of it is that I'm an actress, and this is what I want to do. I don't have many options right now. You create options for yourself so that you have more opportunities later, and that's just the bottom line.… I'm proactive in producing, proactive in what I do, and what I can bring to something. If something that I have chosen to do seems derogatory, I'll try to flip it around and make it something that's much more than somebody who has an accent in the film."
Newcomer actor/producer Annie Lee considers actors such as Liu and Kelly Hu (X2, The Scorpion King) as role models for the kind of career she would like to have one day. Lee's entire family pitched in to bring their self-distributed film Close Call to screens. The film, reminiscent of a Korean-American Thirteen, was written and directed by her father, Jimmy Lee, and both Annie and her sister act in it. "Lucy Liu and Kelly Hu are breaking ground, and it'll open doors for us, even if they are playing stereotype roles. At least they're getting out there. Some people say they don't want to take such stereotypical leads, but if they don't take it somebody else will," admits Lee.
"If we want to move up in this industry, there have to be people who take risks and aren't going to be doctors or lawyers—the typical Asian way," Lee continues. "I feel like Asian Americans aren't where other minorities are at, because we're soft-spoken people. Our culture teaches us to respect, and we're not a very outspoken race. We don't say, 'I want my voice!' The only way we can actually change [stereotypes] is if we write stories ourselves. So that's why I definitely want to be in the filmmaking process. There have to be more Asian American filmmakers. [The Lee family is] trying to be our own mini-studio and make more films that show us as real people. So that's what I hope will happen in the next five years, and more films like Close Call can help do that, help break stereotypes. But [Asian Americans] have to come out and support every Asian American film that comes out. The studios aren't going to make them, and independent films try to do it, but if it gets rejected by our own community, then how are studios ever going to make these films?"
Collaborative Community
It was hardworking actors such as Clyde Kusatsu who paved the way for the Asian American actors working today. A veteran character actor with more than 100 credits in film, TV, theatre, and voiceover, Kusatsu's first TV roles were playing multiple parts in shows such as Kung Fu, M*A*S*H, and Magnum, P.I. When he began working in the 1970s, Asians were still being referred to as "Orientals" and casting directors were impressed that Kusatsu could speak good English. "Back in '66 to '70," says Kusatsu, "I was the only person of color [at Northwestern University], and I can remember a teacher took me aside my freshman year and said, 'Why do you want to be an actor? There's only The Teahouse of the August Moon and King and I. How could you possibly make a living?' And it crushed me. But the decision was, if I'm going to have to make myself 10 times better than a white actor, I'm going to have to do that. The good news was that I went to L.A., and fell into the East West Players, so I was with them for about nine years—a creative time, we were a very small company, and it gave me a home base. We were at a point at East West Players where our mission was to develop that Asian American voice and to demonstrate to the industry that we were more than capable of playing in other plays aside from Flower Drum Song."
Founded during the Watts riots 40 years ago, East West Players was created to help heal the city with the arts. Dang, who has been with the organization since 1980, approximated that they have helped develop and nurture almost 3,000 actors since being founded, "which is a nice figure, because probably about 10 to 15 years ago you couldn't name that many Asian actors on two hands," Dang says. "I would probably say that at least 75 percent of the Asian-Pacific actors that you see on TV and film have come through East West Players at one time or another." Indeed EWP (eastwestplayers.org) has acted not only as a theatre telling Asian stories but also as a place Asian Americans can network and find a community. Filmmaker and actor Chris Tashima gained a greater respect for acting when he joined East West Players. His first short film, Visas and Virtue, which he wrote, directed, and starred in, was based on the true story of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese consul in Sweden who, against the orders of his government and at great personal risk, continued to grant transit visas to Jews fleeing Hitler. The film won an Academy Award for Best Short Film, Live Action in 1998.
"It was at East West Players where I met Tim Toyama, who wrote Visas and Virtue, which became the short film which we won the Oscar for. I also used a lot of the people I met there for the crew and the cast," says Tashima. "It gave me this awareness of myself and where Asian Americans are in the industry and where they aren't, and it completely changed the course of what I wanted to do. When I wanted to be a filmmaker in high school, it was sci-fi action movies, George Lucas, just mainstream stuff. Now I'm only interested in telling Asian American stories and sort of changing what Hollywood presents minorities as. I want to give kids today something different to look at than what I was raised on. I realized that had an effect on me growing up, so I really changed my own personal agenda as well." His next short, Day of Independence, which he also wrote, directed, and starred in, is set in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II. It is currently on the festival circuit and Tashima is planning on turning it into a feature.
Some Asian American filmmakers compare the current movement with the way African-American cinema developed in the mid-'80s with Spike Lee, and perhaps Asian Americans will see their time soon. However, some in the community get upset when filmmakers such as Ang Lee and Wayne Wang branch off to more mainstream films with Caucasian casts to advance their own careers. One filmmaker who has witnessed the changes during the past five years is Risa Morimoto, the executive director for Asian CineVision (asiancinevision.org), which produces the annual Asian American International Film Festival in New York. "There are so many more people making films, which is amazing—especially among Asian Americans," says Morimoto. "Our festival is 27 years old, so we've definitely seen a growth, whereas, back in the day, you pretty much had to solicit for and seek these people out. Now we end up rejecting a lot of work, which kind of breaks my heart at the same time, but there are just so many more people making work. We got about 350 submissions and 120 are screening at this past festival."
Asian-to-Asian Advice
Guy Aoki says he never blames actors for taking on stereotypical roles—just the writers and producers for creating them. "I've often heard Asian American actors say that they have to take bad roles first in order to just get seen, and that they hope they get better roles afterwards," he says. "Even if you're an up-and-coming actor, you do have power. Like, when you get a role and they ask you to do it in an accent and it's demeaning, it doesn't take that much to say, 'Is the accent really necessary?' And make some kind of changes there or at least give the writer or director some feedback as to if there's a problem. It's up to the actors. They have to assess the situation if they're worried they're going to be labeled troublemakers, but I know a lot of Asian American actors feel that too many actors feel powerless when they really have more power than they think to make change and spread awareness."
Margaret Cho's take on the typecasting issue is realistic, and she presses young Asian American actors to honor their own opinion above everyone else's and to not take what people say too personally. Says Cho, "A lot of times the only parts that are out there can be stereotypical, but to be able to work there and still find brilliance within roles is the challenge. To still find a voice within that is really important and then also to be inspired to create your own work: to write, to do standup, and to create one-person shows. I think that's really where it's at."
Filmmaker Chris Tashima also urges Asian American actors to tell their own stories. "It's an incredibly tough business for anybody, not just because you're a minority. You just have to be really prepared. I would encourage everyone to write, because that's where every story starts, and everyone can do it. You never know if you're good at it until you try. That's where I think Asian-Americans are lacking the most because there are lots of actors and lots of filmmakers, but it's the stories that are about us that really need to be created. So write about yourself, your parents … tell your story." BSW