Justin Lin is the man
The other week I had a very directorly week. First was the Hotel Chevalier screening where Wes Anderson and Co. showed up for a little Q&A and then I went to another thing with Justin Lin and some of the cast and crew behind his latest film, Finishing the Game.
First of all, you should know that I loved Better Luck Tomorrow. It’s one of my all time favourite movies, I appreciated it aside from any sort of hollywood social agenda it put forth - I think it was an amazing film. I understood and loved all those characters, I felt like I knew people who (if sometimes a bit less extreme) were those guys. Add to that it’s breaking the mold by creating all these roles for asian americans and putting them on screen and it’s truly amazing. So there you have my built in bias.
The panel began with a screening of a short 20 minute documentary of getting from Better Luck Tomorrow to Finishing the Game. You can check it out on the youtubes. Then they all came in Justin Lin, Josh Diamond, Sugn Kang, Julie Asato and Roger Fan and basically spent an hour or two answering questions. I think a lot of the questions were really about their experience working on these independent films and what trials there are as an Asian American trying to get something done (get a role, make a movie) in hollywood.
It was an amazing panel and it’d be interesting to see a transcript of what went on. I remember one thing Justin said pretty early on… it was a story about when he went into a big marketing meeting and the suits showed him a pie chart of their demographics, a big slice was the african-american audience, a smaller slice was the latinos and everyone else was white. When he asked about the Asians, they said that their research showed that asians spend their money exactly like caucasians so they get lumped in. Effectively, it meant they had no voice.
A lot of the issues discussed flowed from that. The reason asians are not seen on screen in anything but stereotypically asian roles (gansters and nerds, oddly enough) is that money men see no demand for them. There is no real asian audience as there is a black or latino audience. Consequently, asian actors get crappy roles and directors don’t get to create any films directed at the asian americans. Better Luck Tomorrow was the first significant movie to break that rule and it was funded all by credit cards, Justin couldn’t raise any money.
That was another really interesting tidbit told. Apparently when he was going around trying to raise money, he was really poor - sleeping on the floor, eating ramen, broken car, you know, no money. He found some backers who were really into the script and him and they wanted to give him $2 million. The catch? He had to rewrite it to cast all white folks and McCauley Culkin as a star. He turned it down and instead racked up 6 figures worth of personal debt on 10 credit cards. Can you imagine? $2 million dollars.
I think the passion shows through in the movie. The actors are superb in that movie one of my favourite scenes in the movie is when Jason Tobin (Virgil) is in the car after the party where Roger Fan (Daric) pulls the gun on the jock. He’s so conflicted, he’s amped up and he’s scared out of his mind. He’s going a little crazy, it’s unbelievable to me how he pulls off that scene.
That panel was quite interesting - everyone had worthwhile things to say. Having just seen a Q&A with Wes Anderson it was amazing to see the difference in the types of questions that get asked. With Wes it was all movie nerds and questions were raised about how they rehearsed, how did the manage the blocking, etc… With Justin it was mostly asian americans asking about how hollywood can be changed to accept a little yellow in the movies. I’m not saying one’s better than the other, they’re just different - but it’s really interesting to see how directors and their movies attract such divergent audiences.
Anyhow, you have to respect them even more for naming the official website of Finishing the Game - YouOffendMeYouOffendMyFamily.com. I mean, how awesome is that? It opens up in NYC on October 5 (that’s today at the latest!) at the IFC Center, so if you’ve got the inclination it’s worth it to go out and check this bad boy out.
