Asian American film

So, there's this film out, Cavite that seems to be getting a lot of press right now. It's even on metacritic.com. While looking at some of the future releases, (because I have no life) I also saw that Michael Kang's film The Motel is getting released in a couple weeks I think. It was weird to see two Asian American films getting so much attention within such a short time.

I was thinking about the state of Asian American film. It's sort of a weighty topic and sort of a boring one perhaps, but what the hell, I'm going to talk about it anyway. A couple years ago, Better Luck Tomorrow made huge waves by being an Asian American film which was not about rebellious second generation children and their mothers, for being commercial successful and finally, and most surprisingly for being a good film. As luck would have it, around the same time Charlotte Sometimes another Asian American film also did really well. It occurred to me at the time that something was going on.

Since then I've seen a bunch of films come and go, usually trying to capitalize on Better Luck Tomorrow's grassroots success. (i.e. getting on a bunch of e-mail lists and telling Asians to go see the movie and to tell their friends to go see the movie, and we all know how much we looove the internet. Not to mention Friendster, xanga, and the facebook.) There have been a bunch of them that seem to have won distribution and gone on to be modest successes sometimes critical, sometimes commercial, sometimes both. The ones that come to mind are Robot Stories, Saving Face, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, ( I include the last one because, although it was written and directed by two white guys, it starred two Asian guys and used similar methods of trying to get people to go see the movie). I think for the first time in history, we actually have something that we can call Asian American cinema. Most of these films do the Asian American film circuit, and later break into the more mainstream circuit, like Sundance and other places.

I think after Better Luck Tomorrow there was a lot of pessimism about whether or not this trend of success would continue or whether it was just a fluke. After all, before Justin Lin there was Wayne Wang. And quite frankly by taking on Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, Justin Lin does seem to be going down the Wayne Wang sellout road. I have hope though. There do seem to be some projects out there that are getting some attention like Cavite, The Motel, The Grace Lee Project, The Namesake, Americanese, and Punching at the Sun. I'm curious to see what happens.

The point of this long ramble is that, I do think something has happened. It seems to be easier for Asian American filmmakers to break into the regular indie market and get people to watch their movies. Most of these directors are first timers so it will be interesting to see what happens to them. Whether they start making like Wayne Wang and making essentially whitewashed movies or they continue making Asian American films. Eric Byler is a more hopeful example of this. And even Justin Lin's films have never been as whitewashed as Wayne Wang's. Take for example Anywhere but here which takes place in what is apparently an alternate dimension where all people of color have left Los Angeles. At least Annapolis had Roger Fan in it, even if it reportedly sucked.

My people may not be good rappers. (Sorry Jin.) But they do seem to be capable of making good independent films and good comic books. And for the time being, that's good enough for me.