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Car Tal…I mean “Car Discussion 3″ w/Sung Kang aka Han from “Fast & Furious”

  • February 2, 2012 8:20 am

What’s up good people of the World?  Happy we can share with you all the 3rd installment of Car Tal…I mean Car Discussion (plus the revamp of Car Talk Car Discussion Episode 2 with my good friend Tyrese). We got some flack from Car Talk so we had to change the title from Car Talk to Car Discussion.  The Car Talk from NPR sent lawyers after us saying Car Talk is the title of their show and legally we can’t call our show Car Talk, because Car Talk has been around longer than our Car Talk.  So we needed to change our Car Talk to another name that doesn’t sound like their show Car Talk.  So we decided to change our show from Car Talk to Car Discussion.  Hopefully now Car Talk will not be upset at our Car Talk, I mean Car Discussion.  It’s all very confusing so hopefully Car Talk 3, I mean Car Discussion will clarify everything.

Car Talk Discussion 2 (w/Special Guest Tyrese):

Car Talk Discussion 3:

 Read more...

‘Sunset Stories’ Stories: The Beginning

  • February 1, 2012 1:02 pm

Please welcome Ernesto to our YOMYOMF family. Actually as writer/producer on BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, Ernesto’s been a part of the fam for a long time, but he joins us in an official capacity to blog about his new film SUNSET STORIES, which will have its just-announced World Premiere at SXSW in March and is executive produced by our own Justin Lin (with Sung Kang starring) and the first feature to go out under our YOMYOMF Films banner. Ernesto will be sharing his journey with the film on a regular basis.

It took a lot of convincing for me to write this journal about the making of SUNSET STORIES (formerly COOLER), a micro-budget film shot nearly one and a half years ago. People who know me, know first hand how quiet, insular and private I am, and writing something like this amounts to pulling teeth – with a very, very rusty pair of pliers. Slowly. One at a time. With the molars breaking to pieces and you have to dig them out of blood soaked gumflesh…okay, you get the picture, it’s painful. Well, I finally gave in, so here goes.

With this journal, I’m going to trace the making of SUNSET STORIES and follow our journey to our World Premiere screening at SXSW in March. It’s been a long hard road, with a lot of twists, turns and dead-ends – seriously, as I write this, we’re still scrambling to finish and STILL begging for favors because of our limited budget – but fighting ‘til the end. If you’re reading this, odds are you too are thinking about making a film. I write this for you. Maybe you can avoid the many pitfalls we suffered through or maybe I’ll convince you to go back to grad school for industrial design, trade school for nursing and x-ray tech, or, of course, culinary school. Trust me, I’ve got a drawer full of half finished applications at home. But like many of you, I’m a glutton for punishment and no matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise, film and writing is where my heart is.  Read more...

Killer Chink

  • January 11, 2012 8:33 pm

Serial Killer Charles Ng

After I first met Koji Steven Sakai at a CAPE event in 2007, we started developing a couple of projects together along with my longtime collaborator and film school buddy Stanley Yung. And the very first one we started developing was a drama about a self-hating Asian American man. That feeling or complex that I wanted to confront and explore—self-hatred—is really in all of us, particularly in a North American society primarily driven by identity politics. Especially for a visible ethnic minority, how many of us are confronted with the feeling of discomfort, competitiveness or even hate when we see someone else of the same skin color in an all white environment?

I cannot remember more clearly what my mom said to me when she came home one day after dropping my little sister off to school in Montreal.

“I saw this Chinese lady at school and I asked her if she was Chinese,” said my mom. “And she said, ‘I’m CANADIAN!’”  Read more...

From a Firm, to The Firm

  • January 8, 2012 12:02 am

BEN

Ben Lee has written for the television shows ELEVENTH HOUR and FAIRLY LEGAL and is currently writing for THE FIRM, a series based on the John Grisham novel (premiering tonight at 9pm, then moving to Thursdays at 10pm, on NBC). After graduating from Harvard University and Columbia Law School, he worked for several years as a corporate attorney in New York before breaking his parents’ hearts to become a writer. You can follow him on Twitter.

When I was working at the old law firm, I rarely went to court. I didn’t pound my desk or strenuously object to anything. But here’s what I did: I wrote something around fifty pages long under ridiculously tight deadlines. I sent it out to a dozen people, who gave me a whole lot of notes that were inconsistent with one another. I listened to them fight about the document while I kept my phone on mute. Every once in a while, I said something that made me seem competent. After the call, I silently cursed everyone, revised my draft, and repeated the cycle until they all liked it or got tired of fighting about it, whichever came first. Little did I know how well this would prepare me for a career as a television writer.

As a lawyer, I helped private equity firms buy, revamp, and sell undervalued companies. I represented a subprime mortgage lender in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I negotiated license agreements for American television shows to be broadcast in Poland and Malaysia. I drafted endorsement agreements between professional surfers and the energy drinks emblazoned on their boards. But all along, what I really wanted to do was write cool lines for pretty actors.  Read more...

2011: The Year in YOMYOMF (Part 2)

  • January 3, 2012 12:01 am

Continuing my look back at some of the stuff that happened at YOMYOMF this past year—both on our blog and behind the scenes. Today, I cover the second half of 2011. You can read part 1 covering Jan-June 2011 here.

JULY:

We kicked off the month with a YOMYOMF group lunch on July 1 at Gus’s BBQ in South Pasadena before heading over to our nearby office/“man cave” to discuss the latest updates including the fact that we had now decided to move forward and pitch our YOMYOMF Network idea to YouTube. We would be partnering with our friends at 4th Member—including YouTube stars Ryan Higa, KevJumba, Chester See, NBA baller Baron Davis and producers Cash Warren and Abdul Khan–to create the new “Asian American”-centric channel with our own Justin Lin overseeing.

With much prodding from Anderson, some of us who were still around at the end of the afternoon recorded our first very podcast (while taking swigs of whiskey). This is what resulted—so far our first and only podcast in a very loose format to put it kindly. Perhaps we will follow-up with another one in 2012?   Read more...

2011: The Year in YOMYOMF (Part 1)

  • January 2, 2012 12:02 am

I wasn’t planning on writing anything that had to do with looking back at 2011, but then I decided—fuck it! So here’s a brief journey through some of the shit that happened at YOMYOMF this past year—both on our blog and behind the scenes. Today, I cover the first half of 2011. Come back for the rest tomorrow.

JANUARY:

We kicked off our second full year of YOMYOMF’s existence with an appropriate blog from Bev about her wish for the new year and of course her continuing, uncensored experiences as a SAF proved to be the highlight of the weekend, though there would be some changes in that area by the end of the year (more on this in part 2).

Jerome concluded his weekly vow to write about Inception, Anderson continued his international jet-setting in the name of the filmic arts with an invite to the Kyoto Filmmakers Lab while I continued my juvenile (though somehow unfathomably popular) attempts to wring some humor out of the Asian American experience with blogs about topics like Asian Things Western Guys Think are Sexy that Really Aren’t and Things that are Anti-Asian You Didn’t Know Were Anti-Asian. 

But the big news for Asian America in January was the introduction of Amy Chua a.k.a. Tiger Mom. We devoted several blogs to this topic after Anderson kicked things off discussing Tiger Mom’s MILF-ness, but it was Elaine’s explanation of why Amy Chua is actually more akin to Panda Express than anything authentically Chinese that really hit a nerve with our readers.   Read more...

Life’s a Pitch – Part II

  • November 23, 2011 11:37 am

In Part I, I described the prep work my producer and I went through for a pitch we were taking around town for an adaptation of a Young Adult novel.  Now it was time to go off on “the dog and pony show,” as my agent once affectionately described it.

It’s always best to arrive earlier than later, so for our first pitch, the producer and I decide to meet 20 minutes early.  We go over last minute notes, how we’re going to intro, etc. We finally get called in 15 minutes after our scheduled appointment.  Read more...

Life’s a Pitch – Part I

  • November 14, 2011 4:06 pm

If there’s one thing I hate about being a screenwriter—it’s the pitch.

Doesn’t anyone realize how unnatural it is for writers to be delivering pitches?  Hello?  If we were “good in a room” we wouldn’t become reclusive writers who like to spend hours on end alone with a computer in the first place.  There have been many times when I wanted to shout “Damn it, Jim!  I’m a writer, not an actor!”
But whether I like it or not, pitches are part of the job and for those of you who are aspiring writers, here’s a rundown of the process of a recent round of pitches.  Read more...

Makin’ Bacon by Fakin’ (tv commercial style)

  • November 14, 2011 2:13 pm

I’ve done a good number of TV commercials.  It’s how I’ve made the majority of my living as an actor.  It’s how many actors make their living as they continue to hunt for their place on a TV series or name status in Hollywood, studio movies.

"You talking to me? Or just needing a mortgage from Quicken Loans?"

It’s not the glamorous path.  And in some instances, it’s something that both actor and their representatives struggle to downplay or even hide in order to create and maintain the seductive and elusive image of a Hollywood star.  Cause you know…Hollywood stars-in-the-making don’t do TV commercials.  They’ll entertain spokesperson contracts but they don’t do TV commercials (let alone audition for them).

But I do TV commercials.  And I audition for them.  I’ve done quite a few.  At last count, I think I’m close to 100.  Definitely over 70 and somewhere headed towards 100.  So over 16 years, I’ve averaged about 6 TV commercials per year.  For some, that number may seem pathetically low.  For others, impossibly high.  For me, I’m not sure what to make of it.  All I know is that without TV commercials, I wouldn’t have had the ability to afford my acting career.

OK, so what commercials have I done?  What have you seen me in that you didn’t know I was in?  Well, I don’t have a formal list anywhere.  So here’s a sampling off the top of my head.  Here goes…

Mercedes Benz, Campbell Soup, Westin Hotels, Bank of China, Nissan Cup Noodle, Hyundai, Orkin Pest Control, Verizon, Chase Financial, McDonald’s, UPS, Ace Hardware, Zales, Barclay’s Financial, Palm Pilot, Jiffy Lube, Pizza Hut, Sprint, Toyota, Philips Electronics, Quicken Loans, K-Mart, Hallmark, Koo Koo Roo, Sears, Albertson’s, MCI, Nationwide Insurance, Wal-Mart, California Board of Tourism, Assurant Health, Northern Bathroom Tissue, Hertz, etc…  Read more...

Han vs. Han

  • November 8, 2011 6:20 pm

I’m the last person to judge another actor.  I know most work their ass off and the payoff is little to nothing.  It’s really a marathoner’s journey.  You wanna meet someone with thick skin.  Talk to an actor that’s been going at it for a while.  My attitude towards taking roles is… “All the power to you, do what you got to do to stay around.” To make it all work out so there is a balance between making a living and living your dream takes part magic, part unrelenting effort, part magic, and part magic.

So with that said, let me get to the point.  Over the past few months I’ve read and heard much discontent from Asians and non-Asians over the new network comedy 2 BROKE GIRLS. Here’s a recent Hollywood Reporter article that accuses the show of being racist. I try to ignore soapbox criticism yip yap, soapbox complaining about racist this and that.  It’s so easy to complain and judge from afar.  You try living the life of a struggling actor.  Come to think of it, struggling, before any job title sucks balls.  Read more...

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 3 (Oct. 3, 2011)

  • October 3, 2011 3:35 pm

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for the Broadway premiere of his latest play CHINGLISH following a hugely successful run in Chicago at the historic Goodman Theater. DHH has graciously agreed to blog weekly throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life. 

Sometimes, you can start to dislike one of your own characters. A figure from CHINGLISH who has deepened through the New York leg of our journey is Peter Timms, a white English expat living in China, who our American businessman hires as his translator and consultant. Peter started out as a composite of the many non-Chinese expats I’d met during my trips over there. In some ways, they are the reverse of my parents: immigrants who traveled from the West to Asia. They could also, however, be considered the descendants of Colonialists from earlier centuries who settled in the “Orient” to rule and exploit it. And, in today’s bustling Chinese economy, Mandarin-speaking Westerners in their 20’s can experience a range of exciting opportunities which they would probably not have access to back home.

Peter, however, is not one of those young Westerners. He’s in his early-40’s, and has lived in China almost twenty years. Which means, he arrived there when the country was still poor, and foreigners relatively rare. So Peter’s a bit of a relic. When he first arrived, simply being a white guy who spoke Mandarin made him instantly employable. But China has changed a lot, and he doesn’t want to be left behind.  Read more...

The Importance of Being Tsai Chin

  • September 28, 2011 12:01 am

My fond memory of Tsai Chin was picking her up from her West Hollywood condo to rehearse the reading of Simon Sun’s winning screenplay that I directed for CAPE several years back. On the way to West Los Angeles, Tsai and I would talk about everything from her experience in the film industry to her early life in China and London. Deliciously memorable as the sext girl who gunned down James Bond after saying, “I give you very best duck,” Tsai is a living legend of her own.

And she is a star.

 Read more...

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 2 (Sept. 26, 2011)

  • September 26, 2011 12:05 am

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for the Broadway premiere of his latest play CHINGLISH following a hugely successful run in Chicago at the historic Goodman Theater. DHH has graciously agreed to blog weekly throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life. Today, the start of rehearsals for the Broadway premiere.

We’ve just finished our second week of rehearsals, and I’m struggling with a feeling which I also experienced in Chicago: things seem to be going really smoothly, what’s the catch? When’s the other shoe gonna drop? Christine, one of our cast members, said to me last night, “You’re sort of a worrier, aren’t you?” Er, maybe. But opening a show is sorta like giving birth. Even when things seem to be going well, you stay alert for signs of trouble.

Our new cast member, Gary Wilmes, who plays Daniel, the white American businessman, has a challenging task. Everyone else in the company went through a full rehearsal process in Chicago, then performed the show before audiences eight times a week, for six weeks. Gary’s got to learn his lines, find his character, understand the arc of the scenes, and basically get up to speed with his fellow cast members. And to his credit, he wants to do this work honestly, not just go through the motions. Gary compared this to jumping onto a moving train. I imagine it can’t be easy to be the guy in the room starting out way behind everyone else. But he’s tackled his assignment with grace, humor, and loads of hard work. And the cast has supported him with affection and generosity. This week, Gary’s labors really started to bear fruit. His scenes now feel energized, confident, and emotional. Which also makes them funnier. Because sometimes the best humor comes, not out of trying to make people laugh, but from feeling things more intensely, being more invested in the stakes of a situation, than people in everyday life.  Read more...

Life: The Rewrite

  • September 23, 2011 3:56 am

He tapped on the glass and I unrolled the window.

“Can I see your driver’s license?”

I handed the cop my license and watched as he walked away from my car and started talking to another cop.  He didn’t run my license through his patrol car computer.  I wondered why.  He came back, leaned on the door frame, and looked inside the car.

“Do you have a gun in the car?” he asked.

I glanced in the rear view mirror at my 11 year old son Gabriel and his friend Cyrus.  They looked confused, astonished.  So did I.

“No,” I answered.  Read more...

Do You Have To Live In L.A. To Make It As A Screenwriter: the Sequel!

  • September 20, 2011 4:22 am

Q: What do these twelve films have in common?

A: They were all written by a guy who had the pleasure of sitting next to me on a Southwest flight from Burbank to Oakland a few years back.  His name is Ehren Kruger.  And I have to say, he was very gracious about the whole thing.  Ehren didn’t ask for my autograph, didn’t ask if I could slip his latest spec screenplay to my agent, and didn’t complain about what hadn’t gone right in his career.

That’s class.  Read more...

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 1 (Sept. 19, 2011)

  • September 19, 2011 12:05 am

DHH
Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for the Broadway premiere of his latest play CHINGLISH following a hugely successful run in Chicago at the historic Goodman Theater. DHH has graciously agreed to blog weekly throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life. Today, the start of rehearsals for the Broadway premiere.

“They say the neon lights are bright On Broadway/They say there’s always magic in the air”
- “On Broadway” (Mann/Weil/Lieber/Stoller)

It’s the Great White Way. It’s the Main Stem. It’s one of the world’s most recognizable brands. It’s Broadway, a mythic word which conjures images of musicals, chorus girls and boys, bright lights, and flashy marquees. This week, my new play, CHINGLISH, began rehearsals to open on October 27 at the Longacre Theatre. On Broadway.

To those of you who followed my CHINGLISH blogs from Chicago (links to the Chicago blogs below), thanks for supporting us in our premiere production. When we last left off, our show had opened to great reviews in the Windy City, and our producers had announced we would be moving to Broadway. In the weeks that followed, CHINGLISH ended up becoming the most successful play (not musical) produced in the history of the Goodman Theatre. The show’s run was extended an additional week by popular demand. Its closing performances were attended by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (former Chief of Staff to the POTUS).  Read more...

Turning Tragedy into Comedy (with Oded Gross) PART II:

  • September 17, 2011 11:34 am

Previously, I blogged about talented performers, Oded Gross and Regan Forman. The pair wrote and starred in one of the funniest stage performances you’ve never heard of called The Comedy of Oedipus Rex.

I decided to contact Oded and he was kind enough to actually answer my questions rather than dismiss me as a crazy stalker (which is what I would have done). This is my interview with Oded:

ME: Did anything happen after the HBO Workspace?

ODED: The HBO Workspace was a place to develop shows which would hopefully catch the eye of some of the big shots at HBO and then they would throw money at the show’s performers to do said show on their Network.  Sadly, that never happened for us.  Nobody has ever thrown money at me.  Read more...

Turning Tragedy into Comedy (with Oded Gross) PART I:

  • September 14, 2011 3:23 pm

Hollywood, I have discovered, is full of un-hailed talent—people who have the right chops, the right looks and the right attitudes and yet, haven’t quite gotten the attention they deserve.

For instance, about 10 years ago, I chanced upon a two-person show in a small theater in Santa Monica called the Powerhouse Theater.  It was a musical comedy called “The Comedy of Oedipus Rex”.  I know you’re thinking “What?  A musical comedy about Oedipus Rex?”

I wasn’t sure what to expect either, but it turned out to be one of the funniest plays I had ever seen!  By the end of it, I was in tears of laughter as Oded Gross and his wife Regan Forman acted out multiple parts, sang and danced to tunes like Give Your Mama Some Lovin’.  Read more...

SAIGON ELECTRIC: Big Premiere in Vietnam & Second Chances (Part 3)

  • September 13, 2011 3:01 am

Here’s Part 3 about my first experience as a producer for a film called SAIGON ELECTRIC (You can read Part 1 and Part 2)), a hip hop, coming-of-age film made in Vietnam. It was released there in April and is set to be released in select U.S. cities on October 7th. We’re currently mounting a big premiere on September 20th in Orange County called THE ELECTRIC SHOWCASE,  featuring ABCD Season 5 Champions Poreotics. So without further adieu, here’s the latest chapter of the SAIGON ELECTRIC Journey:

I was able to make it to the final days of shooting in mid-June and let me tell ya three things that hit me: It was super hot… It was super humid… And I sweated like a pig. That’s pretty much it. But I surely missed a lot more sweating because the crew pretty much sweated it out through the entire shoot, in one of Vietnam’s most blazing summers in a long time. It was amazing how no one really fainted from exhaustion! On the last day of shooting, it was a simple scene where Hai, the rich handsome kid played by heartthrob Khuong Ngoc, is dropping off our street smart dancer Kim at her place to pick up some things before they head off on their romantic weekend getaway. It was shot in an alleyway that is famous for its graffiti and just so happens to be next to a small factory. Anyway, it was fun to see the factory girls come out after their shift and get all excited with seeing Khuong Ngoc right in front of them, as they whip out their camera phones in unison to take photos of the comely star just a few feet in front of them. To me, it was a good sign.  Read more...

From OUTSOURCED to WIDOW OF NO IMPORTANCE

  • September 12, 2011 3:47 pm

PARVESH

Parvesh Cheena (that’s me, yup, I’m writing my own bio, as we tend to do) grew up in Aurora/Naperville, the suburbs outside of Chicago, Illinois. He studied acting at the University of Illinois in Urbana/Champaign and transferred to Roosevelt University in Chicago so he could act in addition to school because he was jealous of his friends getting agents in Chicago who hadn’t even done much theatre. Anyhoo, he did some commercials, got cast in BARBERSHOP and then did more theatre and then did the sequel, BARBERSHOP 2: BACK IN THE HABIT – no, that was SISTER ACT 2. Oh well. After that sequel, he auditioned for BOMBAY DREAMS, the Broadway musical, and didn’t get cast because, oh yeah, he can’t sing. So then, he – Parvesh that is, moved to Los Angeles and gave demonstrations of ice cream gelato and chicken in grocery stores and did commercials and TV and movies. He was cast as Gupta in the NBC series OUTSOURCED and can next be seen in EWP’s A WIDOW OF NO IMPORTANCE. Blah. Aren’t you bored now? Please like me. Or follow me. Or YouTube me. I’m cute but getting older.

Hi YOMYOMFers. I say it like Yom Yoff. At least when Danny Pudi and I hosted the opening night of LA ASIAN PACIFIC FILM FESTIVAL this past year, we said that. You know Pudi, right? He is that charming pal who I knew in Chicago before we both moved out here. He’s on television, killing it on COMMUNITY and I was on OUTSOURCED. But our show got killed this May. Funny, how KILL can be a good and bad word. Like bad, or fat (or is that PHAT for good?) or the phrase ‘shut up,’ when we hear something cool or unbelievable. I said ‘shut up’ a la Phoebe from FRIENDS (I was backstage at the CONAN show this year because his assistant is a pal, and Lisa Kudrow was on and I was scared to go up to her) … anyway, I said ‘shut up’, like that to my Mom once trying to be all hip and pop culture-y and cool and I don’t think she talked to me for a week.  Read more...