Now that the dust (or snow) from Park City's Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals has settled, Jeff Yang's latest "Asian Pop" column talks with the filmmakers behind some of this year's high-profile Asian American indie films, including American Zombie's Grace Lee, Dark Matter and Year of the Fish's Janet Yang and Finishing the Game's Justin Lin.
My favorite part is the very end, where Justin Lin recounts that he almost got into a fight with Tom Arnold, who apparently made "ching chong" noises at him and the cast and crew of Finishing the Game during a photo shoot -- a reminder that there are still some major obstacles (ya know, racism) for Asian American filmmakers.
"You know, I'm walking down the street in Park City, and people think, 'Oh, it's just some Asian dude,' and they ignore me," says Lin. "But if someone points me out and says my name, they act differently. It is what it is. I was doing a photo shoot with the cast of the movie, and some idiot was being really obnoxious in the background, making ching-chong noises. I was like, 'Who the f-- is that?' And I looked over and said, 'Damn, that's Tom Arnold. I'm not going to take that. I'm going after him.' So I almost got into this huge fight with Tom f--ing Arnold. At the end of the day, it's still a struggle. It's still the same struggle."
Moral of the story? You can think you've "made it" as an Asian American filmmaker in Hollywood, but there's always going to be some racist ass making "ching chong" noises in the background.
