Got another weird casting call sent my way... This one's kind of interesting. Abominable Pictures is currently casting actors of Chinese descent for a live-action Adult Swim comedy pilot called Dumb American Family. The premise will kind of make your head spin.Dumb American Family is a multi-camera sitcom featuring Asian actors made up to look like "gluttonous Americans," speaking in "loud, boisterous, slightly wrong English with Mandarin Chinese subtitles."
What it sounds like: if Chinese television made a sitcom about an American family -- ugly western stereotypes set to maximum -- this is what it might look like.
This is either going to be kind of brilliant or absolutely infuriating. Here are the character breakdowns:
UPDATE: I've been informed that the breakdown is allegedly copyrighted material, so I'm taking it down -- for the time being. But here is a non-descriptive list of the characters they're casting. They want actors of Chinese descent for all the characters except Kraimo:
DOUGIE LINCOLN, 12-16
RONALD LINCOLN, Mid to late 40s
KERRI-STRUG LINCOLN, Mid 40s
VAMPIRE LINCOLN, Early 20s
KRAIMO (The only non-Chinese actor in the bunch.)
LIU XUN, 25-45
SERGEANT APE, 30s
LUCAS, 12-16
JILL, 12-16
I've gotten a look at the pilot script and man, I don't know what to make of this. Is it mocking ugly American ignorance? Or perhaps it's yet another jab at China's cultural posturing/incompetence. Or somewhere in between? It's really difficult to tell on the page. Who's being laughed at here?
If done right, I could see Dumb American Family actually being really smart and wickedly subversive. Or maybe something else entirely. Of course, it still requires Chinese-speaking American actors to play rather ignorant Chinese actors doing fake American accents through via their fake Chinese accents. (Huh?) I don't know. This is one where we'll have to wait and see -- honestly, I'm intrigued.