Census Snapshot
June 20, 2003
Early 1990s: everybody was kung ku fighting
As always, in the 1990s the mainstream American media and Hollywood had no interest in showing the real APA experience. Instead, they were still capitalizing on the legend of Bruce Lee and America’s fascination with Asian martial arts.
Hollywood cashed in by releasing a wave of martial arts films during the 1980s and 1990s, including teen audience fare like The Karate Kid and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The two films and their sequels scored at the box office with over $500 million in domestic gross revenue, but reinforced the same old “chopsocky,” kung fu images associated with Asians in American pop culture.
In 1993, Hollywood resurrected the legend of Bruce Lee with Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, a biopic of his early life starring Jason Scott Lee (no relation), while Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club hit the big screen with Wayne Wang directing an all-female APA cast.
The Joy Luck Club was a huge crossover commercial success, earning over $30 million at the U.S. box office and opening the doors for APA actresses in Hollywood, but criticism surrounded the film’s portrayal of its APA male characters. That same year, Korean American comic/actress Margaret Cho’s landmark prime time TV sitcom All-American Girl hit the airwaves and flopped after one season.
Although the visibility of APAs in mainstream television shows and Hollywood films increased during the early 90s, APA independent filmmakers were the first to break into the limelight, with Steven Okazaki winning an Academy Award in 1991 for his short documentary, Days of Waiting.
More acclaim for APA independent filmmakers followed, with Frieda Lee Mock winning an Academy Award for her documentary Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision and Jessica Yu winning for Breathing Lessons: The Life of Mark O’Brien.
During this same period, gay filmmakers like Gregg Araki (The Living End, Totally Fucked Up and The Doom Generation) and Arthur Dong (Coming Out Under Fire and Licensed to Kill) pushed into new territory with their seminal works.
Mid 1990s: indie films break on through
As the mid-90s approached, APAs were collectively struggling on the margins of Hollywood even as Asian imports like John Woo and Jackie Chan were beginning to prove their crossover box office appeal. Through community-based organizations like the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) and Visual Communications (VC), a number of independent feature films found success, including Kayo Hatta’s Picture Bride, which won the Sundance Film Festival’s audience award in 1995.
Overlooked during this period was the arrival of Filipino American filmmaker David Maquiling with Too Much Sleep, a film that raised controversy in the APA film community for not featuring any APA characters. Thanks to good word of mouth and press reviews Too Much Sleep later found a crossover arthouse film audience and become the first nationally distributed film by a Filipino American.
As the decade came to a close, APA independent film gained momentum, with Tony and Timothy Bui’s Three Seasons (Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 1999), Karyn Kusama’s Girlfight (Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2000), and Emiko Omori’s documentary Rabbit in the Moon (Sundance Audience Award in 1999 and Emmy Award in 2000).
Hollywood: Where’s our story?
But in Hollywood, the real APA experience remained invisible to mainstream audiences. Filmmakers such as part-Japanese Dean Devlin (Stargate, Independence Day and Godzilla), Hong Kong native James Wong (Final Destination and The One) and Indian American M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs) created some of the decade’s biggest Hollywood blockbusters, but weren’t easily recognizable as APAs.
Their success as mainstream filmmakers (nearly $1 billion in combined domestic gross box office revenue) proved that opportunities exist for talented APAs in Hollywood, but as filmmakers they did little to change the stereotypes or increase the visibility of APAs on the screen. According to the Screen Actors Guild, about 2.6 percent of all roles cast in television and film went to APAs in 2000 — double 1992’s 1.3 percent figure — but most of those roles remained relatively minor.
On the independent filmmaking front, burgeoning talents like Rod Pulido (his film The Flip Side was the first Filipino American film to screen at Sundance), Gene Cajayon (The Debut) and Chinese American Bertha Bay-Sa Pan (Face) all went the self-distribution route to find an audience for their unique works.
Pan’s film attracted a lot of attention from African American audiences: Its story surrounds a Chinese American girl dating an African American DJ against the wishes of her family. The casting of an African American rapper in the film and mixing of APAs with urban hip hop culture tapped into the popular trend of Hollywood films like Jet Li’s Romeo Must Die and Jackie Chan’s Rush Hour movies.
Director Justin Lin pushed the boundaries of APA film even further with Better Luck Tomorrow, a dark tale of frustrated suburban teens finding an outlet through sex, drugs and violence. The controversial film stirred up debate at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival for its lack of “positive” APA characters, prompting film critic Roger Ebert to jump up on a chair to defend the film.
With its all-APA cast, Lin’s visionary tale could be the breakthrough film for APA filmmakers. It may herald the total assimilation of APAs into the mainstream American consciousness, helping to accomplish a reality shift in which multiculturalism, mixed-races and alternative lifestyles become the “norm” in Hollywood and the mass media.
—Ed Moy
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