Hollywood creatives behind energetic video rebranding AAPI activism

HAPA MAGAZINE

Represent Us Now brought together some of the biggest AAPI names in Hollywood.

The names are familiar to Hollywood fans -- Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, Chloe Bennet, Steven Yeun, John Cho and Lana Condor, among others. The image of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is new.

The small but increasingly vocal Hollywood community of AAPI artists working in front and behind the camera are teaming up with political activists to promote AAPI pride and present the AAPI community in a more contemporary image that encourages  political activism.  

After Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Agents of SHIELD actress Chloe Bennet teamed up with Brad Jenkins who served as associate director in the office of public engagement for the White House during President Obama’s administration.

Not long after the 2016 election, Agents of SHIELD actress Chloe Bennet Brad Jenkins, a Korean American who served as associate director in the office of public engagement for the White House during President Obama’s administration. They launched RUN AAPI (Represent Us Now) in 2017 as a way to help encourage more civic engagement from their peers.

For Bennet, a Chinese American, the campaign goes beyond politics. “We need to rebrand what it means to be Asian-American. We need to make sure we instill pride in our community,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “You might not be represented yet but look at what we’re doing so far. Let’s bring it all together to bring pride in our community.”

Because this is an election year, RUN launched #TheNew to draw in younger AAPI into the political world.

"Far too often, politicians and the media overlook young Asian American power and influence," said fellow RUN co-founder Brad Jenkins. "We are the fastest growing demographic in the country and yet, we are rarely given the room to share the realities we face in our day-to-day lives. Media, culture, advertising and television all go hand-in-hand with politics, and it's time we harness our collective power to get out the vote in our communities and make sure the issues facing young Asian Americans are addressed."

SCREEN CAPTURE / VIMEO

Chloe Bennet spoke at a gathering of Recognize Us Now (RUN).

#TheNew's political strategy and mobilization efforts are focused on Texas and Georgia; two new battleground states given the rising AAPI electorate. The following AAPI organizations supported the launch of #TheNew in solidarity: AAPI Victory Fund, AAPI Progressive Action, Asian Americans Rising, APALA, the Asian American Engagement Fund, the Asian American Action Fund, We Are Sikhs, National Sikh Campaign, and local community organizers and activists on the ground.

The campaign launched with a star-studded video, which was shared by #TheNew supporters Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, Cory Booker, Ted Lieu, Nathan Chen, Ross Butler, Ai-Jen Poo, Alexander Wang, Jenna Ushkowitz, Harry Shum Jr, Joel Kim, Ella Jay Basco, Steven Yeun, Joe Zee, Prabal Gurung, Tamlyn Tomita, Lou Diamond Phillips, Brenda Song and more.

The video (below) is youthful and energetic, a far cry from the quiet and reticent community stereotype often conveyed in popular and mainstream media.

"We are your next-door neighbors. We are your heartthrobs. We are your doctors," Bennet told Clio on The Muse when describing the video's message. "We are American, all of us. We might not look it to you, but this is what the new normal in America is going to look like. I'm speaking for the Hollywood side, but I think it's also relevant on the D.C. side. We're just not represented on screen, and in an age when we're all stuck inside watching Netflix till our eyes bleed, seeing ourselves represented on screen shows you what's possible. It moves into a very tactical, winnable opportunity. You just have to tell people they matter."

As part of the campaign, (RUN) partnered with the National AAPI Power Fund and the National Education Association to commission the first-ever political opinion poll focused exclusively on young Asian Americans, 18-34 years old.

Some of the report's findings:

• 43% of registered voters are still uncertain on whether they will vote in November
• The most important issue for voter turnout is responding to COVID
• 83% prioritize containing COVID spread over reopening the economy now
• 1 in 3 report being accused of spreading coronavirus
• Young AAPI voters strongly support The Green New Deal, Black Lives Matter, and Medicare For All

“For us, Chloe and I believe a fundamental thing we want to change is we want to be a lot more out front with why our community is so important and why you need to pay attention to us," Jenkins tells The Hollywood Reporter. "You have to make the case for politicians to pay attention to our story and why we matter.”

"Celebrities are one thing," Jenkins tells Clio. "Thought leaders, influencers in their fields—whether it's journalism or advocacy or politics—they all share this feeling of being on the outside looking in at the American experience. We want to change that."

Spirit Awards: 'The Farewell' wins Best Picture & Best Supporting Actress.

SPIRIT AWARDS

Director Lulu Wang accepts the Spirit Award for her film 'The Farewell.'

ASAM NEWS

The Farewell, a film headed by Chinese American director Lulu Wang and which featured an all Asian cast speaking in both Mandarin and English won best picture at the Spirit Awards Saturday night and Zhao Schuzhen, who played the grandmother in the film, won Best Supporting Actress.

Wang seemed genuinely touched by the honor and gave a heartfelt acceptance speech before an appreciative audience.

The gracious winner gave encouragement to her fellow filmmakers and had a strong message about women directors.

“You guys, you guys. Oh, my God. I was here in 2014. It was my first time at an award ceremony. I had made a first feature that didn’t go anywhere,” she said while recalling she had just won a fellowship.

“It hasn’t been that long- five, six years and now I’m up here. For all the filmmakers out there, you can do it. You can absolutely do it. There’s been a lot of conversation this year about how to improve more women to be in film or get more women into the conversation. Shadowing is great. Programs are great, but really what we really need is just the job. Just give them the freakin’ job.” Wang urged.

While Wang noted that there are "great" programs out there for aspiring women filmmakers, she continued in what the Hollywood Reporter called the best acceptance speech: "Really, what women need is just the job. Just give them the frickin' job!"

Wang continued, "Give us the money, you know, because in America, unfortunately we're not going to make a lifelong career making arthouse films supported by government funding. That's just not the country we live in. So, just give the women the jobs. Don't make them run through that many hoops."

She thanked those who took a chance on her and hired her- Executive producer Eddie Rubin, along with producers Peter Saraf, Anita Gou, Andrew Miano, Daniele Tata Melia, Chris Weitz, and Jane Zheng as well as A24 for its marketing support.

“They were invested in marketing the film as an American film, to show a different side of what an American looks like, what an American family can look like, and what an American-leading women looks like and they did.

“I have to just thank my family. I have to thank my parents, of course. My entire family, actually my Nai Nai, my grandma. I think a year ago no body would have known who Nai Nai was, now everybody’s saying Nai Nai so that’s awesome.”

Unfortunately due to travel restrictions caused by the coronavirus, Zhao could not get out of China to attend the award show in Los Angeles.

Wang accepted on behalf of the Chinese actress. Wang addressed elder Zhao as Teacher Zhao as a sign of respect during shooting.

“I know she would really love to be here even though she didn’t read the script when I first sent it to her. She was like ‘What is this about, people lying. ‘We do this all the time. What’s dramatic about this.’ She also didn’t care that much about Hollywood. We were an independent film and we didn’t care that much about Hollywood."

For 35 years, as a counterpoint to the Academy Awards which usually go to the big budget studio-backed projects, the Spirit Awards recognizes and honors top talent from throughout the world of independent film.

Views From the Edge contributed to this report.

Awkwafina's Golden Globe win is a first for an Asian American actress

TWITTER

Awkwafina backstage acknowledges the historic recognition.

It was an historic moment in Asian American history when Awkwafina won the Golden Globe for an Actress in A Musical or Comedy for her role in American production, The Farewell.

She became the first actress of Asian descent to win that award. Last year, Constance Wu was nominated in the same category for her role in Crazy Rich Asians but didn't win.

Sandra Oh also won a Golden Globe last year for "Killing Eve" in the Best Actress in a TV Dramatic Series.

Awkwafina, better known for her comedic roles, challenged herself with the dramatic role of Billi, an Asian American who visits her family in China and her grandmother who doesn't know that she is dying from cancer.

Clasping her award, she joked, "If I fall upon hard times I can sell this, so that’s good.”

SCREEN CAPTURE

Awkwafina publicly thanked 'The Farewell's' director Lulu Wang, left, and costar Zhao Shuzhen.

She thanked the movie's director Lulu Wang, who also wrote the script based on her own real-life experience. She told Wang, "You gave me this chance -- the chance of a lifetime."

Backstage, Awkwafina when told about the historic nature of her award, she said, “I just heard that fact and it was pretty mind blowing,” she began. “There’s also this other feeling that you want there to be more, and I hope this is just the beginning.”

“Immigrants in this country who were raised to feel very American ... and when we go back where, you know, we’re told that you don’t belong here and you go back to where you belong,” she continued.

”You feel like a stranger there and this constant feeling of being lost in translation. And I think that’s what really resonated with me in The Farewell.”

Awkwafna's recognition was celebrated by a host of fellow Asian Americans in the entertainment industry.

The Farewell was also nominated in the Best Foreign Language Movie category but lost out to the South Korean thriller Parasite. It was the first time a South Korean film won a Golden Globe.

Accepting the award was Bong Joon-ho, who was also nominated for Best Director. speaking through an interpreter, Bong Joon-ho said, "Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,"  

"Just being nominated along with fellow, amazing international filmmakers was a huge honor."

The filmmaker then added in English, "I think we use only one language: the cinema."

Earlier in the day, Parasite, which opened in October to ecstatic review, also was named the year’s best film by the National Society of Film Critics. With the Golden Globe Award, it has increased its chances of being nominated for an Academy Award, either in Best Movie or Best Foreign Movie categories. 

Awkwafina's name has already been bruited about as a nominee in the Best Actress award for an Oscar, but competition is stiff. Unlike the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards doesn't separate comedic roles from dramatic roles and competition is very stiff.

With the exception for awards for Awkwafina and Parasite, the Golden Globe awardees were almost colorless. No African American or Latino actors or projects won in the major categories. That raises the question of the diversity of the 90 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who vote for the Golden Globes.

AAPI stars shine bright at Hollywood's Unforgettable Gala

The cast of 'Fresh Off the Boat' was honored with The Legacy Award at the Unforgettable Gala.

ASAM NEWS

Asian Americans in Hollywood gathered to honor their own at the 18th annual Unforgettable Gala last weekend in Beverly Hills. 

Put on by Character Media (formerly Kore Asian Media ), a who’s who of Asian American and Pacific Islander entertainers featured in 2019 came together to celebrate the icons in the entertainment industry.

Awkwafina won the best actor/actress award for The Farewell, the film’s Lulu Wang won in the director category and its entire cast received the Vanguard Award, reports The Hollywood Reporter.

“It’s almost rebirth time,” said Tzi Ma who played Awkwafina’s father in The Farewell. “We’re not stuck with all the flash and the special effects. To be able to tell a story with no thrills and just people talking, and 80 percent in a foreign language, something’s going on.”

Other winners, according to Deadline, included NBC Superstore's Nico Santos for TV actor, Charles Melton as breakout star for The Sun is Also a Star, Maya Erskine as breakout star in TV for Hulu’s Pen 15, Ali Wong for comic performance in Netflix’s Always Be My Maybe, and Bobby Hundreds as digital influencer.

The entire cast of Fresh Off the Boat won the Legacy Award which wraps up its sixth and final season February 21.  The show's stars Randall Park, Constance Wu, Hudson Yang, Forrest Wheeler, Ian Chen, Chelsey Crisp and Lucille Soong were all on hand to accept the award from Ken Jeong and Ming-Na Wen.

“It seems to have inspired other people to tell their stories, one story can’t represent a whole,” Constance Wu of Fresh Off the Boat said to The Hollywood Reporter. Wu said she felt a mixture of sadness that the show was ending, but also happiness that it inspired other stories to be told.

The cast of 'The Farewell' won the Vanguard Award and Awkwafina (left, front) was named Best Actor/Actress at the Unforgettable Gala last Saturday.

The Unforgettable Gala through its 18 years has become the AAPI equivalent to the entertainment industry's awards shows that often overlook the work of AAPI artists. 

"This year, we have seen more Asian American faces on screen and more Asian American projects green-lit than in the decades past. It is more important now than ever that we take this moment to award these individuals who are paving the way, because of course – we still have a long way to go," states the evening's program.

Simu Liu, who emceed the show with singer/rapper/songwriter Amber Liu (no relation) included a zinger aimed at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, according to Variety. The actor, set to  star in Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” noted that the voting body of the Golden Globe Awards nominated Awkwafina for best actress in a motion picture musical or comedy for her performance in “The Farewell” and the film itself for best foreign language film.

“Awkwafina is also having a really good year. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in The Farewell, or as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association calls it, ‘That movie with all the foreign people that speak Asian,'” Liu cracked, echoing a criticism that the film — while mostly in Mandarin Chinese — is an Asian American story, written and directed by an Asian American and starring an Asian American.

Writer Adele Lim who won for Crazy Rich Asians last year reminded people what the night is all about.

“We have all these stories that we’ve been sitting on and burying because we’ve been told over decades that it’s not gonna sell. We’ve seen over the few years that it’s simply not true. That’s a bigger truism we can take to the bank.”

Views From the Edge contributed to this report.

'The Farewell' almost never got made

ASAM NEWS

The Farewell, a new indie film starring Awkwafina, shot past the one million dollar mark in the box office in its second weekend. Fox Business reports the film from director Lulu Wang has grossed $1.67 million since being released on July 13. 

The film with an all-Asian and Asian American cast, is rated 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and has received the Sundance Institute’s prestigious Vanguard Award. But the film many are talking about this summer almost didn’t happen; Wang nearly gave up all hope of making it when potential producers turned her down because they couldn’t place her story as “American” or “Chinese.”

The movie is based on a true story, or “an actual lie” as the movie trailer calls it, involving Wang’s real-life grandma.

Wang began pitching her story to potential producers, hoping to make a tender but comical movie about the lengths that family go to protect one another. But time and again, she was asked the question: “Is this an American film or a Chinese film?”

“Which is kind of like asking me, ‘Are you American or are you Chinese?'” Wang told Vox in an interview. Wang would respond that she’s American, because she grew up here, speaks English, and has an American perspective.

The American financiers weren’t buying it though. “It’s not an American film,” they told her, “It won’t work for the American market.”

So then she tried pitching to Chinese financiers, but was still met with resistance. “This Chinese producer was like, ‘You need a White guy in your movie,’” Wang said in an interview with IndieWire, “They’re so influenced by Hollywood.”

Wang gave up on making the film. “I thought if I can’t make the film the way I want to make it, I’m not going to make it at all,” she told IndieWire. But she thought maybe she could tell the story some other way, so she wrote the details down as a short story.

Wang had already made a feature-length film called Posthumous in 2014, and a 12-minute short called Touch. Neil Drumming, a producer for the radio show This American Life, saw Touch at a film festival, and approached her for more story ideas.

“He was like, ‘You’re a woman of color in Hollywood. What stories do you want to tell that no one’s letting you tell?’” Wang recounted to The Washington Post.

It took a month and a half to write and record the radio episode. “We interviewed my family, and it was such a pure experience—I got to really dig into how I felt.” What You Don’t Know aired on This American Life on April 22, 2016. Within 48 hours, producers called to say that they did want to make her story into a film, including production companies Depth of Field, and Big Beach.

“I said I wouldn’t compromise on the way it was cast,” Wang said, “and I was not going to compromise on the language. It was going to be primarily Mandarin. It will not make any sense for grandma and the family to speak English.”

Depth of Field and Big Beach signed on within a week. Big Beach producer Dani Melia recalled to IndieWire, “When we listened to the podcast, it was indicative of her strong storytelling sensibilities and these rich characters she knew so well. There was never a question in my mind about making this authentic or not.”

With financing secured, Wang’s next challenge was to choose the acting talent. Wang said she needed to find somebody that “really felt American” to play Billi, the stand-in for Wang in the movie. It was then that Awkwafina, before her breakout roles in Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8, submitted an audition tape.

“When I was first kind of placed before her, she was quizzical because she only knew me from ‘My Vag,’” Awkwafina told IndieWire, referring to her viral music video.

Wang was sold on her audition. “All of the emotion was on her face and her eyes,” Wang said. “I needed an actress who could carry the scenes even without speaking.”

Acting alongside Awkwafina was Wang’s great-aunt, who played herself in the film, and whom Wang calls Little Nai Nai. “At first, she was like…’you want me in [the movie]? I have a fat face. I’m just, like, a normal person with a normal face…. I’m going to ruin your movie, because I’m not a movie star,’” Wang recounted to Vox.

“So to be able to show her that she is a movie star, and that the family story is worthwhile, it’s really meaningful in terms of what they think of themselves and the value of our unique stories.”

The Farewell is now playing in select theaters and is generating Oscar buzz for its director and the performance of Awkwafina. The film launches nationwide on August 2nd.

___________________________________________________________________

TGIF Feature: AAPI movie fans get a whole gamut of emotions in 2 films this weekend

'The Farewell' stars Awkwafina, center.

This weekend is an unusual one for Asian American moviegoers. Released today (Friday, July 12) two movies featuring Asian American actors in the lead roles: The Farewell and Stuber.

The two movies are different from each other as can be. 

In The Farewell, director Lulu Wang uses a superb all-Asian and Asian American cast along with gentle humor and a deliberate slow pace to bond the audience with its characters, who we may recognize as our own relatives.

The performance of Awkwafina, who had a breakthrough role in the groundbreaking film Crazy Rich Asians, has been universally acclaimed.

Stuber, is a oddball paring for a action buddy movie, but it also uses humor -- this time slapstick and raucous -- to raise questions about toxic masculinity. Kumail Nanjaini, an Uber driver, and Dave Bautista, a hardboiled detective, use their physical differences to utmost to play off of their different views on life.

The action and laughs are almost nonstop, according to some reviews. 

Also in the cast is Indonesian action star Iko Uwais as its villain. Its the first movie by a major studio to have three South and Southeast Asians in its leads.

________________________________________________________________