Or from another angle even a big Olympics event movie that follows all the different national groups to reveal their commonalities would be neat, especially if they spend some positive time mingling. Kind of like Planet B-Boy (if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it – the Japanese and Korean teams are incredible.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfq2Zwr0ABM

I’m hoping in our podcast we can discuss specific strategic character placement of Asian actors to make the most positive impact on American audiences. Since I’m a kung fu guy, i’m always thinking minimal effort for maximum effect. Then when you ramp up the effort the effect will be tremendous.

I think this is a great idea. It’s kind of like team sports, but it’s on the military field.

As a storyteller I love this group of characters because I can employ my broader study of combat strategy and tactics. We’ve done these groups in the past, and it’s the type of film Blake’s working on now.

Blake grew up in a town with landmark civil rights tragedies and very progressive movements both in the African American and gay community. In fact Greensboro’s nickname by the gay club crowd spin was Gaysboro when I DJ’ed there. The third member of All Aces, Andy Coon, has dedicated years of his life making documentaries about social injustice in Greensboro. He’s chronicled racist corruption of the police force, discriminatory prison sentencing of the son of a black activist (two life sentences for simple burglary), and the historic Greensboro Massacre where the Klan murdered several Communist Worker protesters in broad daylight and got away with it. During a recent civil suit over the Massacre, the taped evidence had been conveniently destroyed, but surprise – Andy had made the only backups during his documentary that no one knew about – and supplied them. There was finally a fraction of justice from that suit.
He made the documentary for free public consumption and I can provide a link if you like. Even though it’s not stylish enough to win a majority of festival awards, Andy still pays to submit it in order to get the truth out.

Anyway, I’m not trying to paint the picture of us as worldly or understanding or sensitive. I’m an asshole – everyone knows that. But whether we purposefully or accidentally have art you don’t approve of, our past and out future is still going to be giving our diverse network of talent an equal shot of being heroes, anti-heroes, and villains. Sometimes aspects of their characters might coincidentally match stereotypes. But that’s just coincidence, and I think the bigger audience will understand that. I also understand that racist mindsets won’t distinguish that, and it’s understandable you’d be upset and consider some art ammunition for those limited perspectives. Some people think responsibility demands artist to limit such art, and other feel that limiting the art because of how biggots might interpret it would be catering to the racists. Both those points of view are very valid. One is more likely to come from victims of racism who unfairly suffer daily being in a social sphere that includes discriminatory people – much respect and understanding needs to be paid to those muted voices. The other view is more likely to come from the art culture that embraces pluralistic acceptance, where the members of the community see individual artistic merit and celebrate the aesthetic beauty of diversity but don’t differentiate any value of skin tone – these voices need to be sensitive to the racism and hurt going on in the world and the potential effect of their art – however some activists should recognize these people, as ignorant as we may or may not be to the world outside of our rainbow bubble – our mindsets are often those that should be aspired to in a pluralistic future of equality, where there’s no racial offense or defense, just people who should be respected based on sharing the human condition.

It’s like Ed says, everything has it’s pro and con. Let’s try to find both the good and the ill in everything.

SOME IDEAS ON EVALUATING BOTH STORYTELLING ABILITY AND CULTURAL SENSATIONALISM IN DRAMATIC FILM

1. STORY VS INDUSTRY – Is the lead character justified in the story, or is he just awkardly stuffed into the story to satisfy audience demographic and film maker bias?

2. LOGIC VS FANCY – Is the story rational and do the characters all make logical sense in their actions and outcomes? Or is reason ignored and logic stretched in order to progress the status and actions of some characters? Are all characters effected equally by the same rules of the films universe?

3. RESPONSIBILITY VS GLORIFICATION – Are the themes responsible? Are characters ultimately punished for criminal behaviour, prejudice, and violence, or are they ultimately rewarded? Is there value shown in noble acts and positive character traits such as universal love, kindness, and tolerance? Are the positive and negative character traits universal, or singling out specific groups of people?

I understand your concerns are much broader than simply these issues. However, for the sport of it, if you evaluate films based on the concepts above,
You’ll find Last Samurai guilty of Industry, Fancy, and Glorification
You’ll find F&F: Tokyo Drift guilty of Industry and Glorification (the logic of events and characters is much more arguable in that film)
But in Dogs of Chinatown, while sharing several surface visual elements with those two films, is not guilty of any of the negative factors listed above.

I can understand how you’d reach that assumption given the film making industry. And you probably have some concern over several elements in the film that outwardly resemble prejudiced and irresponsible cliches from white film makers, but we took special care to ensure that all those elements made logical and responsible sense in this particular story and film.

(Also, please check out the short film I posted above if you have time. It’s nothing special as a film, but non-MA action and sci-fi lead roles like that are going to be the most beneficial roles to your immediate cause of expanding AA acceptance and representation in cinema purely from a film business standpoint.)

http://vimeo.com/4409107

It’s not Dogs of Chinatown, but i have a feeling the characters are just as Orientalist.

His comment was that all the Asian characters are deeply flawed and vile. Blake and I have both asked him whether he recognized that the white and black characters were also extremely vile and had the exact-same character flaws, flaws that are not culture-exclusive.

Unless I missed it, which is possible in these threads, I have not seen an answer, and am therefore have been unable to progress my personal discussion with him.

Personally I feel part of our misunderstanding is that you might assume we like films like Last Samurai or think ‘wow what a great idea we should do that.’ I think as a storyteller, a civil war hero sailing to Japan and becoming the Last Samurai is as ridiculous as a Japanese samurai sailing to America to win the civil war and free the slaves. I think Tokyo Drift is lazy Hollywood cultural sensationalism , but ignoring the cultural identities, the literary devices are actually much more logical than Last Samurai, because unlike Tom Cruises’ douchbag hevily-flawed character who outlives some good characters – the douchebag protagonist in Tokyo Drift has slightly less character flaws than the antagonist he beats.

We don’t watch those films and think ‘we gotta get in on that theme.’ Just because a film of ours has similar elements out of context, doesn’t mean that our story is as illogical as Last Samurai, and that our casting is forced.

Let me just honestly ask some questions to try to get better insight into your viewpoint.

Do you care that an Asian protagonist rescued and “got” the white girl in distress in one of my films?

Do you care that the most positive male character in Dogs of Chinatown, the Asian martial arts instructor, hooks up with a white girl?

Do you care that a white girl throws herself sexually at the Asian hero in another one of our films?

Do you care that a white guy rescues and “gets” the Asian girl on distress in one of my films?

If your answers vary on the first and last question, then it seems like you feel the characters should be treated differently based on the color of their skin.

We have two posters for Dogs of Chinatown. One has a bunch of ugly white mafia guys and a bunch of ugly triad guys on it together. The other has Jack defending Jin as they run through the city. But no one knows the story by looking at the poster. To imagine you do is blindly and ignorantly assuming. If you are either a white racist or if you think every white guy is racist, then you will IMAGINE the poster refers to a heroic white guy rescuing/stealing a beautiful Asian girl from a community of villainous “Orientals.” But that’s how ignorant racists will look at the poster, either cheering for or hating the white guy. If you are neutral, or pluralistic or at least tolerant of pluralism, then you’ll most likely interpret the poster as a story about love overcoming cultural divides in a tale where both characters are escaping their own background of baggage. And if you are actually educated in film, then you’ll know right off the bat from the posters’ stylism that it’s a noir, and the two lovers on the cover are probably deeply flawed characters escaping multiple threats, either criminals or shady cops or something else. But we don’t expect the general audience to that educated in film.

I understand that racists can look at any film and assume racist things about it. And I understand as an activist you watch films knowing what the racists are thinking and getting all pissed off because of it. But we’re making films for an wider audience who doesn’t think like either of those two interest groups.

If someone wants to imagine they know everything about a film from a poster. Fine. If you want to imagine you know everything about a film and it’s audience and film makers and cast from only seeing the trailer, fine. Some people imagine they know everything about Chinese people from seeing The Green Hornet, and black people from seeing rap videos, and white people from seeing a Klu Lux Klan rally. Some people might think they know everything about a book from reading one quote, or everything about nature from looking out the window, or everything about internal combustion engines by looking at a car. Assumptions are not fact. They are based on ignorance. Ego. And prejudice.

I can only invest so much concern in the hurt feelings of people who are offended based on their predisposed assumptions instead of actual logic and scientific research. There’s nothing I can do about anyone who accepts their general assumptions as cold hard detailed fact. That’s why I choose to tell stories for people who seek specific proof, and ask questions and do their homework, and embrace individual experiences instead of prejudiced assumptions and generalizations.