President Bill Clinton made a surprise appearance at a screening of Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary, Virunga, at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York on Saturday night.
Virunga is executive-produced by DiCaprio and follows a team of park rangers in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo who risk their lives to protect the home of endangered mountain gorillas.
Before the screening, Clinton shared about the work of the Clinton Global Initiative members in the Democratic Republic of Congo and importance of the documentary’s mission with attendees.
Ann Curry moderated a Q&A following the screening with Virunga director Orlando von Einsiedel and producer Joanna Natasegara, which discussed the message behind the film.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Jonah Hill, Jeffrey Wright, Jeff Gordon, Beau Willimon and Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos also attended the screening.
Virunga is Oscar-nominated for best documentary feature.
Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking in December in New York. As she prepares for a likely presidential campaign in 2016, the cottage industry that opposes her is evolving to attack her on new grounds.
First, she was called the bra-burning feminist with a degree from Wellesley. Then, she was the aggressively political spouse from Arkansas who plotted behind closed doors. Today, she is the millionaire elitist who socializes in New York City and the Hamptons.
Few modern political figures inspire the animus that Hillary Rodham Clinton generates, and the cottage industry that opposes her never really goes out of business. But as Mrs. Clinton prepares for a likely presidential campaign in 2016, the sprawling network is evolving to attack her on new grounds.
There are “super PACs” with names like Women Against Hillary, Just Say No to Hillary, Stop Hillary and Defeat Hillary. The Republican National Committee recently introduced a website PoorHillaryClinton.com, which mocks Mrs. Clinton’s wealth.
While all politicians endure scrutiny and efforts by the other side to define them, the attacks on Mrs. Clinton often take on a personal tone, which her defenders say is driven by an electorate still coming to terms with the possibility of a female president.
Anti-Clinton groups are focusing on the 2012 attack in Benghazi.
But the message against Mrs. Clinton before 2016 is shifting, highlighting new, less gender-based attacks than those leveled during the 2008 campaign. She is no longer caricatured as the embodiment of a 1960s feminist pushing her husband’s administration to the left. Instead, Mrs. Clinton is criticized as overly cautious and centrist and out of touch with average Americans. Last summer she said that her family was “dead broke” upon leaving the White House, yet she has made millions off her books and is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches.
Richard H. Collins, a Dallas investor whose website Stop Her Now seven years ago suggested that Mrs. Clinton was a witch and featured her bludgeoning other politicians with a “Hillary hammer,” said he had no plans to resurrect the effort in 2016. And when the super PAC The Hillary Project introduced a “Slap Hillary” game online in 2013, many Republicans were quick to denounce the gimmick as sexist.
Sexist attacks were “a dumb thing to do in 2008, and will be a dumb thing to do in 2016,” said Tim Miller, executive director of America Rising, an anti-Democrat super PAC. “The most effective arguments against Secretary Clinton have absolutely nothing to do with her gender,” he added.
A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Kirsten Kukowski, said it is not an “either/or” question of whether to point out scandals from Mrs. Clinton’s early years or her current record and finances. Internal polling has shown, she said, that attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s more recent years resonate more effectively with voters. (The R.N.C. is also assembling a book on Mrs. Clinton and has dispatched opposition researchers to Little Rock, Ark.)
There is no question that Mrs. Clinton, after two decades in public life, remains divisive: 50 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of her, and 45 percent have an unfavorable opinion, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in November.
Unlike in 2008, when Mrs. Clinton’s campaign largely ignored the “stop Hillary” websites and the sale of “No Way in Hellary” barbecue aprons, this time Clinton loyalists have formed their own groups to counter attacks early.
They say they are keenly aware of what happened to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 election, when an independent conservative group, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, attacked his military record in the Vietnam War. The attacks stuck and contributed to Mr. Kerry’s loss to President George W. Bush.
David Brock, founder of Correct the Record, a project that defends Mrs. Clinton in the news media, and a onetime conservative critic of the Clintons, published the e-book “The Benghazi Hoax” in 2013 that defends Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya.
He said criticism that she is wealthy and out of touch would be an easy one to combat, particularly if the Republican nominee is Jeb Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, or Mitt Romney, whose personal wealth became a point of contention in his 2012 campaign and who recently told donors that he was considering running again in 2016.
It was not long ago that conservatives were “raising money off the caricature of her as a dyed-in-the-wool socialist,” Mr. Brock said.
“Now, we’re expected to believe a totally contrary fictional premise — that she’s a plutocrat,” he added.
The fight to define, or redefine, Mrs. Clinton will become only more intense. For Republicans, the attacks not only excite the conservative base, but they can help shape a narrative to weaken Mrs. Clinton’s chances with the broader electorate.
Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group that produced the 2008 anti-Clinton documentary “Hillary: The Movie,” has another documentary in preproduction set to premiere during the 2016 campaign. That film will mostly focus on Mrs. Clinton’s career as a New York senator through her time as secretary of state, and will look at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United and a longtime critic of the Clintons, said Mrs. Clinton’s time in Arkansas and in the White House were less relevant than her ties to the Obama administration and her family’s finances.
“People have to be reminded of these things that she was involved in, but are they the most important? No,” he said.
Next month, Bruce Fein, a lawyer who is close to Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, plans to introduce a website called HillaryWatch.com that will largely focus on Mrs. Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy positions and her views on executive power. (He joked that it could be called “Queen Hillary.”)
The idea, he said, grew out of a pamphlet that defended Mr. Paul’s foreign policy positions. “We want to destroy these myths about Hillary, one of which is her great competence,” Mr. Fein said. A spokesman for Mr. Paul said the senator had met Mr. Fein but never talked with him about an anti-Hillary website.
The cottage industry caricaturing Mrs. Clinton has its own kitschy paraphernalia, some of which seems more rooted in the early mockery of her than on her more recent record, like bumper stickers that read “Even Bill Doesn’t Want Hillary!”
The creators behind the “Hillary Nutcracker” plan to reintroduce the item — which, as the name suggests, cracks open nuts between Mrs. Clinton’s thighs — the day she declares her candidacy. They expect it to resonate with both pro- and anti-Hillary customers.
“If you see a bossy, polarizing broad with ideas you don’t like, then that’s what you get,” said Gibson Carothers, one of the creators. He added, “If you see a tough, strong leader with ideas you do like, then that’s what you get.”
The upcoming film I Am Michael tells the true story of former gay activist Michael Glatze (James Franco), who would later denounce homosexuality and become a Christian pastor. But before that, all bets were off – as evidenced by newly released stills depicting James Franco, Zachary Quinto, and Teen Wolf‘s Charlie Carver… forming a holy trinity.
We knew back in November that Quinto, Franco & Carver would be involved in an onscreen threesome for the film but now we have some visual proof. This still, along with an number of other images from the film was just released.. and is sure to cause he breathless uproar.
The three characters meet in a dance club in the 80′s. When Charlie’s character asks Michael if he has a boyfriend, he replies, “He’d like you too.” The full contents of the scene have yet to be revealed, but let’s just say you might want to get a head start filling out the addresses on your “thank you” letters.
Other new stills include a visit to a rave…
Quinto and Carver staring into the middle distance…
Franco graciously continuing to refuse to wear a shirt…
Something with a tree that will probably make you cry…
Franco and Quinto kissing, which will definitely make you cry…
and Franco embracing Emma Roberts, perhaps congratulating her on her escape from the iron grip of American Horror Story: Freak Show…
I Am Michaelpremieres at Sundance on January 24th, further release dates TBA.
1/22/2015 The New York Times By AMY CHOZICK and MICHAEL CIEPLY
Martin Scorsese has tackled the mob, the Dalai Lama and the real-life Wolf of Wall Street.
But he appears to have met his match in Bill Clinton.
Mr. Scorsese’s partly finished documentary about Mr. Clinton — which once seemed likely to be released as Hillary Rodham Clinton was navigating a presidential run — has stalled over disagreements about control, people briefed on the project said.
Though parts of the film were shot over the last two years as Mr. Clinton made a philanthropic visit to Africa and elsewhere, the project is now indefinitely shelved, partly because Mr. Clinton insisted on more control over the interview questions and final version than Mr. Scorsese was willing to give, those people said.
Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, on a 2013 visit to South Africa, a trip that was to be featured in a documentary.
How Mr. Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, who briefly worked as a special correspondent at NBC News, might figure in the film or on the production team was also an open question.
Asked about assertions that the project, which is backed by HBO, was stalled over differences about content and control and was now put aside, Matt McKenna, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, in an email described them as “inaccurate,” without elaborating.
Martin Scorsese wanted to “provide greater insight.”
A spokesman for Mr. Scorsese declined to comment on the project, as did a spokesman for Steve Bing, a Clinton friend and donor who was to be a producer of the film. A spokesman for HBO said, “It’s not happening soon but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.”
The people who described the project’s disintegration (barring a sudden thaw between the two camps) spoke on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality strictures.
Mr. Scorsese, an Academy Award-winning director who is 72 years old, still has many cinematic irons in the fire. This week, a representative at his Sikelia Productions said the filmmaker and his associates were preoccupied with preparations in Taiwan for the filming of “Silence,” a period piece about Jesuit priests, which stars Liam Neeson and Andrew Garfield and is set for release in the United States by Paramount Pictures.
But Mr. Scorsese clearly had a soft spot for the Clinton project. In a 2012 statement, he said the film would “provide greater insight into this transcendent figure.” Mr. Clinton at the time said he was pleased to become the subject of a “legendary director.”
Still, neither Mr. Clinton nor Mr. Scorsese proved able to overcome the complications inherent in an attempt to build entertainment — however informative a documentary might be — around a figure whose wife stands on the verge of another presidential campaign.
Clearly, the film carried the risk that an unflattering camera angle, unwelcome question or even an obvious omission by Mr. Scorsese would become a blemish to Mr. Clinton’s legacy or provide fodder for Clinton critics as the 2016 campaign approaches. Apparently to avoid such problems, people close to Mr. Clinton sought to approve questions he would be asked in the film, and went so far as to demand final cut, a privilege generally reserved for directors of Mr. Scorsese’s stature.
Mr. Scorsese’s camp rejected those suggestions and the project was shelved. The film now appears to be years away from completion.
Chelsea Clinton, who left her lucrative NBC News job in August and works closely with her father, was expected to figure in the documentary in some way, and some in the Clinton circle had speculated that she would be credited as a producer. But a spokesman for Ms. Clinton said any notion that she had sought to join the production was “categorically false.”
In recent months, Mr. Clinton’s team has shown increased discipline in keeping the former president on message ahead of his wife’s likely 2016 presidential campaign. Mrs. Clinton is expected to declare her candidacy sometime this spring.
The former president is often a strong asset for his wife, but Mr. Clinton also proved to be a liability during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary when he made comments about then-Senator Barack Obama that many interpreted as racially insensitive.
While “Clinton the Musical,” a stage satire focused on Clinton administration scandals, is now set for an Off Broadway run beginning in March, other Clinton-themed entertainment projects have faltered.
In the fall of 2013, CNN scrapped a documentary about Mrs. Clinton in the face of pushback from Clinton aides and the Republican National Committee; NBC dropped a planned mini-series in which Diane Lane would have portrayed her.
Also, “Rodham,” a planned feature film about the romance between a young Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham, has been struggling through Hollywood’s development process since Lionsgate acquired rights to it in 2013.
According to people briefed on the status of that project, the proposed director, James Ponsoldt — whose David Foster Wallace bio pic “The End of the Tour” has a Sundance Film Festival premiere on Friday — remains interested in directing “Rodham.”
But the producers are looking for a prominent, preferably female screenwriter, to revise a script that was originally written by Young Il Kim, a little-known writer who had studied economics at Harvard and wrote “Rodham” as a passion project. As yet, no star is attached, and no start date has been set.
The people briefed on its status said the project had encountered neither direct interference nor encouragement from the Clinton camp, though both political friends and opponents of the Clintons have privately weighed in with various opinions.
Some allies see the film as a potential plus, while others fret that even a slight misstep in execution may make the Clintons look unappealing. On the flip side, some political adversaries suspect the film will become a promotional tool, while others welcome it as a complicating factor in any Clinton campaign.
Over all, the crackle of media attention and conflicting opinion have made the development process more difficult than usual, one person briefed on it said.
As an unauthorized biography, “Rodham” does not depend on support from the Clintons, as did Mr. Scorsese’s film. But resistance could become a problem when the producers eventually seek out actresses who are represented by a small number of Hollywood agencies. Already, two people said, at least one Hollywood actors’ agent sympathetic to the Clintons has communicated concerns about the possible impact of “Rodham.”
Queries to Lionsgate, to Mr. Ponsoldt’s agents at the United Talent Agency and to producers at Temple Hill Entertainment and the Arlook Group, which are producing the movie, drew no response.
Mr. Bing, a generous donor to Mr. Clinton and the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, had been a guiding force behind Mr. Scorsese’s documentary, and had initially persuaded the 42nd president to cooperate in its making. Mr. Bing was a producer of Mr. Scorsese’s 2008 documentary “Shine a Light,” about the Rolling Stones.
Known for its critically acclaimed documentaries, HBO has previously produced films about presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Mr. Scorsese had earlier worked with HBO on documentaries about George Harrison and Fran Lebowitz, and he was an executive producer of the cable channel’s drama “Boardwalk Empire,” which recently ended its run.
1. When it comes to fellow writers, don’t buy into the narcissism of small differences. In all their neurotic, competitive, smart, funny glory, other writers are your friends.
2. Unless you’re Stephen King, or you’re standing inside your own publishing house, assume that nobody you meet has ever heard of you or your books. If they have, you can be pleasantly surprised.
3. At a reading, 25 audience members and 20 chairs is better than 200 audience members and 600 chairs.
4. There are very different ways people can ask a published writer for the same favor. Polite, succinct, and preemptively letting you off the hook is most effective.
5. Blurbs achieve almost nothing, everyone in publishing knows it, and everyone in publishing hates them.
6. But a really good blurb from the right person can, occasionally, make a book take off.
7. When your book is on best-seller lists, people find you more amusing and respond to your emails faster.
8. When your book isn’t on best-seller lists, your life is calmer and you have more time to write.
9. The older you are when your first book is published, the less gratuitous resentment will be directed at you.
10. The goal is not to be a media darling; the goal is to have a career.
11. The farther you live from New York, the less preoccupied you’ll be with literary gossip. Like cayenne pepper, literary gossip is tastiest in small doses.
12. Contrary to stereotype, most book publicists aren’t fast-talking, vapid manipulators; they’re usually warm, organized youngish women (yes, they are almost all women) who love to read.
13. Female writers are asked more frequently about all of the following topics than male writers: whether their work is autobiographical; whether their characters are likable; whether their unlikable characters are unlikable on purpose or the writer didn’t realize what she was doing; how they manage to write after having children.
14. If you tell readers a book is autobiographical, they will try to find ways it isn’t. If you tell them it’s not autobiographical, they will try to find ways it is.
15. It’s not your responsibility to convince people who don’t like your books that they should. Taste is subjective, and you’re not running for elected office.
16. By not being active on social media, you’re probably shooting yourself in the foot. That said, faking fluency with or interest in forms of social media that don’t do it for you is much harder than making up dialogue for imaginary characters.
17. If someone asks what you do and you don’t feel like getting into it, insert the word freelance before the word writer, and they will inquire about nothing more.
18. If you read a truly great new book and feel more excited than jealous, congratulations, you’re a writer.
19. Fiercely, fiercely, fiercely protect your writing time.
20. It’s OK to let your book be published if you can see its flaws but don’t know how to fix them. Don’t let your book be published if it still contains flaws that are fixable, even if fixing them is a lot of work.
21. Talking about how brutally difficult it is to write books is unseemly. Unless you’re the kind of writer who’s been imprisoned by the dictatorship where you live and is being advocated for by PEN American Center, give it a rest.
22. Books bring information, provocation, entertainment, and comfort to many people. You’re lucky to be part of that.
23. Sometimes good books sell well; sometimes good books sell poorly; sometimes bad books sell well; sometimes bad books sell poorly. A lot about publishing is unfair and inscrutable. But…
24. …you don’t need anyone else’s approval or permission to enjoy the magic of writing — of sitting by yourself, figuring out which words should go together to express whatever it is you’re trying to say.
“Just say the line,” said Melvin, our executive producer.
“Did you read the book 1?” I asked. “If you can find any crumb of a complete thought in the book that remotely infers ‘America is great,’ I’ll read the line.”
“Eddie, we need it for the episode. It’s a big moment! You have a black kid and a Chinese kid breaking bread over a Jewish hip-hop concert. Where else could this happen? America IS great!”
“Of course you picked a Beastie Boys concert. That’s what you people do — you make Asian sitcoms for white people praising Ill Communication because we’re both acceptable, unthreatening gateways to black culture. These kids couldn’t break bread at a Gravediggaz show?”
“It’s not your story anymore. Get over it. The kids ARE NOT going to a Gravediggaz show! This is a HISTORIC network-television show inspired by your life, and it’s going to get Americans excited about us. 2 It’s never going to be the book; it’s never going to be Baohaus. 3 It’s Panda Express, 4 and you know what? Orange chicken gets America really excited about Chinese people in airports.”
“Then what did you buy my book for? Just make A Chink’s Life … With Free Wonton Soup or Soda: A reverse-yellowface show with universal white stories played out by Chinamen.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. This show is on the AMERICAN BROADCASTING CHANNEL. It’s the holy grail! Network television! Just say the line, man …”
Complete silence.
“How about a compromise? What about ‘Ain’t America great?’ or ‘America’s not half-bad!’”
I’d known Asian-Americans like Melvin my entire life. Those Booker T. Washington 5–Professor X–Uncle Chans, willing to cast down their buckets, take off Cerebro, and forget that successful people of color are in many ways “chosen” and “allowed” to exist while the others get left behind. They spout off about the American Dream or Only in America as if they’re about to rob the next great fighter from Brownsville. 6 I empathize with Melvin, but Uncle Chans are basically born-again-Christian felons who will praise anything as long as they don’t get sent back to Rikers. I’d rather be Tunechi, “Left Rikers in a Phantom, that’s my nigga.” 7
From the Chinese Exclusion Act to Yick Wo v. Hopkins to your favorite talking head’s favorite “ching chong” jokes, America never ran out of the shadows to defend the honor of their obedient Chinamen. Despite being the “man’s” preferred lapdog of color, everything Asian-American immigrants have was fought for. We still wake up spotting the man 10 points, walking with our heads down, apologizing for our FOB-y aunts and uncles as if aspiring to wash your shirt or do your taxes were really such an insidiously foreign idea. In a way, I accept that I have to be 10 points better; what I won’t accept are Melvins.
“Run the tape.” I said to the editor recording the session. The red light went on.
“America ain’t three fifths bad.” #Compromise
Huang (in Basquiat crown) with his family in 1985.
I used to try to understand my existence underneath the Bamboo Ceiling, 8 but with no way out through the master’s house, I laced up my Timb boots, initiated Chinkstronaut mode, and escaped the gravitational pull of society. Since 2009, I’ve opened Baohaus, produced and hosted Huang’s Worldfor Vice, and, in January 2013, Spiegel and Grau published my memoir, Fresh Off the Boat. It told my life story as a Taiwanese-Chinese-American creating his own America replete with bound feet, bowl cuts, sports sex, and soup dumps. I even got love in the Times. Dwight Garner said it was “a surprisingly sophisticated memoir about race and assimilation in America. It’s an angry book, as much James Baldwin and Jay-Z as Amy Tan. That it’s also bawdy and frequently hilarious nearly, if not entirely, seals the deal.” Life was good.
I also became a TED fellow. But after two days, I got kicked out of Chris Anderson’s Carefully Curated Conference for Intellectual Limp Biscuit. That’s when I met Melvin Mar, who came through and kind of rescued me …
“I love the book. I want to make it a show, buddy!” said Melvin. “Like Malcolm in the Middle or Everybody Hates Chris, with a 12-year-old Eddie and retro ’90s setting in Orlando.”
“Everybody hates those shows.”
“Malcolm in the Middle was great!”
“Okay, I liked Malcolm in the Middle. But Malcolm’s dad turned into a meth dealer on AMC. I don’t want my dad portrayed that way.”
“What are you talking about? Everyone loves Heisenberg.”
“My dad has better hair,” I said. “But I need more than that. I need Married With Chinese People. I want Ed O’Neill to go yellowface with a perm, faux-gator shoes, and blue-lens Cartier frames. If you can make that happen, you can have the book.” #TheGodAlBundy
After several conversations with my agent about industry standards and Ed O’Neill’s availability and unwillingness to go yellowface, we came to an agreement on a term sheet with the studio, which simultaneously attached Nahnatchka Khan (who was behind Don’t Trust the B— in Apt. 23) as the writer and got a put-pilot commitment from ABC. I was in Chengdu when Melvin broke the news.
“What’d I tell you, man? I’m gonna make you a star.”
“I’m already a star, Melvin, my basketball team made the second-division finals in the Fastbreak NYC playoffs this year, and I hit two 3s.”
“Your life story is going to be on network television! Get excited!”
“I would be excited, but you attached a Persian writer, and I’m kinda worried it’s going to be The Shahs of Cul-de-Sac Holando.”
“Relax, Natch 9 is a unicorn! She’s a Persian writer who understands the American experience of getting shit on, fighting back, and wrote Don’t Trust the B— in Apt. 23.”
The sitcom version of his family.
“I get it. She has her own America complete with songs of saffron ice-cream dreams deferred, and we can show solidarity in Raekwon’s ice-cream truck,10 but it’s not the same. I’m rotten fucking banana,11 and this can’t be Soft-Ass Glutinous Asians in Apartment 23! This shit’s gotta go hard. We haven’t had an eat-rocks Asian male role model since Data 12. And why isn’t there a Taiwanese or Chinese person who can write this? I’m sure there’s some angry Korean dude in Hollywood who grew up eating Spam, watching his dad punch his mom in the face, who knows how to use Final Draft!”
I didn’t understand how network television, the one-size fits-all antithesis to Fresh Off the Boat, was going to house the voice of a futuristic chinkstronaut. I began to regret ever selling the book, because Fresh Off the Boat was a very specific narrative about SPECIFIC moments in my life, such as kneeling in a driveway holding buckets of rice overhead or seeing pink nipples for the first time. The network’s approach was to tell a universal, ambiguous, cornstarch story about Asian-Americans resembling moo goo gai pan written by a Persian-American who cut her teeth on race relations writing for Seth MacFarlane. But who is that show written for?
We all know that universal demographic doesn’t exist; even at the level of the person, the network’s ideal viewer doesn’t exist, much less know what it wants. This universal market of Jos. A. Bank customers watches cornstarch television and eats at Panda Express because that’s all they’re being offered. I didn’t need the show to be Baohaus or Din Tai Fung; I would have settled for Chipotle. Yet, for some reason, no one wants to improve the quality of offerings until someone forces them to. A Jedi has to say, “I want to be incrementally better than the Seth MacFarlanes and McDonald’s of the world!” for anything to change. Isn’t that the genius of Shake Shack, South Park, and In-N-Out Burger? What happened to being an incrementally aspirational society? Wasn’t America the City on the Hill? In Hollywood, it felt like, we were the town in a valley run by western Michigan.
“Listen, buddy, the show is never going to be the book. What you are hoping is that people watch the show, buy the book, then say, ‘You know, that show is funny, but the book is better,’” said Melvin.
“But it doesn’t have to be that way! Game of Thrones is based on books, and it’s fucking heat rocks.”
“I hate to break this up, but the books are better,” whispered my manager Rafael.
“You get what I’m saying. It’s still a good show.”
“Eddie, the point of a network show is for people to come home from work, laugh for 22 minutes on the couch, watch your TV family solve the A-plot and B-plot, and end up on a similar couch as one big, happy, AMERICAN family.”
“That show is a lie, Melvin!”
My instincts told me to call a former space traveler. Someone who’d shunned gravity and returned, only to retreat once again: Margaret Cho. I had never met or even talked to Margaret, but I remember her jokes about penises being like snowflakes and still refer to my dick as a six-inch meatball sub. When she wasn’t helping me contextualize my penis in the pantheon of fast-casual sandwiches, she helped me navigate being Asian in America: a spirit guide leading me through San Francisco bookstores, fragrance departments, and Korean dinners. All-American Girl13was America’s first Asian — specifically, Korean-American — sitcom, but it got canceled after one season. Asians like myself ate our hopes and dreams by the grain burnt at the bottom of a seasonal stone bowl, vowing to one day return.
“They have no idea what they’re doing, but they’ll have opinions about everything you’re doing,” she warned.
“It’s as bad as everyone says, huh?”
“It’s worse. When I did it, I was just happy to be there, and every time they told me I was too Asian, not Asian enough, too fat, too skinny, I listened. You have to fight them at every step.”
“Why does anyone even sign up for this Hollywood High School bullshit? It’s not like there aren’t other ways to tell stories.”
“Because you CAN do it. You’ve been irreverent everywhere you’ve gone, just don’t change now. You go to Hollywood and you go be the same person you’ve been the whole time. I believe in you, and to be honest, we need this.”
Over the next year, I went to production meetings, sat on set at times, gave alts, and checked for authenticity, but I couldn’t stomach the culture of scripted sitcoms. In our first production meeting, there were about 50 to 60 people gathered in a classroomlike studio setting, with Jake Kasdan, Natch, Lynn Shelton, Melvin, and myself going scene by scene through the script.
Eventually, we got to the macaroni-and-cheese scene. Throughout the book tour, it was my favorite scene to read because it exemplified how foreign white culture was to me. I remember the first time I saw macaroni and cheese, as a guest in my friend Jeff’s home, thinking it was pig intestines cut into half-moons hanging out in an orange sauce. Jeff found it incredulous that I didn’t know what macaroni and cheese was, but it was formative; he got a taste of macaroni and cheese from my eyes, discovering how it felt to be gazed on and seen as exotic instead of being the one gazing. The script took the moment and exploited it for humor as opposed to making it a teaching moment, so I spoke up.
“The setup for the joke in this scene is nonexistent. People need to understand how weird it is for Young Eddie to see macaroni and cheese for the first time.”
“The visual does it for you. Look at the mac ’n’ cheese, it’s disgusting!” said Jake, who put the prop on the table.
“Yeah, it looks like shitty mac ’n’ cheese, then the joke becomes that it’s bad mac ’n’ cheese. The point is that it’s foreign, not bad.”
Melvin got tense; Natch spoke up.
“I know what Eddie’s saying. We’ll address it. There could be more setup.” Within seconds, I got a text from Melvin. “Welcome to pilot season, kid.” Eventually, they just cut the entire scene.
Throughout the process, I kept speaking to Melvin and Natch about context and perspective so that viewers truly understood how diverse Asian America is. My father loved America. He wanted to come, listen to rock ’n’ roll, grow long hair, and cop dome from Jewish women at Penn State. My mom had no choice. She was brought to the country, never really fit in, but never felt less for it. She’s a strong, confident woman who many times felt that America made no sense. What the hell are chicken tenders? Why did people waste napkins at the restaurant? Why do their kids bruise fruit at the store? Frankly, she thought she was better than America because she came from a culture with 5,000 years of experience. I needed that contrast in the show supported by the specific musings and perspectives of Asian-Americans who actually lived this life. We couldn’t represent everyone who lived this life, but for the individuals we did represent, I felt a duty to be accurate.
A few weeks after we taped, Melvin kept blowing up my phone.
“We tested the show, and there may or may not be a handful of butt-hurt white people …”
“Success!”
“Maybe. But listen, white people keep you on the air. They have to feel included. If people understand our perspective, they won’t be offended. So I pitched them an idea. We gotta hold the viewer’s hand through this because they’ve never been inside an Asian-American home before.”
“Yeah?”
“I know you love Wonder Years …”
“Son …”
“I told them that we should do voice-over on the show. It’ll help the audience get into the mind of Young Eddie.”
“YOU GOTTA LET ME GET MY KEVIN ARNOLD ON!”
“Who is pitching this dickhead, you or me?”
“You, Melvin.”
“You’re gonna get your Kevin Arnold on, buddy.”
And for a few months, it went well. The lines were more or less in some acceptable “network Eddie” compromise voice, and when I had issues, they adapted. But everything fell apart afterthat November voice-over session.
“Listen, I tried to put myself in your shoes after voice-over yesterday,” Melvin said.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t ask you to say ‘America is great.’”
“Thanks, man. You get it, right?”
“Yeah, I do. Like you said, it goes against the essence of the book.”
“Exactly.”
“We’re asking too much of you. I watch you on set, read your emails, and it’s killing you to watch us make this show … Maybe we should have someone else do voice-over?”
I let it marinate for a second.
“You there, buddy?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
At first, I saw his point. “I mean, I’m sure you can find someone who will actually read what you put in front of him.”
“We don’t need to put you through this. We can go harder next time.”
That’s when I realized what was reallygoing on. It wasn’t that I hated the show. It genuinely entertained me, but it had to do more. A Midsummer Night’sDream satisfies groundlings and intellectuals alike. Tragedy is easy and comedy’s hard, but we weren’t even trying! My story had become an entertaining but domesticated vehicle to sell dominant culture with Kidz Bop, pot shots, and the emasculated Asian male. I got upset when they dressed Randall 14 like a Fung Wah bus driver or Hudson 15 like an And-1 yard sale or Constance 16 like the Crocodile Hunter with kitty-cat heels. We couldn’t go out like this! If America is ever going to treat its cold sores, its culture will have to force conversations examining freedom, equality, and ASIANS IN GATOR SHOES.
“Naw, fuck that! You’re trying to steal my story. We may never get another chance!”
“Eddie, calm down, man! No one is taking your story from you. They’re not ready for the book. The show is a bridge; it’ll get them there, but it’s still your story!”
“Nah, son. People ARE ready!”
I hung up on Melvin, parked my car, and hit the interwebs via Twitter. “Producers of #FreshOfftheBoat want me to say ‘America is great’ or they’ll replace me. What’s a chink to do?”
Three weeks later, the EPA had announced it was no longer consulting scientists, Ferguson had announced there would be no indictments, and I sat in my massage chair numb to America, getting the gluten kneaded out of my back fat. Everything I saw, from Republicans suing Obama over immigration reform to the script for our second episode, where ODB is appropriated to teach Young Eddie how to make it rain, made absolutely no sense. 17 But in my post-Thanksgiving slumber, I turned on the Michigan–Ohio State game. Since Desmond Howard did the Heisman, I’ve been a Wolverines fan. They’ve been hot trash recently, but I still hold out hope … BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN A PROMO FOR YOUR LIFE STORY IS GOING TO RUN ON ABC DURING THE GAME WHEN YOU ARE TAKING BONG RIPS.
All of a sudden, I screamed, “THERE IT GO!” The Fresh Off the Boat logo flashed across the screen, my TV mom, Constance Wu, going buck-wild in a Taiwanese market, Young Eddie, searching for Lunchables, and Randall Park with the jade pendant, flossin’ just like my pops. THERE WERE REAL ACTORS ON TV TALKING ABOUT THE PITFALLS OF WHITE FOOD!
My friend Rocky was staying at the crib and missed the commercial, so I played it back.
“Ninja, we made it.”
“YOU made it.”
“Nah, son, WE MADE IT.”
“I ain’t never seen anything like this. I don’t know what to say. I knew it was coming, but … son … YOU GOT ASIANS ON TV!”
But I still wasn’t convinced. Everything I ever knew rang in my head: “It’s not enough … You can’t just get on base. We got to come home.” Quickly, I pulled up the pilot episode on my laptop and played it for Rocky. The standard shots were there, the kitchen scenes, banter, banter, banter, but through all the fucking duck sauce and wonton strips, Melvin and Natch did it … They fucking did it. In the black-box TV format, there we were. Andafter about 19 minutes of shiny suit-bubble goose bounce, there was real talk.
“Get to the back of the line, chink!” said Edgar, the only other person of color at school. It was the most formative moment of my childhood; the first time someone ever called me a chink, held in a two-shot. Two kids of color forced to battle each other at the bottom of America’s totem pole on ABC.
After 18 months of back and forth, I had crossed a threshold and become the audience. I wasn’t the auteur, the writer, the actor, or the source material. I was the viewer, and I finally understood it. This show isn’t about me, nor is it about Asian America. The network won’t take that gamble right now. You can’t flash an ad during THE GAME with some chubby Chinese kid running across the screen talking shit about spaceships and Uncle Chans in 2014 because America has no reference. The only way they could even mention some of the stories in the book was by building a Trojan horse and feeding the pathogenic stereotypes that still define us to a lot of American cyclope. Randall was neutered, Constance was exoticized, and Young Eddie was urbanized so that the viewers got their mise-en-place. People watching these channels have never seen us, and the network’s approach to pacifying them is to say we’re all the same. Sell them pasteurized network television with East Asian faces until they wake up intolerant of their own lactose, and hit ’em with the soy. Baking soya, I got baking soya!
It doesn’t sound like much, but it is. Those three minutes are the holy trinity Melvin, Randall, Constance, Hudson, Forrest, Ian, and I sacrificed everything for. Our parents worked in restaurants, laundromats, and one-hour photo shops thinking it was impossible to have a voice in this country, so they never said a word. We are culturally destitute in America, and this is our ground zero. Network television never offered the epic tale highlighting Asian America’s coming of age; they offered to put orange chicken on TV for 22 minutes a week instead of Salisbury steak … and I’ll eat it; I’ll even thank them, because if you’re high enough, orange chicken ain’t so bad.
But for all the bullshit I heard at studios about universal stories and the cultural pus it perpetuates, I felt some truth in it for those three minutes. It takes a lot of chutzpah to launch a network comedy with a pilot addressing the word chink, yet it works because it’s the safest bet the studio could have made. The feeling of being different is universal because difference makes us universally human in our individual relationships with society. We’re all fucking weirdos. The social contract is here because we have a collective desire to be individuals and preserve our rights to pursue singular happiness with or without cilantro. But we’ve been fixated way too long on universality and the matrix’s pursuit of monoculture. It’s time to embrace difference and speak about it with singularity, idiosyncracy, and infinite density. No more drone strikes, no more Nielsen boxes, no more “we are the world” … if it’s walkin’ dead with a red dot, take the shot.
Chinkstronauts, ride out …
*This is an extended version of an article appears in the January 12, 2015 issue of New York Magazine.
Ted Hope to lead creative as Head of Production, Amazon Original Movies
Amazon is getting into the movie business, the company announced Monday.
Amazon Studios will start this year producing original movies for theatrical releases and early window distribution for Amazon Prime Instant users. The online network vows to bring movies to Amazon four to eight weeks after their theatrical release as opposed to the typical 39 to 59 weeks on other subscription video services.
“We look forward to expanding our production efforts into feature films. Our goal is to create close to twelve movies a year with production starting later this year,” said Roy Price, Vice President, Amazon Studios.
“Not only will we bring Prime Instant Video customers exciting, unique, and exclusive films soon after a movie’s theatrical run, but we hope this program will also benefit filmmakers, who too often struggle to mount fresh and daring stories that deserve an audience.”
The announcement comes a week after Amazon Studios and Woody Allen partnered for his first TV series. It’s been a strong 2015 so far for Amazon Studios: Jeffrey Tambor, star of Amazon’s transgender-based series “Transparent,” won the Best Actor in a TV Series-Comedy or Musical Golden Globe while “Transparent” won Best TV Comedy or Musical.
Couple the awards momentum with the Allen TV deal and original movie push, and it’s clear Amazon is increasing the pressure on top streaming competitors Netflix and Yahoo.
“Audiences already recognize that Amazon has raised the bar with productions in the episodic realm, tackling bold material in unique ways and collaborating with top talent, both established and emerging. To help carry the torch into the feature film world for such an innovative company is a tremendous opportunity and responsibility,” said Ted Hope, the new Head of Production for Amazon Original Movies. “Amazon Original Movies will be synonymous with films that amaze, excite, and move our fans, wherever customers watch. I am incredibly thrilled to be part of this.”
Brevity, so it has been said, is the soul of wit. John Oliver seems to believe the opposite is equally true.
The comedian has been letting loose on his new HBO program “Last Week Tonight,” unveiling segments that can last anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes and often pack as much research as a front-page story you might see from a traditional outlet like a newspaper (when front-page stories carried more weight in the modern news cycle). Last Sunday, Oliver presented a nearly 20-minute treatise on the plight of gay, lesbian and transgender citizens of Uganda, raising the notion that evangelicals from America may have played an instrumental role in harsh new treatment being doled out by that nation’s government.
The segment included nods to information from Al Jazeera, NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, CNN, MSNBC, Christian evangelical news organization World, and advocacy group Political Research Associates, not to mention an interview with Ugandan LGBT rights advocate Pepe Julian Onziema. Oh, and a bunch of cheerleaders, a breakdancing Abraham Lincoln and a Statue of Liberty emerging from a cake.
TV news has always been ripe for satire. That’s what the original “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live” once did, with its ersatz “Point/Counterpoint” fights between Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd and various on-screen antics from Chevy Chase. In recent years, however, the format has leaped from poking fun at those who deliver the news to analyzing the headlines in new fashion, particularly at Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart-led “Daily Show.” Now Oliver and his staff are shaking up the genre anew, providing a sort of investigative journalism that is not seen in any of the other comedy-news hybrids on the air.
In recent weeks, Oliver has presented a segment lasting more than 13 minutes on the “net neutrality” debate and one of more than 16 minutes about the troubles of dietary supplements pitched by luminaries such as Dr. Oz. He eviscerated FIFA, the governing body behind the World Cup, in a bit lasting 13 minutes and 14 seconds, according to a video posting from HBO on YouTube.
How different are Oliver’s content pieces? The typical segment on the often hard-hitting “60 Minutes” typically comes in between 11 minutes and 13 minutes, according to a spokesman for the CBS newsmagazine. Producers at “Last Week Tonight,” declined through an HBO spokeswoman to comment.
Such stuff may have been unexpected from the comedian who shot up the ranks during a stint in 2013 filling in for Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” A spokeswoman for the Comedy Central show said Oliver stuck to the program’s usual format: four “acts,” with the final one being quite short (the show’s “Moment of Zen” cap-off bumps up against the rolling of credits). While there are no set times for the other three segments on the program, chances are commercial breaks on the ad-supported cable outlet would prevent a 20-minute report on most evenings (to be fair, the show has sometimes done two-part interviews with guests).
“I see Oliver as the next logical extension of the genre,” said Dannagal Young, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware who studies the use of political satire. Oliver, she said, “is going beyond traditional satire to give audience members specific directives that allow them to take action on the issues he deconstructs on the show.“
This is a field in which both Stewart and Stephen Colbert have played. Colbert focused on campaign-finance reform issues in 2012 and Stewart spotlighted a healthcare bill for first responders to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in 2010. Both took part in a 2010 event billed as the “Rally to Restore Sanity,” an effort that solidified the notion that both hosts do a lot more than just lampoon daily headlines. These examples, however, have been “the exception rather than the rule,” Young suggested.
Others also see “Last Week Tonight” breaking new ground. “On ‘Weekend Update’ and ‘The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,’ the background information and context about major stories seems to be there to serve the jokes. It’s pretty clear that the soundbites and news footage are there to make sure you understand the story in question well enough to laugh at the punchline,” said Paul Gluck, a TV-industry veteran who is an associate professor of media studies and production at Temple University’s School of Media and Communication. “I suspect that John Oliver and his writers may have a wonderful and satirically subversive mission: I think the humor is there to serve the story.”
Very little on TV is cut entirely from new cloth, of course. One might find an antecedent for “Last Week Tonight” in “That Was the Week That Was,” the satirical half-hour program hosted by David Frost in the 1960s, first on the BBC and subsequently on NBC. And Bill Maher’s “Real Time,” also on HBO, uses many of the same elements Oliver’s program does (the reliance on nattering panelists often seems to prevent the well-prepared host from launching a verbal salvo or three).
Yet “Last Week Tonight” defies nearly all current norms. The show surrounds soundbites with exposition, rather than letting video stand as the sole element of a segment. It trusts the attention span of its audience, believing a viewership constantly distracted by smartphones and mobile alerts will hang in there for the duration of a story, so long as it is compelling and informative. And it believes people will keep watching even if they might walk away feeling uneasy or unsettled by the issues presented each week despite the many jokes and laughs that are also delivered.
In an era during which even the most celebrated newsmagazines have taken to relying on soft celebrity interviews and tales of heinous murders, many could learn something from “Last Week Tonight.” The program is drawing people in with the promise of laughter, but sending them back out to the world with an unexpected element: knowledge.
LOS ANGELES — An Oscar-winning screenwriter, a billionaire film financier and a well-known magazine editor have come together to form a movie and television company built on a journalism foundation.
Mark Boal, a former magazine reporter who wrote and produced “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” which earned him four Oscar nominations and two wins, has spoken for years about a desire to systemize what he calls “front-page art” — movies and TV shows based on deep-dive reporting into current events.
“I want to marry up screenwriters with reporters,” he said in 2012 while promoting “Zero Dark Thirty,” which examined the killing of Osama bin Laden. “That’s assuming that this film does O.K. If it bombs, forget I said any of this.”
It became a hit, of course, taking in $132.8 million worldwide, and Mr. Boal finally has a company to carry out his vision: Page 1, which opened for business last week. Megan Ellison, the Oracle heiress who has helped finance and produce films like “American Hustle” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” has committed to “substantial” funding, Mr. Boal said.
Hugo Lindgren, who stepped down as editor of The New York Times Magazine late last year and previously worked at New York magazine, has joined Page 1 as its president. Mr. Lindgren will be based in New York.
Mr. Boal said, “The goal is to dig out substantive stories that tell us something about who we are as a people and as a nation.” He cited his own films as examples, as well as dramas like “Wall Street,” “Silkwood,” “The Social Network” and “12 Years a Slave.”
The arrival of Page 1 coincides with a growing thirst by audiences for visceral, nonmanufactured stories with the rise of Vice Media, known for stunt journalism, as a primary example. Recent hit movies in this vein have included “Lone Survivor” and “Captain Phillips.” But most studios are deeply reluctant to bet on these kinds of scripts, preferring to funnel money toward less risky comedies and fantasy films.
Mr. Boal, who is writing a current-events screenplay for his frequent collaborator Kathryn Bigelow to direct — he declined to be more specific — said that Page 1 would commission original reporting and buy rights to published books and articles.
Page 1’s initial projects include a film based on a Men’s Journal article about organized fighting in a Thai prison. Page 1 is in final talks with the writer Wells Tower to turn that article into a screenplay. Mr. Tower and the article’s author, Matthew Shaer, are returning to Thailand for more reporting.
Kickstarter team up with the Guardian to showcase journalism work
Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has joined forces with the Guardian to publicise a new dedicated journalism category on its website together and highlight key projects.
Launching today the functionality will allow journalists to seek financial backing for key projects just as it currently does for those in the technology and film sectors. In tandem with this the Guardian has also been given its own page on the Kickstarter website from which to publicise its work.
Commenting on the tie-up Caspar Llewellyn Smith, the Guardian’s interim network editor and head of culture, said: “Kickstarter’s journalism category will be a home for projects that have until now landed in other areas of the website, and it reflects our interest in helping new journalistic models thrive,” the online crowdfunding service said. “Against a backdrop of flux and confusion in the journalism business, more than $10m has been pledged to 2,000-plus journalism, periodical, radio, and podcast projects on Kickstarter to date.”
A number of journalism projects have benefitted from Kickstarter funding in recent years, including Homicide Watch, a bid to cover every murder in Washington for one year and The Tar Sands reporting project, which sought to highlight the impact of the industry on Canadian society.
