Our friend, Austin-based writer Wells Dunbar, has kindly agreed to provide coverage of the bound-to-be-fabulous San Diego Asian Film Festival for us again this year. The festival opened last night and continues through October 18. Here's his first report.
What major lesson to glean from the 8th annual San Diego Asian Film Festival’s opening night? M.C. Hammer is one some real eye-opening, actualization-of-human-potential type shit.
Hammer was in the house, generating cheers and the errant dance request or two as part of the cast from Finishing the Game, an entertaining faux-documentary from Better Luck Tomorrow director Justin Lin. Having traveled the festival circuit all year starting at Sundance, and secured a semi-wide roll-out, the film’s SDAFF appearance felt like a victory lap.
Finishing the Game ponders what the casting call for Bruce Lee’s replacement would look like. With an unscrupulous film company (is there any other kind?) looking to pad the sparse Lee footage shot for his presciently-titled Game of Death, Lin introduces us to a series of sympathetic Lee-wannabees: Cole Kim (Sung Kang), an amiable sad-sack of sorts looking to make his big break; Raja (Mousa Kraish), a deadpan doctor whose passions are acting and the martial arts; Troy Poon (Dustin Nguyen), an actor once on the rise, reduced to peddling wares door-to-door; Tarrick Tyler (McCaleb Burnett) a white dude of supposed Asian ancestry not afraid of venting his spleen in politically-incorrect beat-poetry; and Breeze Loo (a scene-stealing Roger Fan), an off-brand Lee starring in grindhouse quickies like Fists of Führer).
Lin alternates between Spinal Tap-style straight interviews and fly-on-the-wall glimpses of conflict between the actors, managers, an overbearing casting agent and henpecked director. Despite the abundant raunchy humor (Ron Jeremy cameo, anyone?), looming below the surface (and towards the end, the forefront) is a certain sadness and anger with Asian depiction in American film. Troy Poon’s acting journey – from Asian delivery boy, to catchphrase-sprouting second-fiddle cop, and then, well, nowhere – is indicative of the limited roles afforded to Asian actors. Although the film reaches an unsatisfying abrupt end, and sketches both its humor and indictments a little broadly, it succeeds by veiling the former in the latter.
The film was proceeded by a short, Building a Journey: From Better Luck Tomorrow to Finishing the Game, which traced Lin’s path from self-financed guerilla lensman into studio director, and with this film, back again. (It’s available on YouTube in three parts, starting here: YouTube link).
Unfortunately, at a tepid Q&A afterward, someone decided to emulate the controversial Sundance scene captured in the documentary where Lin was hectored for depicted young Asians poorly – the SDAFF questioner wanted to make sure Lin didn’t villainize Asians when he directs Fast and the Furious 4. (Yes.) Here, Hammer (an oily manager to “colored” actors in Finishing the Game and friend to Lin since helping finance Better Luck Tomorrow) took the mic, reminding the questioner that “Denzel’s big movie in December [actually, November] is American Gangster,” and not to compartmentalize Asian actors into such narrowly-defined roles. Earlier, Hammer spoke to the racial tropes in the film, essentially saying “if we forget ‘em, we’re doomed to repeat ‘em.”
Therefore, the off-color jokes in Finishing the Game were “meant to jar our memory.” Who would’ve expected such Brechtian talk from Mr. "Pumps and a Bump?" And if that wasn’t enough, Hammer promised to return to SDAFF next year with a documentary he’s producing about Nagasaki monks that kept a flame from the American atomic blast there burning for over 50 years – until they recently ”returned” it to the Trinity site in New Mexico, home of the first atomic detonation.
Hammer – who the hell knew?
