This is the fifth of 12 or 13 all-new blog posts that are being posted on a monthly basis until this blog's final post in December 2017 (the Ghost Protocol repost does not count as all-new).
This will be the final time I acknowledge Asian Pacific American Heritage Month on this blog, a few months before I will stop writing posts over here at the end of this year. So this final APA Heritage Month-related post is about a pioneering blog in the Asian American blogosphere and what has to be one of the blog's most impressive pieces of writing ever. It was impressive because of the minor but still-significant impact the blog post had during the ongoing struggle, especially from the Asian American side of things, to fight for more representation, diversity and inclusiveness in Hollywood and to get Tinseltown to be less ignorant and racist.
I don't visit Angry Asian Man as frequently as I used to (my favorite thing about Angry Asian Man has always been that its posts have introduced me to a lot of good novels by Asian American authors, and they've included Leonard Chang's Allen Choice crime trilogy and Sarah Kuhn's Heroine Complex, a novel I'm currently trying to finish reading while working on my own novel), but once in a while, Phil Yu, Angry Asian Man's founder, posts something enlightening and non-click-baity (and by non-click-baity, I mean a post that's not some viral video of an Asian American kid doing something adorable). By the way, Angry Asian Man has changed a lot since its start in the early 2000s. It began as a blog where Phil, whom I've talked to over e-mail a couple of times and have hung out with once, eloquently criticized the media and celebrities of all races for their racist attitudes towards Asians or their clueless usages of Asian stereotypes. That means Angry Asian Man can also be a depressing and stress-inducing read, especially whenever Phil posts excerpts of news items about hate crimes where the victims are Asian, which is mainly why I don't read it regularly anymore.
My visits to Angry Asian Man are not as frequent as they were in the early-to-mid-2000s also because, even though Phil still finds time to run the site in between speaking engagements and host or guest stints on online talk shows, his personal voice has been less present on the site (it's more present on Twitter and during Sound and Fury, the Angry Asian Man tie-in podcast where he interviews famous Asian Americans). He's been relying on guest writers for tons of content, and he found a clever way to do that on a weekly basis by coming up with a feature called "Angry Readers of the Week," where he lets an Asian American reader, whether that reader is non-famous or famous, give his or her life story via a Proust-type questionnaire.
Guest writers have also grabbed Phil's mic outside of the site's "Angry Readers" feature. One such guest writer wrote quite a corker for Angry Asian Man in October 2016, and that's the "something enlightening and non-click-baity" I'm referring to.
Acclaimed Whale Rider director Niki Caro is currently directing Disney's live-action remake of its own animated 1998 hit, the lighthearted, David Lean-style battle epic Mulan (she promises that her take on Mulan will be "a big, girly martial arts epic. It will be extremely muscular and thrilling and entertaining and moving"). But back when Caro wasn't attached to the remake yet, a spec script Disney bought for the remake (this early draft was credited to Lauren Hynek and Elizabeth Martin) had awkwardly inserted a white savior character/love interest into a Chinese story that never contained any white savior characters.
The leaked spec script angered the 1998 film's fans, especially Asian American fans who, in 1998, felt empowered by both Ming-Na Wen's vocal star turn and the film's story of a female warrior who saves China and defies patriarchy (Mulan is also one of the few animated Disney films to not have its heroine pursuing a romance with the male lead, who, in this case, was a young Chinese army captain voiced by B.D. Wong). Phil gave the floor to one such Asian American Mulan fan, an Angry Asian Man reader who identified herself (or himself?) only as "an Asian American person in the industry," and the anonymous writer, who posted under the nom de plume "ConcernedForMulan," nicely read the live-action project's producers the riot act.
There are several things I'm going to miss about the short-lived Selfie, a hashtag-era reimagining of Pygmalion that has been rescued from post-cancellation limbo by Hulu and will finish out on Hulu the rest of its 13-episode run, starting today. They include the genuine chemistry between Karen Gillan as narcissistic pharmaceutical sales chick Eliza Dooley and John Cho as her marketing guru co-worker Henry Higgs and the rare and groundbreaking sight of an Asian American male as a romantic lead on a single-camera comedy that's not a YouTube show. Cho's Harold & Kumar franchise has been putting Asian American guys in romantic lead roles for three consecutive movies and an upcoming Adult Swim animated version now. It took 10 goddamn years for prime-time network TV to catch up to Harold & Kumar.
I'll also miss any scene where Gillan dances (especially to Wiz Khalifa) and that wig Gillan has to wear as Eliza (after Gillan had all her hair shaved off to play a bald alien warrior in Guardians of the Galaxy) somehow stays on; that little kid whose sobs sound like Eddie Murphy laughing; and the solid character writing and visual panache shepherded by Suburgatory and Selfie creator/showrunner Emily Kapnek, the Frank Tashlin of single-camera comedies. Like Tashlin, Kapnek started out in animation, which explains the strong visual sense she brought to both Suburgatory's first two seasons (before a huge budget slash really affected that show) and Selfie.
Kapnek's Nickelodeon background--I often forget that Nick nurtured Hey Arnold! and Dora the Explorer, kids' shows with lead characters of color--also explains the incredible diversity of the worlds of Suburgatory and Selfie, both casting-wise and music-wise. The huge amount of interracial couples on Suburgatory and Selfie nicely reflects the world outside the TV screen, and I'll always adore Kapnek for soundtracking a Suburgatory scene at a house party with Full Force's "Ain't My Type of Hype" from House Party.
But there's one thing none of the few TV critics who have been in Selfie's corner have noticed about the show, and I think I might miss this element most of all: the pause-button-worthy attention to detail in the show's cutaways to screen shots of social media. Those screen shots were dead-on about the dumb or vacuous things that are often said in comments sections and on social media feeds.
Henry Higgs' off-screen mom is every single Asian immigrant parent who stupidly parrots Republican bullshit, and I love how Selfie captured that in its Facebook screen shots. So of course, like any other non-stereotypical and genuinely funny show that nails a little aspect or two of Asian American life like that and doesn't feel like it was written by aliens from outer space who studied only clips of Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles or Fisher Stevens in brownface from Short Circuit on their spaceship viewscreen and think this is how all us Asian guys behave, Selfie gets cancelled.
What will you miss about Selfie, Adam? Take it away.--JJA
***
It Was Just a Good Show By Adam Chau
Above everything else, I just liked "Selfie." It was warm, cute, funny--I knew what to expect (from a general POV) and each week it was something I started looking forward to. It was one of those shows where I could feel myself getting more invested because at it's core, I related to it. I laughed with it. I talked to the TV when I watched it. Say what you might about how they got some things wrong--I think they got a lot more right.
It's like the title. People have talked about the title of the show as being a part of it's downfall but how was that any worse than "The League" or "7th Heaven" or "Ally McBeal"? I'll argue that maybe it was a better title than people credited because it was too close to their faces. It's like the underground rapper that gets signed by a major label, or who's song you start hearing more of on the radio and start seeing on television. Are they any less artistic just because more people started to like them? It's easy to write "Selfie" off as a pop-culture-in-the-now-epm style title but when you think about why we do it, the overall arc of picture taking in general, and then what we do with them in the connected world from a larger social networking perspective with more connections and more spheres of influence--it stood on it's own.
I think that's the thing that gets me the most about the cancelling of "Selfie" is that it just wasn't appreciated and it could have been a great hit--for someone. Maybe not for ABC. But for someone. Because we loved Eliza. We loved Henry. They weren't perfect. They had their quirks. But so do we. And that's why we watch. Because we can relate. Because we've all jumped in the lake, or wanted to, at least once in our lives, or did the occasional "Hmm...I wonder what they're up to now..." searches and from that POV "Selfie" really did offer storylines that multiple different groups could relate to. I'll miss that piece of the show where I'm not just watching something that interests me or keeps my attention, but that also references some of my everyday life (versus something like "Storage Wars" which I occasionally like to watch but that has nothing to do with my daily life).
But "Selfie" did.
And absolutely, I will lament not being able to watch a show with John Cho as the lead because he's just a good actor who I like to watch on the screen, big or small. Almost every year he's in a new movie while at the same time also working in television. It's not just me. Other people like him too, and he was a recognizable face that anchored the show for millions of people that tuned in.
Yeah.
I'll miss that.
Minnesotan blogger Adam Chau runs Slant Eye for the Round Eye and contributes posts to YOMYOMF (pronounced "yawm-yawm-eff").
Babyface featuring Toni Braxton, "Give U My Heart (Upscale R&B Remix)," and Toni Braxton, "Love Shoulda Brought You Home"(both from Boomerang; now playing during "The Whitest Block Ever")
Love, Marriage & Divorce, the new album "starring" Toni Braxton and Babyface, is the first time I've paid attention to new music by either one of them in like 13 years (when Babyface tried to update his sound and recruited the Neptunes to produce "There She Goes," to be exact). The project--a collection of tunes about rocky relationships (where the fighting often leads to sex), infidelity, divorce and post-divorce reconciliation that stem from Braxton and Babyface's experiences with divorce--plays to each of their strengths as artists: Braxton's terrific contralto, especially when she sings a blistering kiss-off to an ex like Love, Marriage & Divorce's "I Wish," and Babyface's skills as a craftsman of New Jack-era, pre-Jodeci/R. Kelly R&B of the baby-making kind.
There's a scene early in Boomerang where a heavy-handed--and enthusiastic, of course, because he's played by Geoffrey "No Caffeine: Never Had It, Never Will" Holder--TV ad director presents Eddie Murphy's skirt-chasing ad exec Marcus Graham with a rough cut of a hilariously unsubtle lipstick ad, which is full of shots of supermodels wagging their tongues between pairs of cherries and sucking on bananas. Marcus' response to the footage is "I like the orange, and I like the ice cream. You gotta get rid of the cherries and lose the banana... That's a little too overt, you know? We should go a little more subtle... At least there wasn't no sausages in this one." His preference for classing things up also best sums up why most of Babyface's hits still hold up today and you can sing along to them without snickering, while the much lewder slow jams that followed Babyface's string of hits--like, for example, Silk's "Freak Me"--come off as unintentionally funny when you re-encounter them these days, mostly because their lyrics have been parodied so often by the likes of Murphy's Boomerang co-star Chris Rock ("Suck Your Big Toe"), Dave Chappelle ("Piss on You") and The Lonely Island ("Dick in a Box").
It's nice to hear Braxton and Babyface singing together again because I remember very well when I first heard them together: the duet "Give U My Heart," which Babyface produced for the Boomerang soundtrack. That album, which represented the best in mainstream R&B at the time, dominated the R&B airwaves in 1992 (you couldn't hide from the mammoth radio hit that was Boyz II Men's "End of the Road," which is the very last song featured in the film's end credits). "Give U My Heart," a New Jack tune that still holds up today, made me think, "Who's this chick with the smoky voice? She's like a younger Anita Baker. I'd like to hear more from her." And five months later, we did get to hear more from her when the Boomerang soundtrack hit us with the single "Love Shoulda Brought You Home," which, in fact, was written for Baker, but she declined to record it because she was pregnant at the time, so she suggested to Babyface and L.A. Reid that they give the song to the girl who sang its demo version: Braxton.
The release of Love, Marriage & Divorce isn't just why "Love Shoulda Brought You Home," which Angela (Halle Berry) quotes from when she breaks up with Marcus in Boomerang, and the film version of "Give U My Heart," known as the "Upscale R&B Remix," have been added to "Whitest Block Ever" rotation. It's Black History Month, and I think Boomerang is just as important and vital a film for directors and moviegoers of color as, say, the box office hit Lee Daniels' The Butler and 12 Years a Slave. In 1992, there wasn't a film like director Reginald Hudlin's Boomerang. "Part of the appeal of Boomerang for the Hudlins was that the film's subject matter--a brazen look at the battle of the sexes--had never been explored in a black film with multimillion-dollar production values," said the Philadelphia Inquirer in its 1992 profile of Hudlin and his producer brother Warrington Hudlin, who were fresh off the success of House Party.
The Hudlins' 1992 hit paved the way for the current hot streak of black, or as USA Today likes to say, "race-themed," rom-coms: Think Like a Man (soon to be followed this summer by Think Like a Man Too), The Best Man Holiday and Kevin Hart's About Last Night. That's why Boomerang, which I just saw for the very first time, is worth another look. It's also a damn good comedy (peep its ensemble cast--there are so many funny performances throughout Boomerang) and one of Murphy's best, even though, like Odie Henderson says in his post about the film, it sort of falls apart at the end. (That's due to the Hudlins rewriting the film at the last minute so that Marcus wins back Angela instead of winding up without either Angela or Jacqueline, the marketing department boss--and freak in the bed--played by Robin Givens. It was supposed to originally end with that shot of the Empire State Building lighting up behind Murphy, his future Life co-star Martin Lawrence and David Alan Grier hugging each other--again, that cast!--on the rooftop.)
Comedy movies like Boomerang get slept on simply because they're comedies, and we know how well the Oscar crowd treats comedy movies. The Butler and 12 Years a Slave garner lots of accolades (particularly for dramatizing tumultuous moments of African American history not from a white audience surrogate's point of view or the oppressor's point of view but from a black point of view) but are dismissed by some black moviegoers for being "misery porn." Armond White is a crazy old troll who hasn't written anything coherent or worth taking seriously in 13 years (the last White article I remember enjoying reading was his angry takedown of SNL's first post-9/11 episode because all the cops, firefighters and city workers Lorne Michaels brought out on-stage for Paul Simon's opening musical number were middle-aged white men), and White's heckling of 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen at the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner was just plain rude and stupid, but I understand where he's coming from when he disses 12 Years a Slave for being "torture porn."
There's an interesting Tumblr exchange about this very subject between David Brothers from Image Comics, who's similarly said that he's had it up to here with misery porn, and another African American comics blogger, cartoonist Darryl Ayo. "I do feel like the [black-driven movies] that come across my desk tend to be what you describe--something about how much it sucks or sucked to be black, instead of just movies about people," wrote Brothers to Ayo. "The Butler, the Help, 12 Years a Slave, Django Unchained, Precious, The Blind Side, all these movies traffick [sic] in black misery. I feel like Hollywood's black people, outside of what feels like exceptions, have just a couple ideas as to what black folks are all about, and keep going to the misery well because it has a built-in triumphant narrative if you look at it right... I'm over feeling sad about being black."
Boomerang--which I watched on Netflix Instant because I was in the mood for a film with black stars that was neither somber Oscar bait nor a corny Tyler Perry film--may be a throwback to His Girl Friday, one of Hudlin's favorite movies and an influence on the Murphy film, or any one of those '50s and '60s ad exec rom-coms with Rock Hudson or Tony Randall, but one thing that keeps Boomerang remaining vital all these years is the humor based in political consciousness that Hudlin said he and his brother wanted to inject into House Party and Boomerang in that Philly Inquirer piece. Several of my favorite scenes in House Party involve awkward interactions between black folks and white authority figures, from the school principal who thinks the head bully called Kid's dead mom a garden tool to the inept cops who toss the not-exactly-thuggish Kid in jail and get their comeuppance at the end.
The Hudlins did the same thing in Boomerang, throwing in a little scene where Marcus and his friends, despite their Manhattan ad agency cachet, are racially profiled while browsing around a menswear store (Marcus' comedic handling of the racist clerk brings back a little bit of the fire Murphy brought to the scene that Roger Ebert memorably said was the moment that made Murphy a movie star, the 48 Hrs. redneck bar scene), as well as another bit where Berry says good night to Grier in fake Korean and jokes that it means "I'm sorry I shot you, but I thought you were robbing my store." It's the Hudlins' way of saying, "Sure, this is the same opulent and insular ad agency world from those Rock Hudson and Tony Randall rom-coms, but because our characters are black, these things that are unfortunately everyday to us--like racial profiling--are as much a part of this world as the tuxes, gowns and lavish product premiere parties." And in House Party and Boomerang, the Hudlins preferred to ridicule the racist assholes who keep these problems alive instead of building Oscar-bait dramas around these problems or speechifying about them, an approach I'd like to see more often from filmmakers of color. It's laughing to keep from crying (hey, that's the title of a Tyler Perry play).
Another thing that's made Boomerang age well is the ensemble, and unlike some other Murphy films in that pre-family-movie period of his career (particularly 1994's Beverly Hills Cop III, where, according to Bronson Pinchot, Murphy was so disengaged with the lame material that John Landis told him, "Just rest, Eddie, and I'll do the scene with Bronson," and he shot Pinchot's scenes with Murphy without Murphy), you can tell Murphy enjoyed being there because of the cast he was surrounded with. During one of the business meeting scenes, he looks like he's about to break character and corpse when the ponytail on Grace Jones' hat hits him in the face, and he looks like he's about to do the same thing too when John Witherspoon explains why "you got to coordinate" in a quotable scene Ludacris once referenced. In a later scene where Angela tries to cheer up a depressed Marcus by bringing him along to a kids' art class she teaches, the interplay between Murphy and the kids appears to be ad-libbed, and his amusement over interacting with those child actors brings to mind how much fun he clearly had watching Pinchot hilariously ad-lib in the first Beverly Hills Cop.
Everyone in that Boomerang cast gets a chance to shine, even bit players like the actor who plays the butler for Eartha Kitt's Lady Eloise character, plus there are three cast members who appeared in Bond movies (Holder was in Live and Let Die, Jones showed up in A View to a Kill and Berry later starred in Die Another Day) and the two black Catwomen (Kitt and Berry). Berry would have been an okay Catwoman had the idiots behind Berry's Catwoman fiasco adapted Ed Brubaker's Catwoman comics instead of inserting all that Patience Phillips/Egyptian superpowers shit. On the other hand, her romantic rival Givens would have been a great Catwoman. Peep how Givens dominates her sex scenes with Murphy. It's very Selina Kyle.
That willingness to take a brief break from the heroism of Reggie Hammond and Axel Foley to play such an emasculated character (who, at one point in one of his sex scenes with Givens, starts sucking his thumb) and win back women who hated the misogyny of Raw and wanted more of Murphy's Coming to America rom-com side--plus hitching his wagons to Black New Wave filmmakers--were good career moves for Murphy. Early '90s "Hammer Time in her shoe" line aside, Boomerang stands the test of time, thanks to the Hudlins, the cast they assembled ("I remember talking to one of the producers at the time and saying, 'Ten years from now, people won't believe we had all these people in the same cast,'" recalled Hudlin to Blackfilm) and a soundtrack that still slaps.
Sheldon: That poster of Halle Berry is a little unnerving.
Howard: So don't look at it.
Sheldon: She's like my fourth favorite Catwoman.
Howard: No kidding.
Sheldon: Yeah, Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eartha Kitt and then her.
Howard: What about Lee Meriwether?
Sheldon: Oh, I forgot about Lee Meriwether.
Howard: Well I'm glad that is settled.
Sheldon: That makes Halle Berry my fifth favorite Catwoman. It's Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether...
Howard: Please, I'm begging you. Go to sleep.
Sheldon: I'm trying. I'm counting Catwomen.
--The Big Bang Theory
Sheldon also forgot about Adrienne Barbeau (the voice of Catwoman on Batman: The Animated Series) and Gina Gershon (she assumed the role in 2004 on the imaginatively titled animated series The Batman). Sheldon's third favorite Catwoman, legendary "Santa Baby" singer Eartha Kitt, has died at 81 from colon cancer on the holiday that was the subject of her signature song.
Kitt was the purrrrrfect replacement for Julie Newmar when the statuesque dancer/actress was unable to continue playing Batman's most formidable female foe on the '60s series because she was busy filming MacKenna's Gold. No other Catwoman could purrrrr or grrrrrowl like Kitt did. How fitting that the role was assumed by someone named Kitt.
Who can forget when Kitt purred one of the greatest lines in an Eddie Murphy movie that weren't spoken by Murphy ("Marcus, darling... I don't have any panties on...")?
Kitt led an amazing life. She was a civil rights activist who was blacklisted for criticizing the Vietnam War and its negative effect on minorities and more recently, she expressed her joy over Senator Obama's rise as a presidential candidate ("It's one of the most wonderful things that can happen to this country") and supported her countless gay fans on the issue of same-sex marriage.
She goes on to say that the gay marriage issue is similar to what African-Americans experienced during the time of the Civil-Rights Movement. "We were not allowed to go through certain doors because of our race, our color," she says intensely. "It was so stupid that we were not able to sit at the counter of a restaurant because it was only for Anglo-Saxons. It's stupid when this country says it was born on "freedom for all," but it's "freedom for some"!
This Christmas is a bittersweet one due to the news of her passing on the day when she suggestively invited Kringle to "come and trim my Christmas tree." I usually get creeped out by songs that try to sex up Santa like he's the hero of a Judd Apatow movie, but Kitt's rendition of the frequently covered "Santa Baby" is awesome. Her version was the first version and it's still the sultriest.
If you've never seen the Newman cult favorite Slap Shot, you're missing out on one of the 10 greatest sports flicks of all time. After reading about the death of Newman, whose performances I've always enjoyed watching because of what Alan Sepinwall calls Newman's "anti-vanity," I immediately popped into my DVD player the only Newman movie in my DVD collection, Slap Shot. (I wish I had a copy of Nobody's Fool in my collection, but Slap Shot sufficed.)
Every time someone posts a list of their favorite sports movies, they tend to pick the earnest ones (Rocky, Rudy, Field of Dreams, The Pride of the Yankees) as their favorites. You know, movies that make grown men cry? To borrow a classic Kay Howard line from Homicide: Life on the Street, "Oh, make me puke!" I prefer the more off-kilter and humorous sports flicks like Slap Shot, Diggstown, Breaking Away and Shaolin Soccer.
Nobody's Fool may be my favorite Newman movie, but Slap Shot contains my favorite Newman character, Reggie Dunlop, the aging hockey coach with a rather relaxed attitude towards on-the-rink behavior. Dunlop's insults are so delightfully foul-mouthed and politically incorrect that I'd hate to see what this movie is like when it airs on basic cable ("You know, your son looks like a fuddy-duddy to me. You better get married again 'cause he's gonna wind up with somebody's sock in his mouth before you can say Jack Robinson.").
I doubt TCM will include Slap Shot in its inevitable Newman marathon tribute. Even though TCM never censors its movies, I don't think they've ever aired a movie that's filled to the brim with F-bombs like Slap Shot.
Moviegoers in 1959 winced when they saw Jimmy Stewart discuss panties and sperm in the courtroom in Anatomy of a Murder. They probably had a coronary when they heard Newman curse up a storm in Slap Shot.
No wonder Newman considered Dunlop to be his favorite character and called Slap Shot the most fun movie shoot he ever did. I guess he didn't mind wearing what has to be some of the ugliest pants in movie history. (Plaid trousers? That pair of bell-bottom leather pants Newman tried to rock later in the film? Not even someone as cool as Newman in Slap Shot, Kurt Russell in Escape from New York or Eddie Murphy in his concert movies could persuade me to slip into a pair of leather pants. There are two things I'll never wear: leather pants and open-toed shoes. They're the least manly-looking pieces of fashion ever invented.)
It's interesting that Newman's final role was in another sports movie (and an animated one too!), Cars. I'm glad he went out as a talking Hudson Hornet instead of a planet-eating lardass.
