I went to see The Farewell a couple of days ago. It’s about a Chinese grandma who has cancer, and everyone is too Chinese to tell her. Of which, I have some thoughts:
We saw this in a theater in Fort Lauderdale, where someone wrote “Great ‘fortune cookie’ of a movie” on the comment wall. Because it’s Fort Lauderdale! And there aren’t enough Asians here to be upset about it!
And because of this, I have a lot of Asian friends who didn’t enjoy the movie because there are uniquely Asian American moments that take you out of the immersion.
For example, there’s a scene where the extended family stays at the hotel rather than the grandmother’s house, and the grandmother lets them. That would NEVER happen. My mom called last week saying my dad has finally moved into the room I was staying in, and that I could sleep in mom’s bed while she slept in the living room. I told her I could sleep at a hotel; I may as well have said I quit my job to sell cheese sandwiches to a traveling hippie band. So basically, if I visit my parents, I sleep in the living room. Got it.
There’s another scene in the movie where the entire family talks about identity - whether you’re Chinese or American. One of the fathers says he considers himself American. BZZT, wrong answer! Most Chinese folks consider themselves Chinese on bloodline rather than location. My dad certainly does. Dad considered me Chinese as well until I moved to Florida to live with a man; then, very conveniently, I became American. (Note to self: bring this up with my therapist. A therapist! See? American.)
All of this said: it’s tough to write a script that perfectly captures the dissonance between American and Chinese languages and cultures, as someone who writes a lot of blog posts about a mother who doesn’t speak a word of English. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to find actors and actresses who can portray someone both (neither?) American or Chinese.
To be honest, I don't think there will ever be a western movie out there that will hit American AND Chinese sensibilities. My mom HATED Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ("too slow!") and LOL, The Joy Luck Club ("why are they crying so much?")
Most of these bullet points I spat out, machine gun style, walking out of the movie theater. “They should just make me a script consultant,” I joke to Kareem, forgetting that Kareem is actually a filmmaker.
“You know,” he says, “[our friend] Andrew has been saying all this time that you should send him a treatment on one of your stories. And script doctors are an actual thing - someone who takes an outline and fills the script from there.”
“So, you’re saying I should write a script,” I say. He shrugs.
I guess it’s natural to gravitate towards a medium like filmmaking since I’ve naturally been surrounded by people in the film industry. Storytelling is storytelling, right? But script writing has specific nuances; most stories have a spine, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Newsletters or blog posts like what I’m writing now don’t need to go through the trouble. It feels like a lot of work (he writes, as he takes a couple of days to edit this newsletter.)
So, the seeds have been planted, although who knows if anything will germinate. I refuse to promise anyone anything anymore, thanks to my short attention span and terror of writing anything shitty.
But the idea of bits of my life on screen is… weird. I imagine someone playing me. There’s precisely one chubby gay Asian American actor that exists on American television I’m aware of: Nico Santos from Super Store. He could learn Mandarin, right? So long as he can cry on the inside at the drop of a hat, it works for me.