the slanted screen

June 24 movie: The Slanted Screen. This wasn't really a movie, rather a PBS special from a few years ago about Asian men in Hollywood. They showed lots of clips from movies we'd just seen in the TCM feature this month, plus many we'd already seen before. There were interviews with lots of Asian American actors too. The differing reactions to Bruce Lee were interesting: some of the younger actors said that Bruce Lee made them feel proud to walk down the street for the first time. Then another complained that everyone thinks he knows kung fu and it's all Bruce's fault.

It seemed like the documentary must have taken several years to make. Because based on the narration it sounded like it had been made around 2000. Then at the end they showed a clip from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. But earlier in the show they had mentioned John Cho, one of the stars of Harold and Kumar, but only talked about an earlier indie movie he was in. Also, you could tell it had been made by PBS and not a major studio, because the lighting in the interview segments was terrible. Even the movie stars like James Shigeta looked like hell. And may I say, making James Shigeta look bad is a major, if dubious, accomplishment.

A couple of major omissions: first, Ang Lee. His early movies Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet really should have been mentioned in the segment about indie films from an Asian American point of view. Second and even more glaring: George Takei. They did show a brief clip of him on stage doing some kind of message-y play, but no interview and nothing about Star Trek. We thought maybe they were ignoring him because the documentary was specifically about the movies. But then they did a whole segment on the Vietnamese actor in 21 Jump Street. So that theory doesn't hold water.

As far as I know Mr. Sulu was the first major Asian character on any TV show whose race was irrelevant. I can't remember ever seeing an ethnic stereotype in Mr. Sulu, and I can't imagine why they wouldn't talk to George Takei in a documentary about Asian men in Hollywood.