Contra Costa Times : Navigating the mainstream

04/09/2003

	Navigating the mainstream 'Better Luck' features an Asian-American cast in unstereotypical roles By Ellen Lee
	JUSTIN LIN'S "Better Luck Tomorrow" depicts overachieving teenagers who at first seem as if they could blend comfortably into any suburb, even in the East Bay.
	They want to fit in. They fantasize about dating high school cheerleaders. In their quest to get into an Ivy League college and spring themselves from their dull suburban existence, they join every high school club they can squeeze into their lunch period, study a vocabulary word a day to prepare for the SATs and pick up trash at the beach.
	The film, which opens Friday in a handful of Bay Area theaters, also happens to star an all-Asian-American cast. But it is far from a stereotypical portrayal of Asian-Americans as spelling bee champions or math wizards. A tale of Suburbia, USA, it could easily be examining adolescents of any race or ethnicity as it probes the double lives of teenagers trying to maintain their 4.0 (or higher) grade point averages, even as they spiral into such "extracurricular" activities as snorting cocaine and running a cheat-sheet scam.
	"Better Luck Tomorrow" casts Asian-Americans in an unfamiliar light. More often than not in Hollywood, Asian-Americans have played butt-kicking martial artists (Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Russell Wong in the new WB series "Black Sash"), bumbling martial artists (Jackie Chan), beautiful and exotic martial artists (Lucy Liu in "Charlie's Angels") or animated martial artists (Disney's "Mulan").
	They're immigrants stumbling over the English language, Japanese tourists and stunted geniuses with thick glasses, bad hair and no fashion sense. Sometimes they're not even really Asian-Americans: Mickey Rooney donned buck teeth to look "Asian" in the Audrey Hepburn classic "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
	Lin is betting that "Better Luck Tomorrow" will bring better luck for Asian-Americans in Hollywood.
	"As an Asian-American, not as a filmmaker, I would like to see this movie succeed," Lin said. "If it can succeed, it will open so many doors for Asians onscreen and behind the camera."
	Lin, 31, counts among his early influences Bay Area filmmaker Curtis Choy, whose films ("The Fall of the I-Hotel") he saw during the early days of the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival. The son of immigrants who moved from Taiwan to Orange County when he was in second grade, Lin went on to receive a bachelor's and a master's at UCLA, where he first conceived "Better Luck Tomorrow."
	The film revolves around Ben and his class-clown friend Virgil, two high school sophomores who aspire to get into a top college and maybe even date a cheerleader. They join forces with Virgil's hustling cousin, Han, and valedictorian and president of every student club, Daric. Bored by their regular after-school activities, they begin experimenting with petty theft and drinking, which quickly graduates into drugs, sex with a prostitute in Las Vegas and, ultimately, murder.
	"I'm not trying to represent every Asian-American in this film," said Lin. "It's a very specific view. By making it, hopefully we can have the opportunity to make more films and have more perspectives."
	Despite a stream of Asian-American films in recent years, and a growing crop of Asian-American actors, "Better Luck Tomorrow" is the first film with an Asian-American leading cast since 1993's "The Joy Luck Club" that has a stab at mainstream success. It has already gotten attention since it was shown last year at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was purchased by MTV Films, purveyor of Brittney Spear's "Crossroads," last summer's hit "jackass: The Movie" and another independent film about high school, "Election."
	Asian-Americans in the Bay Area are counting on it.
	"I was blown away with how much I related to the movie," said Jack Song, a sophomore at UC Berkeley who grew up in Southern California, where the movie takes place. "I was recognized as a normal person. I'm not a stereotype."
	He and more than a dozen students have been trying to rally support for the film in Berkeley as part of an effort on college campuses across the country. This week, they began picketing alongside candidates for the school's student government elections and speaking in front of classes to draw attention to the film. E-mails have been criss-crossing the country for months touting "Better Luck Tomorrow." Some of the enthusiasm has been spontaneous, some drummed up by the distributors.
	Support from Asian-Americans is crucial because the entertainment industry hasn't historically viewed them as a lucrative audience. Early on in its making, as Lin sought funding for the film, he was asked to write in a white lead or adjust the screenplay for Latino actors to make it appeal to a wider audience. Lin balked at the requests and instead used up his savings and maxed out 10 credit cards to finance the project.
	"It's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Chi-hui Yang, festival director for the National Asian American Telecommunications Association in San Francisco, which holds the San Francisco Asian-American film festival each year. "Because there's been so few Asian-American films released, very little market research has been done. I know there's an audience for Asian-American cinema. There's just no figure to back that up."
	The film also found backing of another kind from film critic Roger Ebert during the Sundance festival. When a member of the audience criticized the film for painting a negative picture of Asian-Americans, the critic, bundled in a scarf and thick coat, his cheeks pink from the cold, stood up, jabbed his finger at the speaker and said, "What I find offensive and condescending about your statement is nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, 'How could you do this to your people?' This film has the right to be about these people, and Asian-American characters have the right to be whoever they want to be."
	MTV Films plans to release the film in the Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago this weekend, followed by a dozen more cities next weekend. Depending on its box-office success during the first few weeks, "Better Luck" could spread to a wider audience.
	"It's contingent on Asian-Americans," said John Cho, a UC Berkeley graduate who plays a prep school bad boy with seemingly everything -- money, an open door to top universities, a cheerleader girlfriend -- in the film. "It's going to be Asian America filling the seats, so it stays around in theaters and has a chance to appeal to a wider audience."
	It's not just about raking in dollars, however. The film could spur Hollywood to feature Asian-Americans in more leading roles, and not necessarily ones that require them to karate chop their opponent or serve kung pao chicken. Parry Shen, who plays the main character in the film, has been up for his share of lackluster parts: a sushi chef who also fights crime, a Chinese food delivery guy who used to be a doctor in China.
	"The twist is he only speaks Spanish," he said. "It's still the same joke. It's just a wolf in sheep's clothing. (The characters) don't progress the story at all."
	Several more projects by Asian-American directors and writers also are awaiting the green light, and this film could spur investors into giving them the OK, said Lin, who has started his own production company, Trailing Johnson Productions.
	"I sound like a politician," Lin said. "But I realize that everything is interconnected. If you want to see more films like this, you have to support films like this. ... If you show that an Asian-American film is profitable, then they will make another Asian-American film. It becomes that simple."