Month: July 2020

Initially, this wasn’t meant as a blog post. It started as something I was going to pitch to film sites as an essay idea but then just wrote it up as a writing exercise. I liked it enough to throw it up here. It’s also timely, as Kevin Smith will turn 50 on Sunday. Your regularly scheduled “Life in Asia” content will return next week. Enjoy.

In the past few months, I’ve been getting back into screenwriting and filmmaking. Covid-19 has obviously made it difficult to do any kind of production but I’ve been doing a lot of writing and, at least, planning for some future shoots. With that in mind, I realized that Kevin Smith, a writer and filmmaker that has inspired me multiple times to pursue this path, is quickly coming up on his 50th birthday. Even, if you aren’t a fan of his films, if you are trying to become a filmmaker, there are worse models to try and emulate than Smith.

Clerks was one of the first films that I saw that made me want to be a filmmaker. Made for a budget just over $27,000, this was the first time that a feature film seemed like something that was possible to make. Smith often talks about how seeing Richard Linklater’s Slacker at a midnight screening made him want to go to film school and become a filmmaker. He did and just four years later, he released Clerks. I think I saw it for the first time in early 1995 and, like Smith after seeing Slacker, it started me on the path to becoming a filmmaker.

I came of age in that golden age of indie filmmaking that was the early 1990s. I watched films like Clerks, Slacker, El Mariachi, Reservoir Dogs, Gas Food Lodging, and Dazed and Confused seemingly on repeat. I read about these upcoming directors in Premiere and Filmmaker Magazines and explored the catalogs of the directors they said had inspired them. I was convinced that soon it would be my face that would be gracing the covers of these magazines.

I did go to film school in Pittsburgh. I was the last class through to actually shoot and edit everything on film, which cost a small fortune to make even five-minute student films. Once I graduated from film school, I worked on a few projects that were coming through Pittsburgh. I was too broke to move to LA and I also thought that in Pittsburgh there was a decent enough film scene and it offered the chance to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Plus, Smith, Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, and many other of the filmmakers I admired had come from and were working outside of Hollywood.

I knew the odds were stacked against me but I thought success would somehow come easy. I expected that soon I would write a script that would be good enough to raise a little bit of money so that I could shoot it locally, place it in festivals, and cause a bidding war among distributors. The first few screenplays I wrote were terrible. I was trying to write like Smith, or Tarantino, or Linklater. Sometimes all three at once. Besides that, while I knew the amount of luck involved in not just making a film but getting a distribution deal, I never really accepted it as reality.

Smith would be the first to tell you that he was incredibly lucky that the Village Voice’s Amy Taubin happened to catch a screening of Clerks. Her review was what helped it get it into Sundance and eventually picked up by Miramax. Had she not seen it, Clerks could have been just another great low-budget film that hardly anyone saw. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of those out there. One of my favorite films is an ultra-low-budget film called, You Are Alone, written and directed by Gorman Bechard that was on the festival circuit in 2005 but most people I talk to have never heard of it.

All wasn’t for naught in Pittsburgh. I found some likeminded collaborators and we worked on some projects together. Shorts, no-to-low budgets, documentaries; I worked on several different projects with a lot of good people. I even did a little work in front of the camera appearing as an extra in a couple of bigger Hollywood films but also acting in a number of local low-budget films. The Flint Journal even reviewed one of my performances as “exuding every-man charisma.” Beat that Daniel Day-Lewis!

I also worked on developing a few projects that I thought could be good enough to raise a decent budget. I flew out to LA a few times for some meetings that I hoped would lead to something. We came close to getting a few things made. Really close in one or two cases. This should have inspired me. It should have told me that my hard work was on the verge of paying off. I should have doubled down and kept up the press. Instead, I had the opposite reaction. I became frustrated that people weren’t recognizing my “genius” or at least the genius of the projects I was proud to be working on. Looking back now, I realize how foolish I was.

Smith would inspire me as a filmmaker again in 2011, when his horror film Red State premiered at Sundance. Never mind that the film was a well-directed, Westboro Baptist Church-inspired horror film that showcased a new side of the up-until-now comedic filmmaker, it’s what happened after the screening that me double down on my Kevin Smith fandom. Normally, every filmmaker dreams of selling their film after a successful screening at Sundance and when Smith took the stage after the screening, many assumed he would be making a pitch for a distributor to take a chance on a well-known comedic filmmaker working in a new genre. Instead, Smith turned the tables.

He bounded to the stage in a hockey sweater and wielding a hockey stick, honestly, both are pretty on-brand for Smith. Slash Film has a great recap of this, as well as the video here, but at the podium, he auctioned off the rights to Red State and promptly closed it with his own bid of $20. He then went on a long rant, again not out of the ordinary as he is never short of words, about how the Hollywood distribution system was broken and he was taking a chance on himself instead. He explained the hockey stick as a tip of the cap to one of his idols, Wayne Gretzky, who famously said you don’t skate to where the puck is, you skate to where it’s heading. Smith was trying to do the same thing. He announced that he was going to four-wall his film, taking it out on the road, screening it with fans, and then doing Q&As in the theater afterward.

Smith had built up a big following in his years as a filmmaker, only partly attributed to his films. He was one of the first to podcast and has since created a ridiculous amount of podcasts with a variety of themes and topics. Still, at the time, his idea of four-walling Red State seemed crazy. He was lambasted in Deadline, the Hollywood Reporter, and virtually all of Hollywood. I, however, perked my head up. As someone who had failed to break through the gatekeepers in the film industry, I was on his side. I thought it was crazy enough to work. The more I read about it, the more I thought that this would become the future. Hollywood routinely spends $20-25 million to market a $5 million movie. Instead of wasting all that money appealing to the masses, Smith would take his movie straight to the fans.

Kevin Kelly has written a famous blog post about needing 1,000 true fans to be successful as a creator. Smith obviously had more than that but he was using the same concept. The reason that this has inspired me wasn’t for his “fuck you” to Hollywood, although that was quite enjoyable. The real reason is that it has allowed Smith to do what he wants and make the kinds of films that he wants to make. And that is really the dream of any creator.

As technology becomes cheaper and the amount of networks and streaming services continues to grow like weeds, the gatekeepers are becoming less and less relevant. Smith jumped on board in the infancy of this trend. Granted he was already financially and artistically successful at that point, but he was still betting on himself for his creative future. If you are trying to become a filmmaker and have your work seen, you no longer have to pay your dues in the Hollywood system. It’s more important to create and nurture your own audience. Work on building your 1,000 true fans. Smith was the first one that made me start thinking this way but it’s since become a much bigger trend.

I met Smith once in 2008, when he was in Pittsburgh shooting Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I was working at the luxury apartments where he and much of the cast and crew stayed. He couldn’t have been more friendly or humble. As I continue to not throw in the towel and trying to “make it” as a writer and filmmaker, I just wanted to tip my cap to someone that has inspired me over the years. Happy 50th, Kevin Smith!

This week, in honor of my nephew’s 6th birthday, and his obsession with Bruce Lee, I’ve decided to recount my weekend trip to Hong Kong over Dragon Boat Festival in 2017. Dragon Boat Festival is a Chinese holiday that falls in either May or June each year on the traditional calendar. One of the highlights of the Festival is dragon boat racing, of which Hong Kong is home to arguably the best in the world.

Hong Kong has always been high on my destination list as it’s the home of one of my favorite filmmakers, Wong Kar-Wai, and the setting for several of his best films. I had a list of filming locations from his movies that I wanted to see up close and that took priority over any boat races. I booked a small hotel room in Tsim Sha Tsui, the neighborhood where much of two of Wong’s films, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, were filmed. In fact, the hotel was smack dab between the Chungking Mansions, made famous in Chungking Express, and the address where Bruce Lee grew up, which has unfortunately since turned into a gaudy shopping mall.

When I say that I booked a small hotel room, that may be an understatement. Hong Kong is notoriously congested and, as such, living quarters can be extremely cramped. Even the western chain hotels, which were all sold out on account of the holiday, barely give you enough room to stretch out. Lying in my twin bed at a local establishment, I could touch three walls at once and was only maybe a foot away from the fourth.

I arrived on a Saturday and spent the day exploring the city. People were flocking in from all over the globe for the races that were scheduled for Tuesday. I met several people from Scandinavia, Africa, New Zealand, and British Columbia that were all there to compete.

Of course, the other big draw to Hong Kong is the food. With living quarters so small and many homes lacking kitchens, Hong Kong is home to a ridiculous amount of restaurants and its most famous export is dim sum, a cuisine of several small plates of food that are often steamed or fried. Saturday night, I dined out at Tim Ho Wan, a Michelin-starred dim sum chain. It is famous for being one of the cheapest Michelin restaurants in the world and my dinner of pork bun, shrimp vermicelli roll, and spare rib came to about $9 US and was a contender for one of the best meals I’ve ever had.

Sundays make for great mornings for strolling around the most popular areas in Hong Kong. The city is home to almost half a million migrant domestic workers, most of which come from Philippines and Indonesia. These workers will work six days off a week but get Sundays off. Since they usually live with their host families and have no residence of their own, they instead will gather together with their countrywomen on the sidewalks and in the parks. They will lay out blankets and have large picnics with loads of delicious homemade food. Some play music and dance, some catch up on gossip, while others just use the time to catch up on rest.

As I was walking across a big courtyard filled with several picnics taking place, a group of Filipinas invited me to join them on their blanket to enjoy some pork adobo with them. I hung out with them for a few hours, eating and chatting, until the heat and humidity got too much to bear and I left to find some air conditioning.

On Monday, I decided to take the ferry to Macao. I was curious to see the island once colonized by the Portuguese that is now split almost down the middle: the northern half being the old Portuguese part of the island and the southern half, made up of casinos. This turned out to be a horrible idea, however, as all of the tourists in town for the boat races apparently had the same thought. The casinos were packed to the gills and the lines for buses or taxis to the other side of the island were consistently about 50 people deep. I spent a few hours at the Venetian Casino, lost a little bit of money playing Blackjack, and then decided on catching the ferry back.

Tuesday morning came and I met up with the Filipinas that I had met on Sunday. They had an extra day off because of the holiday and we decided to go out together to Stanley Beach to see the Dragon Boat Races. The beach was packed and we fought to get a decent spot. We watched several races before getting bored and exploring the surrounding inlet. Doing anything during daytime in Hong Kong can be difficult, though, because of the awful humidity and we quickly found our way to an air-conditioned bar.

Tuesday evening, I spent at the Avenue of the Stars park nearby my hotel. The small area is home to the famous Bruce Lee statue, as well as handprints and plaques from several famous Hong Kong natives, including Wong Kar-Wai, Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, and many more. Finally, I made one last run to Tim Ho Wan before catching my flight home.

Hong Kong is a beautiful city that is like nowhere else on Earth. In the past year, protests, riots, and overbearing police have made it a difficult place to visit. The people of Hong Kong are fighting to preserve their way of life and I fully support them. I really hope to get back there soon and more than anything, I stand with the people of Hong Kong in their fight to keep their freedoms.

This is a post I wrote up back in January 2017 but never posted about my first experience with a Chinese year-end party:

This past Tuesday night was our company’s year-end party, but it also doubled as the school’s five year anniversary. The entire staff was required to attend and the owner promised to go all out and spare no expense. Still, I had no idea how grand it would actually be.

It was held at the Five-Star Intercontinental Hotel, which doesn’t really say much because China likes to refer to every hotel from your average Marriott on up as a “Five-Star hotel”. This one definitely was, however, complete with a Rolls Royce dealership in the lobby.

Upon arrival, they had a luxurious red carpet to walk down where we got to pose for the cameras. This is when I first started to realize that this party would be on a much more epic scale than I had imagined. Our invitations called for formal wear, but for most foreigners, who don’t have a suit with them in China, it meant a shirt and tie, with a blazer. The Chinese, however, took the formal wear requirement uber-serious. The men were decked out in tuxes, and the women appeared dressed for their wedding day, or at the very least, prom. Many wore extravagant gowns and several wore qipao dresses straight out of Wong Kar-Wai’s “In the Mood for Love.”

Inside the banquet room, the school had hired a camera crew to document the event. And when I say crew, I mean a three-man team shooting with Canon Mark IV’s. ‘A’ camera was on a tripod catching a master shot of the room, ‘B’ camera was a man with a handheld, and ‘C’ Camera was a jib! They had a 20-foot jib in the banquet room to capture an “aerial” view of the proceedings.

After we were seated, a spectacular light show and a booming movie score cued that it was time for the party to start. The lights went out and when they came back up, five women from the Chinese staff performed a flawlessly choreographed K-Pop dance routine. Following their performance, our hosts bounded to the stage, looking as elegant as any Hollywood award show. The three of them welcomed us all before engaging in scripted stage banter.

Throughout the show, the entire staff took turns performing on stage. We were all told in December that we would all have to do some kind of song or dance routine. Most of the foreign teachers, however, didn’t take this too seriously, figuring it was akin to going to a KTV, or Karaoke bar. I decided to pair up with a female teacher and perform Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe”. It was an easy song and if we got ridiculous costumes, no one would care how badly we butchered the song.

Now it was time to sit back and take in what the other staff had put together. My jaw went immediately to the floor as groups of the Chinese staff performed song and dance numbers that they had clearly spent several hours a day practicing for the past month. Shortly before my partner and I were to take the stage, we discovered we had another handicap: no one from China knew who Sonny or Cher was.

Still, I donned my black wig and mustache, as well as a ridiculously patterned shirt that looked like it could have come out of the ’60s, that at 5XL barely fit me. Side note – clothes sizes in China are crazy. I ordered my shirt online and went for the biggest size they had because I’d already been warned. When it came, the 5XL shirt was so tight, I could barely button it. I later found a size indicator chart and it said that a 5XL should fit a 160-pound man! We went on and did our thing. The Chinese had no clue what we were doing, but they seemed to like it.

I thought that my singing for the night was done after that, but so much for wishful thinking. The hosts announced that a game was next on the agenda and they needed some volunteers. One of my coworkers made sure I was picked, so I warily headed back to the stage to meet my fate. The game involved putting headphones on the westerners and playing a Chinese song for them. We then had to sing the song we were hearing, in Chinese mind you,  back to our Chinese partner to see if they could guess which song we were attempting to sing. Of course, I was chosen to go first and slipped on the headphones. I belted out the Chinese ballad I heard as best I could and I must have done pretty well because my partner got it on her first guess.

Throughout the night they would stop the proceedings to award door prizes. Everyone there had their name in a raffle and would be drawn out one-by-one until everyone had a gift. When your name was called you would go up and pick from the pile of gifts on the stage, so you obviously wanted to be called early. My name wasn’t called until about 60% of the gifts had been cycled through, but I was still able to walk away with a nice juicer/blender combo.

The party lasted a little over four hours and food and booze were supplied in plentiful amounts the entire time. I left the party completely wiped and feeling like I would need a couple of days to recover, but unfortunately, I would have to be up for work the next day because for some reason they decided to throw this gala on a Tuesday, ugh!

Asian countries are home to some wonderful and often hilarious bathroom signs. Most of these are bathroom signs I’ve come across on my travels. A couple aren’t necessarily for bathrooms but i included them anyway. Enjoy!

With the Fourth of July this weekend, I find myself really missing baseball. While I can’t wait to see Gerrit Cole take the mound for my Yankees, I figured I’d share the experience I had going to see a Nippon Professional Baseball League game in Tokyo. Last August, I took in the city rivalry game between the Yomiuri Giants and Tokyo Yakult Swallows at the famed Tokyo Dome.

The Yomiuri Giants are the Japanese equivalent of the New York Yankees. They play their home games in the enormous Tokyo Dome and have won 22 Japan Series Championships. They have long been the dominant team in Japan baseball since the team’s inception in 1934 and have a massive fanbase throughout the country and, much like the Yankees, an even bigger cult of haters. Meanwhile, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows may be the equivalent of the Mets. They also play in Tokyo but in the smaller Meiji Jingu Stadium. They were founded in 1950 and spent over a decade before they finished the season with a winning record. Their fanbase is much smaller and doesn’t usually stretch beyond Tokyo as the Giants’ does.

Unlike the US, baseball games in Japan often sell out well in advance of game day. I realized this when I first tried to attend a game in Osaka. I walked up to the ticket counter on a game day and was turned away with a laugh for being naive enough to think I could buy a ticket so late. In recent years, they have also cracked down on ticket scalping so I was out of luck that day. For the Giants-Swallows game, I learned my lesson and purchased a ticket three weeks out. There was only a handful left but I secured a spot down the left-field line in the upper deck.

Crowds at a Japanese baseball game are into it from before the first pitch till the final out. They have loads of different cheers and songs. When the starting lineups are announced, each player on the home team has his own cheer. Unlike attending an American game where the crowd goes through peaks and valleys of interest, the Japanese fans stay attentive to the game throughout and cheer nonstop whether their team is ahead or trailing. The remarkable thing is that they do it all while sitting. At no point during the games did the fans stand up to cheer on their team because that would be impolitely blocking someone’s view.

The Swallows entered the game with the worst record in the Nippon League, the Giants owned the second-best. Still, the Swallows jumped out to a big early lead. By the 5th inning, it was 7-0 and I decided to hit the concourse in search of some food.

I was amazed to see the assortment of ballpark food available in the concessions. Much like an American ballpark, they offered hamburgers, hot dogs, and peanuts, although no Cracker Jacks. They also had a wide selection of Japanese food that looked as good as you’d see in most restaurants. From sushi to pork cutlet to chicken curry, they all looked better than anything you’d find at a US sporting event. The best part was that every food item was under $10US, with most entrees around $5.

As for drinks, Kirin and Asahi are the two largest Japanese beer brands and their presence was felt all over the dome. Still, they offered quite a few craft brews, including a few selections from the Brooklyn Brewery. Highballs are also a very popular summer cocktail in Japan, so there were plenty of whisky carts that featured both the local, Suntory, as well as Dewars. These were mostly hawked by attractive young women in short shorts that winded through the crowd much the same way a cotton candy vendor would in the US. Despite all of the alcohol so readily available, and at a cheap price – both a large cup of beer and a high ball went for around $5 – I didn’t see a single fan that looked like he might have had one too many.

I ordered a pork cutlet and a Suntory and soda, alas I couldn’t resist the whisky sirens, and headed back to my seat. I came back just in time. The Giants had put runners on the corners with no outs and former Padre, Christian Villanueva, at the plate. Luckily, the manager called for a mound conference, as the ushers will only allow you to and from your seat during a break in play. As soon as I sat back down, Villanueva connected on a blast that came close to hitting the back of the dome, easily 450 feet or more! The Giants had cut the lead to 7-3.

The Giants would continue to come back. The game went back and forth in the later innings and was tied 9-9 entering the final frame. In the bottom of the 9th, a Giants player hit a bomb towards centerfield. I thought I was about to see a walk-off home run but at the last second, former MLB-er, Nori Aoki, leaped up and made a spectacular catch, robbing a home run. Unfortunately, the Swallows couldn’t rally off Aoki’s huge play, they posted a goose egg in the 10th, before the Giants would eventually eke it out in the bottom of the 10th.

I was disappointed that the lowly Swallows couldn’t pull off the big win but excited that I had seen such an eventful game. Afterward, I made my way out of the dome with the other 45,000 Japanese fans. No one had left early. The crowd politely made their way out of the dome. Despite the large crowd, there were only two concourses available for exiting the dome, yet no one pushed or complained. I hope to get back again to catch another game, hopefully, next time, I can see the Nippon League team that I’ve decided to adopt for my fandom, the Hanshin Tigers.