What If I Were White?

Posted on May 16, 2013 by The Hodaddy

This is a question I’m sure nearly every person of color has asked him or herself at one point or another in their lives. Would I have been discouraged by my teachers to pursue a career in the arts? Would I have been cast in plays by Ibsen, Shaw and Chekhov during my formative years as an actor? Would I have been more successful?

I’ll never know what kind of success I would have had but I know I wouldn’t have the sensibilities I have today if I were white.

I was bitten by the theater bug at an early age. There was no place I wanted to be more than on a stage in front of an audience. Through high school I performed in every production that was available to me. When I was accepted to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts I thought I had it made.

After graduation, the reality of being a working actor was a rude awakening. I was turned away from many auditions without being seen because of my ethnicity. Once when I had to go back and correct my contact number on my headshot the audition monitor had to search through the garbage to find it.

The parts I was allowed to audition for were crass stereotypes: Japanese tourists, buck toothed foreign students or martial arts gang members. Not only did I hate playing those bit parts, I had to fight very hard to get them.

This is not an uncommon story for any actor of color. Virtually every Asian American actor I know has similar tales to tell. I very well might have become one of them were it not for the events during the summer of 1990. That’s when the Miss Saigon controversy erupted.

Among my white schoolmates, I found myself on the wrong side of the controversy. It was self-evident to them that any actor has the artistic freedom to play any part. I made the counter argument that if a white actor could play a Eurasian, why couldn’t I play an Irish cop? As vigorously as they defended the right for white actors to play minorities, they were unwilling to fight for actors of color to play roles traditionally played by whites. They weren’t even willing to fight for us to play our own ethnicity. This attitude wasn’t held by just my classmates, it was accepted as standard operating procedure by the industry at large even today and today and today.

When the producers of Miss Saigon prevailed and Jonathan Pryce was allowed to perform, I lost hope for any mainstream success as an actor. If things were going to change, more Asian American specific roles would have to be created and we would have to cling to them as if our lives depended on it.

I began stage managing to learn how theater productions were put together. That’s also when I began to write. I was brash and cocky and attacked my work with the fervor of a revolutionary. I was an angry young man on a mission to change the world. For better or worse, my artistic sensibilities were forged by my political and social activism.

Over the years we’ve had our luminaries. David Henry Hwang and Philip Kan Gotanda have done ground breaking and important work. But we never grew our own Asian American August Wilson, or an Asian American Sidney Poitier or Denzel Washington. If you were to list the top ten Asian American movie stars, I doubt your average white person knows by name no more than two of them.

I firmly believe that any change begins with the writing. Over the years I have tried to create as many diverse Asian American characters as I possibly could. During the heyday of the spec market for screenplays I believed we would have our breakthrough. At the same time there were Asian American writers and directors making indie films like Picture Bride, Saving Face and Better Luck Tomorrow. Add to the mix top acting and directing talent from Asia and it felt like all the ingredients were there… only to be left wondering is it soup yet?

Now that the economy has tanked, the industry is risk averse and is far less willing to take a chance on anything that doesn’t already have a proven track record. Though things look bleak, it’s still a fight worth fighting. It’s a fight that has defined who I am.

If I were white I probably wouldn’t be much more than a mediocre actor squeaking by on the crumbs offered by the powers that be.

If I were white I probably would have expected success to come eventually rather than to fight and sacrifice for it.

If I were white I probably would be spending all my energy trying to impress the powers that be rather than building an audience of my own.

If I were white I probably wouldn’t have become a writer.

Write it for a Man, Change it Later

Posted on May 13, 2013 by The Hodaddy

“[Claudette Wyms played by CCH Pounder] was originally written for a man. [Shawn Ryan] made two or three minor little changes to the language and yet she as a woman read it. That’s one of the classic stories that they teach supposedly in Screenwriting 101 is that you write a woman with the man in mind and change the name.”

—James Manos, Jr., Consulting Producer of season one of The Shield speaking on the DVD commentary track for the episode “Carnivores.”

No screenwriting teacher of mine ever taught me this but I’ve heard this sentiment repeated enough times that I’ve found it is generally accepted as truth. Nothing could be further from it.

A little background first. The character Claudette Wyms was originally named Charles but the gender was changed after CCH Pounder auditioned for the role.

While this practice on its face creates acting opportunities for women, it requires actresses who can adopt a male’s point of view, background and attitudes. This practice also reinforces the stereotype that the only way a woman can succeed is to act like a man.

The main reason I’ve heard given to justify this practice is that a writer doesn’t want to fall into the stereotypical traps of depicting women as feminine caregivers or nurturers: that portraying them as testosterone driven and sexist toward their own gender is a better alternative and more transgressive.

In the Pilot episode Claudette has this monologue:

At this point in the series, Claudette is more defined by her vocation as a cop than by the complexity of her character. This statement she believes to be true though she doesn’t advocate this practice herself. This monologue serves more of a storytelling purpose for the writer because a few scenes later, when time is of the essence to get critical information from a suspect, she doesn’t advocate beating him for information.

Is there a more nuanced version of this monologue that would betray Claudette’s gender without resorting to female stereotypes and caricatures? If there isn’t then there really isn’t any reason why Claudette is required to be a woman.

But in actuality, CCH Pounder is a tremendous actor and over seven seasons of The Shield she and the writers evolved Claudette into one of television’s most memorable characters. That is an unusual achievement.

Thinking male and swapping genders later might be a good launching point as a writing exercise but to conceive a male character only to slap a female name on him as the final product is lazy. Our attitudes and complexity as human beings are shaped by many factors including our gender: not by our choice but by how society judges and treats us every moment of every day.

To perpetuate this practice only betrays the writer’s lack of willingness to explore the many complexities that a character may present.

The Radicalization of Immigrants

Posted on April 24, 2013 by The Hodaddy

I had to stop watching the news for a few days because of the overwrought handwringing by the press about the Boston Marathon Bombers’ radicalization. They think it’s inconceivable that they could have been radicalized here in the United States and must have been influenced by outside forces despite the lack of evidence to support that theory.

Let me tell you how easy it would be to radicalize an immigrant.

I am not an immigrant. I was born in New York City but I’ve had to endure accusations and insinuations by anyone who longed for the good old days that I am not a real American.

I know how important my citizenship is and how blessed I am to have it. I also know there is a significant percentage of my fellow citizens who will never accept me as one of their fellow countryman… never.

I remember being beat up in elementary school and being forced to apologize for Pearl Harbor even though I had no idea what the older kids were talking about. One of my classmates would taunt me by shouting “Hey Chinese!” and then pull his eyes to slant his lids. When I protested, the teachers said they couldn’t do anything because, indeed, I was Chinese.

I was an exceptional student in high school but some parents complained that the scholarships and awards shouldn’t go to a foreign student and I should be disqualified. I was accused of shouting racial epithets at a high school football game because “our kids wouldn’t do such a thing.” My principal called me a disgrace and that I needed to learn respect since I was “a guest in this country.”

One parent wanted me kicked out of a school production of Oklahoma! because she was inviting agents to see her daughter perform and that it would look like an amateur production with a Chinese cowboy. I ended up wearing so much makeup to hide my ethnicity, I looked like Sasquatch.

My college experience wasn’t much better. Once I wasn’t permitted to register for class because I had presented my U.S. passport as my ID. The registrar said that anyone presenting a passport was required to present a green card as well. By the time we got the matter cleared up nearly all the classes I wanted were full and I ended up taking electives outside my discipline to keep a full course load.

Another time I was refused a spot in a playwriting class because the teacher didn’t accept ESL students. He asked me if I thought in English or Chinese. When I told him I didn’t understand the question he said that was proof I didn’t have enough command of the language to be in his class.

At that time I was training to become an actor. In a program for a play I was acting in my name was misspelled Isaac Ito. When I brought it to the producer’s attention he said it wasn’t a big deal since I was the only Oriental onstage and easy to pick out. He refused to correct the error.

I was turned away from an audition for an amateur production of Pacific Overtures because I was told I would look funny being the only real Oriental on stage.

I signed up for an audition for a school production of Born Yesterday and waited 4 hours while other actors were let in before me. By the time I was allowed in the director was gone and the stage manager was putting away the furniture. When I complained, I was told that I knew there were no parts for someone like me and yet I was willing to waste their time by auditioning so the director felt he needed to teach me a lesson and waste my time.

I was fired from a temp job on my first day because the warehouse guys were uncomfortable telling ethnic jokes while I was around. By then I had learned that it wasn’t prudent to complain about ethnic jokes. Even though I hadn’t said anything my presence was enough to be let go.

I have been asked to recuse or disqualify myself from many discussions involving immigration or minority issues because of my obvious bias being a minority.

I self identify as Asian American which has gotten me in more than a few arguments. That if I call myself Asian American, then I’m not a true American; that I have loyalties to China even though I never lived there. If I want to live in America, then I must forsake all things Chinese despite the fact that the Irish, Italian and German immigrants have no such requirement.

I was called a racist by a creative executive because of a line in one of my scripts where a Chinese immigrant laments that he misses hearing the music of his native tongue; that the sound of Americans speaking English sounded like snorting pigs. Yet when comedians “ching-chong” I’m supposed to lighten up and find that funny.

How many times are you made to profess out loud that you love this country? How many times in a public place are you asked, “What are you doing here?” How many times are you asked to provide your bona fides to prove that you’re supposed to be at this meeting? Often I have to explain that my MFA was from UCLA, not some adjunct school or continuing ed program and that I had to meet the same strict requirements to get in and to graduate as everyone else.

English was by far my weakest subject growing up. I struggled to write even the simplest of essays in high school. Yet when I saw the stereotypical roles that were available to me as an actor (and worse, that I had to fight to get them), I knew that the only way I could effect change was to become a writer and create those roles.

When I first came to Los Angeles I bought the lie that production companies and studios fed me; that a good script was a good script and it didn’t matter what the story was or the ethnicity of the characters. I’ve also heard producers complain through their representatives at diversity panel discussions that they would produce more ethnically based movies if only there were more good ethnic scripts out there.

People with a little bit of power are so afraid to make a wrong decision they mitigate their creative and financial risks. “Dark and edgy” no longer means transgressive and they fall back on the traditional norms of storytelling: Gays are still freaks, immigrants are uneducated, women need men for fulfillment and the mentally ill should be locked up before they become mass murderers. To truly be transgressive would mean including all of the above as welcome Americans deserving of equal rights and treatment.

Too many of my contemporaries place a high value in the validation given by a studio gig or representation by a big agency or just the mere association with a famous actor. That validation has defined their career.

I will admit that the glamor of Hollywood was a factor in my decision to come to L.A. But as a writer, I’ve had to cultivate a functional knowledge in a wide range of topics including Constitutional law, immigration, prejudice, white supremacy, history, chemistry, medicine and Civil rights; topics that have made me a much more informed human being. For me, the knowledge and experience I have accrued is the true validation of my efforts.

Time and again I meet many “average Americans” who believe that because America is the greatest country in the world, there is no need to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. I recently traveled to China with my father and some of my fellow American travelers openly complained that no one spoke English and that they were being fed only Chinese food.

My political activism wasn’t by choice. At the time I broke into the work force, I had no idea why so many doors were closed to me. I couldn’t understand why I was excluded from employment as a stage hand because they didn’t have an Asian American play programmed that year. I couldn’t understand why it was okay to exclude minorities from the audition process and yet it wasn’t okay to exclude whites. I didn’t understand how white characters were considered “universal” while minority characters lacked the ability to be transcendental.

And yet I’m still told by well meaning folks that racism exists only in my mind. That if I really paid attention I’ll notice that it’s only minorities who bring up race issues. That if we just stayed quiet about it, it would all go away.

I hold no illusions that anything I do will bring about the end of racism. But I must believe that what I write will make a difference. That discourse, discussion and reasoning will make a difference along with protests, demonstrations and empathy. Even if it’s an incremental difference, it’s better than the alternative.

It would be so easy for me to consumed by anger and I will admit that that my early creativity was fueled by anger. But I learned quickly enough that if you wanted to be a creative person for the long term, you had to let go of your anger before it consumed and destroyed you. I believe that, despite all their flaws, you have to love the worlds you write about and the characters who inhabit them for them to have any lasting impact.

Once you stop believing; once you lose faith in the power of discourse and creativity, once you lose faith in the level playing field provided by our laws; once you no longer believe your opinion or your vote counts or matters, once you no longer believe fairness exists, that’s when the radicalization begins.

Isaac Ho

My Something Beats Your Nothing

Posted on April 16, 2013 by The Hodaddy

Do not tell me that the story you have in your head, the story you haven’t written, the story you’ve dreamed about, is better than the script or book I wrote. If you don’t have anything on paper, you have nothing. My something beats your nothing every single time.

If my writing didn’t sweep you off your feet, why in the world would you trust me to write your script? If you don’t feel strongly enough about your own story that you won’t write it down, why the fuck should I waste my time writing it for you? I don’t want to hear your ideas; I have my own ideas.

It’s a fucking free country. I can write whatever the fuck I want. If you don’t like what I write, then write your own fucking story. I have no obligation to voice your story or viewpoint. Fair and balanced is whatever the fuck I say it is.

You have no right to give me your opinion or offer me notes if you haven’t read the fucking story. You can’t judge if a story is good or bad if you haven’t read it. Just like you can’t write a story if you don’t actually put words on a page.

Yes, I’ve taken a few screenwriting classes in my life but I’ve figured a lot out on my own. Yes, I know the Hero’s Journey and I know where act breaks should fall. But you know what? Not everyone follows the rules. What’s the point in writing a story if I don’t trust my own instincts? Yes, I want to be different, that’s the fucking point!

I know you’re friends with a big time producer, I know your kid goes to school with the son of a famous director. I know you worked for a studio but you’ve never been completely specific about what you did for them. Seriously, I’m supposed to be impressed by that?

I looked you up on imdb and your name is nowhere on the credits of any movie you said you worked on. But do you know how I can tell you’re a fraud? You have no respect for my talent and ability and yet expect me to jump at the opportunity to work for you for free.

I don’t need to pay a consultant to tell me my script has limited appeal, the market will do that just fine. I don’t need to prove I’m smarter than you when it’s pretty clear you’re a moron whose greatest skill is covering his own ass.

You read my script and hated it. That’s fair but it doesn’t mean I’m a bad writer. I can take all my rejected scripts (and I have a lot of them) and do something else with them. One of the most liberating things about being a writer is that there is no waste. Everything is source material. Even you.

Money doesn’t buy you respect, it doesn’t buy you intelligence, it doesn’t buy you experience. What’s funny to me is that you don’t even have money. Neither do I. But I have time and perseverance. What the fuck do you have?

You’re not the first person to call me an asshole and I’m pretty certain you won’t be the last. And as long as everyone thinks I’m an asshole, you know what? I may as well be one. It beats taking antacids.

Really and truly I’m not impressed by the car you drive, or the neighborhood you live in, or the clothes you wear. You have yet to pronounce my name correctly. You make me wait while you talk on your cell phone about who the fuck cares? You’re an hour and a half late for a meeting that was set up for your convenience. And no, I won’t figure out why you can’t get WiFi you fucking racist shithead.

For as long as I can remember I’ve expressed myself with the written word. For the rest of my life I will struggle to find just the right word and sometimes I’ll be successful finding it. What will you have to show for your life except the pile of shit you’ve dumped on everyone around you?

You say you can have your pick of any writer in this town? Good luck with that. If they’re worth anything, they’ll laugh at the same offer you made me.

Practically speaking, all I have control of is my writing. I can’t make someone love my script, I can’t make anyone buy my books. That’s all out of my control.

I can write. And the more I write, the better I become. I’m at peace with that. And if you’re okay with that, you’re welcome to come along for the ride.

Isaac Ho