Has anyone else heard about how most of the real-life characters in the book ‘Bringing Down the House’ were mostly Asian American males, but that the movie would be cast with all-white actors and maybe one asian female? That is RACIST TO REWRITE THE ETHNICITIES of these guys from Asian to White. This is racist, because if you read the book their Asian ethnicity is central to the plot and their ability to gamble lots of money in Vegas. Just another example of racist Hollywood casting, and the complete exclusion/suppression of American-Asian men in Hollywood (’Pat Buchanan’ racist mentality that Asian American men can’t play Americans on screen).
“Mezrich mentioned the stereotypical Hollywood casting process — though most of the actual blackjack team was composed of Asian males, a studio executive involved in the casting process said that most of the film’s actors would be White, with perhaps an Asian female. Even as Asian actors are entering more mainstream films, such as “Better Luck Tomorrow” and the upcoming “Memoirs of a Geisha,” these stereotypes still exist, Mezrich said.”
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V125/N43/43vegas.html
Here is a link about Jeffrey Ma, who was the Chinese American protagonist in the book “Bringing Down the House” that actually had all those crazy things happen to him. He is called “Kevin Lewis” in the book, and was in a fraternity and played water polo at MIT:
http://www.thelavinagency.com/images/bios/ma.jpg
http://www.thelavinagency.com/usa/jeffreyma.html
This is like that recent HBO movie ‘Marco Polo’, with a White guy playing Kublai Khan, or that ‘Tsunami’ movie focusing on White British tourists, and starring no South Asians. Can you imagine the outrage if Hollywood had remade ‘Coach Carter’ (a real life story) starring a White guy instead of Samuel L Jackson? [edit] Producers added in Aaron Yoo at the last minute for cosmetic reasons, based on early reviews he’s in the film for 5 minutes, this casting is still racist as hell.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0478087/board/flat/28532375?p=1
2 responses so far ↓
Plan B // February 24, 2008 at 1:49 am
So f-ing true! Did you know in Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift the Asian hero in the movie almost didn’t make. The director who is asian had to fight very hard for it to be an asian male. Hollywood wanted that character to be a white guy, yeah a white guy from japan that speaks japanese. They’re so against having asian guys in movies that they’re willing to defy common sense in a movie.
Mays // June 19, 2008 at 11:14 am
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Mays.
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