Bringing down the Asians
Pretty, blank Jim Sturgess comes off blanding down the Beatles in Across the Universe to play the lead in 21, a movie based on the MIT card sharps chronicled in the book Bringing Down the House. The original team leader, Jeff Ma, is actually East Asian.
Are you kidding me? A movie about math, MIT and gambling, and the lead was made white? Have you ever seen the pai gow tables in Vegas? And this after the success of Harold and Kumar. One step forward, two steps back.
You can just imagine the studio meeting: ‘Asian won’t sell. If you want the movie made, we have to re-cast the leads.’ If Gandhi were an American production, the Mahatma would be played by Keanu Reeves.
The trailer:
on Thursday, March 6th, 2008, 11:17 pm in Film, Issues, Video clips › 
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Yeah, there’s a lot of MIT kids unimpressed by this studio choice.
Or Nicholas Cage, he seems to have the right connections and is in everything :)
just awful. and is that the best they could do? a poor-man’s ashton kutcher? verdict: straight-to-dvd
I finally - FINALLY - watched Harold and Kumar last night, for the first time. What an excellent movie.
JEESH! At least pick a Jew if you’re going to go for a white technerd.
It’s the finest Jewish-Asian-desi stoner flick with a cheetah scene ever.
Ouch.
Nina, for shame, FOR SHAME! But at least you righted your wrong.
John Cho’s playing Sulu isn’t he - is replacing one Asian for a different Asian more acceptable than swapping yellow for white? Cho does not look Japanese by any stretch.
On the Kal Penn note I watched the Namesake yesterday after Manish wrote about Lahiri. I saw it when it was in the cinema but was so underwhelmed I forgot a lot - but I did remember the BMW advert that played before it second-for-second. Anyway, it’s a very good film if you remove anyone under the age of 35 :)
This runs counter to the “we reflect demographics” excuse used by Hollywood. E.R. throws us a bone with some unlikely scenario of a Brit-Asian Nagra when my Chitown friends tell me that about 30% of the Cook County Hospital docs are desi. The Indian in Tulia is replaced by Halle Berry. The “English Patient” movie opts to focus on the “patient” because I guess even necrophiliac nazi collaborators are more marketable than Sikh sappers
Well, Tulia is still on the drawing board, and from what I understand, Berry’s character is still Indian. In the case of bring Down the House, they changed the ethnicity of the characters.
Their excuse could be that the book masked Jeff Ma’s name behind the pseudonym ‘Kevin Lewis.’ But after the book became a success, Ma became well-known.
The thing that pissed me off the most about this casting choice is that the racial make-up of the teams is a MAJOR concern in the book. They make a huge point of explaining that the “high roller” part was reserved for young men who were or could pass for Asian, specifically to take advatage of casino-employee stereotypes. The exploration of racism was necessary to what they were trying to do (scam the casinos) and added to the story.
Cherez - the first time I saw the trailer, I thought that WAS Aston Kutcher.
hell, hollywood *did* cast gandhi that way - ben kingsley, after all.
Kingsley is half desi and did a fabulous job.
I don’t hear Jeff Ma complaining about any of this. Apparently, he doesn’t have a problem being portrayed as white.
I am sure Jeff Ma will tell you the story is what matters most and not the ethnic make-up of the team portrayed in the movie. Here is an excerpt from the book:
It appears as if Jeff Ma didn’t want the world to know he was Asian. (Since when has an Asian looked like a Russian?) Due to the book’s popularity the fact just came out. Has he spoken publicly about this?
I do believe in being historically accurate in movies, but Jeff Ma wasn’t forthcoming from the beginning when he wrote the book so why make an issue?
Now you know how blacks felt watchin’ Sylvester Stallone use Joe Frazier’s story for Rocky as well as all the hip hop adds about hip hop dance and fashion and its whitey as far as the eye can see when there were no white folks in sight for the first 20 yrs of it. And the lead in that movie is white …if they wanted an asian they would have given you an asian….not a wannabe
“Since when has an Asian looked like a Russian?”
Here is a Siberian.
I stand corrected. Thanks Rohin.
Maybe offensive… but this post reminds me of Paul Mooney when he was on The Dave Chappelle Show.
“Well I got an idea for a movie. It’s called ‘last n***a on earth’ starring Tom Hanks.”
Check it out. It’s hilarious.
It’s not just the main protagonist is East Asian. MOST of that MIT blackjack team were Asian American males. But check this out:
["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
They were going to try to change all the ethnicities to White (plus Asian sex object) before they even saw any actors audition. They did end up adding in Aaron Yoo at the last minute, however based on early reviews he is only in the film for 5 minutes, for cosmetic reasons to cover their butts.
Can you guys imagine if Hollywood tried to make ‘Coach Carter’ but starring a White guy and mostly White bball players, instead of with Sam Jackson?
!!!
i loathe gambling so it wasnt like i was going to see this or ocean’s blah or vegas or whatever but this really sux hog balls.
if ever i get into politics, one of my goals will be to get the government to get OUT of lottery and gaming. but then, with the pussy welfare government we have [khoof the rightwingnut rears his head again] it’s the one way the government can tax the lower income levels. my campaign slogan will be “elect the khoof because the scrotum is more fun to scratch than the lottery”.
Yeah, I heard about this switch on NPR today. Carmen from Racialicious was talking about it. I would have liked to see an Asian-American play the lead role.
Thanks, Sol. Here’s the NPR segment.
Hollywood has always exploited minorities.
From the first gigantic money making blockbuster D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation where African American sterortypes were exploited to make money by white film makers
To the casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Omar Shariff again in the remake of Genghis Khan, Anthony Quinn as a Filipino freedom fighter, Yul Brynner as the King of Thailand,Ben Kingsley as Mohandas K. Ghandi or Pete Postelthwaite as a fictional Japanese gangster who spoke the entire time with the wrong accent in the Ususal Suspects
My point is simply this:
The main characters in the film: Ken Lewis, Ben Campbel, and Mikey Rosa are based of the following Asian Men: Jeff Kevin Ma, Mike Aponte, and John Chang.
According to the real Jill Lewis the character portrayed in the movie by Kate Bosworth in the Boston Globe has admitted that Jeff Ma was one of the MIT Black Jack Team Leaders and that Jeff Ma recruited her into the team.
Ms Lewis has also stated the following:
“”Jeff would occasionally have an expensive bottle of wine or champagne, and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Then he told us about Vegas,” Willis says. “I think it dawned on him that we could play blackjack and also give the team, which was mostly Asian”
Here is the link to the Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2008/03/25/count_her_out/?page=full
John Chang has stated on his website that he is the inspiration for the Mikey Rosa character on the film.
Here is his link:
http://mickeyrosa.com/
My name is John Chang. I am the basis for Ben Mezrich’s characters Mickey Rosa (from Bringing Down the House) and Victor Cassius (from Busting Vegas). Kevin Spacey plays Mickey Rosa in the 21 movie, premiering March 28, 2008.
Reports indicate that the execs believe Asians and minorities wont sell tickets to white movie goers. Well we shall know in about seven months whether this was indeed a business decision. If Obama is elected President, the claim by execs would ring hollow. On the other hand if Obama looses traditionally Democratic states such as PA, then the execs may have point about racist white Americans. Until then the jury is out.