The last few days there has been some news that has The Fairy Princess like…
Does this negate the fact that there are still crimes being committed against AAPIs within the lusty month of May? Most recently in fact – YESTERDAY…
Yes, yesterday...the day before today, 3 Asian American women were shot in a hair salon. In TEXAS. One wonders, if this overturn of Roe V. Wade had happened already, and one of those women had been pregnant, if she would have been prosecuted for being shot while pregnant. As we are, to the GOP, just baby makers creating a domestic supply of infants for infertile couples….Food for thought.
Thankfully, they will be ok.
Still, they were shot. In their place of business.
The police have yet to label it a ‘hate crime’.
The wheels of justice are slow to turn, and let’s face it, the wheels of the giant monstrosity that is the Entertainment World are even slower than that. Just when you think you have it figured out, things change.
An example is NYC having it’s FIRST AAPI parade this coming Sunday, May 15th! Starting at 10:45 am, proceeding down 6th Avenue from it’s start on 44th Street.
When you consider the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade in NYC was in 1762, and the first AAPI parade is this year in 2022….
Back to the biz…there was a giant dust up in television, with 17 shows being cancelled.
Nora from Queens, still on the air – Congratulations to BD Wong, Lori Tan Chinn and Bowen Yang.
Magnum, P.I., however, did not get the renewal!
Which seems crazy because it had great ratings…but it seems there was a disagreement between the studio that produced it and the network that aired it. This is why we cannot have nice things- so ‘we’ lose a show everyone enjoyed and all those filming jobs from Hawaii.
Sadly, Kumu, played by the brilliant Amy Hill, will not be back – but Ms. Hill will be heard, in the new Netflix series of Kung Fu Panda;The Dragon Knight, where she will voice the character of Pei Pei.
It is because these giant monoliths of networks and studios move so slow and then speedrace into a different moment, that some things seem to take an eternity.
Some are over before they have even had a chance to begin.
Like, as an example- WHY would ABC pass on the pilot JOSEP based on Jo Koy’s comedy? A sitcom about a Fil-Am Fam? Slam dunk! To TFP, anyway.
TFP really encourages everyone to go out and see EASTER SUNDAY, and perhaps we can turn this ship around!
TFP would have watched the heck outta JOSEP! C’mon, you would have too!
However on the plus side, it seems they want more of a Roseanne Barr type show- you know when she wasn’t a nut job. They still want Mr. Koy, which is great- they just did not like the pilot. Ok then.
Why does everything seem like it is two steps forward and 7 back?
Well, because it is. Things take time. They now have to come up with a new show.
Projects can be in development forever!!! Hopefully the ball will get rolling and we will see at least a new announcement in the Spring. Till then, we have to wait.
Which is why, Actor James Hong – of the over 600 showbiz credits on IMDB – had to wait until the age of 93 to get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One of the founding members of the oldest theater of People of Color, East West Players in Los Angeles had to wait till 93, and garner over 600 credits – had to wait till 93.
The truth of it is, it did not just take Mr. Hong announcing he had x many credits and payment was due – no, it took an online petition begun by Daniel Dae Kim.
DDK had to be an advocate – and the fact that he knows he has to be an advocate, and he does the work willingly -whether or not it is in front of Congress, on the Red Carpet, or behind the camera – is astounding. Not everyone would, this is an honor for both Mr. Hong and Mr. Kim, who now has the power to get ish done.
DDK, who is producing, greenlighting, and still acting for over 20 years, and who only just made it to the top of the call sheet last year.
It moves slowly. It’s moving faster now, than it has in TFP’s lifetime. Faster than it has, certainly, in Mr. Hong’s lifetime.
He started in 1953.
This is honestly for ‘the kids’ – this month, TFP is trying to show you that you are are not alone – even if you feel that way. She has been demonstrating again and again, that there have been people before you who have donned the shoulders of Sisyphus and tried to push the boulder that is entertainment up the hill, they have not always been successful.
Occasionally they have been successful. But it has been rough.
Mostly, they have been persistent.
Because that is what it took. You did what was ‘allowed’ to be done. You kept moving. You built that bridge brick by brick, and you took it, so your the ones that come next do not have to.
To quote Mr. Kim, there are 2,723 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
19 are for AAPIs.
0.69% per cent of the stars on the walk represent us.
We look forward to seeing what YOU all will do in the future, and we hope you will be as gracious as DDK, who made sure people noted someone who has been there and working, all along.
Congratulations to Mr. Hong.
Next round of applause goes to Ms. KRISTINA WONG for being NOMINATED FOR A PULITZER PRIZE in DRAMA.
She is the first Asian American female to be so honored.
Writer, David Henry Hwang has been nominated 3 times for his plays, M. Butterfly, Yellowface, and Soft Power.
Ms. Wong’s show is a solo show based on the work she did during the early days of the pandemic, when she volunteered to make masks and inadvertently created the Auntie Sewing Squad – a troupe of mostly women, mainly Asian American women, who sewed any scrap of fabric into a mask, pre-vaccine, pre-antiviral treatement. She did so for folks around the country, on Indigenous Reservations, Fire Houses, Nurses, essentially anywhere they were needed.
Then after it was over, although – you all know we are still in a pandemic – she wrote about it.
Under the direction of Chay Yew, this show blazed to life downtown at NYTW – yes, the place where RENT was birthed.
TFP was really excited to see it, because you see, she and Ms. Wong were in the same class at LA’s Improv School, The Groundlings. TFP and Ms. Wong have been friends, oh…forever.
Yes, we both studied at The Groundlings. It is famous.
TFP learned a lot there, and the training is really quite good if you have the right teacher. She had a ton of good teachers. She also had others. She was in the class with Ms. Wong with one of the others.
It gives TFP great pleasure to say….someone has a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her comedic one person show, and it is not… the teacher, who in general, had nothing nice to say about either of them. Despite them both being funny.
They were told they weren’t cut out for comedy and to leave and never come back.
Well, TFP was told she had to go back to remedial because she did not know what funny was, and Ms. Wong was told to leave.
TFP then got a Broadway show with Puppets. She has also worked with Molly Shannon and John Mulaney.
Ms. Wong now has a Pulitzer Nomination. In addition to being a powerhouse writer/performer.
So when us ‘old’ folk tell you if you want it, you have to pay no attention to the ‘noise’ that is telling you, you can’t do it- trust and believe, we know.
Like, we know, KNOW – that is what they told us.
That is what people who are frustrated tell people they see coming up, because it makes them feel not so dead inside.
The Karens of Komedy don’t Kare about Kindness.
If you think you have potential, you have it. You just have to own it. Which is hard a lot of the time. There are days when it seems impossible, and yeah, it is really, really hard – but you can do it.
There’s a lot more – cuz, well, MAY, but frankly, TFP is tired of writing and she’ll get to it next blog – where she lists all the AAPI Lighting Designers that were nominated for TONY Awards.
There are 2.
The shade is real.
Congratulations Ms. Kristina Wong, TFP is so so SOOOOOOOO pleased for you.
TFP out.
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