San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi wrote, produced and directed an independent documentary called “The Slanted Screen,” which examines the history of Asian American men in American cinema. Adachi covers Hollywood’s stereotypical portrayals of Asian men as either an evil “Fu Manchu’’ character or as an asexual nerd. The movie was shown at a previous San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The movie features interviews with Mako, James Shigeta and Dustin Nguyen.

Here is a link to the documentary website and a news article:

There was a segment on NPR awhile ago, and I took some notes of the interview below.

NPR interviewed Jeff Adachi and Tai Ma (he plays the main evil Chinese guy on ‘24’). I tuned in and took some quick notes:

In America Asian men in film have mostly played an evil genius, a martial artist, or a nerd. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, White men wore makeup and played evil Asian geniuses with mind controlling techniques. Later Bruce Lee and others were martial artists. Finally, Asian guys were nerds like Long Duck Dong in ‘Sixteen Candles’, where he couldn’t speak English but could do chores. Asian actors have struggled to get beyond stereotypes.

Growing up in the 60’s every image that Jeff Adachi saw of Asian males was always bad. They were either nerds, or gangsters, or evil. There was a catch-22; if Asian actors took those roles they were ostracized by the Asian community, but if they didn’t they couldn’t feed their families. He never saw an Asian lead or hero. Bruce Lee was the lone exception, but even he started a martial arts stereotype. A national poll of world children was done and they mostly thought Asian boys knew kung fu.

He listed SEVERAL films where Asian guys were portrayed demeaningly… Adachi said Hollywood roles are written by writers who see Asians in stereotypical ways. The writer or studio never thinks ‘let’s make the hero or lead Asian’. He brought up the movie ‘Replacement Killers’ starring Chow Yon Fat. He said in Chow Yon Fat’s contract with Hollywood, it was written in the contract that he had to shoot and fight against Asian guys. The bad guys had to be Asian, the White guys could not be the bad guys.

They brought up a quote by an actor: ‘if I’m going to choose between playing a wimpy businessman or an evil gangster, I’ll play the bad guy, to show that Asian guys have got balls’. Tai Ma, who speaks PERFECT English by the way (he has an accent on ‘24’), said Asian guys need more variety of roles, more opportunity for artistic expression, and don’t want to be a puppet on a project anymore. He said he typically only gets called in for ‘ethnic’ Asian roles; only once in a while does he play a normal person. Important: he said the way Asians look on screen is going to change what Asians do. He said why can’t Asians be portrayed as a neighbor, mechanic, insurance agent, doctor, etc? This is what he strives for, some sort of normalcy. The interviewer asked him if his ‘24’ role was a throwback to old evil Asian stereotypes. Tai said there are a lot of double standards, and NO. He said if viewers watch carefully, his character is actually a mirror image of Jack Bauer in terms of questionable behavior, however it is viewers who see him as pure evil and Bauer as the good guy, and most do not realize this double standard orientation themselves.

Finally, the interviewer brought up the scene in ‘Dragon – Bruce Lee Story’ where Bruce and Linda are dating and watching ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s in a theater, and Bruce isn’t laughing at Mickey Rooney’s racist portrayal. She asked Tai if he still saw caricatures today? Tai said there are too many, not just in the past, but even now. He brought up Rosie O’Donnell, the “ching chong” jokes and the weak backlash, and said we don’t have to go too far to see it today. Said it hurts, and this goes across all America.