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CAREER | PERSONALITIES | FEATURES | NEWS
NEW MILENNIUM OPPORTUNITIES
ot so long ago code phrases like "language barrier" and "cultural
difference" were used to justify excluding Asian Americans from the choicest jobs. Today, being Asian, especially a bi-lingual Asian, has become the ticket to fast-track careers not open to many other segments of the American workforce. The "language barrier" has become a "language advantage" and "cultural differences" are now considered an essential qualification to move into executive ranks. The future of global business has finally arrived and it looks to be a future in which Asian Americans suddenly find themselves at the warm center of the business universe.
The traditional well-paying fields in which Asians have concentrated -- medicine, engineering and computers -- are now completely dominated by Asians. The statistical 4% minority status in the U.S. population has been turned on its head, with Asian professional concentrations in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco reaching eight to ten times that percentage. But these traditional area of Asian concentration are now getting serious competition from some hot new fields in which the demand for Asian American talent has begun to exceed the supply of qualified candidates. Of all the fields that once deemed closed to Asian Americans, none seemed more forbidding than media and entertainment. The negative reaction that these fields evoked in most Asian Americans owed to the fact that in the American media Asians had always been most noticeable by their glaring absence or in the handful of recurring stereotypical portrayals that had come to be as hateful as they had become cliched. But in the mid-80s a subtle change became apparent. Asian-themed movies and television series like The Last Emperor, All-American Girl and The Joy Luck Club began diffusing some of the old resentments and awakening the interest of young Asian Americans in considering these once forbidding fields as career options. They may have also been inspired by the Asians who have already made it in the business, and make it big. Scott Sassa was once Ted Turner's right hand man as President of Turner Entertainment, and is now heading up the NBC network's entertainment division. Stephen Chao was handpicked to run Fox Studios, and now heads QVC's new spin-off channel. Teddy Zee has carved an executive career path through several studios, and is now at Columbia Studios. Chris Lee is Executive Vice President at Tristar. Alex Kitman Ho has won Oscars for producing JFK and Born On The Fourth of July. Janet Yang is head of development for Oliver Stone's Ixtlan Productions. These Asian bigwigs meet once a month, according to rumor, for dim sum and inside gossip on the future of the industry. The movement of increasing numbers of Asians into the media and enterainment is also very apparent at prestigious industry training grounds like the world-renowned USC Cinema & Television Department where ever larger numbers of Asian students are seen every term. "We've seen quite an increase in Asian students in recent years," says Tom Kelly, dean of Loyola Marymount University's communications department. LMU's film school is smaller than it's counterparts at USC and UCLA, but the school has a high profile in Hollywood for the number of million-dollar screenwriters who have emerged from the program. "One of our students just shot his senior thesis film in Kyoto," says Kelly. "It's a samurai love story and it's in the process of being completed. Another student shot his film in Saigon. And the great thing is that both of them took a two-man student crew with them on location." The independent film world is full of young Asian filmmakers: Ang Lee, Tommy Chang and Greg Araki are but a few who get press coverage for their off-beat, intimate films. But an independent filmmaker often doesn't make much of a living in film. In fact, his work is closer to art than it is to commerce. It's attractive to have creative control, but it rarely pays the bills nor does it create media empires. "Everyone wants to be a producer or an actor," a young male costumer and grip says, "But I never see any Asians on production crews. There's a lot of work available and no one knows about it." Actress Melissa Chan agrees: "I have lots of friends who want to produce," she says, but very few who want to pay the long and heavy dues demanded by the film industry. The agencies are another path of entry into Hollywood. They see a distinct dearth of Asian faces, possibly simply due to lack of awareness. The mailroom of the three major agencies--Creative Artists, William Morris and International Creative Management--have been the jumping-off place for careers like Brian Grazer and Barry Diller. In a highly volatile, roller-coaster industry, the agencies are the only place that have an actual training program and an actual promotion program that can lead directly from peon to macher. It's brutal, mean, difficult and stressful, but it's the closest to a medical internship that Hollywood has. Asked about Asians in the agency pipeline, Larry Blaustein of William Morris's mailroom says, "Not in our training program. We've had Asians, but right now there are none." It's one avenue that Asians with media ambitions seem to have turned up their noses at.
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Somewhere between the production assistant getting donuts and the development executive or high-grossing producer dining in the studio commissary, is the hard-working professional. LiPo Ching is just such a professional. A graduate of NYU film school, Ching has made award-winning films and directed films for television. He's a new light on the Asian directing horizon: perhaps next year's Wayne Wang. But he's still paying his dues.
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"I thought film school was like going to business school," says Ching in a rueful voice. "You'd come out and you'd get a job. It wasn't like that." Ching's parents were equally disappointed. "There was some hesitation at the beginning of my career," Ching reveals. "My parents were always saying: 'Everyone thinks their work is good. But is your work really that good?' I didn't like it." Despite the negative messages, Ching persevered. Though Ching directed a student film that garnered several international awards, he couldn't get a break as a director. He worked in production in New York for a couple of years, then went to Los Angeles, where he transitioned from production to post-production, editing reality TV series. All the while, Ching was flogging his work, trying to get anyone to see his film or read his script. Ching finally found himself working as a production assistant at the Playboy Channel, where he became friendly with a producer. "He liked my stuff and he recommended me as a director to the Playboy Channel executives." Ching discovered that Playboy has a "Director's Showcase" program in which young directors get a budget and a crew to produce a film for the channel. "Playboy's theory is to give new directors a chance to do some real filmmaking, which is a great thing." Playboy insists that each film have nudity and a sex scene, but Ching had no problem with that. The executives liked Ching's film and thought he'd be an excellent prospect for the program. Stardom looked like it was just around the corner. "It was a year and a half before they said okay for me to direct. This was after I'd gotten a recommendation from two executive producers." The executives had liked one of Ching's story concepts, and said they wanted to shoot it. But then Ching's phone stopped ringing--Hollywood had once again forgotten him. "I didn't hear back for months and I eventually gave up. So I sat down and rewrote the exact same treatment I'd given them the first time. This time they decided they liked it." A year and a half after his first approval to direct, Ching was finally behind the camera in a film called Postcards for the Playboy Channel. Since then, things have gone well for Ching. He is in post-production on a musical for which he received an NEA grant. He has a feature script set up with an established production company. And he pays the bills with regular work from Playboy, most recently producing and directing The Fabulous Forties home video. Ching has paid his dues, joining with the increasing number of dues-paying Asian Americans in Hollywood. The numbers may not be as high as in finance, business or law, but they are growing. Ching doesn't believe there is any difficulty due to race. "I don't know about the glass ceiling in Hollywood. It's just hard for anybody to get in." PAGE 2
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