Film Maker, Book Adapter, and Director
Attending college opened his eyes to a wider world than he had seen within his immigrant community while growing up. He wondered if and how he could fit into the world. While experiencing early rejections within his chosen career path, he persisted and finally saw a way to present a new idea to an appreciative, wider audience.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
RP is the second son of Korean immigrants. His father worked at a stuffed-toy company before opening a one-hour photo studio. For 30 years, his mother worked in the accounting office at a university’s student store.
CHILDHOOD INTERESTS
The most memorable time of RP’s childhood in a large city was the outbreak of race related riots while he was in high school. Students were told to go home early so he wandered the streets for hours with a friend. “I wasn’t ‘cool’ but I was cool with everyone,” recalled RP.
In high school, RP and his group of friends, which he describes as racially mixed, like a “perfect Benetton ad,” spent their free time filming their own skits, in the style of “In Living Color.”
EDUCATION
RP was a serious student through elementary, middle, and high school, which earned admission to a well-respected, large university.
Attendance at the university was a transformative experience for RP, who had not grown up around many Asian Americans and at first, he felt overwhelmed. Then, he said, “After a while, it was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I love this. This is incredible. A community.’ “
An introductory course in Asian American studies opened RP’s eyes to the history, the contours, and the contradictions (e.g., prioritizing personal ambition or care of family) within this community.
EARLY SUCCESS MAY NOT LEAD TO EARLY CONTINUING SUCCESS
A university instructor encouraged RP to pursue creative writing. He and his friends decided to write plays and stage them. They founded an Asian American troupe, whose first performance was a play that RP had written about university undergraduates, not unlike himself and his friends, trying to figure out relationships, ambitions, and self-acceptance. The opening night drew a sellout crowd of hundreds of people. “We were so cocky, because we were so popular,” RP said. “I remember (thinking) ‘One day we’ll look back and see all these people who came from that theatre company.’”
RP remained at the university, where he started pursuing a Master’s degree in Asian American studies, researching depictions of Korean merchants in African American film.
Success for RP in his ultimate career – making films – would not come easily or early.
FIRST JOBS ARE NEVER A FINAL CAREER COMMITMENT
Having co-written only one play, RP needed to somehow support himself financially either inside or outside the world of professional entertainment. His first job was as a graphic designer at an alternative weekly newspaper. Concurrently, RP directed shows in the backyard of his parents’ house, where he was living; he taught himself stage makeup and amassed a collection of wigs and costumes. He did standup comedy and rapped in a band.
Eventually RP quit his full-time job at Starbucks and began to audition for acting roles, mostly for commercials but occasionally for sitcoms. He booked just enough roles to feel okay about his long-term prospects in acting but he was still not comfortable enough about his future, to leave home permanently. Even when he got his first steady gig as a cast member on an MTV improv-and-skit show, he didn’t give up his shifts at Starbucks.
CHALLENGE – PERSONALITY MAY NOT FIT SPECIFIC JOB
RP was in his late twenties when he started auditioning and as he entered his thirties he thought about the small, competitive cohort of Asian American actors and wondered whether he fit in. He watched from afar as director Justin Lin’s “Better Luck Tomorrow” premiered at Sundance, becoming the first Asian American film ever to be acquired by the festival. Soon, several Asian American actors had been receiving film acting roles better than mere background players. RP was both heartened by their success but at the same time, disheartened that opportunity seemed to be passing him by.
When RP auditioned for a guest spot on a short-lived sitcom, his agent told him that the part was down to him and a friend from the Asian American theatre community. He spent the weekend waiting by the phone. His friend, he said, “wasn’t only a great actor, he was also super comfortable around people. And I was only comfortable around my people, but I wasn’t comfortable around the world outside, you know? It always was a marvel to me when I’d see somebody who knew how to, like, be a human.”
CHALLENGE – COPING WITH REJECTION
RP thought his entire future rested on this one-day guest-star role. He realized that this role – if he received that opportunity – seemed like a minor indignity in an actor’s career. “I just needed some confirmation that I was doing the right thing with my life,” recalled RP.
When his agent called to tell RP that he hadn’t gotten the part, RP began crying. “It was the lowest I had ever felt,” he said. He contemplated quitting and going for a Master’s degree in architecture, but he hadn’t taken the prerequisite courses. So, he kept auditioning.
RP recalls writing in his journal that his only goal was to book enough commercial work to be able to move out of his parents’ house, so that he could have his own backyard in which to stage plays.
RANDOM IDEA MAY SPARK A CAREER
While struggling mentally to deal with his lack of acting success, RP wandered into a store specializing in Asian and American pop culture, where he spied the cover of a graphic novel which depicted Asian characters drawn in such a realistic, cliché-free style. RP had never read anything about young Asian Americans like him, bumming around, hanging out in cafes, struggling with change, ambition, insecurity and their own self-perceived ugliness. He read the entire book in the store and then bought it so that he could read it again at home.
RP saw himself in all the characters: some were politically righteous and romantic, others apathetic, judgmental and cruel. In his experience, Asian American actors rarely got the chance to explore such a full range of emotions; they were often cast according to stereotype, as doctors or scientists, never as everyday antiheroes just trying to figure life out. He was struck: “Oh, my God, there were stories like this out in the world!”
RP dreamed of playing a character as complex as the story’s protagonist, a snobby, possibly self-loathing Japanese American film buff. But, as he slowly began booking gigs and piecing together a career, he aged out of the role.
While RP supported himself making low-budget Web series films with friends, which gave him a creative outlet, he was constantly fearful that his acting work would dry up at any moment. During the filming of a movie pilot, the director admonished RP several times in different ways: “Be stronger!” and later, “Just play it more manly.” After several such instances, RP was “shaking inside and trembling,” he said. He ate lunch on the set, by himself, too ashamed to speak to his fellow actors. But by then, he also concluded that acting was not a “healthy life.”
Eventually, RP was offered the opportunity to play a major role on a TV series, as a Taiwanese American but he was unsure whether it was right for a Korean American to do a Taiwanese immigrant’s accent. So, he asked to meet with the series’ writer, who told him: “Do you want to be part of making history (as an Asian American in a major film role) and do something special that will open the door for other Asian Americans? Or do you want to stare at neuroses?”
RP was still uncomfortable, but the writer told him, “Clip up, dog, we ridin’ you.”
The show earned good ratings and helped launch the careers of an Asian American actress and another actor, plus a writer on the show, which aired for six seasons, a significant achievement.
With the financial and artistic success of a few TV shows and movies, RP was determined to pursue his goal of presenting shows involving Asian American actors in non-traditional roles, avoiding typical themes involving the immigrant experience, often highlighting the role of an elder within the family.
RP confessed to being very emotional when fulfilling the custom for the filmmaker to provide an introduction of the film at its premiere. RP had written a short speech, touching on recent gun shootings at the lunar New York celebrations and the importance of showing the flawed characters in the book upon which the film was based plus his pride in bringing them to life in film.
“I had never been so nervous before around an audience,” he said. “I just started telling them how nervous I was and how strange all this was for me. I talked about how there’s a part of me that just wants every single person to like my work, but that’s completely unrealistic. I started using the audience almost as my therapist. It got a good laugh, but I was being genuine. And how this intense desire can be crippling, especially if you’re an artist. And then I introduced the film.”
CAREER SATISFACTION
RP’s career in films, shows, adapting books for movies and directing movies, has now spanned several decades. He is the kind of actor who succeeds by reacting to other people’s drama rather than being at the center of his own. Onscreen, as well as in person, he is deferential and gracious, quick to fill in conversation with agreement and encouragement, happy to shift the focus away from himself.
“I don’t consider myself a social person,” says RP. “But acting forces me to be social and to meet people and talk to people. Because if I was on my own, I would never do that.”
Eventually, RP’s acting success led to self-confidence to adapt a book for a movie involving Asian Americans in roles where their characters expressed themselves through their actions and their words as typically American, with concerns and wishes like everyone else, not as narrowly depicted by Hollywood only a decade ago.
This career story was based on several sources: an article written by Hua Hsu within The New Yorker magazine published 2/27/23 plus online research including Wikipedia.
