Better Luck Tomorrow

Better Luck Tomorrow  (2002), a film that was as groundbreaking as The Joy Luck Club (1993) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018), made changes as it portrayed Asian-Americans and their lives in a different, unfamiliar lens. It shares the coming-of-age story of Asian-American high-school boys Ben, Virgil, Han, and Daric and their adventures with drugs and other criminal activity.

 

Justin Lin (ABC Australia, Tom Hancock)

Justin Lin, a Taiwanese-American film director, was born in Taipei and grew up in a working-class family in Anaheim, California. Upon receiving his BA in Film and MFA in Film Directing and Production from UCLA, he became determined to tell his own stories. In fact, Better Luck Tomorrow was his solo debut in 2002. He faced difficulties in finding funds for the production of the film and was even offered $2 million if he replaced the main actor with Macaulay Culkin, which he refused. Instead, Lin maxxed out his credit cards with $100,000 and received $6,500 from MC Hammer.

 

The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002 yet stirred questions as how it can be sold and bring more success. However, it also stirred controversy and dissatisfaction about its portrayal of Asian Americans and crime. Fox Searchlight worried that it would set as a bad representation for Asian American teenagers while a Paramount Classics executive trashed it. However, MTV Films bought the movie and ultimately was released under Paramount’s logo, amounting to $3.8 million in profits.

 

Lin commented on the topic of representation this film projected in an interview IndieWire, in which he says: “I’m not trying to represent all Asian Americans. I really just wanted to stay true to the characters. Ethnic stereotypes exist for a reason: they’re a shortcut, a label. I wanted fleshed-out, three-dimensional characters. My film would be negative only if I didn’t do my job and these characters turned out to be one-dimensional or caricatures.” This comment of ‘three-dimensional characters’ goes to show that there is no “ideal” representation and that it is dynamic.

(From left to right) Han, Virgil, Ben (Angry Asian Man)

But because this was such a new type of portrayal – considering in that time, the amount Asian-American produced or casted films were limited – even John Cho noted, “It was daring even in the Asian-American community. This was youth-oriented and breaking a lot of rules about how Asians were supposed to present ourselves to the world.”

 

The issue of representation was a huge discussion among non-Asian American audiences as well. In fact, at Sundance, upon an audience question “Don’t you have a responsibility to paint a more positive and helpful portrait of your community?”, Roger Ebert responded in uproar like so: “What I find very offensive and condescending about your statement is nobody would say that to a bunch of white filmmakers. ‘How could you do this to your people?’ Asian American characters have the right to be whoever the hell they want to be. They do not have to ‘represent’ their people.”

 

Though BLT was considered parodies of teen rom-coms and gang movies, the conversations brought to surface – from what this means for Asian Americans and how stereotypes are not fixed nor true – mark the movie’s significance at its time and paved paths for the Asian American film industry.

 

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