Hawaii Film Blog: Watch "My Life Disoriented"

Friday, December 22, 2006

Watch "My Life Disoriented"

A new TV program directed by Hawaii-raised director Eric Byler, written by Claire Yorita Lee, and starring Di Quon, Karin Anna Cheung, and Tamlyn Tomita, is premiering on PBS on Tuesday, 12/26 at 10pm. "My Life Disoriented" is like "Degrassi Junior High"--the one from when I was in junior high, not the new one--with Asian American leads. If you didn't catch it at the Hawaii International Film Festival this year, here's your chance. And even if you did see it already, watch it again to support Asian Americans on TV. Here's a blog post Eric wrote yesterday on MySpace about the show:

Year in and year out, the network television Pilot-to-Series Bus leaves without us. The bus leaves without Asian Pacific Americans..because there is a perception that there is no audience for stories about our community. Of course it left without us when we decided to make My Life Disoriented. But by applying for and winning a grant from ITVS ($11,500 was all it took to get us started) we basically built our own bus. We competed for an won finishing funds from ITVS, and then competed for and won a slot on the prestigious series Independent Lens. So, we made it to the same destination as the Pilot-to-Series Bus, perhaps even a better destination, with..nation-wide roadcasts on PBS starting this Tuesday. This gives us an opportunity to prove that there is indeed an audience for a show like this.

Seriously, it's almost 2007. Can it really be true that no one wants to see Asian Pacific Americans on TV unless they kick someone and/or speak with an accent? Check out the comment posted under the Tamlyn Clip on You Tube. Somebody wrote, "This makes me cringe... Asians don't talk like that. First of all, it's usually not in English."

Anyway, I spent the day writing emails to journalists..because, if enough people find out about the show, and enough people watch it on Tuesday -- we might post the kind of Nielson ratings that could earn us a seat on that bus for 2007, and earn the next band of insurgent TV pilot trouble-makers a spot on the bus with us.

Those emails you've been sending, by the way, they're working. Keep writing! We've gotten a lot of attention from ITVS and PBS in the last few days. Big conference call last night with the programming boss and the publicist. You've gotten them excited. They're totally with us. And also, they love my story about the bus....