Saturday School Podcast

On this week's episode of Saturday School, we revisit the 2010 feature film The Taqwacores, which follows a group of characters living together in Buffalo, New York who are part of the Islamic punk scene. We laugh about how in Hollywood movies, the "outsider" character who introduces the audience to a fascinating minority subculture is usually a white guy, but in The Taqwacores, it's an innocent first-generation Pakistani engineering student. We compare a joke Dominic Rains' character makes about a jihad on his nuts, to Taz Ahmed's best-selling Muslim Valentine's Day card that says "I have a ji-hard-on for you." Brian ties the movie's white girl romance storyline to the recent conversation being had about the lack of South Asian female perspectives in current South Asian stories like The Big Sick, Master of None, Meet the Patels etc., but Ada kinda forgives The Taqwacores for being so "testosterone-y." Good times.

This week's episode looks at two documentaries about performers in the San Francisco Chinatown nightclub scene in the '30s and '40s: Arthur Dong's 1989 documentary "Forbidden City USA," about the nation’s premiere all-Chinese nightclub Forbidden City, and Christine Choy's "Long Story Short," the story of Larry and Trudy Leung (Jodi Long's parents). Ada and Brian think about how the stereotypes and pressures of Asian performers have changed (or not changed) in the last seven decades -- and they think about how they try to "flip the script" in their own lives.

This episode is a straight-up lovefest, as Ada and Brian invite Richard Wong and H.P. Mendoza to talk about their first film, 2006's Colma: The Musical. This is Ada's third time interviewing them about the same movie, yet she learns so many new things. Richard and H.P. talk West Side Story homages in Colma and try their best not to bash La La Land, but can't help themselves. H.P. talks about watching Flower Drum Song and seeing Asian Americans in a musical for the first time. And Brian says that there still has not been a better American film musical made since Colma came out over a decade ago, so it must be true, cause Brian is never dramatic about these things.

Season 3 of Saturday School is about Asian American Music Movies.

We have a very unique musical for Episode 2 of our 3rd season about Asian American Music Movies. It's a 2001 turntablism musical, based on an album by legendary turntablist DJ QBert. Brian reminisces about growing up in the '90s in Cerritos, where there was a prominent Filipino American DJ scene, while Ada admits she was not cool enough to know anything about the Bay Area hip hop scene, despite growing up there. (She listened to a lot of Britney Spears in the '90s.) Brian compares Wave Twisters to English virtual hip hop group the Gorillaz, while Ada compares Wave Twisters to the Julie Andrews show Julie's Greenroom, with the Jim Henson puppets. Because obviously.

We're back! Season 3 of Saturday School will be about Asian American music movies. There weren't enough Asian American musicals to make an entire season about "musicals," but expanding it to "music movies" allows us to include concert movies, films about musicians, and stories that include music in interesting ways. 10 episodes, every Saturday starting today. We bring you Episode 1, recorded from the floor of the UC Irvine library.

Cruisin' J-Town is a 1975 documentary by Duane Kubo, one of the original founders of Visual Communications, the media arts organization that puts on the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival. The film, produced by VC, follows the Japanese American fusion band Hiroshima (saxaphonist Dan Kuramoto, koto player June Okida Kuramoto, and percussionist Johnny Mori) as they reflect on how their music is influenced by their Asian American identity and the civil rights movement of the 1960's.

This bonus episode of Saturday School -- recorded at the Potluck Podcast Collective Lounge at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival with special guest Oliver Wang -- is the equivalent of summer cram session: while class is usually a swift 10-min affair, this time around, you get a packed 40-min conversation that goes all the way from 1960 to today. We talk about the delight of seeing Asian American movie stars singing and dancing onscreen in a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, discuss the joys (and sorrows) of being Team Helen, and give a teaser of what we'll be exploring next season!

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Our first season was on Asian American comedy films. Our second season is about Asian Americans in love.

This is our last episode of the second season, and we're ending it with a real life epic romance, told in the 2014 documentary Limited Partnership. It's the story of a Filipino American named Richard Adams; an Australian without a green card named Tony Sullivan; and their four-decade-long fight to stay together in America, despite the US government not recognizing their legal 1975 marriage as a "bona fide marriage" that should give them the same rights as heterosexual couples.

Earlier in the season, we talked about Kelly Loves Tony. We now try to convince you that the biopic you've all been waiting for is a yet-to-be-made Asian American feature film called Richard Loves Tony. Also, Ada diverts Brian away from a confusing use of the word "aroused" when he really means "awakened." So all the elements of a good Saturday School episode.

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Our first season was on Asian American comedy films. Our second season is about Asian Americans in love.

"Falling in love at 18 is magic. Falling in love at 65 is a miracle." This week, we're talking about 1988's The Wash, starring Mako, Nobu McCarthy and Sab Shimono. It's the most excited Brian and Ada have ever been about discovering one of the greatest Asian American romance films ever made, and they had to go to college library basements to find it. Mako and Nobu play a recently-separated married couple in their 60s. She still comes by to do his wash, yet he can't seem to figure out how to let her know she's appreciated. And while it's hard to let go of such a rich shared history -- they have been together since they were young people in the internment camps -- what red-blooded woman can resist Sab Shimono's character's mustache, fishing tutorials, and low-cholesterol waffles?

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.

On this week's Saturday School, Brian admits that Mississippi Masala contains two types of storylines that he usually hates in Asian American film, but in this case, he's 100% on board. Related, Ada and Brian forget this is supposed to be an Asian American pop culture history podcast and probably spend too much time talking about Denzel Washington. So if listeners want to skip "class" this week and instead listen to the Denzel Washington Is The Greatest Actor Of All Time podcast episode on Mississippi Masala, featuring Hari Kondabolu, we approve of your life choices.

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.

This week, we go way back in history, almost 100 years ago to 1919 and a silent film called The Dragon Painter, starring Sessue Hayakawa and his wife Tsuru Aoki. Hayakawa was a star rivaling Charlie Chaplin in the Silent Era, and after being tired of the villainous Japanese roles that were written for him in Hollywood, he created his own production company to make his own movies. The Dragon Painter was restored in 1988 and added to the National Film Registry in 2014.

Ada and Brian talk about their quest to find an old school Asian American romance, which led them on a detour through an Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn crime film -- and how Sessue Hayakawa, the biggest Asian American star of all time, is kind of like Randall Park.

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.