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GR: What do you think about the review on Ebert and Roepert? SK: It's a blessing. It legitimizes the movie to the mainstream. I think Roger Ebert has been a help to us to support the film. On a personal level, it gives you hope that there's progressive thinkers out there. GR: You get involved in these films and I see you get tons of credits. SK: It's a lesson I learned early. You wish that you can just come on board and be the actor and go home. At the indie level, it's important to collaborate with different hats, do whatever it takes to get the film made. Even if that means pulling connections to get it made. If you call yourself an actor and that's it, you're doing the bare minimum. Everyone has to come on board and do what it takes, and put on whatever hats necessary, especially on an indie level. Because money is not on there, it eliminates the ego problems right away. And you can't let these people down, they worked so hard and did so much, and when you see obstacles get in the way, I have to do whatever I can do. And it makes you a smarter actor. The more you know the better. GR: Was the role of Han easy for you? SK: I had to do research, because I didn't grow up in OC. But tapping into angst wasn't hard for me. There's angst I have that I can tap into. Han had similar type of angst. Getting the feel of a masculine self confident manŠ it was difficult. My whole life, I was a second class citizen. Han is like a guys guy. I think for us, as Asian AmericansŠ I don't know speaking personally, it's been tough to understand to know what it means to be a sexual male, where's there's self-esteem. I grew up insecure. I had my Asian actor friends, and I stole a lot from them. GR: You're nothing like Han? SK: I don't think so, I'm more like Virgil (the comedic character in BLT). That's the trap of being an actor, once you're recognized, you get associated as the character. Most of the time they don't really care. It's the whole fascination with actors in Hollywood. GR: What's up with your hair in the film, it's like greaser style? SK: I don't know dude, it gets longer and longer in the film. Justin wanted to shave my head, I was fighting for corn rows, and we talked about it. It's more like 50s, muscle cars, and at first, we thought gangster. We thought corn rows would work since it's part of hip hop culture. Han embodies the rebel with James Dean qualities. The first shot we did was the opening scene, and that evolved into that. I wasn't thinking greaser. GR: How are you into the Hare Krishnas? SK: I had a friend who was a Hare Krishna. He did construction and we decided to go to lunch. He took me to this place, the Krishna temple. It was all vegetarian food. It's a great alternative to fast food, and that's how I'm related to it. GR: Is the film automatically going to go to more markets after the first couple of weeks? SK: If we don't sell the certain amount of money the fist two weeks, which every sunday, they tally it up, on the second sunday, they will decide if they're making any more prints. If we're doing horrible, then really there's no point to continue. If we do excellent by the second week, we get more cities. The wider we go, the less we have to make in each venue. Indie films are designed to fail. Its going to be interesting , MTV is doing what they can to promote us. Really it's a grass roots campaign. |