Mid-morning at the Bourgeois Pig café in Hollywood. I’m sipping a single Americano and rummaging through a crumbled Los Angeles Times, minding my own business, when a young wired screenwriter comes waltzing in. This place is swarming with young wired screenwriters. The scribe saddles up on the stool next to me, warms up his laptop and orders a double soy latte. After tossing an ill-fated wink towards the barista, he turns to me and, without a beat, proclaims, “Say, do you know who you look like?”
Oh Christ, here it comes.
“You look like that Chinese dude from ‘The Hangover’.”
Okay, I haven’t heard that one before.
“You know who I’m talking about?” he proceeds. “That Chinese guy? He played the gay gangster … uhm yakuza? What’s his name? Ken Chow? No. Ken Yoshi? Ken Nakamura?”
Ken Nakamura? I think I know a Ken Nakamura from San Francisco. The guy owes me money or something like that.
Of course, this screenwriter is thinking of Ken Jeong, who is neither Chinese nor Japanese and doesn’t look a damn thing like me. Then again, this young man’s options are limited.
It happens every once in a while, and not only just in Los Angeles. Someone will say that I look just like … and name one or two Asian or Asian American celebrities who are hot in Hollywood right now. Yes, usually an actor would be named, since Asians have yet to break the glass ceilings in pop music and professional sports. And of course, this actor would have been cast as a sushi chef or a math nerd or a martial arts expert … whatever stereotype is needed for the film.
But the “gay Chinese yakuza” from “The Hangover”? I must admit, that’s a new one. For a long while, all I was getting was, “You look just like Bruce Lee.” Seriously? Bruce Lee? That’s the only celebrity you can come up with? The guy’s been dead since 1973!
Back at the café, I just grin at the screenwriter and brush the whole thing off, but the incident reminds me of the opening scene from Wayne Wang’s 1982 low-budget film, “Chan Is Missing.” Set in San Francisco, the film begins with Jo, an ABC (American-born Chinese) cab driver, picking up an out-of-towner. Jo mentally counts down the seconds, before the visitor asks, “What’s a good place to eat in Chinatown?” “Under three seconds,” Jo thinks. “That question comes up under three seconds ninety percent of the time.”
A nudge at that horrendously racist Charlie Chan serial, “Chan Is Missing” follows Jo and his fellow cabbie and “No. 1 Son” Steve searching for their immigrant pal, Chan, who apparently skipped town with their cash. They drive around Chinatown, interviewing loads of quirky characters, all of whom have different opinions about their missing friend. Their leads throw them into a maze of Chinese and Chinatown politics, while their subject slips further and further away.
“This mystery is appropriately Chinese,” says Jo. “What’s not there has just as much meaning as what is there.” The film concludes with a photograph of Chan, who is standing in the shadow, his face unrecognizable, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
Most of the cast in “Chan Is Missing” are non-actors; they look normal, like people I know. I feel very comfortable watching the film, like I am part of that community, that family.
Then sometimes I feel like Chan, invisible to the world without identity, just about non-existent if it weren’t for what was being said by a handful of chums. I am okay with that as well. There’s something to be said about not being pinned down.
But apparently, somebody out there thinks I look just like that dude from “The Hangover.”
So, which celebrity do people say you look like?
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert’s review of “Chan Is Missing”: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19820101/REVIEWS/201010310/1023
