For Eddie Huang, our humanity comes first
‘Boogie’ director aims to go beyond just representation
Eddie Huang, the author, restaurateur and TV host whose memoir chronicling life as an immigrant kid in the ’90s was adapted into the hit ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” would’ve taken the fast lane to moviemaking had such a path existed. Instead, after minoring in film in college and hustling in and out of careers in law, streetwear and assorted other pursuits, he started knocking down walls his way.
“It was never a viable thing to tell Asian American stories until I broke through with (the Taiwanese bun shop) Baohaus,” said Huang, 39, who makes his feature directorial debut with “Boogie” — the New York City-set tale of a Chinese American hoop star with NBA dreams — now playing in select theaters and also available via video on demand. “You can’t walk in with an Asian American memoir or movie. No one believes in it, no one wants to do it — but they do believe that we’re good at cooking and kung fu.”
He started telling the story of his own cultural roots by serving up Taiwanese bao to hungry New Yorkers, “but the goal was always to leverage the success and intention into film in some way.” Huang’s 2013 book, “Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir” — loosely adapted into a historic ABC sitcom that debuted in 2015 and starred Hudson Yang as a young Eddie, with Randall Park and Constance Wu as his parents — opened a new door.
“People came to me for recipe books, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to write a recipe book. I don’t even have an interest in being a chef,’ ” said Huang. “I did it because that was the only place I felt as an Asian American you could tell your story without somebody standing over you.”
“Boogie” — written during a time of self-doubt after a public split with the network show, a self-described heartbreak and behind-the-scenes friction on his Vice travel series “Huang’s World” — tells the coming-of-age story of Alfred “Boogie” Chin (Taylor Takahashi), a high school basketball phenom struggling to chart his own destiny amid a volatile home life, a romance with a classmate (Taylour Paige) and the often-conflicting pressures of his bicultural identity.
It wasn’t easy for Huang to push his writing and feature directing debut to the finish line. Only weeks before filming began, he persuaded producers to cast Takahashi, his assistant at the time, as the lead in the movie. When another actor dropped out during production, rising rapper Bashar “Pop Smoke” Jackson nailed an on-the-court audition and came aboard to play Boogie’s rival Monk just four months before Jackson’s death at age 20.
Like Takahashi, Jackson had no previous acting experience, but the two brought authentic emotion to a world seldom depicted on screen, said Huang, whose next focus
is a slate of film and television projects “telling stories from the margins” through his production company, Color Correct.
“I hope that other people are inspired to do that so we don’t see the same faces all the time and give people a chance,” Huang said.
This interview with Huang has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: “Boogie” is fictional but contains shades of your own experiences. What made you want to tell this story about a basketball player and his relationships?
A: I always felt like one of the best ways to get to know people was to watch them play basketball, so basketball has always been this thing within which I’ve studied humanity. Even when I wasn’t getting along with my father, basketball was something we could do. I would never really yell back at my dad. I never raised my hand back to my dad despite a lot of crazy stuff going on in my house. But I could take it out on him playing basketball.
Q: What were the challenges of getting this movie made?
A: Focus believed in it from the beginning. They were the only ones that believed
in it. We went all around town. Nobody raised their hand. Everyone was like, “We’re interested in you. We love what you did with ‘Fresh Off the Boat.’ This feels a little less easy.” … I fought to get somebody to sign onto this, but once I was at Focus, there wasn’t that much fighting.
I do a lot of explaining about my culture and a lot of explaining about downtown New York culture, or Black or Latino culture, and I end up having to explain stuff. But that’s part of the job, and I accept that. And to be honest, I don’t complain about that. That is my journey and that is my experience. I had a lot of good partners at Focus who wanted to understand my journey and wanted to get in my head, and once I allowed them into my head, and I wasn’t scared of explaining, things really took off.
Q: Boogie is written as a Chinese Taiwanese American kid. How important was it to portray this specific identity in the story?
A: It’s important so people know that these customs and the way we do things is not just Asian American, it’s specific to Chinese Taiwanese people. Taylor’s Japanese, but he was my assistant for eight months, and he picked up a lot of those values and customs … He lived with me for a while, and he’s seen how I do things, like pouring the tea (for elders). He was around when I would cook for my parents. So he knew it, and he was able to represent that. It’s like how Bruce Lee was able to teach Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Chinese culture and kung fu. I was able to teach our specific stuff to Taylor, and Taylor was able to represent that, and I thought that was very beautiful.
Q: What’s the vision behind your production company, Color Correct?
A: My feeling post-“Fresh Off the Boat” was there were all these things that were, “Representation, representation, representation,” but it’s different than representation; we need the correct representation. And more than representation, I want us to put humanity first. I think what’s drawn people to projects like “Boogie” are race, identity, social issues, but I hope what keeps them is our humanity, and in watching these stories, seeing a reflection of themselves as well, even if they’re of a different race than the main character or supporting characters.