A mass push to boost ‘Asians’
Community comes together to try to make film crazy successful
Stephanie Wong was dressed to the nines. Others had dressed up, too — bow ties and heels — for an early screening of “Crazy Rich Asians” in downtown San Francisco. But Wong stood out.
She wore a red-and-gold gown and brightred lipstick. Her heavy necklace, all silver and diamonds, was upstaged only by the crown on her head and the sash across her chest that read: “Miss Asian North America 2018.” “It’s a celebration,” Wong said. A celebration not just for the film, released in theaters nationwide on Wednesday, Aug. 15, but also for the moment and for what might follow. The movie, a romantic comedy set in the opulent world of Singapore’s 1 percent, is a watershed moment for Asian representation, the first Hollywood film in 25 years to feature a mostly Asian cast. The last was “Joy Luck Club” — and it came out the year Wong was born.
“This is a big deal,” she said. “Why not make it a big deal for myself ?”
The screening had been made possible thanks to a grassroots effort to support the
film. A group of prominent Bay Area Asian Americans came together for what they call the #GoldOpen campaign and spent thousands of dollars to buy out dozens of theaters in cities from San Francisco and Emeryville to Los Angeles and New York, in hopes that the film becomes a commercial success.
If this film does well, they say, others will follow.
“We don’t want to wait another 25 years,” said Alex Wu, one of the campaign’s organizers. “A rising tide lifts all boats. We know there are other projects in the pipeline that are getting ready to be green-lit.”
This is hardly the first time a community has rallied to boost a film. A number of individuals and community groups bought out theaters when “Black Panther” premiered earlier this year, hoping to support the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to star a black superhero.
Still, #GoldOpen stands out as a canny model moving forward, and one that organizers hope to use again.
John Cho’s upcoming film “Searching” could be next on the docket, says Bing Chen, an entrepreneur who helped spearhead the #GoldOpen effort. It’s not about any one project so much as it is about increased visibility.
“Media literally will control whether more people see us as friends or see us xenophobically. It controls who gets to ascend into the C-Suite. … It controls who gets to buy a cake, right? And it controls who gets in the Oval Office,” Chen says. “That’s the longterm impact.”
The effort came about organically. Chen and Wu both saw this as an opportunity to push for greater representation in media, so they pooled their resources. Both work closely with organizations that support Asian Americans in and out of the arts, and they began recruiting friends and acquaintances to help sponsor the screenings.
As of opening day, more than 200 sponsors had joined the cause, some spending as much as $5,000 to rent a single theater. There were many others, too, that organizers didn’t even know about. The effort, Wu said, had taken on a life of its own.
Most of the tickets have been given away to local organizations that support underserved communities. At the screening in San Francisco, though, the room was filled with dozens of venture capitalists and CEOs — many of whom probably compete in business but had turned out, together, for the movie.
“It’s really cool to see the whole Asian American community coming together,” Wu said.
It will still be days before those behind #GoldOpen know whether they helped make the movie a winner. But Variety is reporting that the rom-com could earn back its $30 million price tag by the end of the weekend.
The film, directed by Los Altos native Jon M. Chu and based on the bestselling book by Kevin Kwan, has earned overwhelmingly positive reviews. Its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at around 90 percent. That website’s former CEO, Patrick Lee, was one of the sponsors of the San Francisco screening. He didn’t know about the rave reviews when he addressed theatergoers before the movie began.
He’d helped buy the tickets that night, but if they liked the movie, he encouraged them to buy a ticket and see it again. Invite their friends, their family, anything to help boost its bottom line.
“I just want to emphasize how important this is,” he told the audience. “Movies like this don’t come around that often.”
“Media literally will control whether more people see us as friends or see us xenophobically.” Bing Chen, who helped spearhead #GoldOpen