So you guys have 40 minutes so far of the film. What have you guys learned so far? Any epiphanies?
S: I would say, I don’t know if I’d call it an epiphany but when I started this, I knew only a few Asian rappers-Jin, dude from Smilez & Southstar. I’ve spent maybe a year and a half, two years with these people and they become family and very good friends. You start realizing that everybody loves Hip-Hop. There are people like Jaeki and Rekstizzy who know Hip-Hop better than I can ever dream of knowing it. It really gives you a perspective of how far Hip-Hop has come and reached and the fact that, it sounds really corny, but we all have that in common-that we love Hip-Hop. At the end of the day, that is what’s at the center of this.
J: I realize that a lot of artists are lazy.
I’m sure you knew this before though….
J: I knew this before but they’re not on time. Overall through this doc, in a weird way for me as a kid who grew up on Hip-Hop as an Asian American, although I’m not directly involved in the doc as a character, I feel like a lot of the thoughts and experiences and ideals that I have are reflected in the doc through other mouthpieces. i didn’t really have an epiphany in terms of one of the characters yet but I’m actually genuinely surprised that people outside of the “Asian community” are interested in this subject and genuinely looking to check what this is about. I have an acquaintance. He used to manage a rapper who is kind of prominent now. As soon as he saw the trailer he was like, “Yo, this, this, and this is the reason why this, this, and this.” He’s a Black dude. I didn’t really expect him to actually know about some of the artists or even care about them. But he knew about them and had something to say about them. It kinda gave me hope. Although they seem indifferent and they probably are indifferent, not all of them are looking at this with a twisted lens. It’s a similar lens that I’m looking at it through.
What do you guys plan on filling the remaining time with to make this a feature film?
S: The 40 minutes was for my thesis so it had to be 40 minutes. So we weren’t able to get to really know some of the characters as much as we would want. We know Dumbfoundead because Dumbfoundead plays a part throughout the entire film but we would like for people to know Awkwafina more. For the rest of the characters, you sort of get vignettes but we want people to know them better so they can empathize with them more.
J: We are still in discussion regarding this aspect but for me, I feel like, you know how Asian Hip-Hop is a subgenre. But even within that genre, there are different communities. I feel like this film, as we emphasize over and over, it’s a film about Asian American rappers but it’s also primarily about four friends who are coming up together. There are certain aspects within that that need to be highlighted. A film like this has never been done before. So if I’m going to come through and be like, “This is what Korean food is.” I know to give them a taste of it like, this is the real deal. If this is going to make a first impression on things, even though we’re not going to give them everything, there needs to be bits and pieces of some things.
S: I think what he’s saying is that, you have Filipino rappers. You have Vietnamese rappers. You have a lot of different rappers. But how do you put that into a film and do it so everybody is satisfied. You can’t really do that. Being the first people doing it you want to give everybody something but how much is that going to be a deterrence to the film.
J: We’re not going to be put like 70 talking heads in the film. We’re most likely going to pick out who we think are going to be representative of that group. Even among Korean American, Chinese Americans, Asian rappers who are gangbangers, there’s a whole slew of them that people might not know about that may might be interested in watching.
