I Don't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing...

but I actually feel very strongly about this. The "this" I am refering to is "Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle". Is it going to be stupid, probably. Is it going to be gross, probably. Is it revolutionary? Absolutely. I had plans to write all sorts of editorials about why this movie is so important, about the representation of Asians in American mass media, about why Neela on E.R. needed a whole episode explaining that she's Indian, about why "Broken Blossoms" is a rascist movie, but then I got sent this email that basically sums it all up. Please read, and if you're not doing anything this weekend maybe we should make plans...

July 24, 2004

Dear Friends, Fans, Haters, Players, and True Money Makers,

Hey! This is Kal Penn (aka Kalpen Modi) and John Cho writing to encourage you to go see our upcoming comedy from New Line Cinema, "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," opening nationwide on July 30th. This film marks the first time a major studio is releasing a project with two Asian American males as the leads. We don't have stereotypical accents, we don't passively tread through the story, we're not asexual or hypersexual, there are no martial arts scenes, one-dimensional cab driver segments. We play a couple of all-American guys who happen to be of Indian and Korean descent. Our characters (Harold and Kumar) are post-collegiate buddies who get the munchies and end up going on the adventure of their lives as they set out to satisfy a spontaneous craving for White Castle burgers. Ebert and Roeper just gave our movie "Two Thumbs Up"! We hope you will too. Read on.

The opening weekend for any film is extremely important. Studio executives (the people who make big decisions about movies) track the numbers from that first weekend's ticket sales and make all kinds of decisions based on that data. They decide if they will add more screens to show a film, if they will spend more money in promoting it, if they will start investing in a sequel... but most importantly, they decide if elements of the film work and whether they should do it again. In our case, that means they will be asking, "Will a strong script and story succeed or fail with 2 Asian American guys in non-stereotypical roles?". We personally think it will succeed, but we need your help! This film is our chance to prove that realistic, non-stereotypical depictions can make an audience have a blast, and take in enough money to make this happen in the future.

By buying a ticket to "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle", you aren't just gonna get to see a really funny movie with two dudes who look like you. Nope. You're also going to be saying to media outlets, "I support accurate representation of Asian Americans and would like to see more." You have the power to change things simply by buying a ticket to a film that we believe you'll have fun watching anyway!

Please go to the theaters next weekend and watch "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle". We look at this awesome opportunity like we do voting in an election. Every movie ticket someone buys is a VOTE, and the cool part is, you're allowed to vote as many times as you want. With your support of the film, we will show decision-makers in Hollywood that supporting movies like these is not only the right thing to do, but is also good business. We'll also show YOU what it's like to ride a cheetah, hang glide off a cliff, pick up a hitchhiking Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser), tell off a bunch of ignorant punks, get love interests, and sing Wilson Phillips at the top of our lungs.

So just hold on for one more... week, and check out the website at www.HaroldandKumar.com. This film opens the weekend of July 30th! Send this email to all of your friends. Throw parties. Order food. Make a night (or weekend) out of it and go see "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle"! This is a landmark opportunity for the Asian American community, and we are proud to be the faces involved. With your support and the success of this film, we hope that it's only the beginning of many more Asian Americans on screen...

Enjoy the movie,

Kal Penn and John Cho
"Kumar" and "Harold"

Wherein I Apologize for My Absence...

and then promptly get on to other business. For those interested the rest of the trip went well. I never did get my photo with Udo, but hey there's always next time. Unfortunately I don't have photo abilities on the ol' bloggy currently (I'm hoping to work this out soon) so I can't show you what photos we did manage to take (which admittedly isn't much anyway). At some point I do plan on doing a more comprehensive recap, but right now I'm just wasting time at work.

First order of business: Who Knew Working With Russ Meyer Would Make You Crazy?!
For reasons I can't really explain with much clarity, last night the Boy and I watched "The Double D Avenger" with the Joe Bob Briggs commentary. It should be noted that this is the only way this film can or should be watched, if it should be watched at all. As the Boy is a big Russ Meyer fan he had been keen on this film, until he actually watched it. Joe Bob does a pretty good job of being entertaining when the film isn't (which is most of the time) and includes a hilarious interlude where to save us from 5 whole minutes of exposition Joe Bob simply recites breast euphemisms. For 5 whole minutes. It's at about 2 minutes in when you realize that he means to take up the whole 5 minutes with this juvenile tactic that the pure comic genius starts to shine through. However, the Boy and I agree whole heartedly that the most entertaining part of the whole exercise were the excerpts from the websites of Haji ("Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!", "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" etc) and Raven De La Croix ("Up!"). I highly, highly recommend them if you need a good laugh sometime, or if you just like looking at old chicks with big tits. Either way, very entertaining.

One of these days we might see something besides movies...

Okay, so we've left Outremont and returned to our hostel now that the Jazz festival is winding down and there are rooms available in the city. We had a wonderful two days staying with Andrea's friend Julia and her mother Jocelyn who were both nothing but lovely and generous. We were treated to delicious (and nutricious) breakfasts both days which were much needed after nearly a week of pizza and falafels. Although the eats are generally very good here in Montreal we haven't been able to get out of the Downtown core much and as a result have had to choose between pricy and crap. We did manage to find an excellently priced Indian buffet last night which was such an amazing coup (all you can eat for $12!!!!) and since it was in the tourist district nothing was too spicy of weird. Certainly not as good as anything on Main St, but just what we needed last night.

Caught three movies yesterday (Godzilla, Ginger Snaps III: The beginning (aka Ginger Snaps Back) and Dead and Breakfast. Good thing we saw "Dead and Breakfast" as a midnight show 'cause we probably would have hated it otherwise. Film Threat has already posted my reviews of Wonderful Days and 8th Diagram Pole Fighter if you were interested.

Anyhoo, that's the quick update. More later after we get settled back at the Auberge.

We have been banished...

...but we shall return.

Since the hostel is all booked up because of the Jazz Festival we will be spending tonight and tomorrow with Andrea's friend Julia in Outremont who has kindly offered to put us up. Currently having some difficulty because the very nice woman who runs the hostel isn't here and we're not sure where to leave our keys or who to pay.

Spent yesterday walking down St. Catherine's to Concordia. Were going to take the Metro all the way, but our connecting train was delayed and I couldn't understand anyting on the extra scratchy P.A. so I said screw it and off we went. Only ended up with one new blister (after our first day in New York I had 4 on each foot, eeeewwwww). Managed to meet up with Jeremy after another pricey but quality meal downtown and then settled into festival mode. Met Mitch the festival director who informed me that Kier-La would be arriving in the next couple days. Will be nice to see a familar face even if it's not someone we know terribly well. Watch two movies and a short doco about a female horror director. Really enjoyed the first film, "Wonderful Days" eventhough I didn't expect to. Boy was more lukewarm. Will try to write a review (my first this trip) later today. Also caught "Ju-On: The Grudge" again. Improved subtitles helped with some of the details missed on the DVD we watched. Audience seemed to mirror our initial reaction of laughing first, then as things picked up there was a girl behind us chanting "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit". Though about crashing the after party, but being that we're still not sure when the Metro closes decided to just call it a night.

Back to the safety of Canada

Okay, we arrived in Montreal last night after an extra long train ride (try 11 hours!) and so far we are loving every minute of it. I'm sure the fact that we're staying in the heart of Vieux Montreal in the cutest hostel in the world (!) helps. The hostel is called "la maison du patriote" and it really is set up like a home away from home. The private rooms are gorgeous if plain (although upstairs in the dorm area there is a "room" that's actually a tent). The people who run the place put your name in chalk on the door to the room you are staying in. We arrived to "Brian & Fillance" with little hearts. Took a quick boo around town, absolutely stunning, and ate a late dinner in a neat little eatery (they litter the street like garbage here). A little pricey, but on par for the neighborhood and a high quality of food.

Now for a quick summary of our stateside adventures:

July 4: Woke up late, Xian treated us to pancakes. Went to Scarecrow which was pretty much the only place open. Boy only bought a couple of DVDs and was very disciplined (I'm so proud). Later we ate garden burgers and insano garlic fries at Kid Valley. This was at Xian's prompting as he really wanted to sabotage the rest of the passengers on our flight. Spent the next day tasting and smelling of garlic, but it was worth it if only for the knowledge that we'd inconvenienced a bunch of strangers with our stench. Got on plane. First time I ever had to put my shoes through the X-Ray machine. Tried to sleep. Arrived in Pheonix earlier than scheduled and ate BBQ at the airport while waiting for our connecting flight to New York. Tried to sleep on plane to New York. I succeeding for about 4-5 hours, the boy did not.

July 5: Arrived in New York around 6 am to a hot sweltering blanket of "air". Boy commented on how if we got hungry we should just open our mouths and chew. Got to "hotel sketchyville" around 7:30 am, were not allowed to check in and were generally unimpressed with strange bug-eyed man at the front desk. Managed to ditch our stuff in the basement and proceeded to kill time in Midtown. Being that nothing was open yet (things would be pretty quiet) I decided to take the boy to Times Square so he could at least say he saw it. Ate a breakfast wrap and generally dreamed about 3 pm when we would be allowed to check in and shower. Ahhh, sweet sweet shower. Dragged delirious boy through H&M so I could buy new trendy clothes. Lucked out as they were having a sale and also picked up multiple sparkly accessories for The Big Day. Took turns sleeping in Bryant park. Boy was muchly impressed with quality of the bathroom there. Wandered through Rockerfeller Square (once we found it, we were both quite out of it by this time). Got caught in a flash storm then remembered we're from Vancouver and sucked it up. Laughed at panicked tourists and got back to hostel just in time to find out that they don't take payment by credit card and needed to pay cash up front. Even less impressed. Room was fine, but the "fridge" didn't work and the mattresses seemed to have been found in an alley out back or something as the springs poked into our backs something awful. No dead hookers stuffed in them though so I guess it could have been worse. Managed to cool off thanks to the fan (no air conditioning for us) in our room and jaunted off to meet Louie. Louie took us to Grey's Papaya for hotdogs and juice then down to the UCB theatre to see a live interview with Adam McKay (director of "Anchorman" and former head writer for SNL). NY is so cool, despite the boy's lockerroom smell. Ate baked fries at Better Burger in Chelsea with Louie, his new roommate Tiffany Morningstar and assorted improv people then retreated to the hostel for precious sleep.

July 6: Deliberately woke up quite late. Wandered through Central Park then met up with Louie who guided us through Greenwich and the East Village. Got to see Toy Tokyo (I bought a clock nazi from the "Hell Boy" vending machine), St. Mark's street and Love Saves the World. Wandered through "Trash and Vaudeville" and laughed and laughed at a $90 white t-shirt with small holes in it. Ate at a nice trendy bistro called "Yaffa" and then had some drinks at the "remote lounge" where we spied on te other patrons (all three of them) and took silly pictures. Wandered back up to hotel sketchyville and crashed hard.

July 7: Ran to train station and made it there just as they were boarding. Train ended up leaving late and was too cold for me to sleep. Managed to kill time talking to amusing man beside me who kept telling the story about being told by his barber that he couldn't get the haircut he wanted because the barber liked his way better. Still don't really get it, but to each his own. Walk to hostel was much shorter than expected and hostel itself much (much) nicer.

July 8: Getting a slow start to the day. Will head down to Concordia in a little while to pick up press passes and experience start of FantAsia. Should be hooking up with Jeremy Knox who was not able to meet us at train station (no harm no foul anyway since the train was about an hour late).

that's it for now. More adventures as they happen.

And we're off...

So, the adventure has begun. Started off running to the train station yesterday morning since as usual we were running behind. Got to the station just in time to find out that our 8:15 bus was actually an 8:45 bus, but that we had to wait for the ticket booth to open at 8:15 because we bought out tickets online and didn't physically have them yet. But the ticket window didn't open at 8:15, it opened at closer to 8:25 despite the number of people milling around behind the ticket booth not really doing anything. Then we find out that the machine that prints the tickets isn't working and they have to labouriously write out a receipt by hand (with perfect deliberate handwriting no less) so that we can get on our bus. Despite all this the bus to Seattle was actually quite uneventful. Got to the hotel in Surrey (one of two pick-up stops on the way to the border) just as a horse drawn carriage carrying the groom in an Indian wedding arrived and the bride's family and all of the guests were out front to meet him. Quite cool.

Even on day one this is shaping up to be an ultimate film nerd vacation. Killed time downtown by (finally) watching Fahrenheit 911. I did enjoy it, although I know to take most Michael Moore stuff with a grain of salt. A lot of what was covered were things I was already aware of thanks in large part to the CBC and the Daily Show. Still worth seeing if only for the debate it is creating. After some very good (and very greasy) pizza and American beer (which I can drink oddly enough) courtesy of Xian it was decided that instead of the midnight show of The Muppets Take Manhattan that I had originally suggested we would go see the director's cut of Donnie Darko since it was unlikely to ever see the light of day up in Canadia. Although I did really enjoy the film the first time I saw it on DVD, the new edition does help to clarify a few things and ultimately ended up increasing my enjoyment of the original edition, although I feel that the original should be the definitive cut, if that makes any sense. Later relaxed in the laboratory with Miyuki, Xian and Xian's friend Brian (with the awesome green muscle car) watching some Red Dwarf and then off to bed.

Now it's off to the U District after I play with Xian's wily little kitten some more...

I must share this with everyone...

Even though we're running around like little chickens getting ready for the trip I had to had to had to share the love.