By Christopher Bourne

Jessica Yu is best known for such formally inventive documentaries as her 1996 Oscar-winning short film BREATHING LESSONS: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARK O’BRIEN and her features, IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL, and PROTAGONIST. Much like the works of other documentary innovators such as Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, Yu’s films transcend this label and expand the boundaries of the field by incorporating visual and dramatic structures that illuminate their subjects in uniquely fascinating ways. IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL (2004) spun the strange life story of outsider artist Henry Darger, an elusive figure who had almost no contact with the outside world, making extensive use of animations based on Darger’s bizarre 15,000 page illustrated novel which gives the film its title. PROTAGONIST (2007) is built around an even more challenging conceit: a study of four men and their experiences with obsession and extremist behavior, inspired by the drama of the classical Greek tragedian Euripides and illustrated by staged scenes acted out by puppets. After such complex yet eminently accessible projects, her next logical step was … a comedy about ping pong?

Such is the peripatetic nature of Jessica Yu’s filmmaking career, which goes wherever her interests happen to take her. Her latest, PING PONG PLAYA, the Closing Night Presentation of the Asian American International Film Festival ‘08, is a hilarious and slyly subversive take on the sports comedy, a familiar genre with a long and perhaps not-so-hallowed tradition in American film. Its central figure, Christopher “C-dub” Wang (played by co-screenwriter Jimmy Tsai), is a swaggering, trash-talking, yet obnoxiously immature guy who aspires to be the first Chinese-American player in the NBA. Unfortunately for him, his preening, boastful overconfidence far outstrips his physical abilities. Unemployed and living at home, he is a perennial disappointment to his parents (Jim Lau and Elizabeth Sung), especially in comparison to his brother Michael (Roger Fan), a doctor and ping-pong champion. C-dub’s simple life is upended when a car accident involving his mother and brother forces C-dub to substitute teach his mother’s ping pong class for children.

Inspired by Jimmy Tsai’s self-directed series of online commercials for his clothing line, Venom Sportswear, from which he originated the C-dub character, PING PONG PLAYA melds its deliberately familiar sports-film scenario with a delightfully irreverent take on Chinese-American culture and stereotypes. Yu keeps everything moving with a zippy pace, incorporating aurally-based humor—curse words are replaced by the sound of a bouncing basketball—and sight gags involving split-screens and comic-timed editing. This film, in a way, hearkens back to Yu’s 1993 short SOUR DEATH BALLS, an extended silent comedy-type sight gag depicting the pained facial expressions of a succession of people sampling the titular treat. The anarchic humor of that early film is in abundance in PING PONG PLAYA. Ms. Yu spoke to me about her film from her home in Los Angeles.

CineVue: Considering the sports theme of your film, it was interesting for me to find out you were a fencing champion at Yale.

Jessica Yu: Yes, a long time ago. I graduated in 1987, and I had been fencing at that point for a long time. For some strange reason, practically my whole family fences. My sister and brother fences, my mom still coaches fencing, and I have four cousins who all fenced at one time or another.

CineVue: What were your experiences with fencing?

JY: I started when I was a teenager, and ended up fencing in high school, and through college, and a little bit after college. It’s not the kind of sport that you can really do on a casual basis, but when I was fencing I did travel a lot, which was great. It was really strange to be traveling to places like Bulgaria.

CineVue: So how did you go from fencing to filmmaking?

JY: It’s funny, because I don’t think of it as being connected. But I guess in a way it was, because when I graduated from college I really had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I was interested in film production in general, and because I was still training [for fencing] after I graduated from college, I needed a job where I could still travel for tournaments, and so I started doing some production assistant work. So that was my first taste of film production, through these PA jobs.

CineVue: Ok, so let’s fast forward from that to PING PONG PLAYA. How did you meet Jimmy Tsai, your lead actor and co-screenwriter?

JY: The way that this project came about is that Cherry Sky Films, which is the production company that produced PING PONG PLAYA, had supported IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL. When I was finishing that documentary, they came in with some finishing funds that were sorely needed. I really hit it off with [company founders] Joan Huang and Jeff Gou, and that’s when I met Jimmy, their production accountant. They had a night where they showed a bunch of short films that they had produced, and at the very end there were these hilarious commercials for this clothing line called Venom Sportswear. And they had this guy kind of complaining and ranting on about all things Asian American, and how he should have been the first [Chinese American] player in the NBA, and I thought, this was a great character. But I didn’t know it was Jimmy! A couple of years after that, Joan approached me about doing a comedy with them, which immediately made sense to me. Her idea was that it should have something to do with ping pong, and I thought we should put Jimmy’s character into that world. Then, Jimmy and I started writing the script together. Jimmy was not an experienced actor but I had always assumed that he would play the [lead] role. When I said, “you’re going to be acting, and you’re going to be working every single day,” he said, “Oh, oh, you’d better talk to Joan about that.” They both had no idea. They thought we were going to go out and cast the role. Luckily, it wasn’t too hard to convince them that Jimmy was the only person who could play that role.

CineVue: But since this film was based on a character Jimmy had created, why wouldn’t he have assumed that he would play that role? Was film acting just something he wasn’t seriously considering?

JY: The reason he played himself in those mock commercials was that he had tried to cast somebody for that role, and couldn’t find anybody that could really hit it out of the park, so he decided to do it himself. But the thing is, if you ever talk to Jimmy, you’ll find that he’s nothing like C-dub. So C-dub is definitely an alter ego of his. The only question was how comfortable he would be on camera, and how well he would be able to move into the world of having to do things several times, and hit his marks.

CineVue: Although this is your first fictional feature, you have directed episodic television—ER, The West Wing, Grey’s Anatomy. Did that experience help you transition from your documentaries to this film?

JY: Definitely. The thing about episodic TV is that it’s its own thing. You learn things about that world and whatever particular show you’re on, and those things don’t necessarily translate for your own indie film. But for me, the episodic experience has been fantastic. Not only working with terrific actors, but working with different crews, different equipment, and being on schedule. I mean, the pressure of a lot of these dramatic shows is just tremendous. When we got to PING PONG PLAYA, on most days, we would wrap early. I think everyone appreciated that, because on a little indie film like this—and we had a very tight schedule—I think most crews assume they’re going to be working to the ground, and that’s not anybody’s idea of a good time.

CineVue: How many shooting days did you have?

JY: We had twenty.

CineVue: Why did you choose this particular film as your first foray into fiction? Your documentaries dealt with marginalized people (the disabled and mentally ill), outsider artists, and extremists, certainly more serious subject matter than in PING PONG PLAYA (although the documentaries aren’t humorless). One would think any fictional film you would make would be in a similar vein.

JY: It’s a fair question. With my films, I always feel like there hasn’t been a logical step from one to the next. I always feel like I got hooked on projects because they’re different from each other. And this answer is only half facetious, but when Joan and I were talking about what project we could work on together, we recognized that there was a terrible need in the Asian American film world for superficial comedy. [Laughs] So that was what we set out to do; to make a film that was Asian American themed but pure fun.

CineVue: What you just said speaks to what I thought was very interesting about your film. Many Asian American films deal with identity and cultural issues in a very heavy, dramatic manner, but you deal with these same issues with a much lighter touch, yet the same points still come across.

JY: Well, you feel like there’s progress when you have a film that is more superficial but also with a main character who’s kind of obnoxious. [Laughs] I think there’s always been great care taken when Asian American filmmakers are working with Asian American characters, because there are not a lot of portrayals of us out there. In this case, we didn’t have to be quite so careful. You had to give [the C-dub character] an arc, but he didn’t have to show that he had great depth of soul.

CineVue: Actually, I thought there were some layers to the C-dub character, for example his hypersensitivity to the stereotyping views of non-Asians, and at the same time his own willingness to appropriate them, for example calling himself “the Orient Express” in reference to his ping pong prowess.

JY: Oh, definitely, he has those sorts of contradictions, and presses different buttons as they suit his needs. And there are times when you feel like we just have to laugh at ourselves for saying, this is okay, but that’s not okay, or I can say this, but you can’t say this. Like, if anybody else even suggests that [C-dub’s] mom’s a bad driver, forget it, it’s a stereotype. But then he can tell his brother, “Man, you suck at driving.”

CineVue: Another interesting aspect of the film was its take on cross-cultural appropriation: C-dub’s “gangsta” speech and his black friend’s efforts to learn Chinese. When you and Jimmy were writing, how did this element enter into it?

JY: Maybe you should talk to Jimmy about this, but so much in the film about C-dub is autobiographical. When I first met Jimmy, he said, “You know, I can’t come on Saturday, because I have to go to Chinese school.” I was at Chinese school for awhile, and I didn’t learn anything. He was going to Chinese school every Saturday and he was the one adult in a class of twelve-year-olds, totally un-ironically, he just wanted to learn Chinese. But he wasn’t the best student in the class. As far as his friend JP Money, he is not as based on a single character in the same way that C-dub is.

CineVue: What was funny to me about C-dub’s character was the huge gulf between his basketball ambitions and his actual talent. So much of the humor in the film arises from that.

JY: Yeah, I think that’s something that people have really responded to. People will come up afterward and say things like, “C-dub’s bedroom looks just like my bedroom,” so I think there’s a lot there to identify with. And also, as far as his identification with hip-hop culture, Jimmy pointed out that that’s something that’s infiltrated people of a certain age, especially guys, across the board. And it’s not making any particular statement; it’s just what he grew up with.

CineVue: How did you go about casting the film? Specifically, how did you find the kid actors? I thought they were great.

JY: You know, it was a little scary when we were trying to cast the kid actors. There are not as many Asian American kid actors out there, maybe because parents still think that’s not the best future for them. Then one day, boom, all three kids—Andrew Vo, Javin Reid and Kevin Chung—came in, and we were just so grateful. It’s tricky, because you need the kids to have some elements of their own personality connect with their characters. They’ve got to have some energy of their own, and you also don’t want to get kids who have just learned to parrot back what they’re supposed to say in commercials.

CineVue: Was there much rehearsal with the cast?

JY: We didn’t really rehearse with anybody too much. The thing is, Jimmy is in every scene except for two of them. But because we had written it together, there wasn’t much to talk about. What’s always hard, particularly with comedy, is that the first time you do it, sometimes there’s this great reaction. Then when you shoot it, that spontaneity is gone.

CineVue: How did you train the cast in ping pong?

JY: It was difficult to get the training time for the other actors, but Jimmy trained fanatically for over three months. The first place we went to was the Pasadena Senior Center, close to where he and I both live. There was a club with some good players, but some quite elderly players. I think Jimmy assumed that he was just going to go in there and kick everybody’s ass, but after the first day, he was like, “This old lady, she wiped the floor with me!” For the other actors, like Peter Paige, who plays C-dub’s nemesis, he actually came on board too late to really get into any training. So we had our technical advisors, Diego Schaaf and Wei Wang—Wei Wang was an Olympic champion for China a few years ago—come in and help make sure things looked realistic, even if the actors were hitting an imaginary ball. We also invited some players from local clubs to participate in the final tournament scenes.

CineVue: PING PONG PLAYA follows the familiar trajectory of sports films, down to the climactic final match, although the cultural details you inject into the story separate it from many other films of this genre. Were there any other sports films you looked at for reference or inspiration?

JY: In terms of films that we liked and worked as a formula, certainly everyone talks about THE BAD NEWS BEARS, the original one, which is kind of subversive. Ping pong is not exactly held in the same reverence as baseball but everybody at one time or another has probably picked up a paddle and played on the warped table in the garage.

CineVue: It’s funny you mentioned BAD NEWS BEARS, because when C-dub’s mother asks him to take over her ping pong class, he says, “I don’t wanna coach no Bad News Bears.” So you reference that film explicitly.

JY: The idea was basically to try to take the classic BAD NEWS BEARS-type sports film but cross it with the idea of C-dub being, from his perspective, in a classic kung fu movie. You know, he’s got to "train from the master."

CineVue: Could you talk a little about the film’s visual style? You do some very interesting things with split screens, for example. And there are also the interview segments with C-dub, which I thought were very funny.

JY: The main body of the film was shot on Super-16; the interview segments were the only parts we didn’t shoot in that format. With Super-16, you have the spontaneity and flexibility of it being handheld without losing the nice qualities of film. In the film, C-dub is not shown in his element, so I wanted someplace where he gets to rant and rave about his philosophy of the world. And we wanted to go for simple, fun visual things. Split screens can be fun and playful, and also keeps the pace up.

CineVue: This film has played at a few festivals, hasn’t it?

JY: Yes, it premiered at Toronto, and screened at some of the Asian American film festivals. We’ve got a few more festivals coming up. IFC will release it in the fall. It’s a strange world right now. You’re not exactly sure, especially with a little indie film, how much exposure in film festivals is good, and when does it start to eat into your actual release. It gets confusing. But we had a great time at the festivals.

CineVue: What kind of reaction have you gotten from audiences?

JY: It’s actually been surprising. There are a lot of filmmakers don’t ever want to see to see their films again after they’re finished, or at least they can’t watch it for awhile. But this film is just really fun to sit in on, because of the audience. Starting with Toronto, we had packed houses that were just going bonkers over stuff. [Laughs] And at the Asian American film festivals, certainly people have been laughing at more things that are maybe particular to the Asian American experience. But I don’t think there’s anything in there that is alienating to somebody who hasn’t had that experience.

I have to tell you, I’ve had hilarious experiences at a couple of film festivals where people have come up to me, saying that they’ve just bought tickets because they had seen PROTAGONIST or IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL and really liked it. And they didn’t even really look at the description, they just thought, oh, it’s another documentary. And they’re so surprised! One woman said, “You know, this is the kind of film that I would never go to see on my own.” But she said that she had such a good time. But I don’t think she’s the kind of person who would buy a ticket for a goofy sports comedy. It was fun to see people be a little surprised.

CineVue: What are your future projects? Will you continue with fiction films, or is there another documentary in the works?

JY: I think sometimes people have the impression that you work on documentaries as a stepping stone to get into narrative features, and I’ve never seen it that way. But I’d love to have the freedom to move back and forth. Right now, I’m working on a short documentary and Jimmy and I are working on another comedy, just on the script so far, but that will be fun.

Get up close and personal with Yu as she discusses her creative process SATURDAY, JULY 19 at 145P at the Asia Society. ONE ON ONE WITH JESSICA YU is a presentation of New Landscapes: Media & Its Adaptations.

Christopher Bourne is a critic and writer on film based in New York City who has extensively covered Asian cinemas. His work has appeared in Senses of Cinema, Meniscus Magazine, Offscreen, and The Film Journal. He blogs on film at The Bourne Cinema Conspiracy.