Saturday School Season 2: Asian Americans In Love

AC Lorenzo - Only You (Yazoo acoustic cover)

Welcome back to Saturday School, the podcast where Brian Hu and Ada Tseng teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history! This season is all about "Asian Americans in Love," as we explore memorable Asian American onscreen romances in film that paved the way for the Jessica+Louises, Dev+Rachels and Glenn+Maggies of today. We begin with the Samuel Fuller film, The Crimson Kimono, starring James Shigeta. 

He plays a Japanese American detective that ends up in a love triangle with his partner and a key witness in their case. Back in 1959, when the film was first released, the posters promoted the film with the scandal of an interracial couple. "YES, this is a beautiful American girl in the arms of a Japanese boy!" the tagline read. "What was his strange appeal to American girls?" 60 years later, Brian and Ada expertly attribute his appeal to the timeless phenomenon we call "James Shigeta's hotness."

Season 2, Ep. 1: The Crimson Kimono

In Episode 2 of our season of love, we revisit the 1998 documentary Kelly Loves Tony by Spencer Nakasako. Kelly and Tony, whose families are lu Mien refugees from Laos, live in Oakland, CA, and they've just graduated from high school. She's a good girl (straight A student), he's a bad boy (he used to be in a gang), they're in love, and they have a baby on the way.

Kelly Loves Tony was made through a video workshop Nakasako used to run at a development center, where he'd teach youth how to film video diaries about their lives and then edit the footage together into a documentary. This is the 90's, so it predates modern smart phone culture where everyone knows how to take a selfie and perform for the camera. As a result, it's a really raw account of a real-life, opposites-attract love story that is complicated by threats of deportation, immigrant family pressures, and youthful dreams. 

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.

Season 2, Ep. 2: Kelly Loves Tony

This week, we're talking about The Namesake, a 2003 novel by Jhumpa Lahiri that was later adapted into a 2006 feature film by director Mira Nair. The trailer makes it seem like the movie is mostly about the American-born son's character (played by Kal Penn) and his romances, but watching it again 11 years later (and 11 years older), we were floored by how romantic the immigrant parents' relationship is (as played by the incomparable Irrfan Khan and Tabu). Their performances show us that sometimes the ultimate fantasy has less to do with the initial lust and passion we're used to seeing in movies, and more to do with imagining what it'd be like to navigate a new world with a partner, overcome challenges together, raise children together -- and have the love endure, decades later.

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.

Season 2, Ep. 3: The Namesake

This week's episode is about Bertha Bay-Sa Pan's Almost Perfect from 2011, a romantic comedy starring Kelly Hu and Ivan Shaw. We've talked about how uncommon it is to have a fully-fleshed-out love story between two Asian American characters in film -- and how it's even rarer it is for those couples to actually have chemistry past a few simple meet-cute moments, only because so many elements have to come together in a film (acting, writing, directing, ample screen time, sometimes movie-star hotness) to get an audience to really root for a couple onscreen.  

Because of this, even just six years ago, Almost Perfect seemed like an anomaly. Brian was charmed by the effortless charm of Ivan Shaw's Dwayne, who quickly sweeps Kelly Hu's Vanessa off her feet. Ada really liked how he fixed stuff without asking. This was the work of a cast/crew who really understood what beats they needed to hit to make us believe we were in a romantic comedy -- and sure, call it a formula, but believe we did.

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.

Season 2, Ep. 4: Almost Perfect

On this week's episode, we have a special guest: musician Goh Nakamura joins us to talk about the films Surrogate Valentine and its sequel Daylight Savings, directed by Dave Boyle. In both movies, Goh plays a version of himself as he travels around the country on a music tour. Several women enter his life, including Lynn Chen playing his high school crush, Ayako Fujitani as an ex-girlfriend, and Jane Lui as a friend who catches his eye -- but it's him and Yea-Ming Chen, another real-life musician playing a version of herself, who seem to have the most natural chemistry.

Goh tells us about how two non-actors rehearsed their way to become a believable onscreen couple. He also lets us imagine what it would've been like if his character was named Joe Nakamura. But best of all, Brian asks: um, didn't you guys tell us (your fans) in your Daylight Savings interviews that you wanted to continue the collaboration and do a part 3? If nothing else, this episode serves to remind everyone that it doesn't matter how many years it takes or many awards Dave Boyle wins, a promise is a promise.

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.

Season 2, Ep. 5: Daylight Savings (with Goh Nakamura)

This week, we go way back in history, almost 100 years ago to 1919 and a silent film called The Dragon Painter, starring Sessue Hayakawa and his wife Tsuru Aoki. Hayakawa was a star rivaling Charlie Chaplin in the Silent Era, and after being tired of the villainous Japanese roles that were written for him in Hollywood, he created his own production company to make his own movies. The Dragon Painter was restored in 1988 and added to the National Film Registry in 2014.

Ada and Brian talk about their quest to find an old school Asian American romance, which led them on a detour through an Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn crime film -- and how Sessue Hayakawa, the biggest Asian American star of all time, is kind of like Randall Park. 

Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.

Season 2, Ep. 7: The Dragon Painter

Wake up! Saturday School is a podcast where Brian Hu (@husbrian) and Ada Tseng (@adatseng) teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. New episodes released Saturdays at 8am, when all your friends are still in bed watching cartoons. It'll be a blast from the past, as they dig up some of their favorite works they've come across covering Asian American arts & entertainment over the years -- and discover other gems for the first time. Saturday School is a proud founding member of Potluck, a collective of podcasts featuring unique stories and voices from the Asian American community. Sign up for our newsletter below for lecture notes!

Season 2, Ep. 7: The Dragon Painter

Saturday School Podcast

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