From restaurateur, to author of memoirs, to executive producer of ABC sitcom, Eddie Huang wore many hats. But now he pulls from Fresh from the boat to fresh-faced filmmaker, who made his directorial directorial debut with the basketball drama Boogie. Look at the Boogie trailer below.
Boogie Preview
Eddie Huang is best known in pop culture circles for writing the memoirs about the beloved ABC sitcom Fresh from the boat is based on, even lending his voice to tell the show, which he produced executive. But he famously split with the series after the network “tried to turn my memoirs into a wheat starch bowl and make me a mascot for America.” But there is no concern about smoothing out the rough edges of the Asian-American immigrant in his film Boogie, with which Huang makes his directorial debut.
The film tells the story of Alfred “Boogie” Chin (played by Huang’s former assistant Taylor Takahashi), a Chinese-Taiwanese American high school basketball player who dreams of playing for the NBA amid unrest at home and among his classmates in Queens, New York. The film, which also stars Taylour Paige, Jorge Lindenborg Jr., Pamelyn Chee, Perry Yung, Mike Moh and the late rapper Pop Smoke, is a classic inspiring sports drama, but anchored in the Asian immigrant experience. But rather than draw from the many sports dramas before, Huang told Entertainment Weekly that the story of Boogie was inspired by Good Will Hunting, which was also the film that convinced him to make a film.
“That movie was the moment I said, ‘I want to make a movie that changes another child’s life,'” he told EW. “The way they could humanize domestic violence and those relationships opened my eyes because I did not know you could talk about such things in movies.”
I have to admit that I do not love Eddie Huang very much, mostly because of his controversies regarding criticism of cultural appropriation. I liked Fresh from the boat for all the ‘purified’ reasons he did not like (it’s an ABC sitcom, what do you expect!), but I admire him for taking his creative vision into his own hands and making the leap to filmmaking.
Here is the overview of Boogie:
From the award-winning writer, producer and restaurateur Eddie Huang comes his directorial debut BOOGIE, the story of Alfred’s coming of age ‘BoogieChin, a basketball phenomenon in Queens, New York, who dreams of one day playing in the NBA. While his parents pressured him to concentrate on acquiring a scholarship to an elite college, Boogie must find a way to navigate through a new girlfriend, high school, competitors in court and the burden of expectation.
Boogie will be in theaters 5 March 2021.
Cool messages from around the internet: