Wayne Wang, noted director of Chan is Missing, Smoke, and the divisive (at least among some Asian Americans) The Joy Luck Club, has this particular filmgoer wondering about the status of his latest project, Good Cook, Likes Music.
The storyline according to IMDB.com is as follows: “A slacker and lovable loser lives with his mother in a trailer park. One drunken night, he sends away for a mail-order bride, who ends up being a musical prodigy, and together, they change each other's lives.”
The movie, which has been kicking around since 2001, once had Adam Sandler and Zhang Ziyi attached to star. But its IMDB profile currently has a blank cast and a ‘development unknown’ production status.
So what happened? And more importantly, is there a catch to this movie? I like to think that the film synopsis is just being vague, that there’s more to it than a white trailer dweller simply buying an Asian wife. I would hate to think it's another cinematic fable of a sweet Asian gal turning a man's pitiable life around and a white knight rescuing his foreign woman. If it is, I would hope that those conventions would somehow be flipped on its head which could be done deftly under Wang's direction. Well, maybe those clichés are true. But I’ve never tried teaching a white dude lessons on life and love, nor has a white dude saved me from my own backward culture, so I can’t give a definitive answer on that just yet.
There are three writers attached to this project, one of whom is Asian American Rita Hsiao, whose credits include Toy Story 2 and Mulan. With any luck she wasn't the one who decided to give Mulan a pet dragon. Or the one who decided to name said pet dragon Mushu.
If the project ever gets off the ground, I’ll be very curious to see the end result and hopefully won’t leave the theatre enraged or dismayed. Even leaving mildly irritated would be okay.
Posted by sylvie at January 30, 2008 10:23 AM
Leave a comment