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Grassroots Day 5 - Politics and a Hip Hop Partay!
Sunday, Sep 30, 2007 12:48PM / Standard Entry
This morning I jumped on a train with Justin to go from Washington D.C. to NYC. Prior to our departure, Justin and I had one of the best, home-made-tasting hamburgers in the world...and it was in the food court of the D.C. train station! Go figure.
Upon arriving in NYC, we had barely enough time to drop off our stuff at Hells Kitchen when we had to head out to Queens to attend the Organization of Chinese Americans awards banquet. When we popped out of the subway in Queens, I seriously had no idea where we were. We had to find a Chinese restaurant somewhere in a sea of Chinese restaurants. It's like trying to find a needle in a needle stack. Then it started to rain.
Justin and I were totally blown away by the amazing people of OCA. We met the first Asian woman to pass the bar in NYC, Ellen Young...very cool. There was also Bill Imada, a business leader in the ad agency that led the charge of taking away all the add sponsorship from a big NY radio station after they did a rather racist skit on the air. And we got to hang out with Emmy Award winning journalist, Ti Hua Chang. Thanks OCA for inviting us out!
Only in NYC can you go from a political awards banquet to hanging at a hip hop club all in the same night. And that's exactly what Justin and I did. We jumped a train from Queens back to Manhattan's lower west side. Peter Chun and BASE NY were helping us promote FTG at their club, Hiro Ballroom. It was very cool. The whole club was plastered with FTG posters and they were playing clips of FTG on the jumbotron. And they even gave us our own private booth. Strangely enough no one in the club actually sits in any booth...they sit ON TOP of them. Don't know why they do that, but standing on furniture at a classy joint is certainly something I recommend everyone should try at least once in their lives. It makes you feel like a bad ass rebel. Tough and rebellious. Anyway, it's 4 am right now and we just got in. I'm going to try something called sleep. : ) -Roger
Partying at BASE NY & sitting ON TOP of the furniture.
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Grassroots Day 4 - A Pot Belly in Washington D.C.
Saturday, Sep 29, 2007 3:33AM / Standard Entry
After only 3 hours of sleep Justin, Julie, Sung, and I caught an early morning train to Washington D.C. We had to run like mad to catch our ride at NY Penn Station cause Sung and I refused to get out of our beds.
An FTG "Hello" from the President's backyard. The grass was dying...
The last time any of us had been in DC was in 2002 for BLT. So we were all very excited to return to our nation's capital. We were picked up by DC Asian American Film Festival President, Christian Oh. He was more pimp then film festival purveyor. And he further cemented his image as DC Mac Daddy when he dropped us off at our hotel and gifted each of us with a 2 liter bottle of Vodka.
Sung pictured with Tyesha, Tyeesha, Jamal, Tydvia, Hannah, Donald at DC's Pot Belly sandwich shop on 11th & F.
None of us had a meal and it was 3 pm. So we checked in and headed out for a quick bite. Originally Justin wanted Italian. However, we were snubbed with some hard core "spirit dark" at one of DC's finer italian joints, with the waiter insisting that we could not have meatballs with our spaghetti. We love meatballs so we left. But things always happen for a reason. We ended up at a cool sandwich shop called Pot Belly's. The second we stepped in, the folks at Pot Belly recognized Sung from FF3. They were the coolest bunch and they gave us the warmest welcome. In fact, they refused to let us pay for our lunch. We couldn't have asked for more. Great food, great people, and they had a mean meatball sandwich. Thanks Pot Belly!
Later we attended the opening night of the DC AA Film Fest. FTG was the opening night film. And though it was pouring rain, the energy was awesome and the DC crowd was just great. One of the coolest things about this Journey is getting to meet the many people we connect with on line via MySpace, Facebook, etc in person at their home cities. We finally got to meet our MySpace buddy Nathalie Liautaud and a few other of our Internet family members. Very cool indeed. By the time I looked at my watch it was almost 2 am. I decided to head back to the hotel with Julie while Justin and Sung decided to go walking to find DC Chinatown. Justin and I are headed back to NYC in the morning to attend the NY OCA Banquet while Sung and Julie are sticking around in DC to speak to the students at Georgetown. It is now 4 am, Friday. Must sleep. : ) -Roger
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Grassroots Day 3 - It's Hot as Hells Kitchen in NYC!
Friday, Sep 28, 2007 3:13PM / Standard Entry
Sung and I are dripping wet in this picture. Not the day to wear wool blend
Autumn in New York is supposed to be nice, cool, fall affair. Unfortunately for Sung, Julie, Justin, and myself, we are experiencing the preliminary indicators of global warming in Manhattan. It's HOT here in Hells Kitchen!
Sung and I had to get up early because we had some phone interviews with newspapers and web magazine outfits. After we were done, Sung and I decided to run the entire rim of Central Park. Normally, this would not be too much of a problem given that Sung and I run quite regularly. However, it was 90+ degrees and super humid so the loop around the park felt more like a prison death march. At least both of us got a tan.
We then met up with Justin for our 2 speaking sessions at the NY Film Academy and the Korea Society. Justin had just come from a Chinese TV interview where the make-up artists on set insisted that he had to wear lipstick. Sung and I arrived at Union Square dripping wet...no one told us that NYC was going to be soooo hot so we only brought long pants & long sleeve shirts. The sweat stick of boxers on a man's leg is enjoyable for only so long. I wonder if the NY Film Academy audience thought it was strange that both Sung and I looked like well-dressed wet cats. We had an amazing Q&A session with about 300 film students. What was really cool was that many of the foreign students were big fans of BETTER LUCK TOMORROW. You gotta love bootleg DVDs. Mejor Luck Manana baby!
We then went to the Korea Society on the East Side. I got to hand it to the society of Koreans, they definitely got some serious cash flow. Their building was rather pimp. Josh, Julie, Justin, Sung, and I played our documentary and then spoke with 120ish members of the Society de Koreans for about 1 1/2 hours. We ended the session by giving away a bunch of FINISHING THE GAME T Shirts. As parting gifts, the Korea Society gave us T Shirts of Bruce Lee. Kinda strange to get what you just gave.
After that we cabbed it to Chinatown for some late night eats. Why Justin ordered the stomach & liver dish I will never know. It looked and tasted like coagulated vomit. But hey, the noodles rocked! We then went back to our lair in Hells Kitchen to do some work and prep for our next day. Before we knew it, it was 4am. As I am writing this, I realize we have to get up in 4 hours to catch an early train to Washington DC. Yeah boy... -Roger
Kind of ironic that this NYC police officer pulled us over to tell Sung that he loved "The Fast & The Furious 3"
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Grassroots Day 2 con't - Hunter College & AA Film Lab
Thursday, Sep 27, 2007 1:02AM / Standard Entry
Our visit to Hunter College in NYC!
Tonight we went to go speak at Hunter College in NYC. We had an amazing time connecting with and meeting all the students. It was kinda cool cause it was our first "Official" stop on our national Grassroots tour. Sung, Julie, Josh and I made it there first. Traffic sucked though. Justin showed up about 15 minutes later because his cab got stuck in all that United Nations meeting traffic.
We played our "making of" documentary and then had a great chat session with the students. It turns out that the Hunter students have been fighting for years to establish an Asian American studies program and make it an official part of their curriculum. We loved their passion and enthusiasm and felt very lucky to have an opportunity to meet them all.
After Hunter we went downtown to 26th street to speak to the Asian American Film Lab. We spent about 2 hours exchanging ideas and thoughts with the NY AA filmmaking community. It was cool to connect and meld minds with fellow filmmakers, actors, and producers. They're a great bunch. And after that, they took us to 32nd street to engage in traditional Korean BBQ. Delicious!
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Grassroots Day 2 - Finding the Dragon & Shopping
Wednesday, Sep 26, 2007 2:38AM / Standard Entry
Sung & I found Bruce Lee in the NYC Subway. We then went to Fairways for groceries and made the very bad decision to walk 31 blocks back to our pad in Hells Kitchen.
Ahh yes, our first real day in NYC. It's beautiful...sunny & 81 degrees. Sung & I decided to go with Julie (our producer) on her nostalgia tour 2007. She took us to her old neighborhood in the upper west side, saw her old apartment, and then we went to Fairway to pick up food to fill our very empty fridge. All this walking and sun really got to Sung and I...we worked out really hard last night and then got up at the crack of dawn to do some sort of stupid Navy SEAL training through the NY alleyways. A very dumb idea indeed, for Sung and I almost collapsed on our walk back home to Hells Kitchen. The grocery bags were heavy. Thank god we had a egg salad sandwich. Sung and I sat in some park and ate while Julie, full of energy, ran around to buy flowers for our apartment. Must go take a nap, for tonight we speak at Hunter college and also the AA Film Lab. -RF
Stats
- Roger Fan is one of the industry’s most interesting and exciting young personalities, redefining the leading man aesthetic through a wide variety of projects as an actor, host, and motivational spea...
- Occupation: Actor , Film/TV Producer
- Gender: Male
- Total visits: 123,131
