The Paper Tigers (2021)

[ElectricBoogaloo]

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Three Kung Fu prodigies have grown into washed-up, middle-aged men, now one kick away from pulling their hamstrings. But when their master is murdered, they must juggle their dead-end jobs, dad duties, and old grudges to avenge his death.

Written and directed by Quoc Bao Tran. Starring Alain Uy, Ron Yuan, and Mykel Shannon Jenkins.

Trailer:

Release date: 5/7/21

Edited May 17, 2021 by ElectricBoogaloo

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Yuji Okumoto (who you may recognize as Chozen from The Karate Kid/Cobra Kai) said that when he and writer/director Bao Tran were seeking funding, they received some interest but with some deal breaking strings attached:

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“And we all collectively whooped and hollered,” Okumoto said. “But then their ask was kind of ridiculous. They said, ‘OK, we’ll give you $4 million to shoot this film. But we’re not crazy about the lead Asian characters and stuff like that. So, we’re wondering would you be open to having white actors play the leads?’ It was pretty much a gut punch. They said, ‘How about Bruce Willis?’ ”

After ten years of trying to get this movie made, Tran ended up raising the funds for this film on Kickstarter and through private financing so he could keep his cast intact

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“It’s definitely couched in business sense so it doesn’t feel prejudiced, but it is, obviously,” Tran said. “Keep in mind, this was before Crazy Rich Asians and Black Panther, before we could really point to all these big movies. They’ll say, ‘there’s no successful film with leading casts of color. How can you justify putting our money in to make a movie like this?’ So it’s kind of a catch-22 in that never ending cycle. So, yeah, there is a brazenness because they kind of feel like they have history and data by their side. Fortunately, those dinosaurs are dying out and that’s just an old way of thinking. It is just so patently absurd, and yet it’s a very prevalent way of thinking.”

Tran refused to recast the film, so he came back to Seattle and set up a Kickstarter. On the crowd-funding page he wrote:

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We’ve had offers to fully fund the film if only we change our main characters to Caucasians. We’ve had offers to fully fund the film if we shoot in China. We’ve had offers to sell the script and shop it to more famous directors. But this is a distinctly Asian and American story and we have consistently stuck to our guns to make the movie we want to make.

In the end, the film was fully funded by the community and local investors.

Filmmaker Bao Tran writes about the struggle to make his film “The Paper Tigers” and why he stuck to his creative guns

Edited May 17, 2021 by ElectricBoogaloo