‘My Life Disoriented’ Short Premieres Dec. 26 on PBS
By JOYCE TSE
Rafu Staff Writer
Saturday, Dec. 23, 2006

One-episode show that tackles Asian American issues has potential to become a series. 

It’s been just over a decade since the first and last network program featuring an Asian American family made headlines before it was quickly cancelled.

But Margaret Cho’s “All American Girl,” which ran for one season from 1994 to 1995, brought to light the fact that until that point, there were no leading Asian American families on network television.

Enter “My Life Disoriented,” the Asian American community’s second chance at having something of their own on network television. It is a one-episode show about two Bay Area teens who are forced to relocate with their family to Bakersfield when their dad loses his job.

“My hope is that as many people as possible can see this,” said actress Hira Ambrosino, who plays the mother of the two teens. “It is absolutely appalling that there are no TV episodics on air in this country that have an Asian American family at the center. For that reason alone, it is very important to at least get the trend going.”

Set against the backdrop of a high school, “My Life Disoriented” tackles issues that are familiar to many Asian Americans. Beyond family matters, sisters Kimberlee (Di Quon) and Aimee (Karin Anna Cheung) Fung suddenly find themselves at a mostly Caucasian high school where they must decide between associating with the few other Asians on campus or befriending people outside their race.

“Yes, Kimberlee and Aimee are Asian American, but at the heart of everything, these are universal issues, with something that everyone can relate to,” said Claire Yorita Lee, who wrote the script.

Though the story was based loosely on the real-life experiences of Quon, who grew up in Bakersfield and was the only full-blooded Asian American in her school, a conscious effort was made to set the story in a high school setting since it was decidedly the perfect format for depicting the social pressures that affect people in adult life, according to director Eric Byler.

“We are so used to watching that [high school] genre. It’s a fun genre and an excellent metaphor for the plight of those of us who feel we don’t belong,” he said.

 What adds to the show’s appeal and purpose is that it doesn’t depict Asian Americans as outsiders, said Ambrosino.

“The show really sheds life into Asian Americans as really just Americans. We’re not any different. We fall in love and out of love, and we have families and relationships and hardships—everything that everybody else has,” she said.

Though the show is currently only one episode, and is therefore being called a “short,” it has potential to become a regular series if viewer response is positive, said Byler, who has heard PBS, MTV and ABC Family express interest in turning the show into a series.

“We are hanging on by our fingernails,” he said. “The real challenge is convincing the powers that be that there is the need and the audience.”

It hasn’t been an easy ride for the cast and crew to finish filming or to get the show on the air. This one episode alone was made on a budget of an $11,500 grant from Independent Television Service, a subsidiary of PBS that is responsible for “Independent Lens” and additional funds from Yorita Lee’s father. The first day of shooting was two years ago to the day of air (Dec. 26, 2004) with the final scene shot in January this year.

“A lot of it was money, we couldn’t afford to do it all in the beginning,” said Yorita Lee.

To garner more support for “My Life Disoriented” and to prove its worth, Byler started an email campaign, asking fans and supporters to email the PBS affiliates in their areas to have the episode aired if it isn’t already being shown and to ask for broadcasts at better times than the 3 a.m., 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. showings in some parts of the country.

Other methods of showing interest would be to email the affiliates to thank them for showing “My Life Disoriented” and to express interest in seeing future episodes.

Web site and video download hits would also provide proof that an audience exists, said Byler, who posted two clips from the episode on YouTube, the “My Life Disoriented” MySpace site and the show’s personal Web site.

“If the community shows there’s a hunger and interest for Asian American representation in mainstream media, it would give us one thing we lack when the pilot season begins since there’s a perception that there isn’t an audience,” he said.

Part of this perception may be due in part to the downfall of “All American Girl,” said Ambrosino.

“Margaret Cho’s show scared away a lot of network execs who go by example. They say look at that show,” she said, explaining that Cho’s show was “meddled with by so many executives, who changed the character so much that by the time it got on air, it had nothing to do with [Cho].”

At the same time, the appearance of Asian Americans as main characters on television has grown in recent years with actors and actresses like Sandra Oh as Dr. Cristina Yang on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Yunjin Kim as Sun Kwon on “Lost,” Daniel Dae Kim as Jin-Soon Kwon on “Lost,” and Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura on “Heroes.”

“We’ve come a long way in 10 years,” said Yorita Lee. “The time is right…people are getting used to diverse casts.”

Byler, Yorita Lee and Quon are also confident that things will be different for them since audiences at screenings in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C. and Hawaii have praised the show, and it differs from “All American Girl” in one key way: the cast and crew’s strong desire to keep things true to life.

“The one thing we’re holding onto is we’re not willing to compromise the integrity of this show. That’s a challenge in this industry,” said Quon, who is also one of the producers. “I will say that PBS and ITVS have been huge supporters of allowing the vision to be what it was meant to be without interfering and changing it. That’s a beautiful gift.”

Because “My Life Disoriented” has a behind-the-scenes crew of all Asian Americans, the show manages to strike a delicate balance between depicting cultural nuances without falling prey to stereotyping.

“I hate to say this out loud, but most American TV really still stereotypes Asian Americans. When Asian American actresses are younger, meaning we can look 25 or younger, we play manicurists, pedicurists and prostitutes. If we are older, 30 and up, we suddenly have graduate degrees and play nothing but doctors with no personalities or lawyers with no personalities. That’s really inexcusable,” said Ambrosino.

To Ambrosino, the diverse makeup of the cast and crew, which represents members of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Eurasian heritage, was also a significant factor in making the show what it is.

“If you notice, there’s a lot of infighting among some of the Asian community,” she said. “But in the end, we have to remember that we’re all Asian American, otherwise we just keep dividing and falling.”

“My Life Disoriented” debuts on Dec. 26 with reruns through Jan. 24 on PBS as part of its “Independent Lens” series. Show times vary among PBS affiliates around the country, but in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the program airs at 10 p.m., while in San Diego, it starts at 12 a.m.

Visit www.mylifedisoriented.com or www.myspace.com/mylifedisoriented.

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