Interview with Jessica Yu
Jimmy Tsai-Co-writer, production accountant and leading actor
Highlights:
Christopher "C-dub" Wang is a suburban guy who sports an urban swagger, waxes political on all things Asian American, and clings to pipe dreams of a career as a pro basketball player. Blaming genetics for his failure to make the NBA, C-dub lives at home, works a dead-end job, and squirms in the shadow of his older brother, Michael, a doctor and ping pong champion.
With a family-run store devoted to all things ping pong and a mom who teaches it at the local Chinese Community Center, the Wangs’ entire world revolves around the sport. But despite the family legacy, C-dub opts to spend his free time playing video games and daydreaming about get-rich quick schemes with his best friend JP Money.
C-dub is kicked back into reality when his mom and Michael are hurt in a car accident, leaving his father to watch over the store and forcing C-dub to take over his mom’s ping pong class of misfits. C-dub starts to appreciate the benefits of ping pong when he starts using the class to make some extra money on the side and befriending one of the kids who happens to have a beautiful older sister.
But when the Wang family livelihood is threatened by a rival ping pong player’s attempts to lure the kids away, C-dub begins to take things more seriously. With the National Golden Cock Tournament coming up and an injured Michael unable to defend his title, C-dub must become the player he pretends to be and defend his family’s ping pong dynasty.
PING PONG PLAYA opens Friday September 5th in New York.
Transcript:
Jessica Yu is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien, an intimate portrait of the writer who lived for four decades paralyzed by polio and confined to an iron lung. She also won an Emmy and a Cable Ace Award for Best Documentary Director.
Yu’s latest documentary, Protagonist, looks at extremism through the lives of a spectrum of individuals. Funded by the Carr Foundation, it premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and will be released theatrically later in the year by IFC Films and Netflix. It also won the Grand Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival.
In the Realms of the Unreal, Yu’s celebrated feature documentary about the enigmatic “outsider” artist Henry Darger, premiered at Sundance and went on to win Best Documentary at the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Newport Beach Film Festival, Best Editing at the Atlanta Film Festival and a Gotham Award nomination for Best Documentary. She was also nominated for the WGA for Documentary Screenplay. Released nationally by Wellspring Films and broadcast on PBS’ series, P.O.V., REALMS was shortlisted for Academy Award nomination, and nominated for P.O.V.’s first Primetime Emmy Award.
Yu’s film The Living Museum, the award-winning ...
Jessica Yu is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien, an intimate portrait of the writer who lived for four decades paralyzed by polio and confined to an iron lung. She also won an Emmy and a Cable Ace Award for Best Documentary Director.
Yu’s latest documentary, Protagonist, looks at extremism through the lives of a spectrum of individuals. Funded by the Carr Foundation, it premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and will be released theatrically later in the year by IFC Films and Netflix. It also won the Grand Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival.
In the Realms of the Unreal, Yu’s celebrated feature documentary about the enigmatic “outsider” artist Henry Darger, premiered at Sundance and went on to win Best Documentary at the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Newport Beach Film Festival, Best Editing at the Atlanta Film Festival and a Gotham Award nomination for Best Documentary. She was also nominated for the WGA for Documentary Screenplay. Released nationally by Wellspring Films and broadcast on PBS’ series, P.O.V., REALMS was shortlisted for Academy Award nomination, and nominated for P.O.V.’s first Primetime Emmy Award.
Yu’s film The Living Museum, the award-winning HBO documentary about an art community in a New York mental institution, premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for Academy Award nomination. She has also created a diverse group of shorts, which includes the popular Sour Death Balls, which has been featured at over 60 film festivals.
As the first director selected for the John Wells Diversity Program, she has directed episodes of the NBC dramas “The West Wing,” and “ER,” as well as other shows including ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” She also directs commercials with nonfiction spots of Santa Monica. PING PONG PLAYA is her narrative feature debut.
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