the unbearable notice is; that you've to make up your mind to be the difference and not the other way round else people will misjudge you even though you're not that person.
I was drawn in by the photo of the tall young Black man with a red tie, staring wistfully into the ether, and his mother, a black woman, statuesque, perfectly coiffed and staring straight into the camera.
I was intrigued by the headline, “A Black Student’s Mother Complained About ‘Fences.’ He Was Expelled” , which drew me in even further.
As someone who writes, researches, and lives a life of a Black mother fighting for anti-racism in America’s schools, I began to read with earnest interest, believing that I would be silently praising this mother as she fought for her child.
Now, Jamal’s mother, Faith, did not like the idea of reading this play in her son’s class, where he is the only (or one of a few) Black children.
INSIDERNOTES
A quick summary of the problem: This young man, Jamal, in the ninth grade, attends an elite private school in North Carolina.
In his freshman English class, the teacher assigned the play “Fences,” written by acclaimed Black playwright, August Wilson for the class to read.
Fences is a 1985 play about a working class Black family set in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. It won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Tony Award for Drama that same year. Fences was brought to the screen in 2016, with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis playing Troy and Rose.
“Viola Davis won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress that year.”
As the city goes dark coming from a blue town, people breaking laws and creating obstacles for others, who are willing to pay the ultimate price. Talk is a novelist.
I had a choice between two movies about jungle cruises this weekend. First, there’s Disney’s Jungle Cruise starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Emily Blunt in a big-budget adventure based on the classic Disneyland amusement park ride.
“Jungle Cruise isn’t the first Disney film to be based on a theme park ride, and I daresay it won’t be the last.”
INSIDERNOTES
Seeing the throwback characteristics of Jaume Collet-Serra’s Jungle Cruise, folks are quickly applying the “swashbuckler” label, calling upon the good juju of Michael Curtiz, George Lucas, Stephen Sommers, and Gore Verbinski that came before him.
That understandable descriptor fits a bit like a slightly oversized hat. The chapeau in question is…
Whenever I have to refill my car with gas, pick up shampoo and conditioner, or purchase new cleaning supplies, doing so always feels like a chore.
However, there is one weekly errand that I actually look forward to doing, and it is none other than grocery shopping. I still try…
One of my absolute favorite things about owning a group fitness gym is the camaraderie. When you work out together, you get to know each other, and in a way, end up on a fitness journey together.
“Watch carefully, and you can also see the ups and downs someone may be going through.”
INSIDERNOTES
After all, everyone is in there giving 100% to become the best version of themselves. The energy that creates is powerful.
One thing that used to baffle me is watching someone giving major effort and being super consistent in their workout routine, but that physical transformation seemed elusive for them.
There are a million reasons why this could be happening and far be it from me to speculate. Over the years, however, the same recurring theme came up: food choices.
You have to ignore the temptations, or you will continue to sabotage yourself.
1. Plan Ahead: First, plan your entire week to know what you’re going to eat.
2. Shop The Perimeter: This has been a common trick for a while now, but most stores line the outer perimeter with generally healthier food.
3. Keep The Basics: Get a good stock of grocery staples at your house and make sure you never run out.
“If you feel like there is no hope and are convinced the grocery store will always win, I’ve got promising news for you.”
INDIDERNOTES
The stores gave you an out with online ordering! This means you can build an order with only the items on your list, know exactly what your spending, and voilà! Your groceries will be ready for you to pick up curbside.
So see what you gonna do ok, If you walk into the store hungry, you will want all the things. Caution is thrown to the wind, and you’re borderline hangry, so everything sounds fabulous.
Since your bookworm is signaling that you need a meal right now, you’ll be drawn to quick and easy meals which shouldn’t be what’s on your plan.
Now, if even entering the parking lot is too much temptation, some areas will deliver your groceries straight to your door!
That’s right – you place an order online, but instead of a pizza delivery showing up or your Amazon Prime order, it’s healthy and smart food choices all from your list! That’s using technology for good.
I’ll set the scene. Here I am at one of my first post (ish)- covid girls dinner party. I think it was a French theme, put on by my friend Liz. While chatting away, I mention that I work as a finance coach. As per usual, this drums up some conversation and questions.
This evening a new question popped up: ‘But Genevieve, how do I stay prepared. The future gives me anxiety and I find it hard to prepare for things I don’t know are coming.’
“I don’t have a crystal ball and even the expert psychics in New Orleans can’t tell you exactly what financial obstacles and opportunities will be available in the future.”
GENEVIEVE
The question becomes, how do we prepare for the unknown? Will I snag that 7 figure job? Will my parents need my help? Will I finally buy that farm to house all the dogs I want to rescue? Will I be able to take a 6 month tour of the world? So many questions and very few answers.
It’s said that living in the future gives you anxiety and I agree. That’s why my strategy is all around covering the basics and providing flexibility for the future. This is something I recommend to clients too.
Seven Ways to be financially secure;
But before I do that, is there anybody like me? Who would like to throw in some ter**r $hit? Whether as CCs or DCs? Solid question. A whole blog+worthy question. So, here’s the deal.
Share this blogpost with at least 16 people and stand a chance to be stared on “our mentions got viral” this weekend. Offer last on til Sunday, 8, August.
Here are the following steps, below,
1. Have enough cash on hand for emergencies.
2. Focus on your health. If 2020 taught us anything it’s that being healthy = being wealthy.
3. Insure your physical assets. Take it from a lady whose lived in 3 hurricane strike zones- stuff happens when you least expect it.
4. Start with your goals now because- newsflash- you can always tweak them later.
5. Have more than one income stream. If you’ve lost a job you’ll understand. If you haven’t, learn from those who have.
6. Insure your non- physical assets. If you’re investing, how can you create a safety net?
7. Have access to funds. Yes, I mean credit.
Let’s dive into these items and figure out how we can ditch the anxiety around money and start living for today.
From the time you enter high school, college (and a four-year university in particular) is often presented as the end goal.
Once your junior year rolls around teachers, peers, and family members start throwing out a barrage of questions your way: are you looking at colleges yet? which ones have you visited? what’s your personal statement going to be about? what do you want to major in? when do you start applications? what about sororities? how about roommates? My head is spinning thinking about it.
“In 1636, European colonists (as the story usually goes) founded “New College,” now known as Harvard University.”
JULIA KRAMER
High school is a microclimate, making for a confusing experience, at the end of which you’re supposed to be “grown.” It acts as a small town, where everyone knows everything, news spreads like wildfire, and everyone is talking behind each other’s backs.
It’s a place where good influences and bad influences collide to form the person you will enter the “real world” as.
Back then, colleges were attended by wealthy Puritans who would inherit family business and go on to be leaders of the new world as proper, well educated Christians. So from the beginning, college was associated with greater success and wealth.
“I’m not here to deny that anyone with a college education will likely earn a significantly higher salary than those who don’t.”
INSIDERNOTES
But don’t worry it gets worse.
If you’re like me and genuinely interested in learning more about the world or god forbid making it a better place, be prepared to drown in debt, working a minimum wage job until you die (just kidding…sort of).
After I received my Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara (not because it was “easy” but because I was passionate about the subject), it was not lost on me that my 40 thousand dollar degree would get me nowhere.
I’ve been a victim of racism for most of my life. This has given me the intuition and hindsight to infallibly detect the type of racist one is dealing with.
First, there are the Empathetic racists. They call you up whenever there’s a racist incident reported on in the media. They demonstrate alongside you at Black Lives Matter protests, they talk about how shocked they are at open displays of racism.
“They work to ensure that everyone is treated fairly. They work toward a better world for humanity.”
GETREVUE
The Supremacist racists are those that believe that white people are superior to black and brown people. They categorize all nonwhites as sub-human. In fact, they dehumanize black people to better abuse them.
They feel threatened by what they say is “the big replacement”: a white extremist theory that says that black and brown people are willfully trying to out-populate white people.
“Without the iPhone cameras filming, these people will kill black people whenever they have a chance.”
GETREVUE
So the reality is that racists can belong to one or several of the above categories. Some can be Supremacist racists and Sadist racists at the same time.
Others can be Empathetic racists and Fetishist racists. Cross-pollination occurs across these categories all the time, but whatever the racist, they are harmful and sometimes life-threatening to black and brown people.
Almost after 2 years of original release date, Disney+ is going to bring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt’s family-friendly movie Jungle Cruise to the theaters this summer.
“Out there is not funny. It’s everything and has nothing to do with you but, you’ve come to seek vapor in the badland.”
As like other movies Mulan, Raya, and The Last Dragon, Black Widow you can easily enjoy this film from home only. This is because Disney+ has officially announced that the movie is going to hit the streaming platform on the same day as theaters.
Ergo, this is the reason why filmmakers have decided to ask for $30 from all the viewers of this film.
DISNEY
You should not expect to stick with the Premier access strategy of Disney in long run. This is because Deadline has reported that Disney+ is thinking to revive the theatrical business.
Meanwhile, the upcoming movie Jungle Cruise will be available for the Disney+ subscribers at regular subscriptions after a certain time period.
DISNEY
Ever wondered what it would be like if you combined Werner Herzog’s ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’ (1972) with John Huston’s ‘The African Queen’ (1951) and transformed the result into a two hour long kid’s movie? No, neither have I and I would’ve doubted any rational or sane person would ‘ve either.
SA it seems that the execs at Disney are in no way rational or sane people because that’s exactly what they’ve done with ‘Jungle Cruise’ (2021), which is only appropriate as this movie feels neither written nor directed but constructed solely from studio diktats (‘Jungle Cruise’ is based on a Disney theme park ride ⅞ studio memos go floating by).
See screenshots below,
So that’s Jungle Cruise’ — a two hour, incomprehensible, unnatural affront on every single level that cost $300 million to make and market.
Nigeria’s number one Starboy, Ayo Balogun, popularly known as Wizkid or Big Wiz has revealed one of the kind of people in his DM, who are sliding in for Tickets to access his forthcoming Made In Lagos Tour.
Big Wiz took to his Insta-story to share a screenshot of a lady offering him Blow Job in exchange for two tickets. The mysterious lady slide into Wizkid’s DM with the message;
See screenshots above,
Between September 10, 2021, and January 22, 2022, Wizkid will perform in Maryland, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Minneapolis, Colorado, Nevada, California, Washington, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Ontario, and Quebec.
Wizkid has approved Naira Marley’s proposal to name every 30th of May as “Marlians Day” in Nigeria, shortly after Naira Marley announced the proposed date on Twitter.
Her husband, identified as @ajmoney001 on Instagram, took to his page to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
On Instagram, he shared a photo of himself kissing his wife, with the caption, “My wish on our anniversary is that our love will never be seized. It will be wider than the sky, grow higher than Everest, brighter than the Stars, stronger than the Diamond and warmer than the Sun.
“Happy anniversary Ajmoney, Tega loves you.”
INSIDERNOTES
Happy anniversary from Biggie’s house
Tega, as a contestant on the ongoing show, also mentioned her marriage anniversary to her fellow housemates.
Teasing Whitemoney, Tega said, “White wants to make me a special delicacy on my anniversary.”
The horrific and heartbreaking scenes at Malaysian hospitals are akin to a disaster movie. An overwhelmed healthcare system and overworked medical staff have struggled to cope with the exponential growth in COVID-19 admissions.
Canvas beds have been put up in hospital car parks, several patients have had to share the same oxygen canister, and some life-saving procedures had to be performed on hospital floors. Doctors have reported that whole families have been admitted together to hospitals and some have died together.
“Now, I just have no emotions, it is what it is … death has become so frequent that you become numb,”
ALJAZEERA
To keep up with the rising death counts, bodies have had to be stacked up on trolleys and pushed to the morgues. Volunteer undertakers have been handling nearly 30 times more bodies than they did last year.
Malaysia’s biggest COVID-19 fear was becoming a mini-India and unfortunately, it has come true. Its daily infection and death counts per capita surpassed India’s peak. At the end of July, Malaysia’s daily cases per million people stood at 515.9 and its daily deaths per million were at 4.95; by contrast, at its peak, India reached 283.50 cases and 3.04 deaths. The country also has the highest per-million cases in Asia, and one of the highest per-million deaths in Southeast Asia.
“This is a dramatic reversal of fortunes for a country once deemed the role model in handling the pandemic”
ALJAZEERA
Malaysia celebrated as local transmissions reached zero for a few days, garnering praise from foreign experts, academics, and organisations such as the World Health Organization. The Malaysian government’s swift actions to implement a full-scale lockdown, invest in testing and medical facilities, and deploy proactive communication with the public resulted in fewer cases than in the rest of Southeast Asia.
Malaysia’s director-general of health, Dr Noor Hisham, was given the highest civilian honour and was named alongside the US’s Dr Anthony Fauci and New Zealand’s Ashley Bloomfield as the top health officials in the battle against COVID19.
Every night, Moussa Kamara works at his bakery preparing hundreds of loaves. But at sunrise, instead of going home to sleep, he now starts a second back-breaking job – hoeing the earth and tending newly sown seeds in a specially designed circular garden.
Kamara, 47, believes the garden will prove even more important than the bakery in the future for feeding his extended family, including 25 children, and other residents of Boki Dawe, a Senegalese town near the border with Mauritania.
A newly built Tolou Keur garden in Boki Diawe, within the Great Green Wall area, in Matam region, Senegal.
[Zohra Bensemra/Reuters]
He is part of a project that aims to create hundreds of such gardens – known as “Tolou Keur” in Senegal’s Wolof language – that organisers hope will boost food security, reduce regional desertification and engage thousands of community workers.
“This project is incredibly important,” said Kamara, finally at home after a night spent at the bakery followed by 10 hours of cultivating edible and medicinal plants in the garden.
The project marks a new, more local approach to what is known as the Green Wall initiative, launched in 2007, that aims to slow desertification across Africa’s Sahel region, the arid belt south of the Sahara Desert, by planting an 8,000km (4,970 miles) line of trees from Senegal to Djibouti.
The wider initiative has only managed to plant 4 percent of the pledged 100 million hectares (247 million acres) of trees, and completing it by 2030, as planned, could cost up to $43bn, according to United Nations estimates.
ALJAZEERA
Self Sufficiency
By contrast, the Tolou Keur gardens have flourished in the seven months since the project began and now number about two dozen, said Senegal’s reforestation agency.
Three months after a garden is completed, its agents begin a series of monthly visits over two years to assess progress.
Project manager Karine Fakhoury said it was important that local people felt fully engaged: “This is not an external project, where somebody comes from outside and tells people what to do. It is something entirely indigenous.”
The gardens are partly a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
ALJAZEERA
Senegal shut its borders early last year to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus, cutting imports and exposing rural communities’ dependence on foreign food and medicines.
“The day people realise the full potential of the Great Green Wall, they will stop these dangerous migration routes where you can lose your life at sea,” he said. “It’s better to stay, work the soil, cultivate and see what you can earn.”
Technology fuels productivity growth but tight labour markets provide the spark for this growth because firms typically need to make better use of technology when hiring new employees is not possible.
The tight labour market conditions that can spur productivity growth tend to be localised and so economies benefit in different ways and at different rates.
Policymakers should view tight labour markets as both a risk and an opportunity to see productivity grow.
The idea that technology drives productivity growth is both a commonplace and a common frustration. Economies operating at or near the technological frontier have long seen sagging trend growth rates despite marvellous technology – from artificial intelligence to bioengineering to robotics – proliferating at breakneck speed.
This matters because productivity, or output per input, pays for higher wages and is the foundation of long-run prosperity. In that sense, it matters most in rich economies where higher productivity growth would allow political debates to shift from (re-)distributing a relatively stagnant economic pie to sharing a growing one.
Technology is critical to productivity growth, but tight labour markets provide the spark to fuel this growth.
Philipp Carlsson Szlezak
So how can cyclical tightness spur productivity growth? Which types of economies are set to benefit from this relationship? And why should policymakers see tight labour markets as both an opportunity and risk?
Understanding the spark of productivity growth
Availability is often not enough to prompt broad adoption and utilisation of technology – integration can be costly and there may be implementation risks. It is often easier for firms to continue to grow with the next incremental hire.
The charts below back up this observation. The chart on the left correlates more than 60 years of US business investment (relative to its 5-year average) with 5-year productivity growth. If simple availability and investment in technology drove productivity, we would see a relationship, but that is not the case.
The fuel of productivity growth is global, but the spark is local
While the frontier of technology can diffuse around the globe through trade and global value chains, the labour market conditions that provide the spark for adoption are far more localised. This means that productivity growth may diverge in countries with similar technological capabilities.
Rapid tightening – or loosening – of labour markets can occur as the byproduct of strong cyclical dynamics (such as the recovery currently underway). Or it can happen as the result of the structural organisation of local labour markets. In other words, economies have different capabilities when it comes to harnessing the nexus between labour market tightness and productivity growth.
Consider the difference between Europe and the US, two advanced economies that operate at the technological frontier. The US is set to benefit from a tight labour market as the lack of easy labour is already forcing firms to invest and reinvent their businesses and processes. This will underpin not only faster growth, but also allow workers to claim a growing share of output.
Balancing the risks and benefits of tight labour markets
Ignoring the benefits of tight labour markets could come at a cost for policymakers and executives. Take once more the US economy. It is on a path to achieving higher output in 2024 than was once expected pre-pandemic, i.e. “overshooting” its old trend path. Owing to strong and sustained fiscal stimulus, the rapid return to labour market tightness has been framed as an inflationary threat. Often a picture is painted of an impending wage-price spiral and a Federal Reserve falling behind the curve and smothering the cycle once forced to raise rates to reign in price growth.
The benefits of a hot economy, as outlined above, represent as much a macroeconomic opportunity as a threat – two dynamics that need to be balanced. Part of this balancing act is acknowledging that tight labour markets push productivity growth and thereby can expand an economy’s capacity. This would actually narrow the dreaded overshoot, even as economic activity remains strong.
Surveillance start-up Paragon has reportedly found a way to break into a host of encrypted smartphone apps. The Israeli firm, which was established in 2019, claims to have discovered a way to break into encrypted messaging apps remotely. The applications reportedly at risk from the start-up’s encryption busting techniques include Gmail, WhatsApp, and Facebook as well as Signal and Facebook Messenger.
But while details on Paragon remain thin on the grounds, executives have spoken about the secretive firm’s offerings on condition of anonymity.
“As of yet, Paragon reportedly doesn’t have any customers.”
EXPRESS
But while details on Paragon remain thin on the grounds, executives have spoken about the secretive firm’s offerings on condition of anonymity.
One exec said Paragon only sells its spyware products to countries that respect fundamental rights, freedoms, and adhere to international norms.
Journalists, lawyers and human rights activists have reportedly been targeted by the Pegasus malware.
EXRESS
While an investigation discovered a leaked list of 50,000 targets – including world leaders such as French president Emmanuel Macron – that were targets for the Pegasus spyware. A CEO for the NSO Group has denied the accusations.
Speaking to Forbes about accusations NSO was involved in any attempts to hack French officials, Shalev Hulio, the CEO and co-founder of the NSO Group, said: “It’s definitely not related to NSO; it’s definitely not related to Pegasus. This is what I can confirm.”
The divorce between Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, cofounders of one of the world’s largest private charitable foundations, was finalised on Monday, a court document showed.
The couple filed for divorce on May 3, after 27 years of marriage, but pledged to continue their philanthropic work together. They said at the time they had reached an agreement on how to divide their marital assets.
No details of that agreement were disclosed in the final divorce order filed on Monday in King County Superior Court in Seattle, United States, Reuters news agency reported.
“The couple filed for divorce after 27 years of marriage, but pledged to continue their philanthropic work together.”
Aljazeera
The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has become one of the most powerful and influential forces in global public health, spending more than $50bn over the past two decades to bring a business approach to combating poverty and disease.
Bill, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, and Melinda, an author and businesswoman, had announced their decision to separate in early May in an identical statement posted on their individual Twitter accounts.
Nigeria’s Olamide continues his run from the impressive new album UY Scuti with this latest single, “Julie.” The romantic jam sees the Nigerian heavyweight expanding and exploring his flow over a Caribbean-tinged beat. “This song is me telling my woman that I know I’m crazy and not 100% perfect, but the kind of love I get from her is so amazing I’m willing to surrender everything,” Olamide says. “I wanted a mixture of that Caribbean feel just to take it away from the regular afrobeats vibe.”
Adekunle Gold feat Lucky Daye ‘Sinner’
2nd
Nigerian Afropop star Adekunle Gold comes through with his brand new single “Sinner,” the latest taste from his upcoming album due this fall. In “Sinner,” Adekunle goes in over a historical story of love and lust. “Weirdly, I was thinking about King David and Bathsheba’s sexcapade and thought it’d make a beautiful song,” he mentions The Marcel Akunwata-produced notably features Lucky Daye.
Omah Lay ‘Understand’
3rd
Omah Lay, one of 2020’s breakout artists, comes through with his new single and music video for “Understand,” an ear and eye-grabbing affair produced by beatmaker Tempoe.
Falz ‘Mercy’
4th
Here’s a new addictive tune from Falz , produced by Sess The Prblem Kid. “Mercy” is some impressive stuff here as Falz goes in over a stuttering beat.
Lady Donli ‘WILD’
5th
Lady Donli returns with the new 6-song EP, WILD. The collection of tunes features highlights like “Searching,” a smooth concoction produced by GMK.
Fireboy DML ‘Peru’
6th
The buzzing Fireboy DML rolls through with the new single “Peru” which follows up his excellent album, Apollo. The Shizzi-produced track, Fireboy’s first official single of the year, is yet another earworm from the constantly rising Nigerian artist.
Ayo Jay ‘Paranoia’
7th
Ayo Jay, who you probably know from “Your Number,” drops another addictive jam in the shape of “Paranoia.” He goes in over Caribbean-influenced beat in this highlight off his latest 5-song EP, Wonder Shall Never End.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that convicted fraudster currently in a US jail, Abass Ramon, aka Hushpuppi, paid $20,600 or equivalent of N8m to the head of the IGP Intelligence Response Team (IRT) Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari, to arrest and detain his fellow fraudster, Chibuzo Kelly Vincent.
According to a document issued by the US District Court for the Central District Court, California and dated February 12, 2021, it stated that Hushpuppi contracted the services of Abba Kyari after Chibuzo allegedly threatened to expose an alleged $1.1m fraud committed against a Qatari businessman.
“Kyari provided the account information for a bank account at a Nigerian bank, Zenith Bank, in the name of a person other than Kyari himself”.
FBI Special Agent, Andrew John Innocenti, made the allegation in the ‘Criminal Complaint By Telephone Or Other Reliable Electronic Means’ filed before the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
WhatsApp for iPhone now lets you send photos and videos that can only be viewed once by recipients. The new change is currently rolling out to the iPhone users through a new WhatsApp version that is available for download through the App Store.
The update also changes the style of in-app message notifications. WhatsApp has been testing the ‘view once’ feature for some time to essentially enable photos and videos to disappear from the chat after they are viewed by the recipient.
The new change is currently rolling out to the iPhone users through a new WhatsApp version that is available for download through the App Store.
The update also changes the style of in-app message notifications.
WhatsApp has been testing the ‘view once’ feature for some time to essentially enable photos and videos to disappear from the chat after they are viewed by the recipient. However, it doesn’t restrict people from keeping a record of the media content by simply taking their screenshots.
Photos and videos that are being shared using the ‘view once’ feature will no longer be visible in the chat where they were sent once the recipient exits the media viewer. The media content will also not be saved to the recipient’s Photos or Gallery, and they can’t forward them through the app. However, recipients can still take a screenshot of the ‘view once’ photos or capture these videos by using the default screen recording feature.
Director Jon M. Chu brings the vibrant world of “Crazy Rich Asians” to life with all the style and glamour of a big-budget Hollywood movie — but early on in the project he had a big choice to make, joining author Kevin Kwan in turning down a massive Netflix payday to ensure the groundbreaking project would make its impact on the big screen.
The Palo Alto-born USC graduate had spent the last decade becoming one of Hollywood’s fastest-rising studio directors with credits including “Step Up 2 the Streets,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and the “Now You See Me” films.
But Chu, who will direct an adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” in 2019 and is developing a film based on the Thai cave rescue, realized the time had come to focus his message — and put his money where his mouth was.ADVERTISEMENTnullnull
In your own words: What’s your Hollywood story?
My mom’s from Taiwan. My dad’s from mainland China. They came over when they were 19, 20 years old. I’m the youngest of five kids from the Silicon Valley — Los Altos Hills, California, to be specific.
They started a restaurant called Chef Chu’s. Fifty years, next year. My dad works every day, and they always taught us that America’s the greatest place in the world: If you work hard and focus on what you do, you can be the best and you can do anything you want.
I went to USC film school, made a bunch of shorts there. Luckily, I got discovered off of my musical short “When the Kids Are Away,” and I started making movies. It’s kind of an insane Cinderella story.
I got a call from Steven Spielberg on a Friday night and got my catapult into the business. I’ve done a bunch of movies, but it wasn’t until a couple years ago where I really questioned what kind of movies I wanted to make. I found “Crazy Rich Asians” and I feel like this is the beginning of my Chapter Two.
What made you feel that you had to be a part of bringing “Crazy Rich Asians” to the big screen?
I wanted to find something that was more personal, and the most personal thing was tackling my own cultural identity — something I was too scared to deal with before… Hopefully through this movie you realize everyone’s trying to find their place. Everyone’s trying to find their role in this life, and you’re not alone in your struggle.
Jon M. Chu, director of “Crazy Rich Asians,” says that what’s both personal and universal about the story is: “Everyone’s trying to find their place.”
I want to bring back that old Hollywood charm.
“CRAZY RICH ASIANS” STAR HENRY GOLDING
“Crazy Rich Asians” is the first movie of its kind in 25 years. What does it mean to you to be part of this moment?
I remember growing up as a kid and not seeing a lot of people on the big screen, or even behind the screen, that looked like me. So the fact that we get to show romantic leads in a contemporary movie, showing this experience of an Asian American going out into the world and discovering Asia, that we’re not just one blob of Asian people, means so much.
I think about my young self. I think about my daughter who was just born a year ago, and the world I want her to live in. I want her to live in a world where she’s seeing Constance Wu, Michelle Yeoh and Lisa Lu be these strong independent people that don’t need a man in their life to be fulfilled, and that love themselves and know that they’re worth every inch of their existence, and can be anything and do whatever they want.
When you were young, who inspired you?
I remember making my first project. I was making videos with my family and I got this Sharper Image mixer. I used all the VHS tapes to cut it together and I showed my parents in the living room and they cried when they watched it, and I felt heard for the first time. Being one of five kids, to be heard is a big deal! I knew I was going to do this for the rest of my life whether I was going to be paid for it or not.
Growing up I remember seeing people like Rufio [played by Dante Basco] in “Hook” and being like, “That guy’s so cool.” I got to play him every time I was playing with my friends. Even though it was just a little small thing, I know how much that can mean to a kid. So as we make this, I hope it gives inspiration to others — not just that they can be these characters, but that other writers and directors with other stories … don’t have to depend on one story with one set of characters.
These other stories we can hear that we don’t even know exist right now — that’s why I’m really excited for the future. Where there are cracks is where the light can come in. ADVERTISEMENT
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