this is why it's called make belief ok. just cuz it doesn't happen in real life doesn't mean it can't happen in movies. a movie is a movie. it can't be watever it want to be.
lol...you are so correct AZNGIRL...! If you really think about it... As far as the maid issue. There are maid services where people go in and clean up for so many hours a day and come home. Kalia just happens to work for a hmong maid service who got sent to a hmong client…she could have easily been sent to an American resident…but then there would be no story…lol…... Its no big deal. In the end..its all about make believe....our job as filmakers is to entertain....lol....
YM girl….
I think nobody will understand us writers better than each other as writers…lol… I totally know what you mean about the actors knowing their characters. I did have a complete character description for all my actors. I also tested them on it to see how well they all know their characters. It got to the point where my actors can tell me off on their characters attitudes and the clothing that they wore. If I tried making Michael , Sean or any of the other male leads wear certain clothing…they would flatly tell me no…BECAUSE …Michael..Sean…Blong..Jack..or whatever character would never be caught dead in those clothes…. For example..Michael has a personality that would make him feel out of place if we were to make him wear T-shirts and jeans…lol…
The language barrier has always been an issue as with any production company. I picked my actors according to what I though would be the best fit to represent that character. Its true that I would love to have my entire cast fluent in Hmong, but with such a big cast, that’s not always a possibility. I have also maintained that some of them were not perfect in their hmong, but we would work on it with them…and to which they have improved enough to be deemed usable. I think they all did a good job at it considering that they did not even speak hmong that well at all to begin with. But do not let those one or two actors determine the basis of your complaint that they do not speak it well. Our entire first cast speaks it clearly and so do 90% of the cast.
Anyhow YMgirl….its OK if you havn’t seen the drama yet. Its four hours long so I don’t expect people to have time to watch it. Although I am amazed that some of them were gracious enough to make the time to watch it and try to knit pick at it to help me with some pointers…lol..
Maybe you should just see it so that you can also give me some constructive criticism. Miss Mai is correct in the sense that sometimes people do tend to put down other people’s work in the pretense of constructive criticsm. I have always said that we were not the best, but that we would give it our best shot…lol…
It is true that the rich and poor theme was a main factor in this drama, but I do understand that we’re equals in America and that is why I gave Kalia her attitude. She has nothing to lose if you think about it. I have always known that people would start the rounds on the drama trying to be another Korean drama…lol…isn’t all dramas like that …reality is that life does imitate others sometimes. Does it have to be shot in Laos in order to qualify as a non-Korean…Chinese..Japanese wannabe drama?
People are so deep into picking on the rich poor theme and the wannabe Kdrama theme (Kalia is not poor..poor..she’s a working class person like any ordinary American who lives struggling from pay check to paycheck like any of us) that they missed some of the very Hmong themes in the drama…lol…. And yes, these boys are wealthy…more so than Kalia will ever be as a working class citizen, but keep in mind that she has also been screwed over by a very wealthy boyfriend….and if you paid attention…at one point Alli does say that Kalia does not forgive easily…..so as you can see…..and with her type of personality and hatred for the wealthy…its understandable that she gets offended easily by wealthy people…but for all that she is..she is only a human being proned to make errors just like any of us.
There are so many other twists in the drama that it will leave some of you wondering…�what the heck?�…. I can’t give out much, but I can give you all a little spoiler on one of the twist…..Kalia, Alli and Benny are in fact ten times wealthier than the boys any day!.
I’m not trying to defend this drama because it is what it is. The cast and crew worked extremely hard on it so if people don’t want to just sit and enjoy then OK..that’s their prerogative. They as the consumers have every right to be the next Siskel and Ebert because without people like them we would never improve….lol
The truth is, I would rather receive bad reviews over the good ones any day… because then it will tell me where I need to improve. If I always get good reviews then I will never know where to improve. So what if they trash my film…they trashed author Christopher Paolini on his Eragon….and look where its got him… a film made and printings of his book in 45 languages…lol…. (I actually enjoyed reading ERAGON…even though it is at 500 something pages long…and his second book ELDEST at 704 pages long was even better!…lol…. )
I, myself personally will go out and see those very same movies or read those very same books that the critics specifically trashed because I have found that most of the times, its just a matter of opinion. Clint Eastwoods “UNFORGIVEN� for example..was highly acclaimed, yet I could not get through the 1^st 15 minutes of it even if my life depended on it…lol…. I never finished the film…But they trashed TITANIC…and it grossed over 200+ million dollars worldwide when it first released…lol…I loved it and saw it more than 10 times on screen when it first came out (well…OK… so it was partly because of Leo di Caprio…lol) …….. So go figure…..
