 It's almost like these execs are dreading the idea of having to cast more Asian guys. They're like, God, God, look at more Asian guys' faces. I think that they're re- Are you serious? Yes. That's the funny way to put it. David, what's the new story? This is a bomb. Whoa. All right, I'm waiting for it. Peter Shinkoda, who plays Nobu in the Daredevil TV series, said that he had certain episodes that were based around his character canceled, that were worked on in the writer's room, developed, and killed at the last second by executives. An executive called Jessif Lop. I think it's just Jeff Loeb. Jeff Loeb. Jeff Loeb. Basically, he had scripts and development that were finished pretty much. And Jeff Loeb came through and goes, cut these scripts. Your character can't have their own episode. He goes, why? Because nobody cares about Asians. And then he had a bunch of justifications. He had a bunch of quote unquote anti-Asian sentiments that he expressed for why there should not be any Asian-centric storylines in the Daredevil TV show. So in the quotes, he did not use any Asian derogatory terms. No, he did not say. He was condescending to the Asian market, but he didn't use the C word. Right. OK. All right, I just wanted to make sure, because we're going to analyze kind of how racist or not racist his statement was. Because actually, I think there's a lot of more macro takeaways from this. Yeah, so what we're basically saying is that he was like, yo, nobody cares about Asian characters. Marvel had Blade. And in the Blade movies, Blade killed a bunch of Asians. He said, Blade killed 200 Asians. Nobody cared either. Obviously, there's tons of movies where people go back to Asia. Superheroes go back to Asia, and they have to kill a bunch of Asian people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is true. When they kill the Asians, it almost is like not in my mind. It almost feels like they're just killing robots. Because usually the Asians all are wearing the same thing. You know, like crazy 88s, even when they got killed and killed Bill. You know, for me, I never looked up to the crazy 88s, like other Asian-Americans that are like 30 did. I didn't know. But you know that was a thing. I know people dressed up for them as Halloween and stuff. I always thought that I was like, why would you want to dress up as a character? First of all, I was based off Cato, Bruce Lee's outfit in Green Hornet. But it kind of took away your agency. And they all got merked anyways. Yeah. Just annihilated. There was plenty of movies where a large amount of Asians got killed for a number of reasons. Merked. But basically, David. They're right in my office. Yakuza, Triads, or some sort of, you know. All right, the question is here. In an entertainment business sense. By the way, Jeff Lowe has been fired. He left. And I got to say this. I got to say this. He's not going to come out and tell this story if Jeff Lowe was still in charge. Right. No. No, it is true. Peter Shinkoda has came out and said this story. But I've also heard that it's probably true because other people have some kind of negative stories about him as well. So let's just say this guy is a very blunt and mean guy. But let's analyze what he said. He said nobody cares about Asian stories. Blade killed 200 of them. Nobody cared. Cut these episodes. That focus on you, the Asian character. Is that like in itself? Is it how bad was that? I don't really understand like the inner workings of Hollywood because we're like not even on that side. David, wait, wait, wait. So maybe he said it really racist. And that's like what Peter Shinkoda remembers or something like that. I've seen people analyze it on the internet. And a lot of people go, yeah, that's messed up. But dot, dot, dot, but it's probably true. Okay, what do you mean it's probably true? Does that mean there's part of it is true? It's what, 50% true? It's slightly true? Obviously it's not 100% false. Let me give the skeptics breakdown of what he said. He was basically expressing a Hollywood accepted pattern of thought that Asian men in particular don't make money. So when you base franchises, even an episode off an Asian male character, basically you know on TV shows or I was trying to take the right steps for the show to make the show like as big and make everybody as much money as possible. They think that basing one episode around the Asian character, Nobu, would like bring the show down. Well, he probably thought the ratings for that episode were going to be the lowest ratings is what he was expecting. Now let me, on the other side, let me play the devil's advocate to the negativity and be like, well- Right, because you say, because that's it. Yeah, that's the- That is generally accepted. I've heard that. Let me just say that I was theoretically a conservative guy, just be like, well, you know, he's just playing the numbers. Ain't no wrong with playing the numbers. Yeah, but, but here's the numbers. Daniel Wu had his own TV show, Into the Badlands. Ming Na Wen, who is on the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. There's plenty of Asian characters on TV. Obviously Stephen Yoon, he had his time on Walking Dead. Shang Chi is coming out with Simu Liu. Obviously we had the whole crazy rich Asians and Akfina and searching things. So I'm like, was that kind of wrong of him to be like, yo, nobody cares about Asians. But then Asians are on the rise. The part that's racist about it or problematic about it, I guess, is that fact that there's no like heart and compassion to try to change the status quo. I think honestly that Jeff Loeb was operating off patterns of thought that may have been true more like 20 years ago. And even 20 years ago, I'm pretty sure Jackie Chan was popping with Rush Hour and stuff. So I'm like, yo, what if he was like, all right, we can write this episode, but he's got to act more like Jackie Chan. And it's not like they tried like a hundred of them. And then like, they all failed. And he's like, not another one. Peter Shenkota, let me tell you this, he's a pretty good looking guy, all right? No regular, it's not Fungbro's episode on Daredevil. Come on guys. Or William Hung, maybe we would sell. I'm just kidding. Obviously wouldn't sell like Peter Shenkota. There's different levels to it. All right guys. But yeah, I mean, I think it just goes to show you that to be honest, even when there are diversity initiatives in Hollywood, it sometimes doesn't apply to Asians. Especially not Asian guys. What they'll do is they'll cast like 40 Asian women and then just be like, yeah, we hit our quota. Yeah, there's eight. But literally all 40 spots, let's say there was 40 spots and they all go to Asian women. And then you'll be like, hey, what about Asian guys? They'll just be like, what do you mean? No, they'll be like, what do you mean? We got Asians. We're good, we're good. We got Asians. We got Asians. Asians that people have a chance of liking. What's the larger takeaway? I mean, we all know- What a larger takeaway is that first of all, I think Asians in general people are like, I don't know if I need to help them or not. You know what I mean? Maybe they're not doing bad enough or they're not doing good enough. They just this weird gray limbo forever and a gray limbo of like not being able to be easily boxed in forever debatable for some reason. We're like so boxed in to like being some sort of amorphous gray zone that like is like lukewarm water. Oh, there's hot water. There's cold water. Everybody orders hot water. Everybody orders cold water. Have you ever heard anybody say, yeah, just give me lukewarm water? And that's the perception and maybe in Western society that Asians are lukewarm or whatever. But I think even in that, if anybody was to like lukewarm water or heat the water up or cool the water down, put some ice cubes in it, it would not be the Asian guys. The Asian guys, even if Asian women are get viewed as hot or cold at some point, like as society moves, it seems like guys, Peter Sincota in this case, but all Asian guys, I think that's why people were mad about it and it went super viral on the internet. And this is almost, whatever happened to Peter Sincota as an Asian male, it almost feels like a proxy for so many other things in society. Like the guys have their humanity extra fractionated. But what about the half Asians, the hop of guys? All right, what if they say something like, oh, we got Asians, we got this guy, he's half Asian? Yeah, he looks kind of Asian. His apocantal fold is a little bit stronger than this guy. So he has Asian eyes. Usually the halfies don't have the full monolith, but yeah. Or this guy has an Asian last name. There was a connected thing that I read about the Peter Sincota piece. Cause you know how like on the internet, people would just be doing all types of research. Apparently the same like executive squad or whatever, maybe not necessarily Jeff Loeb, like they wanted to make a full Asian character half in something that people would just like see. That's common, man. This is like problematic too. Cause they were just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we get a halfie in this role? Yeah. For our iron fists, like redo or something. Oh yeah, because the first iron fist on Netflix was a white guy. Yeah, they canceled that. Which was bad, it was bad. Yeah, cause the character was supposed to be full Asian. Made it a white guy. And then I guess people were like, we'll bring it back only if he's half. The acceptable Asian man. Dude, they're just trying to inch, man. They're just like, what's the minimum half Asian guy? I see it from both sides. I see it that they're skeptical, but I also see that they don't want it to happen. Theoretically, if something has no precedent for happening and you're betting a lot of your money and that whole industry has a whole media Andrew, like fiction series, it's all like collapsing. Yeah. If it wasn't a comic, an established comic book before, forget about it. It's just not turning profits anymore. It's just not dying. And I don't know if it's dying industry, but it's taking some hits. I think there's enough evidence to suggest, Andrew, that not only are they just like numerically, algorithmically, mathematically skeptical, I don't think they actually have any desire to see it happen. Well, what's their incentive? They don't want it to happen. What is their incentive? Yeah, because now you gotta cast Asian guys and everything, and there's a whole other group you gotta be sensitive to. And to be honest, there are a lot of Asian characters in like the past comic books and stuff like that. So it's like, well, now there's a whole bunch of characters on their way that we have to cast Asian guys. And what if there's not enough Asian guys? Listen, I believe, and I fully believe, I understand that there's not that many Asian guys in America, but they are pulling from Australia and the UK and other parts. So, you know, they're helping out. I'm just saying, if every animal in the Lion King can get a series, I'm not against Shang having his own series from Mulan. Big buff dude. Shang, yeah. Yeah, like why can't he have his own series? And why can't, I'll even take the dragon as a proxy for Asian dude. Oh, Eddie Murphy. Yeah, I will even take dragon. Like if they make a whole series off dragon and they still have like Eddie Murphy or Eddie Murphy like person voice it, I'll still be like, I'm counting it. I'll take it for an Asian guy with male representation. We're the dragon. What, who else is dragon? I swear. The dragon, clearly Asian. It's almost like these execs are dreading the idea of having to cast more Asian guys. They're like, God, I gotta look at more Asian guys faces. No, you know what it is? I think that they're re... Are you serious? I think that's a funny way to put it. What I'm saying is, now, now, we have to acknowledge one thing. Why do I have to look at one more of these? Why do they all have black hair? Why is their hair always short on the sides, long on top, hard part? What the hell? I think it's something they don't know how to deal with, man. I think they're already, to be honest, I don't think they even like dealing with like black diversity or Latino diversity. They are having enough time, hard enough time with that. And they're like, oh man, are Asians starting to want to like, not just make the TVs, but they actually want to be on the TVs that they make? That's like kind of a, that's like another calculation we're gonna have to make. What, like our faces are gonna look extra weird on like the Samsung? It's weird because everybody's watching something on a TV made in Asia. I think ultimately, and it took me a long time to actually convince myself that this was fully true, is that I really think if the story is good and the actor is good, they can look very Asian and I think it's gonna still be very successful. Yeah, I agree. But honestly think so. And you know the funny thing is, It has to be written well and the actor gotta be pretty skilled. Yeah, and they gotta be pretty good looking usually. But they can look Asian. You know, Andrew, 10 years ago, I actually might have more just agreed with Jeff Loeb. If someone put a gun to your head and was like, yo, you better produce a successful show, would you cast an Asian on it? And somebody had the gun in my head, 10 years ago, I'd be like, no, don't do it. Dude, dude. It won't fail. It won't fail. Don't shoot me. 10 years ago, I just cast like a Chris Brown, some light-skinned black guy. That's the easiest way. But like, I think in 2020, I'm more like, yeah, I think that people want to see, I mean, it's gotta be good and can't be like kitschy and stuff. Yeah, obviously, I think maybe they are feeling, oh, it's reaching this level. All this diversity is flooding in at one point or it's gonna be too jarring for people because it was true that when the Star Wars series came out and then not only was the lead character a woman and then the second lead character was a black guy, the fifth supporting character was an Asian girl. Some Star Wars fans had something to say about it. They were being pretty mean. Racist. Yeah. They actually did a good job in it, to be honest. Yeah, and I think there's always that doubt, but I think if the story's good enough and the actor's good enough, I think it's gonna work out. Like, I truly think so. And I think people have to understand that like, first of all, I really didn't make sense because Daredevil is like using martial arts and stuff. It's different than The Bachelor. I know the Black Bachelorette was the lowest ranked season ever and they felt a lot of pressure and then they have a Black Bachelor now and they're really worried that it's not gonna perform and then obviously, you know what I mean? Like, you know the networks, they wanna get ratings, but if their audiences are like biased or racist, they still wanna make money off the racist audience so they're put in like a tough situation because their job is to make money and that's their excuse oftentimes for making very conservative casting choices. So, but at the end of the day, I think that diversity, if you do it the right way, it makes money because it obviously opens up whole English-speaking Southeast Asia, English-speaking East Asia, global markets, dubbing is really big nowadays. You can sell intellectual property syndication across many different markets that previously weren't open. People don't want to develop the new muscles, though. I think it's a great opportunity for the people who could just be a little bit more open-minded and I think that that's why, to be honest, the old execs, they gotta go. Leave. Jeff Loeb. Yeah, just step aside, man. Geez. Oh my gosh. You've got the bag already. You're rich. You're rich. You made your impact. It's all good. Dude, hand the game over. You know what I wanna say. It's a changing of the guard. You know what I'm trying to say is any white guys watching this. You're still good, man. You're still white. You're good. Don't worry. No one's taking your spot. We just deserve a little bit more. So let us get it.