How to American

Начало книги

When we first cast Jimmy O. Yang in Silicon Valley, I didn’t know anything about him. I just had a good feeling about him based on his audition. I had no idea that the accent he was doing was not the way he normally spoke and that his persona was very different from that of the character he was playing in our show, Jian Yang. I also didn’t know that he had graduated with a degree in economics from UCSD, the same school I graduated from many years earlier, or that he graduated in 2009, the year that I gave the commencement speech, and that he had attended it and apparently had been somewhat inspired to go into comedy by what I said. I found all this out after we had been working on set for a couple days.

Jimmy and I hit it off right away and became fast friends. As you’ll notice when you read this book, he’s a funny guy with an interesting and unique perspective on things in this country. You don’t often hear the stories about Chinese immigrants. At least it seems that way to me. I think maybe it’s because we Americans just don’t ask. Jimmy and I hung out quite a bit and I became interested in his story. It’s an interesting one. He’s had quite a journey. From being a child Ping-Pong star in Hong Kong, to coming to America and becoming a stand-up comedian, achieving his dream of being a strip club DJ only to discover how sad and depressing that is, to becoming a successful TV and movie actor, Jimmy has really experienced America like few have.

Читать дальше →