John Cho Quotes
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One of the things I like about comedy in general is that it affords Asian Americans the opportunity to not be noble.
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The goal of Asians in the arts is plurality of roles. I've always been hindered by me over-thinking what is a stereotype and what isn't.
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I like to flip flop, but making your days work to find a laugh is a really good way to spend a day. I appreciate it more going away and then coming back to it.
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I feel like there's this need that the Asian-American community has to feel like people. It's something that Asians in Asia do not understand about us.
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I think my parents were surprisingly cool with me entering the arts. Although, I think they thought it was going to be a phase, and they didn't expect me to actually stick with it, and rightfully so. They were concerned whether I could afford groceries, being an actor.
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Whenever I meet a Korean, I ask about their immigration history.
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Asians narratively in shows are insignificant. They're the cop or the waitress or whatever it is. You see them in the background.
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The key to doing 'Harold and Kumar' movies is you make it earnest. Primarily what we do is make Harold and Kumar's relationship and friendship believable, and we don't actually work on being that funny.
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Movies may be as close to a document of our national culture as there is; they're supposed to represent what we believe ourselves to be. So when you don't see yourself at all - or see yourself erased - that hurts.
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I think Hollywood acts like followers of culture and is constantly seeking to follow trends.
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I just didn't see anyone on TV who looked like me, and then I saw George Takei being cool and piloting the spaceship on television.
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I like that guy Matthew Perry a lot.
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I am a little curmudgeonly about new media.
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I don't know what the next frontier is, but good comedy should put its toe into taboo waters. You have to transgress a little bit, and that area shifts with culture and with the year.
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Even though there's a lot of horror from Asia in the American cinematic tradition, I hadn't seen Asians at the center of it.
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That's a huge part of being a human being: looking for love and finding a partner in this world. When you constantly play characters who don't have that life, it feels incomplete and not totally human.
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Actors are supposed to be these runaways that get in a covered wagon filled with hats and tambourines and go from town to town making people smile.
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I've thought for years, sometimes against my will, about what kind of son I'm supposed to be, what's expected. Being Korean, that's a particularly charged question. Is your duty to your culture or to your parent? Is your life your own, or the second half of your parents' life? Who owns your life?
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Our species likes being social.
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It's hard in America as a writer of color, an actor of color, not to get caught up in race and culture. But you're also supposed to be able to write characters and scenes in a way where it's just a matter of fact, a component.
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I don't know if I trust entertainment to teach anyone anything.
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It just seemed hedonistic when I first started acting. It was a pleasurable thing. But as I look back on it now, I understand that it was a journey of the self for me.
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I've had an unusual career in that I've never had a big break, but the rent always seemed to get paid.
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I campaigned for Obama, and that was such a big component of getting the vote out, was social media.