{"href":"http://player.captivate.fm/services/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fplayer.captivate.fm%2Fepisode%2F501a157d-dab7-47b2-90e4-bc939e2b9c3e","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Captivate.FM","provider_url":"https://www.captivate.fm","width":600,"height":200,"type":"rich","html":"","title":"Season 6, Ep. 6: Gen X Cops and Gen Y Cops","description":"In this week\u2019s Saturday School, we break our sixth season streak of epic, emotional and honorable love stories, and as we hit the turn of the century, we look at \u201cAsian films about Asian Americans\u201d from an entirely different, warped mirror. We\u2019re talking about 1999\u2019s \u201cGen X Cops\u201d and 2000\u2019s \u201cGen Y Cops,\u201d which is like a who\u2019s who of Asian American/Canadian/Australian actors who briefly ruled the Hong Kong film industry, when the powers-that-be there were thirsting for new talent and caught some ABC fever.\n\nYou got Daniel Wu, Maggie Q, Nicholas Tse, Stephen Fung, Edison Chen, Jaymee Ong, Terrence Yin -- and post-\u201cClueless,\u201d pre-\u201cAnchorman\u201d Paul Rudd (\u201cthe dark days of Paul Rudd\u201d) with bleached blond hair playing an FBI agent that says things like \u201cYou're the one going to the bamboo Alcatraz!\u201d\n\nBut back to the ABCs: Their Cantonese isn\u2019t great. Their English-language acting is only debatably better. But they\u2019re hot, they don\u2019t give a fuck, and that\u2019s kind of exactly what Hong Kong needed for this new type of hero leading high-octane action flicks with explosions, evil foreign adversaries (like Paul Rudd), nonsensical plot twists AND ROBOTS.\n\nHistory showed that this archetype of an Asian American too-cool-for-school sexually-liberated renegade, a la Edison Chen, wasn\u2019t going to represent the future of the Hong Kong film industry. And probably for good reason, because Asian Americans from the other side of the ocean might have found it all a little bit embarrassing. But looking back, for a brief moment, Asian Americans were ruling the box office in Hong Kong. How did they pull it off? Did they totally improvise their own English lines because nobody behind the camera could tell them otherwise? Probably. And it was kind of glorious.","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/fe58c6eb-2d2a-4337-a79a-b3dae8cf9bd2/artworks-000570711812-par3x6-t3000x3000.jpg"}