To rebel or not rebel.  That is the question.

The hero in my book is confronted with a choice.  His close friend and former mentor wants to brutally take over the world.  The hero is given the safe and easy position of being the right hand man.  Doing so would kill tens of thousands of lives through war.  Rebelling against his mentor would kill tens of thousands of lives through war.  Probably more.  Nice choice, huh?

I was watching a documentary called Slanted Screen. It chronicled the stereotypical and racial barriers Asian actors have to go through and endure in order to be successful in Hollywood.  I enjoyed the documentary, but I have a serious problem with it.  More on that later.

The main message was rebel.

One of the main reasons Asians are not seen as much in Hollywood is that acting, singing, dancing, the arts, are not considered practical choices of occupation.  I know.  My family detested my decision to study acting, and at times isn’t the most positive when it comes to my success in writing.

Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa has been in tons of movies such as Mortal Kombat, Rising Sun with Sean Connery and  Wesley Snipes, and in upcoming movie Tekken.  The list is just huge.  He said something that I connect to.  If your heart is in the arts, and your family doesn’t support it, then don’t listen to your family.

Rebel.

I think too much in life we succumb to the norm.  Afraid of marching to our own drummer.  Wary of listening to our hearts let alone follow it.

I wrote a post about themillion dollar question. It asked, if you were guaranteed to make a million dollars a year, what would you do?  Does it match the work you’re doing now?  If not, can you spend an hour a day, five days a week on it?  If that’s too much time, then reduce it to 45 minutes a day, five days a week.  Or 30 minutes, five days a week.  Four days.  Three.  Just start.

What happens, if you truly love it, or like it, is you’ll naturally spend more time on it.  You’ll sacrifice precious things like hours talking shit in the bar, or watching television.  Have your own vision.  It happened to me.  I started writing around five hours a week.  Then it grew to ten.  Suddenly, I was spending an average of 15 hours a week writing.  I loved it.

We all have bills.  We have to eat.  Take care of our families.  Have laundry that we have to wash on the rocks by the river bed.  After we clothespin the laundry on the clothesline, what do we do?  We sit down on the couch and watch TV.  We watch reality TV.  Watch others chase, attack their dreams.  We see a lot of them succeed.  Then we go to bed, sleep, wake up the next morning, and start the circle all over again.

This is called complaining, playing the victim, blaming things outside of ourselves, when it is us who stopped us from chasing our dreams initially.  And that was the problem with Slanted Screen.  A lot of people interviewed said being Asian made it hard to succeed in Hollywood.  Really?

Have you heard of a small guy namedBruce Lee?

Rebel.

When I was doing research for my book, I’d read books on Vikings, Native American Indians and Samurais. There was also a lifetime of Chinese period soap operas lurking in my head that made its way on paper. My brother pointed out a common theme that I used without knowing it in my episodes.

Then I ventured down to individuals such as Miyamoto Musashi, Geronimo, and Ibn Fadlan.  I’ve also used Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Robert Greene’s The 33 Strategies of War.  I then obsessed over movies such as Braveheart, the events at the Battle for Thermopile and the History Channel.

The Samurai culture has always interested me.  In my research there was a movie I came across called The Twilight Samurai.  I immediately fell in love with it.  So much so that I bought a copy of it.  Not download it!  Bought.  It stars Hiroyuki Sanada.  If you’ve seen Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai, then you’ve seen Sanada.  He was the one who taught Cruise’s character how to sword fight.

Twilight won a dozen Japanese awards and was nominated best foreign language film in the 2002 Academy Awards.

Despite the fact that Sanada plays a low ranking Samurai, I fell in love with the character.  The character is widowed, humble to a fault, works a low paying job, loves raising his two daughters, one of the best Samurais, cares nothing for advancement, and dreams of working on his own farm.  Empathy techniques at work?

The romance in the movie works so well, tons of chemistry, and no sex scenes.  I like sex scenes, don’t get me wrong, like in a porno.  But it seems a lot of movies use sex to get the movie goer to come–ahem–instead of using it as a tool to forward the romantic story.

Take The Matrix as an example.  Look at the special effects, which the movie required.  Most of it, if not all, wasn’t terribly advanced or over done for it’s time.  Special effects was used as a tool to forward the plot, never used to get the movie goer to come.

One thing that really caught me about Twilight is there seems to be no real antagonist.  Where’s Darth Samurai?  Then it occurred to me.  The antagonist was society.  The hero struggles with money, raising his daughters, living with his senile mother and the disrespect the other Samurai.  He’s constantly badgered to remarry, to advance, to succumb to everyday standards.

His response?

“I’m too cool for ya’ll.”

Not really.  But he does resist it all.  Then comes his childhood love.  She is the monkey wrench to his well oiled machine.  From there, the story develops well, the romance progresses with all its angst, using the sign of the times to present obstacles, and there’s enough action to help the story along.  Though the sword fighting is not central to the movie.

If you like Samurai movies, rent this.  You’ll love it.