Season 9, Ep. 3: Hundred Percent

Episode 3 of Saturday Season Semester 9 -- where we bask in the glow of our "Stars of Asian American Cinema" -- takes us back to the '90s. 1998's "Hundred Percent," directed by Eric Koyanagi, came out post-"Joy Luck Club," as Asian American filmmakers were experimenting with style, shedding the burden of representation and embracing hotness + silliness. There are three main storylines. A Venice cafe owner (the sweet and smiley Dustin Nguyen) crushes on a mysterious New Yorker (Tamlyn Tomita), who is on the run from a toxic ex-boyfriend. An aspiring actor (Garrett Wang) deals poorly with the stressors of being an Asian male actor in the '90s and puts his relationship with girlfriend (Lindsay Price) at risk. Two wannabe-Rastafarian potheads (Darion Basco and Keiko Agenda) accidentally get caught up in some criminal shenanigans. It's out of print, so we watched it on a DVD Brian kept from 2006. But there are four university libraries that carry it: UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, Sarah Lawrence and Tufts. (Shout out to universities with impressive Asian American media collections.)Mentioned in this episode:Listen to Inheriting from LAist & NPR"Inheriting" is a show about Asian American and Pacific Islander families, which explores how one event in history can ripple through generations. In doing so, the show seeks to break apart the AAPI monolith and tell a fuller story of these communities. In each episode, NPR’s Emily Kwong sits down with one family and facilitates deeply emotional conversations between their loved ones, exploring how their most personal, private moments are an integral part of history. Through these stories, we show how the past is personal and how to live with the legacies we’re constantly inheriting. New episodes premiere every Thursday. Subscribe to “Inheriting” on your app of choiceListen to Inheriting now!