The “club” Jimmy O. Yang and his producing partners run is one of the most popular places to hang out in Hollywood. There isn’t a disc jockey or a bottle service here. You’ll need Dungeness crab eating skills if you want to get in.
The Netflix holiday romantic comedy “Love Hard,” directed by Yang, stars Jessica Gao and Ken Cheng, and they run the production business Crab Club.
Contents
Weekly Crab Meals With Their Fellow Asian American Entertainers.
The Crab Club Answers Your Questions! The group’s nickname stems from their custom of having weekly crab meals with their fellow Asian American entertainers. The point was to eat together and be there for each other. They take turns hosting dinner at their houses in the Los Angeles region. It was a “cool supper club,” according to Yang.
Yang told the AP, “I simply felt really regular, kind of like when I was shooting ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ when we didn’t have to explain ourselves.
Due to their location in Hollywood, the meetings quickly grew beyond their original purpose as a support group and are now an incubator for television and film projects told from their perspective. Crab Club, Inc. was founded by Yang, Gao, and Cheng in 2019, and the three quickly established the company’s viability.
Yang added that when comedian Jo Koy attended one of the dinners, a spark of “synergy” was created. Their discussions about forming a production company resulted in “Easter Sunday,” a comedy about a Filipino American family in which Koy stars. Amblin Entertainment, headed by Steven Spielberg, has joined forces with the film’s creators for an April release.
It was a group effort to reveal the news. Yang remarked, “But Ken is the major writer.” “He produced such a fantastic script that, according to rumour, Steven Spielberg approved it after reading only the first draught.”
Their new project, “The Great Chinese Art Heist,” has Crazy Rich Asians helmer Jon M. Chu on board to direct and work with Yang on the script. Crab Club is also developing a comedy series for Amazon Studios about Los Angeles misfits, which will feature Cheng in a co-writing and EP capacity.
For any given project that is sent to Cheng and his team, “we have two rules,” he explained. The first need is that “the project has to sort of emphasise a minority voice or a disenfranchised community. We are a group of three Asian-Americans. Naturally, we will prioritise works that focus on the Asian diaspora or Asian Americans. Second, it must be something that all three of us are interested in doing.
These Crab Club meals, which were put on hold as the epidemic swept the globe, weren’t meant to be a secretive Asian version of the Algonquin Round Table. It all started with a craving for crab. Gao, the brains behind the upcoming Marvel/Disney+ series “She-Hulk,” revealed that in 2017, she and two other pals set up a text thread to share information about cheap prices on Dungeness crab.
Gao remarked that when the price of crab dropped into the single digits per pound, the group would get together “like the Avengers” style for a crab feast. When it was someone else’s time to host, we would all rotate in. “And we can all cook like a champ”
It’s invitation-only because the host has to buy the crabs and it’s tough to accommodate more than about 15 people. The news about their little dinner club has spread, and now actors and directors are eager to learn more about how they may join.
Since the beginning, Cheng claimed, the group has been “siloed off,” with only one other Asian person present on sets at any given time. In this space, they are free to discuss potential projects or air grievances about being discriminated against by professionals in the sector because of their colour or ethnicity.
Beyond the realm of Crab Club productions, they have each other’s backs. Some people were quick to point out that the premise of “Love Hard” and Yang’s involvement were based on the tired stereotype that Asian nerds don’t make good romantic leads.
Last Words
In the sentimental but not cloying holiday film, Yang plays a New Yorker who posts a picture of his hot childhood pal as his dating profile picture. He becomes close with a writer in Los Angeles through phone calls and texts (Nina Dobrev). She surprises him at his house and catches him in the act of catfishing, leading to antics reminiscent of Cyrano de Bergerac.
