LA Moms Blog

Diversity: The Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE)

CAPE's throwing a big fundraiser on December 2, 2008, and you're invited! The soiree will be at Cafe La Boheme in West Hollywood, and we'll be honoring Tim Kring, creator of the hit tv show HEROES, and John Cho, "Harold" of the silly stoner comedies HAROLD AND KUMAR (...do silly things). We'll have the cast of HEROES in attendance and a red carpet arrival for our celeb guests and honorees. Our Lifetime Achievement Award goes to James Hong, a 50-year veteran of Hollywood. (If you're a scifi movie geek like me, you might recognize him as "Chew" from BLADE RUNNER. "Eyes, I just do eyes," he tells Rutger Hauer's character.)

So what does CAPE do? I've been a member of the Board of Directors at the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE) for about five years now, so I feel pretty confident I can answer that.

We try to diversify the industry in every possible way. That means "above the line"--writer-directors, producers, cinematographers, and "below the line"--the gaffers, grips, and other crew people who are the little village that forms to make a film happen. But we also focus on professional development and networking for entertainment executives and their assistants, some of whom have been heads of production at studios like Warner Brothers, SONY/Columbia Tristar, Fox and the like. We're reaching out to video game designers, agents and representatives, animation people, casting agents--*all* the gatekeepers and the people trying to crash those gates.

One of the most important things we do is run a screenwriting contest. The CAPE New Writers Award helps identify talented feature and television writers and is a key component of changing the picture, so to speak. Not to belabor the point, but movie and tv screens have a way to go before they resemble what America really looks like in all its diversity. (Hello? Add about 50% more Asian residents, nurses, and interns to any hospital drama. That's what I saw when I delivered my baby at Cedars! Shout out to the Pinay nurses who brought me fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.)

I Swore I Didn't Want to See Another Cupcake for 364 Days...

...And that feeling lasted exactly 3 hours.

Sunday, the day of the LA Moms Blog launch (more on that in a bit), my son woke me up at 7 am as usual. After breakfast, we loaded up our car with 36 cupcakes, ice, drink boxes, a tattered plastic assemble-it-yourself gazebo, a few lawn games, and hit the road for the park where our son's four-kid birthday extravaganza was scheduled to happen with 106 people attending.

Four kids. Four November birthdays. 144 cupcakes. One clown/face painter. (No bouncy house, but fresh-grilled tacos.)

If any childless people are reading this--take heed. Run. Away. You KNOW the teens who work at Chuck E. Cheese are the most conscientious users of condoms. Ever. They have seen the consequences of intentional or even unintentional procreative sex, and it has scared (rightfully) the living daylights out of them.

So, battle-scarred parents who are still reading--