In 2009, Eddie Huang opened his first restaurant, Baohaus, which served Taiwanese street favorites in a tiny storefront on New York’s Lower East Side. By then, the twenty-seven-year-old had already cycled through a few vocations: attorney, standup comedian, T-shirt designer, minor-league weed dealer. In the twenty-tens, he quickly established himself as an outspoken presence in conversations about food and identity, more interested in name-dropping Howard Zinn or Cam’ron than in ingratiating himself with celebrity chefs. He was a thoughtful showman. Even a zero-star review of Huang’s short-lived restaurant Xiao Ye, in the Times, doubled as a fawning profile of his swaggering creativity.
It soon became clear that food was just part of Huang’s vision for penetrating the culture. Whether he was explaining the origins of a Taiwanese gua bao or a sneaker he’d designed, he was, at root, a storyteller. In 2013, he published his memoir “Fresh Off the Boat,” which discusses his family’s journey from Taiwan to the United States, and his own identity struggles growing up in Orlando, Florida. In the book, he writes about how hip-hop offered him a sense of stability and purpose, a spirit of underdog hustle. He parlayed Baohaus and “Fresh Off the Boat” into a variety of TV jobs, hosting shows on the Cooking Channel and MTV, as well as a short stint co-hosting a daily talk show alongside Meghan McCain. In 2015, “Fresh Off the Boat” became an ABC sitcom—a landmark for Asian-American representation on network television. But Huang left the series shortly after it began, owing to conflicts over creative control. The following year, he published “Double Cup Love,” a book about exploring his roots in China. He also began hosting “Huang’s World,” a Viceland travel show, which was driven by his curiosity about people different from him, whether they were porn stars or white nationalists.
Throughout this eclectic, unpredictable series of passions, gigs, and side projects, Huang, who is now thirty-nine, somehow retained the devil-may-care essence that was his calling card over a decade ago. (He has also somehow remained a fan of the New York Knicks.) A few years ago, he began spending more time in Los Angeles, channelling his energies into filmmaking and screenwriting. He wrote and directed “Boogie,” a scrappy, artful take on the coming-of-age sports movie. The film, which is currently in theatres and streaming, follows Alfred “Boogie” Chin, a Taiwanese-American high-school-basketball prodigy trying to navigate the expectations of others, from his tough, occasionally abusive family to the belittling world beyond his native Queens.
The past year was a tumultuous one for Huang. Last March, as Americans began to take the pandemic seriously, he relocated from Los Angeles to Taipei, Taiwan. In October, his restaurant, Baohaus, closed its New York location. Our talks, which have been edited and condensed, took place over the past few months: the first in November, while he was still in Taipei, and the second the day after “Boogie” débuted, in March, after he had returned to L.A.
So where are you right now?
I’m in the mountains of Taipei. It’s actually right near 101 [Taipei 101, a skyscraper that anchors a bustling shopping district]. There’s a hike that everybody takes called Elephant Mountain. I’m to the right of it, up here on Thumb Mountain. It’s pretty nice.
That area was so quiet before 101 was built.
My first week here, late at night, I would just wear my mask and go out and hike with my iPhone light. I had some mushroom chocolates, so I started eating those and hiking, wandering for, like, five hours. One time, I went from Elephant Mountain all the way to the back of Thumb Mountain, and I found a coal mine. I’m, like, “What the fuck is a coal mine doing fifteen minutes from 101?” I came back in the daytime and there’s all sorts of routes, off-the-path routes. I found this magical old man who was just, like, “Come up with me.” He showed me a different plateau. I ended up meeting the last guy from this coal mine—like, a ninety-year-old miner. I wrote a script about the last family on a coal-mining mountain watching 101 being built. That’s what I did for the first month I was here.
Let’s go back to March, 2020, when you actually left your home in Los Angeles for Taiwan. In the early days of the pandemic, I knew a lot of people who toyed with the idea of going somewhere else, but not many who actually did it. What was the thought process like? When did you decide, and how soon after did you hop on a plane?
Everyone was so confident it was just the flu. And I was, like, “I don’t know, man.” I started to get nervous. My parents live in China, and they were already locked down in mid-February. I’m hearing what they were doing in China. Let me see what they’re doing in America. They ain’t doing shit over here! [My parents] were, like, “Oh, your officials aren’t even wearing masks. . . . You gotta get out.”
I was playing ball with my friends, we got a Wednesday-night run, and that’s when we saw Tom Hanks got it. Then the N.B.A. season got cancelled, and I was, like, “Shit, man, I gotta get a flight out of here.” Tom Hanks, No. 1 white man in the world, is sick. The N.B.A. is cancelled. It was that one night. I took a shit, I was on the Delta app, I just bought a ticket.
So when you got to Taiwan, did you think you were going to stay in the mountains and pursue these vision quests?
I’ve had a few different routines. The first routine was just wake up, swim at the hotel, destroy the breakfast buffet, go hike. Then I met a few people that had basketball runs. Slowly, I started to go out. I met one guy that was cool, this guy Bobby, from New York, he loved going to the clubs, so he brought me out. First night I was at the club with him, this kid jumped out of line. He had a Dior scarf, a New York Yankee hat, he was all New Yorked out. And he’s, like, “Yo, New York, bro!” and I was, like, “You from New York?” “No. But you from New York!” Then he says, “My name is ‘Chicken Leg Rice.’ ” I was, like, “That’s a solid, solid alias.”
So, we walked in. [Chicken Leg Rice] is there with his bandanna on a bottle of Henny, dancing around. His whole crew had Atlanta Braves hats on, and they were all wearing streetwear, like Bed-Stuy kids. Amiri jeans, bandannas, anything Gucci. I don’t know if it’s real or fake, but it looked good. I could tell they were working. People were coming up to them, they were going to the bathroom. We became very fast friends. And then everything flipped because, for the first time in my life in Taiwan, I got into the local scene and culture. I’ve written five hundred pages here. I wrote three features and two television shows. Chicken Leg Rice comes over, we chill. I wrote the mountain script where I wanted him to be the main character. I started to work with him, teaching him what I know about acting. He’s a rapper, and eventually we started to make music.
You’re making music?
I was bored, you know? Homie showed me his music, and it banged. I was randomly online one day, and my friend [the Grammy-nominated producer] Benny Blanco told me, “My best friend from high school, Dave, is out there, you gotta meet up.” He showed me some of his beats, and we got into the studio, and we just started recording.
I had no intention of getting involved in this, because there’s nothing that the big Asian labels are trying to propel across the ocean that I found inspiring or interesting, besides “It G Ma.” I like K-pop, I like Wonder Girls. I love Wu Bai, Teresa Teng, old Andy Lau or Jacky Cheung. When you listen to shit the locals listen to, it’s amazing. Chicken Leg Rice, his [rap] name is Bad Boy Raco G . . . he’s talented, he’s really living the life.
We made a drill song: “Plug Speak Taiwanese.” Our intention was, No. 1, we want to make Taiwanese drill. No. 2, we don’t want this to be like those corny A.B.C. [American-born Chinese] rap songs where it’s, like, you’re trying to speak English, but you don’t speak English. I was, like, “Yo, our language is good enough.” I love Taiwanese. It’s a language that lends itself to this. It’s a patois, you know. It sounds like your parents beating the shit out of you. But I had to convince Chicken Leg Rice. Their thing in Taiwan is, they always think they need to be more American. I was, like, “Son, you’re good. Just be you.”
How has your perspective on America changed?
I'm dying to come home. I love Taiwan, but I always knew that what I loved was living in a diverse society. An entire new district in another city is just one block in New York. I never took it for granted, but I’ve never missed it more than I have the nine months here, living in a country with only one race of people with very, I would say, homogenous ways of thinking.
My dad was a street dude out here. He’s not connected to Taipei American School [the private school synonymous with globe-trotting locals and rich expats]. It’s, like, I meet my dad’s broke friends that bootleg CDs and DVDs. My dad would always talk about how he loved Taiwan, taught me all the values, everything. I was, like, “Yo, if you love this place so much, why did you come to America?” And he says, “I just wanted to grow my hair and listen to the Bee Gees, man.” I was, like, “That’s it?” And he’s, like, “That’s it. Sex with girls. You can have a lot more sex here.” He just wanted to live a free life.
In late December, Huang returned to the United States to prepare for the release of his directorial début, “Boogie.” We spoke again in March. He was at his home in Los Angeles.
What did you do the day you got back to L.A.?
My boy picked me up. He took me to Leo’s Tacos. I got the al pastor, the alambre, and I ordered lemon-pepper wings and Buffalo hot wings to the crib from American Deli. It was really, really good. That’s what I missed. I missed Mexican food and I missed wings. And then I watched the Knicks.
It seems you came back at the right time for the Knicks. [At the time, the perennially underachieving Knicks were 19–18.]
Yeah. We’re ballin’. I was, like, “Man, Knicks playing .500 ball? All right, let’s go.”
It sounds as if you just went back to your comforts. Did you have a different perspective coming back to a somewhat changed America?
It’s actually weird because, uh, I actually kind of prefer the slower version of America. It’s easier to not hang out with people. I’m a real homebody. I just go to the boxing gym and come home.
When you were in Taiwan, you mentioned writing all these scripts. And, in the run-up to “Boogie,” you’ve talked about how you’ve always aspired to be a filmmaker, as opposed to working on books or TV. Why were you drawn to film in particular?
I was always looking for a medium where all of my talent could come into play, all of my interests. I like clothes, sneakers, music. Cinematography, visual art. But, more than anything, I like words. And then what I discovered while directing is that I like relationships. I’ve never really enjoyed my relationships at work besides Baohaus and my crew on “Huang’s World.” On “Boogie,” I realized that I really, really like working with actors, because there’s a part of me where I’m always rooting for the underdog. I like to help people. And, as a director, you’re kind of like a coach. I would watch scenes as if I was watching a game, like, “Go left! Go right!” That was the thing, going into filmmaking, that I did not know I would fall in love with.
Did you grow up watching Asian films? I always thought it was powerful, as a kid, seeing the range of ways you could look and act and still be a movie star in Hong Kong or Taiwan. Not everyone was pretty.
The easiest way to touch Asian identity growing up was watching film. I would go to the Chinese grocery store and rent the movies. When you watch Fifth Generation Chinese cinema, Taiwanese New Wave cinema—it’s on par, if not better than, a lot of Western cinema. You can put it up there with seventies Hollywood, the Italian neorealist movement, French New Wave. Those are the best movements in film.
I always tell people, I don’t get that excited for all-Asian casts. There’s an entire continent of film with all-Asian casts. What interested me about the opportunity to tell Asian stories in America was that it was Asian-Americans. We have a different experience. And our experience projected back to Asia has a lot of value. When I was shooting my kitchen scenes [in “Boogie”], it was, like, “If Tsai Ming-liang shot ‘Rebels of the Neon God’ in Queens, what does that kitchen look like?” I don’t think people realize the little homages to Asian film. When the dad throws the bowl, it’s an homage to “Rebels of the Neon God.” When the kids are laying on the rocks, head to head, that’s an homage to [Wong Kar-wai’s] “Days of Being Wild.”
I read reviews [from small towns] and I’m, like, “Yo, they totally don’t get this film.” And then I read the reviews from L.A. and New York, and they’re, like, “You actually intentionally took an American genre film but infused it with an Asian world, the Black world of downtown, and cut out the white people.” I was so happy to read reviews that noticed that. I’m going to do what white people have done to us for so long, which is to take our stuff, take our people out of it, and put themselves in.
It’s interesting because those scenes in Queens, for example, make more sense now. The film has this rich color palette, which felt familiar, but I never made the connection to the Asian films you’re talking about. One thing that strikes me as you’re talking is that there are these moments where you’re addressing different audiences at once, and maybe some people have no familiarity with the worlds that you’re drawing on or where you’re coming from. But you don’t feel the need to explain stuff. The character Boogie has a relationship with Blackness, for example, but he’s not thinking hard about it, it’s just who he is. . . .
He’s oblivious to it. Like even the beef-and-broccoli scene. [In the film, Boogie describes the humble takeout dish as a metaphor for Chinese-American identity, the propensity to sell oneself short in order to gain acceptance.] Everyone’s, like, “I get the metaphor, but does Boogie?” And I’m, like, “The point is that he tries to explain this thing, but he’s an eighteen-year-old kid, so he can’t get it across.” Eighteen-year-old me would try to pull that off and fuck it up, so that’s what Boogie’s going to do, you know?
That was a funny scene because his obliviousness does come out, and he’s explaining it to Eleanor, who’s Black, and she clearly already gets it.
He is thinking about Blackness. It’s on his mind, but I definitely didn’t want to spell it out. There’s a lot of things where I didn’t want to spell it out. There was a thing, even in the subtitles, with “uncle.” [The film uses two definitions of “uncle”: to refer to a blood relation, but also as a term of respect for someone older.] There was a big discussion about the validity of me just calling people “uncle,” and I was, like, “You gotta trust me—in our culture, that’s what we do.” Everyone but white people in America calls people uncles and aunties.
Was “Boogie” the first film you wrote? How did you sell it?
First film I wrote. I gave it to my agent at the time, and he’s, like, “I love it, but I don’t know how we’re going to sell it.” I left that agency, I went to U.T.A. We started to work on it and we went out to sell it. It didn’t sell. I was, like, “Damn, maybe this won’t happen.” You’re basically writing a character where there’s not any bankable star in Hollywood to play him. But that’s what gave me hope. It was the same reason why [the editor and publisher] Chris Jackson bought “Fresh Off the Boat” when he was with [the publishing imprint] Spiegel & Grau. I remember him saying, “It’s not even about the numbers. You’re introducing an audience. You’re going to get people that don’t read books to read this book.” And that excites me, you know?
One of my agents was at a film festival and ran into the president of Focus Features, Robert Walak, who was, like, “Who are your interesting young writers? I just want to read weird stuff.” And my agent’s, like, “I got Eddie Huang. He’s got a crazy script nobody wants to buy.” He loved the script but didn’t want to buy it. I met Walak and I brought a deck. I was, like, “I know this is a general meeting, but humor me. I’d like the opportunity to present my film.” At the end of lunch, he goes, “I had no intention coming here to buy this script, but I’m going to buy this.” [Walak left Focus in August, 2020.] I hung out with him a month ago, and he told me, “The reason I bought it is because, when I looked at that deck, I knew you had a vision for how this movie was going to look, and how you were going to make it. Down to the wardrobe. I knew you had this movie in your head.” It was a miracle. Nobody was going to buy this film.
You mentioned Chris Jackson and what he suggested about you creating your own market. You’ve been around a minute, but I still see you as this young upstart. How has this field changed for people who want to tell Asian-American stories, whatever that actually means? Compared to when you were starting out, in the early twenty-tens, are there more opportunities now?
What’s funny is, there’s money in it now. I mean, we’re dropping the same week as “Raya and the Last Dragon.” That’s also an Asian film. But I’m doing this stuff that’s not easy, you know? I think my stuff is actually very challenging to Asian moms and dads. “Do we want our kid to watch this? Do I actually want my kid to turn out like Eddie?” I don’t think that my own parents wanted me to turn out this way. [Laughs.] So, there is more money in it now, but it’s “Panda Express” entertainment money. With “Boogie”—that’s not the film that the “Crazy Rich Asians” audience is showing up for. There is more money for people doing Asian culture for the dominant culture. You want to be the Asian Tyler Perry, there’s an audience for that.
We’re talking at a time when there’s been a noticeable uptick in anti-Asian attacks. Do you feel more pressure as a storyteller? Is there more urgency for you?
I feel like we’ve always been under attack, to be honest. I remember reading about Vincent Chin. So, the increase is the increase, but I’ve expected this. As soon as the coronavirus happened, I was just, like, “People are gonna hate us for this.” I remember, even though I was only, like, five or six years old, after Tiananmen, everyone was, like, “You fucking Communists!” I was called a Communist all the way until the middle of high school. So, I’m glad other people are waking up, but I’ve always been fighting, you know?
So, in the past year, you’ve spent time in Taiwan, and written stories there that you want to tell. And some of those stories seem like an even more challenging sell than “Boogie.” How has your perspective on storytelling changed over this time?
The Taiwan trip really nailed it for me. Stop looking for a place you fit in. The world I’ve created for myself, the friends that I have, that’s my world. There’s not another country or place to go to. I accept being different, and I enjoy it.
My process coming into “Boogie” was that this may be the only film I get to make. You get one shot at this, so say what you want to say. I’m gonna address the Asian-American coming-of-age, our struggle, our pain. I’m going to address the family issues. I want to address the intersection of Black and Caribbean culture with Taiwanese Chinese culture, how all that connects. How I learned everything through basketball. If I knew how difficult it was to shoot basketball, I maybe would have reconsidered.
But I have no regrets, because I wanted a Trojan horse, a basketball art film. I don’t want to make the super-small art film that nobody’s going to watch. I want to change culture. I was, like, “Yo, this is the Chinese ‘Rocky.’ ” And then my strategy was, if I give them a film that they’re satisfied with on the genre side, then I get to take exits and be, like, “Here’s a scene where he’s kneeling in the principal’s office, here’s a film where [New York hip-hop radio personality] Charlamagne [tha God] is playing a recruiter asking about ‘Taiwan Beer.’ ” [In the scene, Charlamagne’s character doesn’t quite grasp the difference between “Taiwanese” and “Chinese.”] Like, I don’t think most people are going to get it, but I was, like, “We deserve this scene.” It was a negotiation with the studio: you get your sports film, I get my art film. Everybody makes money. And another Asian kid gets to do this as well.
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