While promoting his now-released film, The Girl from the Naked Eye, star/producer/everything Jason Yee was willing to talk to me a bit about his upcoming projects. The most interesting of which is a period piece about immigration, prostitution, and (hopefully) awesome shootouts. He said:
I’m working on a Western, which takes place in 1890s Chinatown. It has to do with anti-Chinese immigration, which is similar to Mexican immigration today. The Irish moved in and felt like the Chinese were taking all of the jobs, there was conflict, but the story centers around a female protagonist who basically saves little Chinese girls from the brothels. She’s an American lady. It’s based on historical stuff, and I’ve been working on that a couple of years.
I neglected to ask him specifically which Chinatown it would be set in, but nonetheless it sounds like it could be pretty compelling. I don’t know all that much about the history of immigration, let alone Chinese immigration in the last 19th Century, so it would be awesome if Yee made a movie that people like me (which is to say, most people) could actually learn from.
You can read the full interview here.
