Glad you dig the blog.

What I find so arrogant about your post are the assumptions. So let me clear up a few.

When I say Hmong is an interesting word, that’s not cultural imperialism, or ethnocentrism. It’s an observation of the fact that words in English generally don’t start with “Hm.”

It’s dandy that you know about how the Hmong came to America. As you might guess, I knew a lot about it too. Many of the Scout projects in my troop involved helping out the Hmong community in Boulder. If charity work is patronizing or culturally destructive, I can’t fix that. I don’t think the Khmer Rouge or the CIA has a lot of bearing on the discussion of race and screenwriting, however.

You assume I’m not mentoring any young black writers. You’re wrong. And that was very sloppy guess-making on your part, because a little Googling would reveal I’m a frequent advisor to Sundance and other screenwriting labs, each of which has the goal of increasing the diversity of voices in film.

I don’t make a big fuss about how mutli-culturally enlightened I am, because that always feels like excuse-making. I am a white guy from an upper-middle-class background. That doesn’t make me a monster. And it pisses me off that you’d lump me in with The Man trying to keep the black guy off the one-sheet poster. I’m not an apologist for Hollywood, trust me, but there’s a dangerous tendency to mistake how hard it is for anyone to make it in the industry with racism.

I tend to underplay what a giant crazy liberal I am because I want any aspiring screenwriter to feel like this site is for him or her, regardless of political beliefs. If anything, I try to keep the blog the way I’d like to industry to be: open to all.

And, John, the Hmong were distributed throughout the US based on non-profit charitable organizations (mostly christian protestant and catholic groups) after they played a pivotal role in our mostly secret, mostly illegal CIA-led operations in Laos and Cambodia (performed largely in defiance of congressional directives) during the latter half of the conflict in Southeast Asia. They provided military intelligence and guides through the back country as our government sent in military and CIA (and other, darker groups) sponsored opps to disrupt the communist influence from Centra Asia into Southeast Asia. We brought them here because the Khmer Rouge and other regimes were exterminating them for helping us. We didn’t give them lessons on living in an industrialised world, just basically dumped them from a tropical semi-nomadic existence into places like colorado, minnesota and the dakotas with very few social services. A number of them died after setting fires in their living rooms because they didn’t understand how to use central heat, stoves, ovens, etcs., a few pried open elevator doors (with resultant tragedies) trying to get out of their apartment buildings, but many went on to assimilate into American culture. My optometrist in NYC is from a family group that was resettled in Minnesota and she was shocked that I knew anything at all about her ethnic group — she was accustomed to being mistaken for Chinese, Vietnamese or Laotian. They have a beautiful language and script. Kudos to your mom for helping them. You should find out more about them. It might help with your diversity issues.

I’m glad to see you address these types of topics on your blogs, but, in my (vociferous) opinion, the latest battle in America is this ethnocentric attitude that pervades people of all backgrounds in the country. It just sucks that white men have been exploiting others for hundreds of years so your ethnocentrism causes more damage (for now, anyway, I’ve got my eyes peeled, though). I worked in the studio system, at a production company and in physical production for the last ten years or so, and, while it’s better than when I started, I’ve sat in on so many development and production meetings with people saying things like “black people don’t speak English” or “we need a white guy on the poster”. I always speak up, but frankly white men listen to other white men so it’s up to you and your white male friends to work this out. I’m counting on you. For more than just a few names in a script. Champion a young nonwhite male writer. Hell, mentor one. It’s not like there are that many opportunities for writers of color to get out of the black movie ghetto and work on mainstream films, and as you know, film is experiential — you learn by doing. I hope your blood isn’t boiling reading this. We are each a product of our cultures…. And I do dig the blog.

“I find it amusing that Craig Mazin feels he is such an authority on screenwriting when his credits are as limited as they are.”

If Geogie knew anything s/he would realize that much of the scriptwriters work goes uncredited because of such business as script doctoring. Also… does Georgie have any credits, at all, to compare?

If not, s/he must realize then, that getting even one legitimate credit is a feat unto itself. That to write a script, any script, that a producer actually wants to risk his/her reputation and millions of dollars makes that writer a success. At least, more of a success than people who critisize produced writers with having “credits (that are) limited.”

Yes, Hmong is a fun word. My mom was an ESL teacher, and most of her students were Hmong. No, really. There’s a community of them in Boulder, for whatever reason. So I never missed an opportunity to say “Hmong” growing up.

Anyway, my point was the REASON part. There is always a reason. Not accidental ethnicity.

Maybe not, but there is something very bland about that.

Mac. (PS: The only time I have ever visited a Hmong village, I met a Hmong kid who had red hair. So even the audience may not know that he is Hmong !)