Janet Yang: The Sheroe Making the Oscars Not So White

MMCxchange — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 21:09:26 -0400

Born in New York to Chinese parents, Janet Yang went to China as a young woman and it changed her life. She suddenly found herself in a country "where everyone looked like me."

She also found a mission: to bring Chinese cinema to North America, to help dispel stereotypes and change perspectives. "I thought, well, if people could see these films, they would respond in the way that I did -- which is, 'Oh, we look so much more three-dimensional on screen.'"

"It was really not a career move as much," she continues. "It was more an attempt to just be seen and heard, the way everybody would like to be."

Eventually Ms. Yang's vision and mission would spread over the globe. She became a barrier-breaking Hollywood powerhouse, a producer and executive known for such films as "Empire of the Sun," "The Joy Luck Club," "Dark Matter," "Over the Moon, "The People vs. Larry Flynt" -- and more. To call her entry on the Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB) voluminous is a great understatement. She has worked with the likes of director Oliver Stone, studio mogul Jeffery Katzenberg and the legendary filmmaker Steven Spielburg.

View MMCA Sheroes in Media Luminary Award Interview Clip

And there's another achievement: She is currently the head of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences --- the people who bring you the Oscars. Unless you are a bankable actor or director -- a household name -- that perch is one of the highest and most esteemed In Hollywood. Yet she says: "It never, ever occurred to me that I could actually work in Hollywood. I grew up on the East Coast. Los Angeles seemed like a distant planet, and certainly the whole film industry seemed like an unattainable sector of the universe."

Growing up she had never met an Asian American in the arts, she says. Many immigrant parents steer their children toward more traditional careers in the sciences or business, for example. Ms. Yang cites an old joke: "With a lot of Asian parents, they might say, you have three things that you can be when you grow up: a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure,"

Her journey is also a lesson in trusting one's internal compass and not letting go of one's dream. That her advice to young people especially: "You find your mission, and if you find your voice, that's the thing that leads you -- not somebody else telling you. Because nobody told me what to do exactly. They told me what they wanted.

View MMCD Sizzle

"I can promise you that the overwhelming majority of people in the entertainment industry did not come for fame or fortune, because it's not at all guaranteed, and there's more rejection than there is acceptance. And that's why, when you watch the Academy Awards, for instance, people give those moving speeches: they themselves did not believe it was possible, but they kept the faith because they couldn't imagine doing anything else."

One Chinese story she was determined to bring to the screen involved a young girl who decided she must go to the moon to meet the Moon Goddess. After many iterations, it became the animated feature "Over the Moon," for which she was executive producer.

The very idea that a girl could reach the moon seems outlandish. But anything can happen in the movies. Consider the story of Janet Yang, MMCA Sheroes in Media Luminary Award Honoree.

Janet Yang: The Sheroe Making the Oscars Not So White - Machetes

Janet Yang: The Sheroe Making the Oscars Not So White