A note from Talking Taiwan host Felicia Lin:
At the beginning of 2012 a dispute between Time Warner Cable Inc and the MSG Network left two million Time Warner Cable subscribers in New York City unable to watch New York Knicks games. Some say that when Linsanity broke with the popularity of New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin leading the team to seven straight victories, and fans unable to watch the games, this forced Time Warner to make a deal with MSG on February 17th.
I spoke with Brian Yang the producer of the film Linsanity shortly after he had just returned from promoting the film in Taiwan around October 10. We spoke about how he had started working on an idea for a film about Jeremy Lin even before Linsanity happened.
Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:
- How Linsanity broke the Time Warner cable —
- Brian’s involvement with the Linsanity movie
- Promotions of the Linsanity movie in Taiwan
- Linsanity is an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival
- The film Linsanity premiered in January at that Sundance Film Festival
- What it was like premiering the film at Sundance
- How the idea for the film was around before “Linsanity” happened
- The Kickstarter campaign and challenges with getting the movie made
- How things changed with the film project after Linsanity happened
- How they used Kickstarter to market the film
- How Brian and the film team initially approached Jeremy Lin about the film when he was still at Harvard University and how they convinced Jeremy to be in the film
- How Jeremy was happy with how the film represented him
- The difference between shooting a documentary film vs. a narrative film
- Future plans for the Linsanity film
- How the Linsanity film is one of the few films showcasing an Asian American male lead
- How the Linsanity film addresses the bamboo ceiling, Asian stereotyping, and racism
Related Links:
Linsanity the movie Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LinsanitytheMovie
Linsanity sparks MSG-Time Warner Cable deal: https://money.cnn.com/2012/02/17/news/companies/lin_msg_cable/index.htm