Tim Lounibos is an actor and producer, as well as the artistic director of Lodestone Theatre in Los Angeles.  He’s been a guest star on shows such as JAG and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and is the producer of the upcoming film “Kissed on the Lips”.

By: David Lee

Rotten Banana Staff

Can you first please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background?

My name is Tim Lounibos, I’m an actor/producer.  Ethnic background is Korean, German, and Irish.  I’ve been involved in the industry since 1991, when I came down to LA.  I’m from Petaluma, CA, which is about 50 miles north of San Francisco.  I kind of grew up a redneck in a way, and it wasn’t until college that I started to become more aware of issues of race and identity.  And it wasn’t until I was down here, I had actually worked on a film in Hong Kong that was the catalyst for everything that helped me be comfortable with who I am, and when I came back to LA I became involved with the Asian American community in the beginning of 1995, and I became one of the leaders in the community since then.

How did you come to terms with your Asian American identity?

You cannot not identify with your Asian side when you’re Asian.  When I was growing up I was always a leader in my classes and on sports.  I grew up with a weird dynamic where I pushed away the Asian side of me growing up because I’d go from being a leader in my class, in the first second grade, and there would be an older kid calling me Chinaman, Chinaman.  My mom said that when I was little I would go home crying to her and she would tell me to ignore it.  Where I was coming from, there were very little Asian Americans at all.  I remember in college, my first love used to call me a closet Caucasian.  I guess truly it wasn’t until coming down here and getting involved with the Asian American community and getting specifically involved with a Korean American performance group that I became fully identifying with my Asian side.

Talk about how you got started with acting.

It was when I was going to school at Berkeley.  My earliest memories were of singing to a radio next to my bed, and I’ve always loved to write.  I had never acted per say in terms of official acting, I pretended a lot.  When I was in college, it was near the end of junior year, that I found myself in this mini-crisis, where I was thinking, what do I really want to do.  It was my intention to go to grad school and get my MBA.  But I had worked at B of A as a side job and I found it so "un-stimulating".  It was such a shock to me going from campus where the level of conversation you would identify with being intellectual, then going to this bank setting there were people who had never gone to college, and it was amazing the level of conversation going on there.

It probably wasn’t the best environment to base my judgment on how it was like going into the corporate world.  But one morning I went to breakfast at a place called “Upstart Pro” in Shattuck Square, and I went specifically to decide my future.  So I asked myself, what do I want to do.  I would want to do something creative, its something I would love to do and be the most stimulated.  I said to myself, ok, what are the possibilities.  At that time, I had thought very narrowly that I liked to sing, liked to write, and then there’s acting.  So there are those three, and what are my best chances at succeeding. So I had to pick one and eventually I could branch out.  I thought in singing, I had no way in hell to succeed, because you just don’t see any Asian American singers.  I had never seen any Asian American writers either.  I knew it was extremely difficult to make it as a writer, even though I knew it was difficult as an actor as well.

I felt African Americans had popped, and Latinos had an up and down trend, but one group that hadn’t was Asian Americans.  I figured when it became a global marketplace, one quarter of the world’s population is Asian, and that would help.  But I didn’t figure in that in those countries they are going to target the stars of those countries.  So that’s how it came about, very pragmatic dreaming I guess, so I made the decision to put the next five years into acting, and then re-evaluate it at that point.  And by that five year mark I was making a living.  The first day of class I went to, I knew I was in for life.

Did you encounter any resistance from your family over your choice of career?

I knew I would, so I didn’t tell them.  They just kind of thought I was taking classes at Berkeley while doing the plays.  One day they came to Berkeley for dinner and I decided to bring it up.  I thought my dad was going to be livid, and he comes from a family of attorneys, and I figured my mom would have a hard time at first but be fine about it.  But it turned out to be the opposite.  My dad was supportive from the beginning. He said his dad never supported him in what he wanted to do, and he basically became an attorney because that’s what he was forced to do.  So in a sense, he was living vicariously through me.  My mom was absolutely floored and devastated by my decision.  My brother had gotten involved with music about 7 or 8 years before I dropped the bomb on them.  I thought that he would have paved the way, but it was the opposite, because if he wasn’t going to be a professional, my mom was looking to me to fulfill that.

What was the final outcome with your mother?

It took for me three really huge discussion/arguments until she realized fine, I wouldn’t be happy unless I did this.  But still, every time I had hope, she would be like, are you sure you want to do this?  You can live at home and do this.  But once I started doing this, and her clients would see me on the screen and she would be really happy.  There’s a part of her that is still thinking, unless I get a part as a series regular or she sees my name as top billing in a movie, she knows it could be feast or famine.  Fortunately, I have been able to make a decent living.  Now I have a year and half old daughter and a wife, and we made it so my wife left work to take care of Healy.  I’m in a condo, and my mother wants me to be in the house, so there’s still worries.

Talk about what your typical day is like.

My typical day encompasses both acting and producing.  There’s artistic director stuff for Lodestone, and there’s being a father.  So my answer is different than what it would be five years ago.  My typical day is I have to deal with administrative details for Lodestone, and for “Kissed on the Lips”, which is a film I’m producing, and another documentary I’m producing. And then there’s Lodestone’s general thing I handle.  I go through all that and it takes a couple hours.  I might have auditions, but its been pretty slow this season.  I usually have an audition every couple of weeks maybe, and another reason why that is is there are certain things I just don’t do.  I don’t do certain smaller parts and I don’t do anything I find ethnically demeaning.  When you figure for an Asian American male there aren’t that many roles, I have limited even more by the decisions I have made as an asian American actor.  There are always meetings, potential investors in projects, meet the others I’m working with, and take care of those things.  Right now we have a show going on, there are three artistic directors, one of whom is in the show, and its up to the other two to keep things on track.

What about after this interview?

Tonight I have to be at the theater, every night there needs to be at least one of us there.  I try to spend time with Jenny and Healy, and give them the time they need. Today I took Healy to Gymboree.  It’s an interesting life because when you ask what’s your normal day, for someone like me, unless you’re producing a show that’s going on right now or you’re a regular on a show that has a three month shoot, your day changes all the time, so there is no normal day.  I can’t even tell what my schedule is tomorrow until 7 o’clock tonight, because I wont find out if I have auditions and whatnot until tomorrow.

Professionally, do you tend to audition for Asian American roles or non-ethnic specific roles?

My career has been mostly getting these cross-over roles, where they weren’t necessarily looking for ethnic specific roles.  Things have changed a little bit, before it would say Asian American or it wouldn’t.  There was a time when they were looking for Asian, then they weren’t looking for a guy who’s 6’2, kind of All American, they were looking for someone who they pictured to be Asian.  In 1993, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story came out, the Wedding Banquet came out, Joy Luck Club came out, which all had high success. Jason Scott Lee was also the leading man for The Map of the Human Heart.  So all of a sudden it was ok to cast Asian Americans as Asian Americans.  That lead to Margaret Cho getting her show, All American Girl.  And then that show had horrible writers, they had a good cast but didn’t have a good show, it wasn’t handled properly in terms of the issues dealing with the Asian American community.  So all of a sudden that one show just killed it for all Asian Americans for a while.  For Joy Luck Club, they would want to cast Asian Americans and ask for the females in Joy Luck Club, Lauren, Tamlyn, and Ming Na.

What about now?

Well, with the whitewashing and lack of diversity on screen, stuff has started to change again.  And that started a couple years ago, and all of a sudden I noticed more activity on my end for guest star roles.  There are jobs that have breakdowns that say please submit all ethnicities.  One line that I saw recently that was quiet humorous said please submit all ethnicities including Caucasian.  Shows how smart they are.  A lot of times I’ll be up for parts and I’ll look and see Latino men and women.  Sometimes my agent will get me in parts where they are looking for white guys but I’ll get in too.  Sometimes its hard to tell if they’re seriously considering me or if they’re just doing it to keep my agent happy, or if they know me and are trying to keep me happy.  This fall season wasn’t what I thought it would be, I’ve done four projects or so.  I find sometimes it’s not a race issue but that the network executives are deciding who are going to be guest stars on shows.  Before that never happened, they only had say on the main stars, but guest stars they could care less, the producers would be making the decisions.  Now the networks are handing a list, saying get these people involved to get big name celebrities, because of the whole issue of losing audience to other stations, because of the network losing their audience because there are so many choices on TV.  It used to be only in sweeps periods during May and November where they would do it, but now its all across the board.  The other thing is that if we get more presence as Asian Americans in the next season, this spring would be the ideal time, because there are going to be a lot of pilots being created from the surplus resulting out of the fear of a strike last year.

You mentioned  some of the stereotypes, which ones have you found most proliferated in the mainstream media?

This is an interesting topic because I find that stereotypes still exist quite a bit but I also find that whenever I’m on a panel discussion or whenever I’m with a group of Asian Americans or on an email list talking about depictions of Asians and Asian Americans in the media, I find that people keep holding on and seeing only the roles that they don’t agree with.  The vast majority of the roles I have done have been cops and attorneys and doctors over the past few years.  And the roles that I do, for the most part, go against all stereotypes.  Some people might say that being a doctor is stereotypical, but I think that’s stupid because we should be able to play all kinds of roles.  It’s how you approach the role, like if you do it with an accent or something.  So I don’t have a problem with Jackie Chan, what he does is fine, but if that’s all we see, then I have a problem with it.  There’s just a yearning to see Asian American stars, and there are so few and far between, and there are very few roles being created.

Any personal dealings with these stereotypes?

I’ll give you a story that happened recently that deals with a stereotype.  I was in New York doing some producing work.  So before that, I was in LA, I was going for a guest role in MD’s, and I got a call saying that the producers wanted to see me that day for a part.  When my agents told me the name of the part, I kind of paused, and I asked my agent if this is going to piss me off, and he said no its not.  Because the name of the character was Llama John Kon Kempo, and he’s a Buddhist monk.  So I thought all right, I’ll let you know what I think about it.  So then I hang up, and I get another call, and its my wife, who just got a fax of the script.  I asked her to tell me what she thought, and she said you’d kind of like this.  So I go back, and sure enough, I read the part and I loved it.  It was a role where this Asian American guy, who went to Columbia med school, I saw him as someone who didn’t deny the Asian part of him, and he made the decision to become a monk. A nd I thought it was very cool, because he wasn’t a guy (Asian accent) talking like this, and the whole episode was about how the other doctors see him in a stereotypical fashion, and then he would say something to totally throw them all off.  So by the end of the show, their perspectives have all been changed.  And so one of the doctors says thank you so much, these doctors think they can never learn anything, but you’ve taught them so much.  So I went to New York and I haven’t heard anything from them, and I had to leave, and if they called me back it would have screwed me.  I was getting ready to do all this stuff in New York, but then this rarely ever happens, I get the call back telling me to come back and read again for the part.  So I decided an hour later that I would stay, and I got the part.  So I ask for the script, and they tell me they’ll get it to me, on Tuesday, and I was supposed to start shooting on Friday. Wednesday comes along, no script, Thursday comes along, no script.  They tell me they had to deal with rewrites, and I tell them I like to have my script so I can learn my lines.  So I get a call from my agent, and he tells me that the executive producer would like me to call him. So this never happens, and I’ve talked to other actors in their fifties and they never had this happen to them.  But I say ok fine, and I call.  So the guy’s name is Renee, and I call him.  He tells me that the network executives hated the episode and wanted to scrap it.  He says, I know you’re going to be disappointed, the script has changed and the character that has been changed the most was yours.

So in this session, I have talked more than I ever have. I said, you know what, let me tell you the vision I have for this character.  And one of the executive producers says, that’s very interesting, like they never thought of it that way.  Fast forward back to this phone conversation, he tells me, I know you’re a professional, which sends up a big red flag, and I said ok, so how has this character change.  He says this whole thing about going to Columbia med school and going around talking to the other doctors is all out of the window.  And we don’t see him as Asian American, we’d like to see him with an accent.  So he has essentially become a stereotype.  So I tell him, you’re right, I’m very disappointed.  I ask him why they need him that way, and they said they needed him to and have that Asian American element.  I say, it seems to me that you need this guy to be different from everyone else. But if I’m going to shave my head and be in this monk’s outfit, and the fact that I’m going to be so imbued with Buddhist beliefs, that that’s going to make me different from everyone else in the hospital.  I’m going to speak differently and think differently.  I ask him if he gets it, and he says, well, not really, he tells me that they don’t want to recast this and want to use me.  So why don’t you do this, come in tomorrow fully prepared to sway us to your viewpoint, and also be prepared that we have our own vision of this character.

Not this easiest task I assume.

It was the biggest test to date of my values and my mission statement as an actor.  I’ve never been one who has succumbed to economic pressure or anything like that, but it had come at a time when we could use the money.  One of these guest spots pays a couple thousand dollars and we could use that cash.  So it sucked thinking about this thing, and I talked about this with my wife, and my wife and kid were on vacation which was supposed to coincide with me being in New York.  I even had an Emmy award winning friend and I thought I should talk to him about it.  So I talk to him about it and he tells me Tim, as long as you maintain the integrity of the character in the script, then you’re fine, you should stick to your guns and fight for what you think the character should be.  So when I woke up one morning, I just said fuck it, I was going to play hardball, and they could just cast someone else if it ended up that way.  It’s so difficult to make writers consider that your vision has more validity than theirs, so I knew I was in a long haul there. But I said screw it, they’re not getting an accent.  If it means a job, that’s fine.  So I first called Jenny to see if its ok, and she said of course, when it comes to integrity you have to stay strong.  I called my agent and told him we might not be doing this job.  I came in ready to do battle, I didn’t wan the added stress of dealing with this on camera.  So I talked to him, and he says, come on in Tim.  But I realized this guy was Rene Echevarria, who wrote the first script that I had ever done a guest spot on, in Star Trek the Next Generation.  So then he goes ok, well I thought about what we had talked about, and I think I figured out a way that we could make it all work that would fulfill all our leads.  He can be Asian American, and we’ll put that back in of him going back into med school, but then we might want you to translate a line or two.  And I said that’s fine, that’s perfect, and I said well thank you, I had been all apprehensive about this and it came out fine.  So I had a good time working on set, everything worked out great.

So standing behind your convictions actually worked?

I thought so but then the episode aired, and I taped it, but when I saw it I was so pissed because the final ace in the hole for the creative product is the editing room.  They had essentially cut out any dialogue dealing with me going to graduate school and they had also cut out another scene.  So essentially I was just a monk.  I thought thank god I didn’t given them the accent, because it would have been a complete stereotype.  And now having said that, I do not believe that they went in with the intention of just giving the actor what he wants right now and lets just edit it out in the end.  I think the situation was they had all these other things going on and other storylines, so my role lost out. 

You’d be surprised though, the thing right now is that people are so gun-shy because of the ultra political correctness going on that they are afraid to write about certain individuals because they don’t feel they can identify, and the next thing you know people are clamoring and that person is getting flak.  At the same time, they realize the need diversity so they end up making small parts more diversified ethnically, and that’s sort of how they’ve gone about it.  There are some guys who have hooked up with some roles which will translate into some success from the Asian American male perspective.  Like John Cho, Bobby Lee, and Eddie Shin.  Hopefully that will continue to open up more roles and you can see an Asian American male who’s funny but doesn’t have to be exploited to be funny.  And I think what’s going to really make a difference is two things: one a very successful ensemble show.  I don’t think you’ll see an Asian American have his own show, drama or comedy, that will be very successful.  I think it needs to be an ensemble, and hopefully other people can do other work and creative jobs in other things.  Or even a big lead in a major film that helps us pop.  Hopefully you’ll be able to see something like what’s been happening to Lucy Liu happen to an Asian American male.  And there needs to be additional pressure, because we want the screen to reflect what we see in society. 

That is my natural reaction against the white washing of America, how they all went out and created Latino shows, they created African American shows, and I think that’s segregating, maybe this person happens to be Asian American, this person happens to be Latino.  Another thing I want to see is Asian American filmmakers, people who create things that are multi ethnic.  And hopefully Kissed on the Lips is one of the movies that does that.  So you have gang members still, monks, you have the computer engineer, but you also have these other roles that come popping up here and there.  Maybe what it is is that if a film comes out, everyone can go see that film.  But on a television show, unless it’s a regular, its hit and miss whether someone’s going to see that show, if you happen to be watching that show at that time.  So that could be why people don’t see how there are roles that have been created that haven’t been stereotypical.

So what do you say to an Asian American artist who might find himself in the same position you were in?

I can’t judge anyone really on what decisions they make and what projects they do. Personally for me, as an actor, I’ve made a choice from the very beginning not to do anything I found ethnically demeaning.  Essentially my decisions are made on when I wake up in the morning and I look at myself in the mirror, I have to be comfortable with myself.  If I do a stereotypical role, I will not be happy.  Even if I’m in the red financially, I will still not do those roles.  In Hollywood, the element of desperation is so high.  It’s not just an Asian American actor.  All actors have reasons to be desperate, to need to be validated, to need to land roles.  Sometimes we get so myopic in our own needs and everyone else has their own situations and problems with Hollywood.  I would say that you need to stay true to yourself and listen to your gut.  If your gut tells you not to do a project for a certain reason, a red flag pops up and tells you that it’s probably not good, but then you think you might do it because it might translate into other roles and I’ll never do it again.  I don’t think you can live with that.

My advice is if you come up to a situation, just listen to yourself and listen to yourself fully, because it will come back to haunt you.  And again, when you look at a role as an actor, don’t look at it as if “is this something that everyone else is going to be pissed of that I’m doing”, look at it as “is this something that I’m going to piss myself off for doing”.  I’m so big on helping to raise the level of consciousness of American society and global society, and giving the audience a virile, strong Asian American male figure to see on the screen.  Having said that, I don’t look at the part and ask if I take this part, is the audience going to look at me a certain way, blah blah blah?  Fuck everyone else, it comes down to what you want to do.  Everything else becomes a byproduct of that.  If you are true to yourself and true to your beliefs, as long as your beliefs are not fucked up, then everyone else will be fine with that.  And if they’re missing something and they talk to you about it, you’ll be able to talk to them and make them think, ok I see where you’re coming from.  But you can’t have that strong base to come from if you are compromising your value system.  There is no room to compromise your value system.  There’s enough room in this industry that there will always be something coming up, you don’t need to take every opportunity. 

Who are some people you know who are community activists, and who are people that you recognize in promoting awareness over Asian American issues in the media?

Talking about the community, I don’t really consider myself a leader. Everyone does their part to help, I say I’m a leader but what does that really mean?  I was helping to produce this September 11th board, and it turned into me running the show. Did I get paid for it? No. They paid for my flight out to New York. But with community service, you give and you help unconditionally.  If you have enough people and they realize that you’re doing it selflessly, then hopefully that rubs off and they do that for others.  And that just makes all of us all that more together and stronger when we do have to approach certain things.  I do think that people like Karen Narasaki in Washington, D.C. are important.  I don’t view people like Mineta as a leader, I don’t see really anyone who can be a leader to cause real change in the Asian American community.  The leaders right now sort of work within the Asian American community and try to make an impact on society overall, but I haven’t really seen anything.  Things occur here and there, people don’t want to piss us off, and that’s important.  But I don’t think if you talk to an everyday guy off the street and ask him to name any Asian American leaders, he’ll say “Fuck, I don’t know”.  It’s the same thing as me being considered an Asian American celebrity, I have problems with that. I had been doing a few things, and then I was invited to all these events, saying that I was an Asian American celebrity.  It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when I’m considered and Asian American celebrity because I’m not a celebrity. 

When was this "mistaken celebrity"?

At the East West Visionary Awards, CBS had a table, Fox had a table, and they were all the front main tables on stage.  I get a call from CBS asking if I would like to be their guest, and I said sure, I’ll go.  And so I go and I’m expecting to see other actors at the table, but I was the only one at the table.  I was the CBS actor, because of my recurring role on JAG.  And Eddie Shin at Fox.  So that pretty much says where we are with Asian American television and film, regarding celebrities.  You have Lucy Liu, who is really the only Asian American actor who pretty much crosses the board and you can ask people off the street and they will know who she is, Charlie’s Angels and Ally McBeal.  Ming Na and Tamlyn Tomita and Lauren Tom, but for the most part its Lucy Liu.  As for Asian American men, I thought it was going to be Jason Scott Lee.  But he made certain personal decisions about his career at the time that sort of shot it in the foot.  Basically he didn’t want to do any commercial stuff, he wanted to do these epic type movies.  He was really in the position I think to become a sort of a torch bearer.  If he had taken the commercial stuff, when he was really on a high after Dragon and Map of the Human Heart, then it would have really translated into a lot.  But at the same time, I can’t judge his decisions. I love Jason Scott Lee.  He’s a great guy, and he was true to himself.  He made decisions where he could wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and be comfortable with who he saw.  And there was Russell Wong, and I thought, good looking guy, great looking guy, maybe he could be the one.  And he wasn’t, for whatever reasons.  And next thing I knew, I was being kind of seen as, Tim might be the guy, but that didn’t happen.  As an Asian American actor, things were different then.

Where do you find AA actors now?

I guess things were different, but it was always starting from square one.  Whatever you accomplish, you had to start all over again.  But now, I think you can build upon success.  Maybe John Cho or Eddie Shin, if they can take what they have going on and translate it into some film work, get a good team behind them and can make it work, then maybe something can happen there.  It’s amazing how they still play me like I’m in my twenties, even though I’m going to be 38 in January.  I don’t see myself as one of these young guns.  Now for me, what it’s going to be about is creating a project that does well, or getting a series regular on one of these ensemble shows.  People tell me to be ready to get for all these new shows coming out, but I’m not banking on it.  Or it’s going to be if someone becomes popular as a musical entertainer, who can translate that into a film career.  One of these things will cause one of them to pop, and I’m talking about Asian American males because I think its easier for Asian American males.  Another person I was thinking about was Rick Yune, another person I have certain judgments about certain roles he chooses, but I don’t think he’s going to be the guy to do it.  Not that he’s going to be successful or anything like that.  I joke with my wife, I think I’m going to be the Asian American Morgan Freeman.  I’m going to be around in my forties or fifties, and then I’m going to be the old wise guy.  But I’m thankful for being able to make a living during this time.  This town can just chew you up and spit you out.  You need to have a really strong self to survive and flourish.  So whenever I’m getting frustrated, I just have to realize that I have been able to stay true to myself and have a good living.  Would I love it if I was living in Brentwood or Pacific Palisades.  Sure.  I live in a condo in Sherman Oaks, which is better than Van Nuys, but I think I have a feeling that something’s going to pop soon.  I have to be thankful that I’ve been able to make a living under all these conditions.  But it does come down to really, if you want to make a difference, you need to create your own projects.  Now is not the best time to be doing that because of economic situations, but fortunately I have a team that are putting something together right now.

What do you think UCLA students can do to get involved?

I think one thing is to support the films out there with Asian Americans in them.  First I don’t think you should boycott films with Asian Americans in them.  You should go to them regardless, because all the studios look at is money.  If the turnstiles are turning, then they’ll create those roles.  But then what you need to do if you have a problem with the characters, you need to express that as well.  But you can’t do that in a way that’s not constructive.  If they create a character and they create a huge backlash, then they wont create it anymore.  And they’re not thinking about roles they could create, they’re thinking about roles they can’t create.  And next thing you know, we’ve disappeared from the screen again.  So there needs to be constructive criticism about it.  With All American Girl, why that happened, the Asian American community became very vocal, and because there was no positive constructive criticism, essentially that’s why you’ve never seen another Asian American sitcom on television, they don’t even want to touch that.  Whereas if someone says, here’s what the problems are with the show, we can come and help you with the creative aspects of it.  But you also have certain egos to deal with on the network side. But it has to be constructive, that’s the only criticism that’s worthwhile.  And you also have to support your artists.  But it comes down to the only color being valued in the industry is green.  They have no problem with positive portrayals of Asian Americans if it means money for them.  So if you’re a student interested in getting involved, I think you really need to be really prepared.  It’s important to be confident, it’s important to be cocky to a certain extent, but you can still do that and not be egotistical.  You can’t be egotistical, you need to allow yourself to be aware of what’s around you, and to use that and translate it into something meaningful and productive.

How do you think they can go about that?

It means that you make a point of learning about all aspects of whatever you go into. From talking to people, learning from their experiences, not saying “I’m the shit, I know that already.”  Everyone around you is valid, and you should learn about their validity.  And its just being smart and intelligent and having common sense, and not going in with a chip on your shoulder, all ready to expecting everyone that you work with to put a strike against you because you’re Asian American.  It would take a lot for me to think someone was being racist against me.  It’s easy for someone to be ignorant, so I take it on myself to inform them, and maybe they will think, oh my god I never thought of it like that.  So don’t jump to the first conclusion and say fuck that person, he’s a racist.  Everyone likes to work with people they like, and if you don’t give anyone else a chance, they won’t want to work with you.  In which case, you can’t accomplish the things you want to accomplish.  When I came out of college, I was ready to change the world.  I still feel like I want to change the world and I want to change the world more. 

You have to understand the system and society, and you can’t expect to not take into consideration everyone else that lives around you and what’s around you and go with this blinders on narrow focused laser or missile and just think that you’re going to create this path of consciousness and the world’s going to be all the better because you were the man or you were the woman.  It’s not going to happen.  Always ask for help too.  If there’s something you don’t understand, never base any judgment or decision on fear.  Realize that it’s about being vulnerable, and if you need help, you need help.  It’s much easier working with people who can help you rather than working in fear of being considered stupid.  If you don’t ask questions and you do your own stuff, it might be much harder and more difficult trying to accomplish what you want to accomplish.

You said you had a project called “Kissed on the Lips”, can you tell us more about it?

For the past year I had been looking for a film project.  It’s been a natural progression for me, being the artistic director for Lodestone, then producing these awards shows, then a documentary, it was only a matter of time I felt I would be producing my own film project.  For me, it’s so important to keep raising the bar in my level as an actor.  So I had been looking really hard for something that I would be acting and producing in, it would have to be something I would have to be passionate in.  It couldn’t be something that I responded intellectually, but something I could just feel.  I had gotten together with my manager for lunch, and he told me he had something for me to read.  And so I went back to his office, got the script, went to a boba place, read it, and within the first ten pages I read it, and I felt like it was it.  I wanted to call him but I felt maybe it would turn to shit in 20 to 30 pages.  By the time I was done, I was on my cellphone with him, and I said this is it.  I want to produce it.  So the project is called Kissed on the Lips. It’s about a documentary film maker who’s relationships have all gone bad, and he decides he wants to rekindle his filmmaking career.  There’s only one guy he knows, this connection, who ends up hooking him up.  Next thing you know, he’s walking up to this AIDS hospice, back in ’92, and he’s homophobic and AIDS-phobic, but he needs this gig so he agrees to take the project.  And what transpires is his experiences and how his perspective is totally shifted.  It’s very much an ensemble cast, and you see what happens in this hospice.  It’s quite well written, each character is so well-defined.  We have Chlorus Leachmen attached, and Peter Boyle interested.  If we attach him, then we can go look for a current name female celebrity who’s right for the part.  This part is one of the parts that you can just win the Academy Award for, basically.  First person we’re going to go after is Hilary Swank.  And then my part would be the documentary filmmaker, Joe.  But even there, we were talking about how if we go traditional route for financing this, looking for a distributor, especially for film, they’re going to want to have the young male and female leads, and have say in who’s there. And frankly that means they want big names in there that will change how they view the project based on those people. And I’m obviously not one of those people.  So I said, well look, I’m not stupid, I understand where that comes from, but I also plan on having a substantial producing career before it’s all said and done.  So when it comes down to it, I don’t have a problem with the casting, as long as there’s a role in there that’s a strong supporting role that would help propel me into the next level.  So now it’s up in the air if I’m going to be Joe the lead guy, or another character.  Do I want to do Joe?  Most definitely.  I already have investors lined up, we’re going to have a $2 million dollar budget, DV, blown up to film. And that’s “Kissed on the Lips”, and the idea is to shoot it next year.

Favorite Restaurant?

Used to be Orsos.  I like to eat at Cushumbo over here, but where do I really like to go? Well my favorite Korean restaurant, I don’t even know what it’s called, but it’s on 8th street near Vermont, but they use wood charcoal.

Favorite City?

Favorite city to visit is Chicago.  I wouldn’t want to live there because the seasons are too extreme, but I love the people there.  They have this interesting combination of big city hipness with this Midwestern strong value system.  It’s a combination I haven’t seen anywhere else, and I love the place.  The architecture is amazing too.  And I also love Hong Kong.

Favorite place to hang out?

I’m a dad, I don’t really hang out.  I like coffee shops.  My kid’s a year and a half, and it’s impossible to work at home.  What used to be my office turned into her bedroom, so I tore out this bar area and turned it into a office nook, and there’s no separation, so she’s always there wanting to play.  So I got T-Mobile so I could go to Starbucks and do work. I don’t want to be Norms from Cheers at Starbucks, so I go to a bunch of different Starbucks.  I’m a parent and a husband, I don’t really hang out anymore.  It’s just mainly during the days its at coffee shops.  But I will say, coming from Petaluma maybe, if I can find this greasy diner, usually in the middle of nowhere, that’s a place I would love to go.  Maybe even Café 50’s or Mel’s Drive-in, they have the diner feels.

Favorite movie?

There’s a group of movies I like, not really any favorites.  Pelee the Conqueror, with Max von Sydow, tour de force performance.  I like Blade Runner.  I just saw this movie recently that people should all go see, that’s well crafted and well made, and it’s called Charlotte Sometimes.  It’s going around film festivals right now, and it’s really quite well done.  I love Time Bandits, and Adventures of Baron von Munchausen.  There’s another movie everyone should go see, called Crimson Kimono, and it starred James Shigeta, who’s a friend of mine now.  It was done in the fifties, it’s got the hokey feel to it, but James played an LA cop, and his partner’s white, and they end up fighting for the same woman, a white woman, and James end up winning her in the end.  It’s interesting how you watch some movies made in the fifties dealing with race, and you would expect them to be in the stone ages back then, but some of those films are much more progressive than what we see today.  It’s kind of wild, and kind of sad in some aspects.  I like Magnolia.  I worked with this director who made a movie called Autumn Moon, which was really quite good.

Favorite material possession?

My laptop.  I don’t know, maybe my car.  It’s kind of funny that I’m a guy who likes toys, but I could throw them all away tomorrow.  I’m not really attached to my possessions.  I’ve sort of always been that way.

Favorite song?

I’ll say the first song that came to mind is “American Pie” by Don McLean.  In high school it was AC/DC, The Police, and the Time, those were my three favorite bands.  Of all of them, my favorite would probably be The Police.  In college I was a big Depeche Mode fan. I bought their new CD and I thought it was crap.  You know one group I liked that came out was Crash Test Dummies.  Intelligent writing always grabs me, then that’s always more important to me than the music itself.  But when you can combine writing and music, then that’s great.  But if I can’t repeat lyrics, then it wont be my favorite.  There was a time when they didn’t have lyrics included either with tapes or albums, so I would play a song, write down the lyrics, stop it and rewind it, and I would do this religiously.  Anything I liked, I would write it down.  These days I listen to, since I’m old, I listen to 98.7 the most, and I also listen to 93.1, which is oldies.  I like Jack Johnson a lot.

Favorite thing to do with your daughter?

I love taking her to the zoo.  And I love laughing with her, and playing with her.  She’s kind of a nut.  It’s important to me that she is a strong woman, in whatever area she chooses that she’s a strong person.  I realize how much is biological, and what’s nature not just nurture, and all the things I see in her right now that are going to give her a great head start in life are also the things that are going to make her a really difficult daughter, when she goes through puberty or whatever.  I can just see, we’re going to be butting heads.  But I can’t imagine life without her and I love her dearly.  She’s smart, and pretty, and funny, and headstrong.  And she’s only a year and a half.

Thank you very much, Tim.

Oh, you're welcome.