Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival 2009

LESTER NILES (Anthony Montgomery) is a struggling African-American stand-up comedian who’s trying to make it doing comedy showcases and open mikes while working a day job as one of the most hated men in Los Angeles… a meter maid. His stand-up is purely observational and political, with a straight-up style like Jon Stewart or Seinfeld. Unfortunately, it seems like everyone in the industry, as well as his half-brother and manager KENNY (Joe Torry), wants him to be the next Martin Lawrence, pushing him to do angrier, edgier kind of material. Lester doesn’t know what to think anymore… should he be himself and keep struggling, or does he have to change who he is to make it? In addition, he has to deal with his extremely attractive but manic-depressive fashion model Mom, NATALIE (Valerie Pettiford), who’s divorcing his tired senior citizen Dad, CLIFF (Obba Bobatunde) . Lester is also madly in love with beautiful East Indian-American NIRA (Sheetal Sheth), who seems to like him a lot, but not enough to give him a chance at boyfriend-hood.Lester's best friend, TONY CHANG (Tom Huang), is a struggling Asian-American actor who can only seem to get auditions for parts as Chinese delivery boys or sushi chefs with bad accents. He loves acting, but everywhere he turns seems to be a dead end for his career. He feels even worse when he runs into his friendly actor nemesis, the famous TIM CHUNG (Teddy Chen Culver) whom he hates because Chung and John Cho get all of the few good Asian male parts that are available. Tony’s younger brother, DANNY (Dion Basco), is a wanna-be Asian hip-hop thug, who races his lowered Scion on weekends and looks forward to dropping out of college. Tony has to deal with keeping Danny out of trouble while trying to fend off his nagging older sister, DONNA (Tamlyn Tomita), who implores him to get a job in her company. Meanwhile, Tony works multiple jobs to pay the bills, one of them being Spider-Man for kids’ parties. At one of the parties, he falls for a girl in a Pink Bear costume, KATIE (Lynn Chen), later trying to establish a relationship with her. Tony also hangs out with hot wanna-be actress AMBER (Emma Caulfield), who pretty much just uses him for his car and beer money… but Tony can’t admit to himself he only hangs out with her because she’s hot.Together, Tony and Lester support and help each other in their fight to keep the Hollywood dream alive while still trying to deal with family and getting a girl. The film follows them and those around them as they all learn a little about themselves in a story that’s about more making it in Tinseltown; it’s about learning how to be true to your soul in the background of living in a city where cultures and race are forced together, ultimately effecting how you live.