Tuesday, January 9, 2001

David Tsubouchi's secret SCTV stint


Tsubouchi's secret SCTV stint










copyright 2001 Mark Bellis



 from SCTV broadcast



Now, who was that man in the shades with a beard, here shown with Robin Williams in an SCTV episode from 1982...... could it be a certain David Tsubouchi (Shown in insert), now Ontario's Solicitor-General in the Progressive Conservative government? (Rather scarily in charge of the police.... prone to do crossword puzzles during those boring meetings with the public he has to take part in....and who reminded all those people on welfare how much better the weather was in Vancouver when he cut back payments... Tsubo portrayed a Japanese porn dealer in David Cronenberg's Videodrome, something he was understandably modest about when someone noticed it after he'd been named minister) ....in this spoof of the Deerhunter, he plays a Chinese gangster who gets clocked by Williams.........one of my big pet peeves is North American film makers think that everyone from East Asia looks alike, and they often put people who REALLY don't look Chinese in with regular Cantonese - and that's what got my attention on Tsubo. If you watch Hong Kong movies, you'll notice that they get Japanese actors to play Japanese roles.
Tsubo did this stilted Fu Manchu Chinese accent as he extorted money from Williams......."Ah the American, yes he's here but it's going to cost you... thirty-four thousand dollars ... American!"
Ah well, I'm sure it improved the public image of Asian-Canadians no end......