Dante Basco Talks The Fabulous Filipino Brothers And Uplifting Asian American Creatives
After a World Premiere at SXSW 2021, Dante Basco’s directorial debut The Fabulous Filipino Brothers is headed to VOD. The film is a relatable exploration of love, family, and Filipino American culture. It is told through vignettes that follow each of the real-life Basco Brothers as they prepare for a Filipino wedding. I spoke with Dante Basco on the Pop Culture Planet podcast about what it was like creating this family-centered film and his passion for uplifting the Asian American community.
Dante Basco called it “amazing” to work with his entire family on The Fabulous Filipino Brothers and highlight all of their skills. “I've got a lot of great opportunities to play a lot of great roles and, you know how it is in Hollywood. You don't always get hired to do all the stuff you can do. So in embarking on doing this film and writing this film with my family, we really crafted each role for each brother,” Basco told me. “I wanted to give everyone a platform to shine and do what they could do.”
The vignettes were heavily inspired by one of Basco’s favorite films, Pulp Fiction, but the stories were all based on real events the Basco family dealt with. “A lot of things are based on personal stories in life, especially the last vignette,” he said. “[It touches] on some really personal stuff in our family history. You want to walk around it with the most respect.”
Representation is us telling stories from our perspective and being a part of the conversation in a different way than we've had been in the last hundred years. - Basco
Basco is excited for the future of Asian Americans in entertainment, sharing that Asians are at the highest profile in pop culture they’ve ever been since the birth of Hollywood. “We talk a lot about representation, which is beautiful, but what is representation? How do we even define that word?” asked Basco. “We're entering this new era of storytelling, of media. We have to have more stories told from our perspectives, from an Asian perspective, from a Latino perspective. The problem is for the last hundred years the conversation of art has been over leveraged from one community. Business is changing, things are changing, and that's where we're moving in the future. Representation is us telling stories from our perspective and being a part of the conversation in a different way than we've had been in the last hundred years.”
Basco is passionate about supporting Asian American creatives, even forming his own production company dedicated to telling those stories. “When I became an adult in the industry and I was doing Avatar: The Last Airbender, Mako who played Uncle Iroh in the project passed away. Mako is one of the most prolific Asian American actors in our community. He was very special mentor to me and he even created East West Players, which is the longest running theatre company in the country of people of color. An Asian American theatre company in Los Angeles. Part of his career was paying it forward to the next generation, which was me,” shared Basco, looking back at his relationship with Mako. “When he passed away — it was almost like that Uncle Iroh sage wisdom — I understood that I’m part of that lineage now too. You get to a place in your career where it’s not just about you anymore and about your career. [It’s] about creating things that will pay it forward, setting up the next generation to do better than what we did in our generation.”
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers premieres on digital platforms on February 8, 2022.
