By Erin Chew, AsAmNews Staff Writer
Harriet’s Rooftop, West Hollywood was the location for the Gold House pre-Oscars event: ‘A Gold Toast to Community, Progress and Opportunity’. Its purpose was to honor multicultural achievements across filmmaking, including a historic number of Oscar nominations for the Asian Pacific (AAPI) community.
The lavish and exclusive venue served Asian inspired cuisines and desserts. The event proved a great opportunity for different sectors of the AAPI community to casually meet, engage and mingle with those in the film, television and entertainment industry, and at the same time celebrate their work and achievements.
Listed by the Hollywood Reporter as one of the ‘A-List’ events for the Oscar parties for 2023, the event didn’t disappoint with the number of big name AAPis present who were willing and ready to celebrate and interact with the wider AAPI community members in attendance.
Some notable names of ‘big name’ attendees were Janet Yang (President, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and Gold House Vice Chairwoman), Daniel Dae Kim (Actor, Lost; Executive Producer, The Good Doctor), Guneet Monga and Kartiki Gonsalve (Producer and Director of the Oscar-nominated The Elephant Whisperers), Abhijay Prakash (President, Blumhouse), Lisa Joy (Executive Producer, Westworld), Kevin Kreider (Actor, Bling Empire), Sam Yam (Co-founder, President and CTO, Patreon) and many more.
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Bing Chen, President and Executive Chairman of Gold House, made a toast midway through the event celebrating the rapid progress the multicultural and AAPI community in the industry has made:
“Five years ago, we demanded that our voices be heard by demonstrating how critical our community is through Gold Open that broke box office history for Crazy Rich Asians”, he proudly expressed.
“Three years ago, we showed how we definitively belong in this country by sending Parasite—fully in Korean—to the top of the box office that went on to win Best Picture. We got here because we did this together—and we can’t wait to take it further”.
In a casual conversation with AsAmNews and a photo opportunity, Daniel Dae Kim mentioned that seeing the success of Everything Everywhere All at Once is a sign that the Asian American narrative in the industry is changing:
“We are definitely seeing the start that our stories and our narratives are becoming mainstream. The success and rightful acknowledgement of films like Everything Everywhere All at Once, demonstrates that we can be creative and take our stories to another level and do extremely well.”
The 95th Academy Awards (Oscars) will be held this Sunday March 12, with predictions that Everything Everywhere All at Once will be the evening’s biggest winner including best picture and its two main stars Michelle Yeoh forecasted to be the first Asian and second woman of color to win best actress, and Ke Huy Quan forecasted to be the second Asian winner in supporting actor category.
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