A movie documenting Jeremy Lin’s (林書豪) rise from an obscure Ivy League basketball player to an NBA star with a global following was enthusiastically received at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah on Sunday.
A Los Angeles Times report called Linsanity: The Movie easily “one of the most crowd-pleasing documentaries to play the festival this year.”
The movie, directed by Asian American Evan Jackson Leong (梁伊凡), should be mandatory viewing for high-school athletes, a coach was cited as saying in the report.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Leong said that the movie ends with the Linsanity phenomenon, but Lin’s journey to that stage is what the movie is all about.
“I actually heard about him in Harvard, and at that point, to me, he was already a fascinating story because he already got further than most any Asian American player I’ve ever seen,” Leong said when explaining his decision to film a documentary about a relatively unknown player.
“Even him getting into the NBA was amazing to me. That’s already an inspirational story, it’s a fascinating story,” he said.
“Hopefully [the movie will] inspire the next Jeremy Lin,” he added.
The movie lays out Lin’s story in great detail and “shows the psyche of a man who genuinely struggled — on the court with doubts about his game and off the court with a series of racist taunts he faced as the first Asian American to start in the NBA,” the Los Angeles Times report said.
Lin, the first NBA player of Taiwanese descent, who led Palo Alto High School to a California D-II state championship, was overlooked in the early stages of his basketball career.
He was not given a scholarship by any Pac-10 school after high school and went undrafted by NBA teams after graduating from Harvard.
He signed with Oakland’s Golden State Warriors as a free agent in 2010, but was cut by the Warriors and then the Houston Rockets the following preseason.
The New York Knicks signed him early in the strike-shortened 2011-2012 season and he was on the verge of being released again before his breakout in early February last year.
“How am I supposed to play if everyone is looking at me expecting me to make a miraculous play every time I touch the basketball?” Lin, now a point guard for the Rockets, says at one point in the movie.
The film was one of the last things on Lin’s mind when his career was in jeopardy, but “looking back, I’m really glad we got this, because it just really showed the dream,” he said about the documentary in a separate video clip.
Leong, who noticed Lin four years ago and decided to make a film about him, said after the screening that “it was a project of passion.”
“We had no money. Nobody cared about our project before February of last year. In a documentary like this you don’t know how it’s going to end,” he said.
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
CHANGES: After-school tutoring periods, extracurricular activities during vacations or after-school study periods must not be used to teach new material, the ministry said The Ministry of Education yesterday announced new rules that would ban giving tests to most elementary and junior-high school students during morning study and afternoon rest periods. The amendments to regulations governing public education at elementary schools and junior high schools are to be implemented on Aug. 1. The revised rules stipulate that schools are forbidden to use after-school tutoring periods, extracurricular activities during summer or winter vacation or after-school study periods to teach new course material. In addition, schools would be prohibited from giving tests or exams to students in grades one to eight during morning study and afternoon break periods, the
Advocates of the rights of motorcycle and scooter riders yesterday protested in front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in Taipei, making three demands. They were joined by 30 passenger vehicles, which surrounded the ministry to make three demands related to traffic regulations — that motorcycles and scooters above 250cc be allowed on highways, that all motorcycles and scooters be allowed on inside lanes, and that driver and rider training programs be reformed. The ministry said that it has no plans to allow motorcycles on national highways for the time being, and said that motorcycles would be allowed on the inner
AMENDMENT: Contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau must be reported, and failure to comply could result in a prison sentence, the proposal stated The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday voted against a proposed bill by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers that would require elected officials to seek approval before visiting China. DPP Legislator Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) proposed amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), stipulate that contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau should be reported, while failure to comply would be punishable by prison sentences of up to three years, alongside a fine of NT$10 million (US$309,041). Fifty-six voted with the TPP in opposition