THE MOTEL |

Genre: COMEDY / DRAMA

Release Dates: 2005

Official Websites:

Taglines: There’s always room for one more.

Production Company: Hi Point Productions

Synopsis:
This first feature by New Yorker Michael Kang comes with a pedigree: the script was workshopped at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab, was honored as the US recipient of the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award, and boasts Miguel Arteta, Matthew Greenfield, Gina Kwon and Karin Chien as producers. The result is one of the truest portraits of emerging male adolescence we’ve seen in a long time (perhaps, even, since Arteta’s own breakout Star Maps). Ernest Chin (Jeffrey Chyau) is a chubby, thirteen-year-old Chinese-American kid whose family owns and runs a hot-sheet motel. After school but before homework, Ernest works, changing sheets and cleaning the rooms, making for comic confrontations that also bring Ernest face-to-face with a side of life he’s just beginning to understand. When a charismatic Korean-American guy (Sung Kang) reeling from a broken marriage checks in, Ernest finds in him something of a mentor: but is this a case of the blind leading the blind-sided?

Crew: Michael Kang (writer and director); Miguel Arteta, Karin Chien, Matthew Greenfield and Gina Kwon (producers); Eden J. Shapiro, Esther Shapiro and Richard Shapiro (executive producers)

Cast: Ian Boyd as Jimmy, Ron Domingo as Hank and Jackie Nova as Shakira