My friend and I at autopartswarehouse.com really loved the movie 21 and we can’t get over at it. I read about facts and myths regarding the movie 21 and I was shocked when I found out that the real-life versions of “Ben”, “Micky”, and “Fisher” are Asian, but were made white for the movie. It seems that Hollywood can’t fade an Asian as the hero, not to mention the supporting characters. (Yes, two of the players in the movie are Asian — the two with the smallest roles.)
However, in the book, Kevin Lewis was identified as half Chinese, and Fisher was identified as half Asian as well.
There’s a lot of buzz on the net about the Asian whitewashing, with some folks calling for a boycott. But it’s worth pointing out that neither John Chang nor Jeffrey Ma themselves really care about this issue. John Chang says, “Being played by a 2-time Oscar winner isn’t exactly an insult.” and Jeff Ma says, “For me it wasn’t a big deal, because for about three years people had been asking me who I wanted to play me in a movie and I never was saying like ‘John Cho’ or ‘Chow Yun-Fat’ or ‘Jackie Chan’…”
By the way, the players’ Asian heritage supposedly wasn’t exactly a coincidence. According to the book, Ma was recruited into the team in part because of his Asian looks, which used to be a boon for card-counting, since casino staff expect card counters to be white (perhaps the same way that people expect the lead of a movie to be white).
Incidentally, some people claim that Micky Rosa is a composite of John Chang and Mr. M.(J. P. Massar, who is not Asian). While that may be partially true, I believe that Rosa is mostly John Chang, since Chang used the name Micky Rosa when playing in the World Series of Blackjack.
Here’s the Who’s Who of the book and the movie:
Winner Winner! Chicken Dinner!
|
Real Name |
21 Movie name | Bringing Down the House book name |
Busting Vegas book name |
| Jeff Ma | Ben Campbell | Kevin Lewis | (n/a) |
| John Chang | Micky Rosa | Micky Rosa | Victor Cassius |
| Mike Aponte (aka MIT Mike) |
Fisher | Jason Fisher | (n/a) |
