Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: He’s merely Generic Asian man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but he is always relegated to a prop. Yet every day he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production.
MY REVIEW
This was such a delightful read and I loved the script format, it made it hard to put down. It tackled some huge issues in a very digestible format and the satire made it actually more pronounced for those of us who hadn’t been in a position to have considered certain things before. I did have some feelings about how Turner was written, the Black male detective, but I don’t know that I have any grounds for it other than I was a little unsure where I found everything else to be just so amazing. Since this is a script format it is not the best for in-depth character knowledge or growth, so I wouldn’t go in expecting that but it does move everything at a fast pace.
Metafiction isn’t usually a go to for me but I am so glad I picked this up when I found out the show was based off a book. It was such a brilliant work, especially for a metafiction.
Willis Wu and everyone else in Interior Chinatown are background characters in the police procedural Black and White. It’s a life they’ve all accepted, they’ve come from various backgrounds, some from historical tv or stories of climbing up the ladder of adversity, but there’s a common thread; they’re all stuck in roles and most of these roles aren’t amounting to much for them. And in Interior Chinatown? Not even death has to be a permanent state, for most you simply come back after 45 days depending on if you died on set or not or it was scripted or not, etc. You can tell who has main character energy from lighting, from their ethnicity, the main stars of Black and White? They’re not Asian, and their lighting is flawless, as is their hair, their looks, you get the picture. I loved how he integrated that in.
Willis is stuck with the same few roles that every man his age in Chinatown seems to get saddled with and yet like most his age he dreams of being more than that of being ‘Kung Fu Guy.’ Yet his Mom tells him to be *more* than that. And for a long time, Willis doesn’t get that.
He meets Karen (Lana in the show), falls in love, but he still tries to to pursue Kung Fu Guy until he finally gets the role…and…I can’t say more without spoilers.
It’s around this point in the book that though I did really enjoy the scenes that came after and how it was presented, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first half of the book because I felt it was a little rushed -even for script format-. There was so much to explore and it didn’t feel like a real story for Willis but as this is satire and the point was still made, I doubt that was something Yu overlooked and instead it was a deliberate choice.
3.5/5 Huge cups of coffee for me. I loved the subject matter for this, I loved the format, and I loved Yu’s writing voice over all. Now onto the show!
I usually do films, but since this show is as of now only 10 episodes long -it has not been renewed for a second season, so far- I went ahead and picked it because I am too excited not to.
This show I absolutely amazing, the cast was so well done and…wait for it…..
I liked it better than the book.
By a cup and a half of coffee no less!
Yu is the show runner on this and it gave me a lot of joy because I knew the changes and the story involved him and so me liking this better is really just picking another version of his own work in a lot of ways. This has so much heart to it and the satire is still so very on point. I also like the changes in the characters and I LOVE that we got so much more depth to the characters and more characters too. A lot were passing names in the book and here, they just blossomed. Including my favorite of them all; Fatty. The actors did such a good job of carrying out this book, I don’t think I could imagine other people in their place when reading it.
Willis Wu is at the forefront again but we see so much more of his parents, Older Brother, and we get Fatty, Carl (though Not Carl is missing, alas), Karen who is renamed as Lana, and of course Turner and Green the stars of Black and White. The expanding of the cast fit so much better though, so adding others in set this up to be so much more rich in characters and their development than we were able to get in the book.
Another thing they kept? The fantastic lighting differences, and even amped it up too which just pleased me so much. It works so well to show us the difference between the TV series being filmed and their ‘reality’ outside of that.
I appreciated so much the switch of Older Brother as a general role and making him the actual older brother of Willis. It also allowed for a real plot to form that way because while Older Brother is missing in the book, Willis isn’t tied to it as much. Here, this is what drives him, the fact that it’s *his* brother who is missing, his family who is hurting. This also allows us to get a much more flushed out Lana. Though there’s no Phoebe in this one as there was in the book that was a good choice, and if it ever gets a second season, could be something to build up to. I also preferred this ending overall.
5/5 for Interior Chinatown for me.
The Differences:
- Willis Wu has no actual brother in the book
- Willis Wu’s parents are not a huge role in the books
- Lana Lee is Karen lee in the books
- Fatty isn’t really a character, in fact most of the characters aren’t
- There is a solid plot that plays more on their awareness of being characters and it’s built up from the ground more. (So they don’t necessarily immediately realize it in the show)
- Older Brother has more history and less clarification on his future in the show than the book but it works.
- Bigger play on Chinese mythology in the plot of the show.
- In the book they’re aware they’re dying and being cut from their role from the show and have to wait 45 days before returning to set.
- The history of the parents is in detail in the book
- Willis is more engaged in his changing of roles in the show than in the book where it’s just a hope to strike lucky sort of deal.
- Chinatown itself is more of a presence in the show almost a character on its own.
Final Verdict
The Show wins this round but the book is definitely worth a read too!
The Caffeinated Reader 
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