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Notes -
I imagine the plot would be sort of a twist on the oft-forgotten Jamie Kennedy vehicle Malibu’s Most Wanted.
Taiwanese immigrant tiger mom sends her striver son to live in Compton in order to up his street cred. Unfortunately, her perceptions of America being thirty years out of date and skewed by pop culture, she doesn’t realize that Compton was gentrified by Latino immigrants more than a decade ago and isn’t even a particularly unsafe area anymore. However, her son desperately needs to maintain appearances so his mother doesn’t realize her money (she’s paying his rent, which is no longer dirt-cheap in Compton) is being wasted. So, he hires some of his black actor friends to pretend to be hardcore gangsters every time his mom comes to check on him.
However, when a real gang confrontation does break out (instigated by a very real and very scary Latino gang) he and his fake gangster buddies have to put their money where their mouths are, with the protagonist displaying surprising aplomb and bravado. This is witnessed by a Harvard admissions officer, who offers full-ride scholarships to him and to his “gang”. (None of whom, mirroring real life, are actual poor urban blacks, but who will happily count toward Harvard’s black quota)
Great premise. Not too different from current asian meta of 'personality hacking' instead of achievement grinding. Asians are unpopular so use a Nigerian immigrant pretending to be ghetto in order to get the best success at hollywood scripts.
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this is very good.
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