The Circuit

by Anthony D’Alessandro
When it comes to overnight success in Hollywood, there are some standard stories, i.e. waterboys morph into hit screenwriters while assistants turn into power execs.

But a production accountant who becomes the leading man in a feature comedy is a first.

Such is the case with Jimmy Tsai, the affable headliner and co-writer of the Asian-American comedy “Ping Pong Playa” which opened the 24th annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Thursday night at the DGA. 

Playing to a soldout theater, “Playa,” directed by Oscar-winning docu filmmaker Jessica Yu, generated plenty of guffaws, however, at the after-party festgoers were more smitten with the larger-than-life onscreen personality of Tsai.

Making his acting debut in “Playa,” Tsai plays C-dub, a brassy SoCal slacker who pursues a career in ping pong playing after his pro brother is wounded.

A longtime number cruncher for the “Playa’s” producer Cherry Sky Films which shepherded Yu’s 2004 doc “In the Realms of the Unreal” as well as Justin Lin’s “Better Luck Tomorrow” and “Finishing the Game,” Tsai was chosen by the helmer to play the comedy’s urban protag after she caught his Asian commercial parodies on the web.

Remarking on his hammy shorts, Yu exclaimed at the post screening Q&A, “Jimmy has the greatest muddled minority ‘Rushmore’ syndrome.  When we were working on the script, he had no idea that I was working under the assumption that he was going to star in the film.”

“Luckily, we hired a production accountant for the office,” exclaimed Tsai who prepped for his role like any method actor would: watching repeated viewings of “Karate Kid” in his trailer.

“Playa,” which screened at Toronto, was shot in 20 days for a cost that was on par “to the craft services budget of the other ping pong comedy that didn’t do so well last year,” according to producer Anne Clements.