Q&A with Jeffrey Lei, director of Dick Ho: Asian Male Porn Star, a documentary about the mysteries surrounding the legendary 70s porn star, Dick Ho.

Disorient: For the movie, why did you choose to focus on porn? Isn't the stereotype of an asexual Asian male prevalent in a lot more than just porn? What do you think about American cinema in general with that stereotype?

Jeffrey Lei: Well, I didn't specifically choose porn to be the subject matter. It just came with the concept that is Dick Ho: Asian Male Porn Star, which happens to address Asian male asexuality and the overall absence of Asian men in mainstream porn. What were you asking about cinema in general?

D: Do you think there's a problem with American cinema in general with perpetuating this stereotype?

JL: Well, yeah. I just notice there's a lot of Asian male angst going on. Overall, just the general representation of Asians in films isn't really there. When a male is present, there's no real sexual identity. They're not portrayed in that way other than, you know, martial arts... Well, right now there are a lot of gangster images to represent masculinity. For instance when you watch Hong Kong action stars and they're paired up with white females and in some cases when their relationships are obviously sexual, you can see they try to avoid any romantic kissing or any kind of sexual representation. I guess there are some exceptions though.

D: If someone misses the message of what you're trying to accomplish by making this documentary, have you failed that person? Do you feel like your goal is to get some sort of message across, and if you don't, have you failed?

JL: No. My main reason for making Dick Ho was just to have people see it and judge it for themselves. The message is there, but the main goal is to have audiences see it and be informed about him.

D: Are you afraid the content of the movie will make less people see it?

JL: Yeah. I think the content is very risqué. I don't have much knowledge or experience of people not wanting to see it. I think my experience mostly has been that some festivals will not take it because of the content.

D: Why did you choose to spend the majority of the time in the movie on interviewing the actresses? Was there any sort of meaning behind that?

JL: That wasn't really a choice in the end. I guess I had adequate but not a lot of footage of Dick Ho. So it turned out to be more interviews. I guess it turned out that the porn stars were telling his story. That's why there are a lot of the testimonials in there. It's almost a development of his story. Where is he now and what was it like to work with him...so that's why there's a lot of [interviews].

D: How long did the movie's development process take?

JL: It took approximately two years because I think that I found out that shooting a documentary takes a while. And I had a lot of other things going on, time tracking down the porn stars, hiatus between interviews. So, about two years.

D: Wow. Was it hard to get the porn stars to do the movie? Just tracking them down...were they pretty happy to do it? Were they enthusiastic?

JL: They were pretty enthusiastic about doing this. A lot of times I got through by tracking down their e-mails, and actually, I had an ex-girlfriend who knew Annie Sprinkle, one of the porn stars. But eventually I tracked her down myself, and I went to their Web sites, the ones that have contact info on the Internet. The Internet helped a lot in finding them.

D: A lot of the research for the movie was done online?

JL: Mostly contacting the porn stars. Communicating to them about what I'm doing... the whole project of Dick Ho. They were really into it.

D: Did you think about choosing race in choosing the porn stars to interview? It seems like the message, or just that there's sort of a racial aspect to the movie. They talk about how there are not really Asian males in porn in a lot of the interviews, and so did you think about getting a racial spread with the porn stars or was just whoever you could get a hold of?

JL: Oh yeah. That was the plan. I wanted a broad spectrum of different ethnicities. I think it was important to get the views of what they think of Asian male sexuality, and what it would be like to work with an Asian male porn star like Dick Ho... and also address the issue that he was just pretty big despite his race.

In the beginning, there were specific porn stars I already had in mind that I wanted to get and who happened to be white because that was the mainstream in adult cinema back then.

D: Are most of the women in the industry also white?

JL: Yeah, that's what it seems. Back in the 70s, more, if you watch the documentary, there were a few Asian females and African American males, but I don't really follow contemporary porn. It just seems like mainstream entertainment, it is predominantly white. But, of course, I still don't see Asian males in mainstream porn when I look into it.

D: Is your purpose behind the movie to have an impact on the movie industry itself?

JL: No, that wasn't really my intention when I made Dick Ho. It was just a statement. I want the concept of Dick Ho to be out there and I guess in a way it's a sort of a protest: wanting the industry to change. Not specifically the porn industry. There weren't really any intentions of them changing their casting or anything like that.

D: It's just more of an observation?

JL: Yeah, right. It's just more of an educational thing. You know, just to let people know that there aren't any Asian males in the industry and I thought that would be a good way to address asexual images of us.

D: In the end of the movie you say there's a Dick Ho in all of us. Do you want to expand on that, or just leave it at that and let people decide for themselves what that means?

JL: I just thought that was a very dramatic phrase. I thought it'd be a good closure to the documentary. It's over-the-top and meant to be satirical. It adds to the tone of the film. I guess I wanted to also address that, well... I wanted people to relate that maybe Dick Ho kind of represents not just Asian men, but also anybody who feels asexualized or un-masculine.