(piano music)
- My name is Jason Lee.
I was born in Queens, New York, and we moved a lot.
Basically, we started in Flushing, Queens.
And then when I was around, I think, six years old,
around kindergarten, all of a sudden from the city,
we were in the nice suburbs of New Jersey,
in actually a very wealthy town.
It was a big switch and it was predominantly
a white neighborhood until I got to middle/high school.
My parents ran into problems and they separated,
and our family kind of got split.
My freshman year of high school in New York state,
in a totally different school,
different neighborhood, mostly black and Hispanic.
My brother went off to live with my grandparents and uncle
in long island and I was just living with my mom,
in our one bedroom apartment.
There was that quick change.
So throughout high school,
I struggled with self image and self-esteem.
I didn't have confidence with girls.
And I remember, I went to the prom with my friend
and she was always like, let's dance,
come on, let's dance.
And I hated dancing because I didn't have any rhythm,
so I stepped on her feet while we were slow dancing.
And you know, my black and Hispanic friends were like,
"Yo, Jason, you just don't have it.
Like, you weren't born with it".
So I always believed in my mind that it was a genetic thing,
it was innate, I was born without rhythm,
I'm not going to have rhythm.
But, it wasn't until one day in college,
where I actually saw Oprah Winfrey,
a show where they had a choreographer teaching
basic steps for the party.
And he was teaching people how to nod
and shake their shoulders.
And I remember trying to do it and I was really off rhythm,
but I kept practicing this nod and these basic steps
for months behind closed doors, till one day I got rhythm.
I don't know how, but I was doing the two-step, right?
And I was feeling that, that soul.
I remember calling up my friends.
I was like, "Let's go to the bar, let's go out dancing".
My friends was like,
"What? You don't, you hate dancing, you don't like dancing."
I said, let's go.
So, I went and I went into the corner by myself
and I was doing the same two-party steps, all night long.
And my friends were looking over at me like,
"What? this guy's crazy. He's losing his mind".
And from that point on, I fell in love with the dancing.
I'm close with a lot of people, in different ways.
I'm close with my family, I love them very much.
But in one way, I feel right now, being in Korea,
the most meaning, like sentimentally,
I'm the closest with my grandmother.
She's my hero because she was the one that
brought my two aunts, my uncle and my mother, four kids,
a husband and her from Korea over to New York City,
in search of that American dream.
And what I heard was that,
most people in Korea at the time were saying, "Don't do it".
But she was that risk taker.
Me coming over to Korea,
realize how much sacrifice my grandmother made.
She passed away before I came here,
that made me really reflect on what she went through,
the hardships my family went through.
So every time I want to say it's hard,
it's like, please, it's nothing compared
to what my grandmother went through.
I mean, I heard six months off the boat in New York,
she became a nurse.
I mean, how does, how do you do that,
with not even knowing the language well?
But I heard she was really smart and studied hard.
That's where my mom gets her toughness from,
because she was the oldest of her siblings,
and she was the General in the house.
My aunts, who were younger, used to console us
and, have to tell my mom, "Hey, take it easy on them.
Everything's about studying, studying, studying".
We were like, "Why"? We just don't understand it".
But, now that I come over here
and learn about this culture in Korea,
everything makes sense.
The way my grandmother was, the way my mom was in my family,
and it just comes full circle,
so I feel really complete.
I wasn't good in school.
I wasn't that stereotypical smart kid.
I was lost.
I was that kid who didn't like studying,
who didn't do well in college.
And I found something, it was dance and it was performing.
At one point, I found out there was break dancing classes
in the Bronx, in Hunts Point.
That led me to finding the street crews
in Time Square, New York City who performed for money.
They usually don't let outsiders come into their crew.
But I asked them, I remember after a show,
if I could get down or show them a little something.
And at the time one of the guys was like,
"Yo, do you wanna rock with us? Do you want to hit with us"?
That's what we called it, we called it hidden.
I was like, "Yeah, of course".
That was kind of my escape
and it was also my breeding grounds for learning how to
perform, because people were in your face
and they were looking at the Asian guy
and a line of like, five to six black and Hispanic people.
And they're all looking, like waiting for
"What's he gonna do? He's gotta be good. He better be good".
So when it was my turn to come out,
I may not have been as good as them,
but I had to overcompensate by using my character,
by smiling and humor.
And that was where I learned to really perform and come out.
And that's when I started gaining confidence,
then that led to me auditioning.
Just the thought of, "Hey, maybe I can book something.
How lovely would it be if I was on a music video
or a TV commercial"?
And next thing I know, I was traveling internationally,
dancing behind artists.
And I remember one of my first shows, my friend was like,
"You want to go to Venezuela and dance for this artist"?
And I was like, "Yeah, definitely I'm down",
and we went and we traveled for this artist
and it was just like, I don't know, 60,000 seat stadium.
I remember being like, "I can't do this. This is not right".
But I had to make a decision, I either do it or I don't.
And if I do it, I have to just go full out,
a hundred percent.
I went, I did it, and at that moment I realized,
this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
This is what I'm good at, entertaining.
Because after the show,
I got a little taste of what it was like to be a celebrity,
a little taste of what it was like to be like
Beetles or Michael Jackson,
because people are all essentially, screaming
and they were on their knees begging for kisses and hugs.
And a guy was like,
"Please, can I have your towel, your towel"?
And I was like, this is so out of this world.
And from that point on, I made a decision to be a performer.
And then I had all this self-confidence
and I was proud of who I am.
I was proud of who I was and everything changed from there.
I wasn't the best son in terms of having a job
and having my life straight.
I kind of felt like a failure in my family's eyes,
because I wasn't the successful doctor and lawyer.
But it wasn't until I started making money and being on TV,
whether it was like a commercials or shows.
I remember one of the Thanksgivings or Christmases,
my cousins noticed me and they're like,
"Oh, Jason, we saw you on this".
And then all of a sudden,
my family was looking at me different, you know?
But I mean, I wasn't rich or anything.
I was making a little more money now, at the time
and able to support myself.
I booked a national ad for Intel and it ended up being in
New York City, on a large billboard.
I forgot how I heard,
I heard it through the grapevine, through my family,
that my uncle who lived in long island,
took my grandparents and family and drove over to see it.
So, when I heard that,
that really made me feel good about what I was doing
because I was always wondering if they really,
if my family really accepted or believed in me,
but to know that they drove all the way out from Long Island
to the city, to look at my billboard was a great moment,
I guess, in my career.
I remember when I was auditioning,
there was not a lot of Asian dancers in the scene.
So when I went out for casting notices,
I had to crash a lot of auditions and castings,
because they were always
looking for black, Hispanic and white.
Asians were never in the category of wanting dancers.
So, I would have to always go into those
and see if they will give me a shot.
Now it's like a stereotype.
Like if you're Asian, they're like,
"Oh, now you're either dance or, right"?
But back then, it was totally not like that.
When I was in the industry, the way I saw it was like, wow,
this is like a license and a legal way of being racist.
That's how I saw the entertainment industry.
I didn't really get caught up on that,
I just tried to go and go to auditions where I was not asked
to, and prove that, "Hey, as an Asian, watch me look at me.
I could kill it, just as much as this guy next to me".
What it means to be Korean American, in my eyes,
is to have the best of both worlds.
I know there are Korean Americans struggling with identity,
here and in America, because a lot of people will say,
"Ah, I'm not Korean enough in Korea,
but I'm not American enough in America".
But, I always try to flip that in my mind and say,
I got the best of both worlds.
So it's just,
I'm always trying to trick myself into believing,
flipping things into a different positive light, in saying,
"Hey, I got a two for one special".
Everything I've gone through,
being able to overcome obstacles, was a result of my history
of being Korean and of being American.
I got that New York City hustle fighter mentality,
that dirty, gritty mentality.
Then I got my grandmother and my family's gritty,
dirty hustle mentality of being Korean, that hard worker,
the one that has to represent for your family.
To me, Korean Americans,
is having that meaning, is to have the best of both worlds.
My name is Jason Lee, and this is my Korean American story.