Season 2, Ep. 2: Kelly Loves Tony
In Episode 2 of our season of love, we revisit the 1998 documentary Kelly Loves Tony by Spencer Nakasako. Kelly and Tony, whose families are lu Mien refugees from Laos, live in Oakland, CA, and they've just graduated from high school. She's a good girl (straight A student), he's a bad boy (he used to be in a gang), they're in love, and they have a baby on the way. Kelly Loves Tony was made through a video workshop Nakasako used to run at a development center, where he'd teach youth how to film video diaries about their lives and then edit the footage together into a documentary. This is the 90's, so it predates modern smart phone culture where everyone knows how to take a selfie and perform for the camera. As a result, it's a really raw account of a real-life, opposites-attract love story that is complicated by threats of deportation, immigrant family pressures, and youthful dreams. Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.