By Coming to a theater near you, Hines Ward the movie:
Behind every successful man is his mother.
Hines Ward, the Korean-American NFL player for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and his mom, Kim Young-hee, have given the green light to a movie about their life.
Without Kim’s support, few believe Ward would have become the sports star he is today. To earn a living, Kim had to work 16 hours a day working as a grocery clerk and maid.
The film is provisionally called “My Mother.” CY Film said on Monday that the two gave permission for the film to be made last summer. [Joongang Ilbo via Brian in Jeollanam-do]
It will be interesting to see how Hines Ward story is told in this movie because I am wondering if the movie will be filmed to appeal to a Korean audience or an American one? The producer for the movie is James Kang who is the same guy behind the absolutely horrible D-War movie. One thing is for sure there is no way the Hines Ward movie could be any worse then D-War.
By the way Hines Ward and the Pittsburgh Steelers in general are having one heck of a season this year. Hines Ward probably has the hit of the year as well which is unusual since he is a wide receiver, but Ward is well known for being a hard hitting down field blocker.
Check out this hit on Cincinnatti’s Keith Rivers:
Here is a final thought I have about this movie, who will play Hines Ward? Even though he looks nothing like Hines Ward, could Daniel Henney end up getting the role due to his name and face recognition in Korea?
Daniel Henney
Some more good comments about this movie worth checking out over at Brian’s site.
10:36 am on December 21st, 2008 1
It will be very interesting to see how they portray his mom/dad in Korea and his relationship with the mixed orphans he’s visited.
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12:31 pm on December 21st, 2008 2
There’s already a Henney movie called “My Father” although I don’t think it’s biographical.
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2:04 pm on December 21st, 2008 3
Ward’s father is black. I suspect most of the info in the movie about him will be possibly false and mostly negative.
Hell, The Metropolitan is half Korean and look what he’s had to deal with.
It’s funny how Ward only became “Korean” after the Super Bowl was won.
Why wasn’t he a Korean when he was drafted and/or before?
Is he now a “pure blooded” Korean?
The whole thing is a farce on the South Korean side really. I mean what about the other mixed blood Koreans that have to live in Korea everyday? The ones who aren’t stars.
What about them? This whole Hines Ward thing shows how uncool and pathetic the situation is for mixed blood people in Korea.
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5:11 pm on December 21st, 2008 4
Steve,
I first knew about Hines Ward as a half Korean was back in 1998 when he was drafted by Steelers from UGA. There was a Korean documentary (I am not sure about the name of the program.) who filmed Ward’s background. They showed him playing football and they showed him eating KalGukSu and kimchi at his mother’s house. His mother said that he was discriminated from both Black and Korean community in Atlanta as he was growing up. The documantary also showed his mother working menial labor job ever since her divorce from Ward’s father. It was very moving and emotional documentary. Since 1998, I have been following Hines Ward’s NFL career. I am glad to see that a Korean American is going to produce this movie than a Korean producer.
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5:31 pm on December 21st, 2008 5
I have a feeling this won’t reflect well on Americans, who will be shown as racist and discriminatory. No doubt many are and were, but to take that angle and to focus entirely on his mother’s endurance ignores the fact that he would have been abandoned in some market, or put in some orphanage had he stayed in Korea.
In Pittsburgh it was known that he was half-Korean since the time he broke into the league, and it was no big thing. In Korea nobody really cared until he became Super Bowl MVP . . . then, tellingly, he became “Korean.”
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6:03 pm on December 21st, 2008 6
Other mixed race Koreans aren’t stars but they look up to Hines Ward as a hero.
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6:03 pm on December 21st, 2008 7
I wanna documentary about Cho S?ng-h?i.
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11:05 pm on December 21st, 2008 8
I see two references to a “James Kang” as producers in IMDB. I presume the correct person has been identified. As far as the credit or discredit for D-War, the director, Hyung-rae Shim, was perfectly happy to take all that for himself.
The movie’s tentative title of “My Mother” portends either a problem or an opportunity.
If it is meant to compliment the movie, “My Father,” then I see a problem. That movie portrayed almost everyone sympathetically, including the father executed for murder and to some extent, the memory of the grandmother who sent him for adoption. The only protagonists, as far as I could tell, were the racist and abusive GIs he had to work with while he was here in Korea.
However, if it is truly an account from Hines’ mother’s point of view and if the producer, James Kang is a Korean American, and has some creative control, then the movie may have some potential to appeal outside of Korea.
As CPT KIM suggests, I think only a Gyopo could properly tell this story. And, as Ms. Kim is still alive and we know she has spoken out before, she will be able to correct any bias an exploitative aspects of the movie.
Let’s hope there will be more to the story than to reinforce the prevalent Korean theme about the strength of the Korean spirit to persevere against evil foreigners.
While Hines felt racism in school, Ms. Kim’s own comments suggests that she was more stung by ostracism by others in the Korean American community for being a parent of a half African American son. She also spoke out more strongly about why it would have been much worse if she had to raise her son in Korea.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200604/200604060002.html
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11:25 pm on December 21st, 2008 9
correction: protagonists = antagonists
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2:10 am on December 22nd, 2008 10
I bet the movie won’t go into his mom’s real history. She was a bar whore.
And Hines ward is a well known cheep shot expert.
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5:06 pm on December 28th, 2008 11
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