COMP CLOSED: ‘The Whitewash’ by Siang Lu

This week’s giveaway book is Australian author Siang Lu's searing debut The Whitewash – a black comedy about the whitewashing of the Asian film industry, told in the form of an oral documentary. Here’s a quick synopsis of his book:

It sounded like a good idea at the time. A Hollywood spy thriller, starring, for the first time in history, an Asian male lead. With an estimated $350 million production budget and up-and-coming Hong Kong actor JK Jr (who, let's be honest, is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but probably the hottest), Brood Empire was basically a sure thing. Until it wasn't.

So how did it all fall apart? There were smart guys involved. So smart, so woke. So woke it hurts. There was top notch talent across the board and the financial backing of a heavyweight Chinese studio. And yet, Brood Empire is remembered now not as a historical landmark of Asian representation that smashed the bamboo ceiling in Hollywood, but rather as a fiasco of seismic proportions.

‘The Whitewash’ is the definitive oral history of the whole sordid mess. Unofficial. Unasked for. Only intermittently fact-checked, and featuring a fool's gallery of actors, producers, directors, film historians and scummy click-bait journalists, to answer the question of how it all went so horribly, horribly wrong.

We have THREE copies to be won. To be in the running, simply tell us what name YOU would give to your own Hollywood movie studio (e.g. Flop Pictures or 20th Century Frocks etc). Our three favourite names will win a copy of this book!

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Entries close midday Monday 31 October 2022, Sydney/Melbourne time.

GOOD LUCK!