Al Leong, aka the False Yaphet Kotto

IN THE DAYS BEFORE the Internet Movie Database and Wikipedia, when "Internet" was somewhere that Ted Kennedy whacked tennis balls while drunk, it took more legwork for a movie fan to trace the career of his or her favorite actors. This was especially true for character actors. True, you might remember a person's face from one film or TV show to the next, but picking his or her name out of the credits, especially when that character merely appeared as "Guard" or "Henchman," was difficult without some fast taping and freeze-framing. (Did I mention we also lacked TiVo? Oh, the indignity.)

My friends and I reached adolescence in the 1980s, the Golden Age of the Action Film. We spent our nights playing Dungeons & Dragons or a host of other roleplaying games, and our audiovisual backdrop for this mayhem was a festival of endlessly rerun bullet operas on HBO, TNT, and the USA Network. By this method did we memorize such epics as Aliens, Lethal Weapon, and Big Trouble in Little China, as well as dozens of B-grade offerings at the unlikely hands (and sometimes feet) of the era's gun-wielding, roundhouse-kicking steroid abusers.

Casting agents for these films invariably turned to a regular cadre of action-film utility players for stuntwork and bit parts that usually ended in on-screen death. Working both ends of this equation was Al Leong. If your movie-watching history matches mine, you know of whom I speak. Asian gent, bald crown, long fringe of hair, bushy handlebar mustache. His characters were dynamic and generally doomed. You saw him electrocute Mel Gibson, watched him lead a gang of Tongs into battle, and laughed as he snarfed a candy bar amid the burglary in Die Hard.

My friends and I naturally picked up on the fact that Leong was typecast. We never actually got his name, though. For a while, he was "that guy from [insert film here]." Somehow, one of us — possibly me — got it into his head that this actor's name was Yaphet Kotto.

Now, we had seen Yaphet Kotto in a few things as well. He was an ill-fated crewmember of the Nostromo in Alien. He challenged Britain's greatest secret agent in Live and Let Die. And he was the FBI nemesis of bounty hunter Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run. Somehow, like a virus jumping species, Al Leong became, in name, Yaphet Kotto. It sounded exotic, had great "mouthfeel," and gave our geeky teenage minds a feeling of smug insider knowledge.

To be clear: This is Al Leong.


And this is Yaphet Kotto.


Why yes, my friends and I function quite well for Mongoloids.

It wasn't until the release of the aforementioned Midnight Run in 1988 that we learned our mistake. Whoever that nimble Asian mook who died in every film was, he wasn't named Yaphet Kotto.

With no swift or convenient way to find out his true name, said actor was dubbed "the false Yaphet Kotto."

People, we called him this for the better part of the next decade. Even after we saw him in more films, even when we could have stayed during the credits to settle, finally, the mystery of who this diehard from Die Hard really was, whenever we saw him, my friends and I would squeal with delight and say, "It's the false Yaphet Kotto!"

It wasn't until the Internet had wormed its way into every home that the resources finally sank to our level of laziness, and one of us learned that this guy was actually named Al Leong. I'd like to think that, on the other side of the country, Al felt a shiver of relief go through him, temporarily displacing the aches and pains from a hundred hyperkinetic stunts and a thousand explosive squibs detonating across his career and anatomy.

Then Steven Seagal probably broke his neck.

Motherfuckin' Snakes on a Motherfuckin' Plane

YOU WANT TO HAVE yourself some real fun? You miss the days when film distributors would shamelessly book grade-Z films for drive-ins and third-string suburban screens so kids could go and have a blast with an R-rated exploitation fest? Go out and see Snakes on a Plane before it slithers out of the theaters.

I just got back from a showing at my town cinema with the gang, including the new girlfriend of one of them, whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time tonight. The movie theater itself was a subdivision of a sector of a slice of what was once a single-screen house. This lent the room an intimacy that accentuated the feeling of this all being an in-joke, a flick that, though made with some gravitas as a horror film, was swiftly overtaken by the pop-culture hype that grew up around it.

I needn't rehash that whole saga. I will merely say that the film pulls in the standard set pieces of both horror and disaster movies, and delivers exactly what it promises: crazed, kill-happy snakes on a plane. Innocents will die, as will unrepentant assholes. And through it all, with constant cool and growing exasperation, Samuel L. Jackson will walk the path of the righteous man.

My throat was sore from laughing my ass off, sometimes at it, sometimes with it. With shitty movies arriving by the shovel-load every week from the Hollywood crap factory, I am an infrequent moviegoer. But this I had to see in the theater, along with fellow lunatics, in the midst of a crowd that was in on the joke. At least some of the younger folks there were of a like mind. The forked tongue of this film was, much of the time, in cheek.

So if you know a bunch of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans, get them drunk, make your way out to that little theater where you'd never dream of seeing the $150 million special-effect lightshows, shut off your brain's disbelief centers, and see this batshit-zany film.

Why It Is Wise to Ask for a Second Take

SAY YOU'RE A FILMMAKER.

A director. A screenwriter. Even a bit of a technology nut.

You released a film in the 70s. Piece of science fiction film. Inspired by old serials and obscuro Kurosawa.

Scorned by the critics. Reviled by hard-sf authors.

Viewed by tens of millions.

In this film is a character.

Faceless. Clad in black. A master of mystic powers. An unmatched pilot.

His name became shorthand for ultimate evil.

And in the first sequel, you shocked the world by making him the father of the films' protagonist.

Even when you had his son help gain this character's redemption in the third (and technically final) film, it didn't detract from the growing popularity and fascination a generation of filmgoers would have with this enduring screen villain.

Say you have returned to this series after a long absence from the craft.

You are rich beyond the dreams of all of your student-film days, and you want to complete this saga by telling the story of how this villain was once a hero, and how he became evil.

Nobody has said "no" to you for a very long time, and your early efforts in this regard show it.

Your dialogue in the first and second new films is wooden, and your direction invests it with no new life.

You elect to introduce this enduring villain as a child, to show his pure beginnings. All the fans see is an irritating kid reading terrible lines from a rusty filmmaker in need of a script doctor.

But the fans return for the second film.

The eventual villain is a young adult.

Your characterization is not subtle.

He is loud when he should be menacing . . . whiny when he should be manipulative . . . creepy when he should be seductive.

Both the actor and, yes, your dialogue are to blame.

But the fans return for the final film.

Because this film will feature the turn to evil.

This film will show him turn against his friends, his lover, and his teachings.

This film will show The Duel.

He will enter this film a man, and leave it a scarred, cybernetic monster.

You're under juuuust a little pressure.

You have this one last chance to depict how a defender of peace and justice, a loving husband, and a devoted friend becomes the agent of a despot's rule . . . the destroyer of a democratic order . . . and the betrayer of of his fellow warriors.

You almost succeed.

Everyone went into this film wanting to see the moment when this man disappeared into forbidding black armor and robes, from which he would not emerge until just before his death.

Everyone wanted to hear, for the first time since 1983, the deep, resonant rasp of his voice, echoing through that nightmarish mask.

So given all of this, when it comes time for you to record his moment of ultimate despair and regret at the evil he has embraced, wouldn't you ask for just one more take if all you had to work with was this?

"Henry Says, 'Don't Let the Sauce Stick!'"

I have accomplished the unthinkable. I used to believe I could only make tomato sauce on a weekend, when I had the broad scope of an empty, work-free day in which to tinker and toil and fry and boil.

I have proven this this theory to be false. At 6:53 p.m. earlier tonight, I began opening cans of crushed tomatoes while, on my TV, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci drove along an upstate New York highway with a somewhat-less-than-dead Frank Vincent in the trunk. By 9:20, the film was over, the sauce was simmering — strained and filled with beef, pork, and meatballs — and Al Michaels and John Madden were introducing the lineup for the Denver Broncos.

I had purchased meat from Whole Foods this Saturday, with the thought of making my mighty sauce (as fantasized about here) on Sunday. A few factors conspired against me. First, the Jets game was a 1:00 affair, which was a prime opportunity for me to crank out some time on the aerobics machines at the gym while watching whatever befell to our hapless boys in green. Second, I stayed up way too late on Saturday night — mostly reading on the damn Internet — which led me to wake up later than I would have liked. And I had my usual dinner plans at my parents' house that night, which was going to be combined with doing laundry there . . . so it was in my interest to get there a little early. Checking the Jets' schedule might have served me well. But this is my sauce we're talking about here!! I haven't settled down with a meaty dish of pasta or chicken parmigiana or a meatball hero for a couple of months! No way in hell am I using that jarred shit when I can conjure gallons of scarlet goodness with just a few hours' effort!

By the time I stepped off the train tonight, the only question in my mind was which movie to pop in while I cast my spell.

This turned out to be Goodfellas. I had initially slotted The Godfather Part II, but for some reason my VCR is not cooperating with my TV. This may be a sign to me from the electronics gods to upgrade my Godfather trilogy to disc. Maybe at the next paycheck. I am in no rush; this batch of sauce will last a while. So in the interest of speed, I started the film that SHOULD HAVE SWEPT the Academy Awards for 1990 instead of that Dances With Wolves fuckery, grabbed six cans of tomatoes, and began crackin' em open.

I tend to get the Tuttorosso blue-label 2-pound cans of whole peeled plum tomatoes for my sauce. But the company recently scrambled the colors of their labels, so now the blue label is for crushed tomatoes in thick puree. As long as they didn't crush the seeds into the mix, I figured, I would be fine. My mother once tried to puree the tomatoes after she had let them simmer down instead of straining them, and the seeds got chopped up in the mix and turned it pink. Ugh. Needless to say, this experiment was not repeated.

Fortunately, the puree in the cans featured intact seeds, so I wouldn't be making a suspiciously strawberry-like sauce. In fact, this turned out to be a bonus. Normally, I let the plum tomatoes break down over the course of 90 minutes, then strain them. In this case, 30 minutes to warm them up was all I needed. Once they'd boiled down a bit, I strained them in record time with a fraction of the mess in the form of seeds and pulp. So I was ahead of the game.

One surprising setback came when I broke out the meat. I had purchased two center-cut pork chops, a hunk of London broil beef, and two 1-pound flats of ground beef for meatballs. When I pulled one of these flats out, it was brown! What the hell? They were both in date, and from Whole Foods no less, which I associate with a finer class of meat. Even when I cut into it, it was brown inside as well. In retrospect, I feel fortunate that the meat tilted its hand so early, so to speak. Whatever turned it so swiftly might have been strong enough to survive the relentless frying and boiling to which I subjected the rest of the meat . . . and I have a less-than-illustrious history of food poisoning whose details I shall spare you for now. The other flat was fine, so I diced up the pork and beef, got it browning in some spices and olive oil, and made meatballs with the single pound of ground beef. I did managed to get a good 20 or so out of the package, which with the other meat looked like it would be plenty.

I have to say, I am impressed with the result. I just took some time to ladle out the sauce. Deep red, smooth but thick, with lovely chunks of meat that have spent 90 minutes releasing their essence into the sauce. I got 11 pints out of this batch, which should hold me for a good while. I am waaaay past my bedtime, though, so work tomorrow is going to be something of a death march, Still, considering what I will come home to by way of dinner, it will be worth it. Definitely beats the hell out of the ketchup and egg noodles Henry Hill describes being given at the end of Goodfellas when he asked for spaghetti and marinara sauce in his hick-town witness-relocation exile.

Mamma Mia, Ats'a Spicy Hallway!

As I mentioned, I was at the gym last night. I had eaten a serving of All-Bran before heading over, because I knew I would leave the gym in a ravenous state after an hour of selectively abusing various muscles and joints. Some sources advise exercising on an empty stomach. I agree with this rule for first-thing-in-the-morning gym trips, but I know myself: If I returned to the apartment starving, there was a greater chance I would eat crap like a PB&J instead of just the protein/fruit shake I usually chug after lifting.

This proved to be a wise idea. Although I was getting growly in the abdominal region by the time I left, it wasn't as severe as if I had eaten nothing. So I drove straight home, avoiding both the pizzerias in town and the Trader Joe's right next door (oh, those spicy tortilla chips), and ascending to the second floor of my building.

All my discipline was undone when I caught a whiff of my hallway. Someone was cooking Italian food. More specifically, someone had clearly spent a fair portion of the day making fresh Italian meat sauce. It filled my nostrils like some sort of scent-based Sicilian embrace. It had just the right tang, too . . . that sassy, broad flavor you can only get when you let some sturdy cut of beef simmer and break down over the course of sweet, slow hours, flaking and yielding its savory punch with each forkful of pasta.

I somehow tore myself away from this maddening embrace and found my apartment. Mixed berries and protein powder were now looking, by comparison, like North Vietnamese prison rations. I was not without hope, though. Two weeks ago, I had bought a dozen 2-pound cans of crushed plum tomatoes on sale, in anticipation of making a new batch of my own tomato sauce. Plans to craft this crimson potion over Labor Day Weekend never manifested. I will now enact them this weekend. There is no other way.

Though I have no Italian blood, I benefit from having ancestors who hailed from the Bronx. My maternal great-grandmother was sufficiently catholic in her culinary worldview to befriend and learn from Italian housewives in her neighborhood. The recipe I follow had its origins nearly a century ago, and what changes in it I have made, I have kept quiet from my mother. (She likes a thinner sauce than I do; I also prefer not to add sweet sausage chunks to the mix.)

I measure the amount of sauce I make by the number of cans of plum tomatoes I use to produce it. I used to make massive amounts, up to 12 cans' worth. I was one cheesy label away from having a home industry. Now, I just use 6 cans, but more tomato paste than my mom does (thus the thicker sauce). I could probably go as low as 4 cans, but 6 strikes a good balance. Not so much sauce that I have to haul most of it over to my parents' basement freezer to store it, but not so little that I feel like I am gearing up the entire process for a stash that's only going to last a few weeks.

And boy, is it a process. Labor Day is actually a perfect day to produce this red gold. On Sunday, I can get over to Whole Foods and buy the meat. My mother uses odds and ends of beef and pork in her sauce, but then removes it to eat separately once the sauce is done. I prefer to use prime meats — center-cut pork chops and sirloin, both cubed and sauteed briefly in olive oil and herbs — that I leave in the sauce for the entire simmer. I also buy a couple of trays of ground beef for the meatballs.

Here's another difference in my philosophy of tomato sauce that differs from my mother's. Her meatballs tend to be considerably larger than mine. I'll use 2 or 3 pounds of ground beef — I don't bother with the ground pork or lamb that some do; I've already got pork chunks in the mix, and the lamb flavor tends to get lost amid the seasonings. What differs between us is I will make a good 45 or so smaller balls, which I find easier to fry such that the insides get done evenly. She prefers to make a smaller number of biggies, which complete their cooking process in the sauce itself over the simmer.

That's just the meat aspect of things. The tomatoes are another ritual. All of the plum tomatoes boil for a good hour to 90 minutes, depending on how many cans, along with the spices and the tomato paste. Unlike the old Italian women who first imparted this wisdom, though, I prefer a smooth sauce, no seeds or skins. So I grind the entire lot through a strainer, ladle by ladle, until all of the pulp is out. This might be another reason why I make only 6 cans' worth of tomatoes; by the end of the process, my right arm is just about numb! My parents do have a food mill, which my mom uses to separate her sauce. Not my preference; it results in a thinner sauce. I like it to be able to cling to pasta and endure baking in parmigiana dishes without separating out.

So you're looking at a good five hours' worth of prep, some of it just simmering time interrupted by stirring to keep the bottom of the pot from burning. How, then, to occupy my time while the zesty maroon treasure bubbles happily away in the kitchen?

Simple. You throw in a Mob movie.

It is an inflexible rule in this house: Thou shalt not make tomato sauce without Mafia media playing on the television.

The Godfather is the natural choice. If I time it right, I am making the meatballs just around the same time Clemenza is demonstrating his sauce-making skills to Michael Corleone. Considering how much the characters of that movie eat, it's wise to have a little something of my own to nosh on so by the film's credits, I'm not frantically faxing the local Italian deli with "one of each" scrawled across their menu.

Another fine selection for an afternoon of sauce brewing is Goodfellas. Again, the characters in that film eat constantly. If you don't at least have a nice ham, salami, and provolone sangwich handy, you're gonna begin gnawing on the curtains even befofe that hunger-stoking closeup of Paul Sorvino contentedly munching sazzeech and peppah like a Sicilian Buddha. (Note to self: Sneak out of work early and go to San Gennaro.)

This time I might shoot for another star in the Mob constellation (what would that be, "Nicky the Butcher?"), something like Donnie Brasco or Casino. That brings up a whole, separate obsession, though . . . Las Vegas. The rush of having a TV screen full of casinos and a kitchen wafting with fresh sauce is enough to make me pass out and imagine I'm attending a summit of various Vegas operators as they carve up the Strip over eggplant parmigiana and grappa.

So here's hoping for a Biblical downpour to keep me shut in this weekend, surrounded by cans of tomatoes and spices and frying meatballs on their fragrant bed of translucent onions, while I craft a mighty flood of my own, this one to welcome me home on lazy evenings to come, when all I need to do is make pasta and simmer that mighty sauce to a sensuous boil.