One of the most surprising performances that came out of the Toronto International Film Festival was Jimmy Tsai's C-Dub in Jessica Yu's Ping Pong Playa'. It was not a stunning or eye-opening look into a dramatic character, but rather a simple account of a guy who loves basketball, but begrudgingly enters the world of ping pong to help out his parents. Tsai is completely at ease on-screen, and seems more like an old, comedic pro than a fresh face who's used to crunching numbers rather than starring in a feature film. Cinematical was lucky enough to have a quick chat with the actor during TIFF about the project, his background, and what's coming down the pike.

Cinematical: How are you enjoying the fest so far?

Jimmy Tsai: It's good, it's good. I mean, I've only got the chance to watch one other film --Juno, the Jason Reitman film. It's really good. Just that one because everything leading up to our screening is just, you know, taking care of little details. But otherwise, it's really cool. I enjoy the vibe here. I heard about people who would literally take off a week, and just come here and watch movies. I was like oh, wow that's pretty cool, people actually do this? And then, when I was waiting in the ticket line, you know, for Juno, the guy sitting next to me was one of those guys. He was watching 3-4 movies every single day for the entire festival. That's like 34 movies in a row ... That's pretty amazing. It's very cool. Cool vibe.
Cinematical: You've been a PA, producer, director, and you've made your own short. How did you get involved with this project?

JT: So, the way the project came about ... I'd done these series of spots for this website that I did with some friends of mine. They were commercial spots for this clothing company that we had come up with, featuring this character we sort of created. That was the first thing. The second thing was our producer, Joan Huang from Cherry Sky Films. She wanted to do a ping pong movie, and said there hadn't been a ping pong movie done in a long time. I mean, there was one from Japan, but it wasn't really that funny. Anyhow, she's like yeah, this would be a really funny topic to do a movie on. And the third thing is that we had actually helped Jessica finish her movie In the Realms of the Unreal. We had such a great time working with her that we had to find something to work on with her. Jessica and Joan were having a conversation, I think at one of the festivals, and Joan mentioned the ping pong idea. Jessica had seen the sports the ads for Venom Sportswear, and she's like why don't we use C-Dub as the central character in this ping pong movie? So it was sort of those three things that formed the genesis of the movie.

Jessica and I wrote the script together, and from the business side I was talking to Joan about, you know, the producing aspect of it. We talked about maybe trying to find an actor who at least has a little bit of a recognizable name. There aren't that many, you know, huge Asian American actors out there that can command a big box office. We thought maybe we should find someone that's at least recognized, but then Jessica had sort of assumed that I was going to do it. You know, I can understand it from both angles. So I was like, you guys just have a conversation and let me know how it turns out, because either way, I am totally 120%. You want to find someone else to do it, I have absolutely no hard feelings whatsoever. But if you want me, I'm there 120% as well. That's how I got involved in the acting.

Cinematical: How did you get into the business?

JT: Oh... I've been like making little videos for school projects and stuff ever since middle school, and all through high school. Whenever we had a chance to do anything like a book report or a project where you were allowed to use multimedia, we were like: "Ohhh, let's do a short film" I'm originally from Houston, Texas, and I knew I wanted to come out to California to get into the movie industry. I came out to California, and did stuff in college. I actually interned down in LA. I went to Berkeley, but I came down every summer to work for a production company in LA, and as soon as I graduated, I just hopped right into the industry

Cinematical: Since this is your first acting gig – how did you approach the role and what was the experience like?

JT: Well, the way that it initially came up was that when I was doing the initial spots, Joan was actually a producer on that too. We had always talked about not just finding a person for the shorts, but that I wanted to actually work with someone that I could use in future projects -- kind of like how Scorsese had DeNiro or John Woo had Chow Yun Fat. You know, that kind of thing. I mean, not to say that I'm anywhere close to being in the stratosphere of them.

We were like okay, if we don't find that guy, the back up plan was always for me to go and do it. And so there were like two or three guys that we looked at, and we couldn't all agree on the lead guy, so I said screw it, I'll just do it myself. It actually turned out a lot better because it was more efficient. I didn't have to explain what I wanted to someone else, and we were dealing with little kids. So, obviously, they have short attention spans and it's easier for me to interact with them. And that character, I guess, is sort of a certain aspect of my personality.

Cinematical: What aspect?

JT: The ultra-competitive. You know, into basketball, hip hop, and stuff like that.

Cinematical: Do you challenge little kids on the basketball court often?

JT: Not really. Well, it wasn't actually on a basketball court, but I'll tell you the story about how that came about. I was with some of my friends in Vegas. They have a bunch of arcades for kids and stuff, and I was playing on one of those hoop shots games that they have side by side so you can play against another person. I was just playing by myself at first, and this kid, he couldn't have been more than 12 or 13 years old, and his little brother, who was like 8 or 9, came up. He was like, "Can I play you?" And I was like, "Alright, sure!" I played him one game, and I totally took him to school. I destroyed him, pretty much. And then he was like, "Let's play again! Let's play again! I'll pay for it!" And his little brother was like, "Yeah! You can take him! You can take him!" And I said, "Alright, if you pay for it!" And I just proceeded to destroy him again. I mean, it wasn't mean-spirited or anything. They were obviously having fun, and I was having fun too. It was that kind of thing that sort of inspired the initial character.

Cinematical: But no gambling ring?

JT: No, no gambling ring. That's strictly fictional.

Cinematical: I was at the premiere, and I remember you mentioning that you hadn't played ping pong a lot. What was it like to learn how to play?

JT: The wonderful thing about ping pong, that was really fun to discover, is that everyone has usually played ping pong at one point or another in their lives -- either when you're a small kid and your parents have a ping pong table, or a lot of people have that college experience where it's in the dorms or wherever. So, I had the child experience. I think it was when I was in fifth grade, there was one whole year where a friend of mine came over to our house after school because his parents worked late. We always had like two hours after every school day, and for a whole year, all we did was play ping pong.

I hadn't played ping pong since then, up until we were getting ready for the movie. Then, since we knew that I was going to portray this character, we found our ping pong consultants and coaches. One of them is actually an Olympic hall of famer, Wei Wang. She and her husband, Diego Schaaf, were going to be our consultants, and also teach us ping pong. I basically trained with them for 6 months straight. For that 6-month period, at the very minimum, I would play one hour of ping pong every day. I played anywhere from one hour to sometimes 6 or 7 hours every day. We had a ball robot in our garage. Um, it's in the movie -- that little thing that shoots balls out. That was in the garage, so I could practice really early in the morning, or really late at night, and yeah, it was just like non-stop ping pong.

Cinematical: Did you enjoy it?

JT: Oh yeah, absolutely! The thing is too, ping pong, just looking at it, it seems like such a simple sport. You just stand there and hit a ball. But if you get into the competitive arena of ping pong, there's a lot of stuff that will get you tired really fast. One example: people, when they're playing recreationally, they just stand there. If you're really into ping pong, you've got to get down -- hunch down. It really takes a lot of energy and stamina, so it was a really good workout. During that training period, I lost like 10-12 pounds and went back to my college weight, which I never thought I'd be able to do ever again. After graduating, I gained 12-15 pounds and even with dieting and exercise, I could never get back to that college weight. But that training got me to a weight I hadn't seen in 6-7 years. So, it was cool!

Cinematical: You've played ping pong; you've co-written and starred a feature. Do you have anything else on the docket?

JT: I have a couple different scripts that I've written, that I hope to do something with in the very near future. And hopefully we'll work with Jessica again on a few different projects. I can't say too much about [the scripts] right now. I just don't want to be the person who says: "Oh, I've got this and this and this goin' on," but nothing ever happens. I prefer my actions to speak louder than my words. I'm into more comedy, obviously, but also more action-oriented kind of movies, but we'll see what happens with that.

I definitely want to do more creative stuff behind the scenes, as opposed to necessarily acting. I mean, I'm not going to be stupid about it. If a really good opportunity comes along the way, then you know, I'll definitely consider it strongly.

Cinematical: And right now? What happens after you leave Toronto?

JT: Let me think... We were literally finishing the movie up to the last minute, so we haven't lined up other festivals yet. But I'll go back to doing some accounting. I work for the production company that produced the film [Cherry Sky Films]. Actually, I still have to... You reminded me -- as soon as I get back I have to... We're in post on this other production that I'm producing. It's a documentary about the fortune cookie.

Cinematical: Interesting...

JT: Yeah, it's a very interesting story. There's this whole history behind the fortune cookie that no one really knows about. Ask anyone in North America where the fortune cookie comes from, and they'll invariably say: China. But the fortune cookie is actually an American invention. You can trace the origins back to Japan, but there's all these questions about whether it's Japanese-American, or Chinese-American invention... Whether it started in Los Angeles or San Francisco... There's all these interesting things about the fortune cookie, and all this pop culture.

Our company is also producing another film by one of the writers of Buckle Up Tomorrow, and that's going to be a feature that's going out, so I'm kind of juggling a lot of different things.