Cracking the Fortune Cookie
Chinese? Probably not, according to Derek Shimoda's first feature length documentary.
In 2005, Derek Shimoda was watching the news when a story about lotto fraud caught his attention. Over 100 people came up winners at the March 30 Powerball lottery drawing - just too many to be a coincidence. At the center of the controversy was the fortune cookie.
The curvy, crunchy after-dinner snack actually yielded winning lotto numbers.
"That put a bug in my ear," said Shimoda, a 39-year-old filmmaker and researcher who has worked on documentary series for cable television networks like "National Geographic" and "A&E."
Everyone knows the sliver of paper tucked inside each cookie espouses predictions general enough to cover all of North America, but what do we really know about the fortune cookie?
Shimoda's mother had always said Los Angeles' Little Tokyo was the birthplace of the fortune cookie. But he, like everyone else, thought the cookie was Chinese. After all, they are given out at every Chinese restaurant from here to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
Shimoda decided to dissect the cookie's contentious history in the fun documentary "The Killing of a Chinese Cookie," which took the Los Angeles native from San Francisco to Japan.
"I didn't think I would go to Japan. If anything I thought I would go to China."
Chinese or Japanese?
"The fortune cookie is an icon," said Shimoda.
In America, the fortune has permeated every part of popular culture. In China, however, if a piece of paper were found inside a cookie there would be an uprising and rabid complaints to the Chinese equivalent of the U.S. Health Department, according to one "Chinese Cookie" interviewee.
If there were a hall of fame for universally palatable Asian foods, the cookie - along with neon glowing orange chicken - would be legends. But with legendary icons come epic lore and individual claims of ownership.
A slate of U.S. companies and families have staked claim on the creation of the famed cookie including San Francisco's Golden Gate Park's Japanese Tea Garden, Los Angeles' Fugetsu-Do and Hong Kong Noodle Company, which has physical evidence - an old unopened can of the cookies.
A court trial was even fought out in San Francisco's mock Court of Historical Review in 1983 where Los Angeles took on San Francisco and lost a bitter battle to call itself the birthplace of the fortune cookie.
Brian Kito, owner of the Fugetsu-Do confectionary shop, had an epiphany about his family's role in the making of the fortune cookie after watching an episode of "Ripley's Believe It Or Not," which explained that the fortune cookie may have Japanese American ancestry. Kito is part of three generations of confectioners who maintain that the fortune cookie was hewed out of their hands.
"He feels adamant about it," said Shimoda about Kito. "He was the only one advertising the claim by putting the mold in the storefront."
For "Chinese Cookie," Shimoda assembles an impressive cast of characters to wax philosophical about the cookie. But it wasn't an easy feat - many of the claiming families gave up their attempts for boasting rights. Many thought since there would be no financial gain, why ruffle any feathers?
And some of these characters are really characters, including the white lawyer from the mock trial who dressed up in a traditional Chinese outfit for his interview.
"There are certain interviewees where you clinch your teeth and go, 'am I getting this?'" said Shimoda.
Too Much Success Too Soon
At first Shimoda, a Shin Nisei, doubted that a cookie would - pardon the pun - have enough meat for a feature length documentary, but the people he met along the way carried the film.
"I didn't want to do a feature-length history lesson," he said.
Production began in 2006 with funding from Shimoda's pockets and post-production financial help from Cherry Sky Films.
Shimoda always wanted to do something creative. He went to film school at San Francisco State and completed all of the requirements for a degree, but just never really officially applied for the certificate.
"I think I was itching to get out of there."
Perhaps the itch came from success. Before film school, Shimoda went to community college in Los Angeles where he met Mike Sakamoto. They talked about independent filmmaking and decided to make a short documentary about one-man band genius Arthur Nakane, a street performer often seen at Los Angeles' Santa Monica Pier playing three musical instruments at once.
"Secret Asian Man" was Shimoda's first foray into filmmaking. In 2000, the film made it into Sundance.
"We felt like we cheated the system," said Shimoda with a laugh. "Here were all these seasoned filmmakers, and here we were - newbies."
But too much success too soon may have proved difficult to swallow.
"Mike pulls me aside one day and says I have something to tell you and now that some time has past maybe you'll forgive me for it."
The news is funny ... now.
After Sundance, several big Hollywood studios were interested in meeting with the filmmakers. Mike, completely overwhelmed, never called them back.
"I could've killed him, but I've forgiven him. I mean we went to Sundance, got an interested call, but never called back. It's like the whole point of Sundance."
In the grand scheme of things, it worked out.
"Chinese Cookie" is fun and irreverent as it navigates into other traditions of the cookie like adding "in bed" after reading your fortune out loud.
Still, Shimoda often wonders what would've happened if they had called the studios back after Sundance.
But that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
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