One weekend evening when I was home, I remembered I wanted to see and wound up watching To Be Takei via Comcast On Demand and thoroughly enjoyed the film.
After viewing the documentary, I thought about what a remarkable life Takei has had, experiencing life as a child growing up in a World War II Japanese internment camp, to becoming a breakthrough and iconic Japanese American and Asian American actor (and in the closet) in the 1960s as Lt. Sulu on Star Trek to a human rights and gay activist and coming out of the closet and marrying his longtime partner and now husband Brad to his involvement in the Japanese internment musical Allegiance.
Takei’s impact on Asian Americans and overall popular culture, both from his Star Trek TV series to movie days to his online Facebook followers is pretty amazing, spanning decades. And that is why I *had* to meet Takei earlier this year, when he was in San Francisco supporting Congressman Mike Honda’s bid for re-election.
Now the documentary is available on DVD (as of October 7th – my bad for the late plug!). I imagine that this documentary will be required viewing for all future introductory Asian American studies college courses in the future.
As I had previously blogged, Takei had made a guest appearance on The Daily Show and really made an impression on host Jon Stewart, especially Takei’s time being interned as a child during World War II.
