Quan Ke Huy

One of the biggest problems I have with current media is that there are too few people who just happen to be of a certain ethnicity. It’s always a plot point. Now, it’s true that I’ve only seen The Goonies once (as an adult; I didn’t care for it), but the character of the Asian nerd is a staple of the ’80s, I think, and therefore counts. Any way you look at it, I can think of quite a few movies made in the late ’80s and into the early ’90s where minor characters could have been played by an Asian kid without changing much about the characters or the movie, but of course they never were. That, to my mind, is why Quan Ke Huy is only really known for two roles, neither of which are exactly shining lights in either cinema or ethnic sensitivity.

In fact, to be completely frank, one of those roles is in my least-favourite Indiana Jones movie. Now, my problem with the movie isn’t Short Round, and that’s even though it should be “problems” and is frankly quite a long list. He’s not a great character, goodness knows, and is one of the examples of how awkward the script is in a number of ways. “No time for love, Dr. Jones” is . . . well, it is what it is. But Short Round is still a better character than, say, Willie. He’s the sort of Asian child sidekick you’d expect in a boys’ adventure novel of the ’30s, and even by those standards, Billie is awful.

What’s more, Quan does a decent enough job even through the clumsy writing. Personally, I feel as though the scene where he’s trying to reach Indy through the mind control is beautifully acted; we know from the movie itself very little of the child’s history. But it’s not unreasonable to assume that he’s already lost one family and is terribly afraid of losing another. (Which he does, because we never see him again, but anyway.) Indy is the closest thing he has to a father, and this is truly painful to him in a way that the movie never explores in words—but doesn’t have to.

I feel as though he could have at least done a few of the movies the Coreys were in. Okay, so not Stand By Me; that would have required rewrite of the characters. But surely there was room in Lucas or Dream a Little Dream or something. He could’ve been one of the guys in Say Anything . . . or just about anything, really. He was in Encino Man, with Goonies castmate Sean Astin, but I don’t feel as though that’s a really glowing career highlight for anyone.

Now, don’t get me wrong; from what I can tell, he’s doing fine work as a stunt and fight choreographer, and goodness knows I’m supportive of child actors’ moving on from acting if that suits. He worked as a stunt coordinator on X-Men and The One. That’s pretty nice for him, and I hope he’d continuing to do good work in that field. I just think that there are opportunities he didn’t get because he was a kid of Han Chinese descent born in what was then Saigon.

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