A friendly crowd greeted Filipino-American filmmaker Steven Mallorca at the San Francisco screening of his labor of love, for the Asian-American Film Fest -- about three rows of seats were reserved for his family and friends, various members of the film's crew, and other people affiliated with the movie, and the rest of the seats rapidly sold out with people interested in small indie comedy film, Filipino country music aficionados, and people eagerly waiting outside in the suddenly-cold weather in the rush line. (Can't SFIAAFF let them wait someplace a little warmer?)

Slow Jam King was written, directed, and produced by Mallorca (and exec produced by John Woo), and Mallorca also wrote almost all the songs on the soundtrack too. Dang, a quadruple threat! The movie's main focus is a young depressed Filipino-American named JoJo, the former salutatorian of his high school who's dropped out of college for the aspirational hiphopper pimp lifestyle, in an attempt to win the heart of a Filipina girl in the neighborhood who's already dating the neighborhood gangbanger. That gangbanger then gives JoJo a hot gun, at which point JoJo carjacks Vance, a country-music-loving perfume salesman from Tennessee, and ropes his African-American friend DeVaun into a road trip to Nashville.

Take a trip to the Durty South, after the jump.

Image from Slow Jam King

Slow Jam King