Jennifer Yuh Nelson

So I was listening to this pod cast about Jennifer Yuh Nelson who was very much a part of and one could say behind the Kung Fu Panda movies. Given how I have blogged about these movies to an obsessive degree in the past, like on the ethics and morality in the first movie, or applying the philosophies to my life
or Lord Shen's Death....I totally cried watching Kung Fu Panda 3... so basically even before I knew Jennifur Yuh Nelson's name... I was a fan. Hearing about the throught process that goes into making the movies... basically confirmed my suspicion's... that a true Kung Fu movie fan made the movies. Apparently the original concept for the film was going to be a parody... basically a children;s version of Kung Pow. Which, to be honest, before i had seen the movie, is what I thought it was. It wasn't until I had seen Kung Fu Panda several times that I began to analyze and think that it was awesome and worthy of being a Legend, a mythology, a bible for my own practice.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson talked about watching hours and hours of Kung Fu movies, Not just the good ones, but the bad ones as well, because some of them were so bad that they were good.

The truth is that even the worst Kung Fu movie has at least one or two aha! moments where maybe by accident or maybe despite all the BS that goes along with the movie making business they were able to touch a message, a truth, a higher meaning.

So I had always thought that Kung Fu panda, maybe by accident, had created an ultimate Codex of Kung fu by taking all those aha moments and putting them into one movie with a plot that flows.


"They don't put all that thought into it." people told me.

But people are wrong because Jennifer Yuh Nelson totally did put all that thought into it and she talks about it. Not just in terms of abandoning formulaic Kung Fu stuff, but abandoning text book story telling book stuff to go instead.. with reality.

And in terms of emotion, it was her intention to make Grown men cry. and she was successful and points to a large Football player type guy telling her that he cried as a point where she felt she had truly succeeded.

"You should interview her!" Grace said... "Because you ARE Kung Fu...the worst she could say is no."

In any case.. the pod cast was very inspiring. I think I will start drawing again and work on my books and what I am doing...and it would be awesome if I could get an interview of course or if one of the stories in my book became a cartoon. That would be incredible. But it got me thinking, I used to draw all the time... why have I stopped, and why have I not started  putting pictures to some of my stories? If for nne else... for myself at the very least?