{"id":563924,"date":"2026-07-23T07:57:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T07:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/563924\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T07:57:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T07:57:28","slug":"new-york-citys-downtown-cool-kids-spent-the-afternoon-reading-eddie-huangs-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/563924\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s Downtown Cool Kids Spent the Afternoon Reading Eddie Huang\u2019s Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou guys always wear Stone when you kill people,\u201d says Chloe Cherry. Except it\u2019s not Chloe Cherry, really. It\u2019s Chloe Cherry playing Veronica, the green-juice-obsessed borderline nymphomaniac with a sadistic streak who dates the main character, Malcolm, in Eddie Huang\u2019s movie Tuna Melt<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malcolm is a hitman. And he does, indeed, wear head-to-toe Stone Island<\/a> when he goes out to kidnap, maim, or murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is all, basically, classic Huang. Tuna Melt, set in Los Angeles, is the story of a steezy guy who\u2019s in a destructive relationship with a shallow, beautiful woman. He\u2019s also dealing with deep-seated childhood trauma. And there are strong notes of streetwear culture woven in. Last Thursday, as the Canadian wildfires turned New York City into a hostile alien planet, Huang partnered with Substack to stage a table read of the movie at Baohaus, his East Village restaurant. Black-cloth-bound copies of the script were handed out to audience members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/p>\n

It was a perfect little Eddie Huang microuniverse, including the cast, most of whom Huang tapped himself. Along with Cherry, Evan Mock played Malcom<\/a>, Chet Hanks took on the role of Malcolm\u2019s co-conspirator and best friend, and Joey Bada$$<\/a> was their boss. (Mock and Hanks were both dressed in Stone Island jackets.) Bada$$ has been a regular at Baohaus for a while; he always orders eight fish bao. The front-of-house and kitchen staff got to know him, and eventually Huang approached him for the role. \u201cIt\u2019s very deranged,\u201d Bada$$ says of the script. \u201cI feel like that\u2019s Eddie\u2019s style.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before the audience filtered in, the group \u2014 which also included the actresses Kiersey Clemons and Highdee Kuan and Kid Super founder Colm Dillane \u2014 did a first run-through in private. For Bada$$, who prefers to go into jobs cold, it was his first time reading the script. \u201cThe shock factor was there,\u201d he says. People were cracking up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second, more public reading had a biblical feel, with each of more than a dozen cast members lined up at a long table facing the small audience. They were set off by a black velvet curtain, with Cherry sitting in the Jesus chair. As they read through the 90-minute film, Huang, who played a bit part, sat off to one side, mouthing along to the words. At one point, like a perfect stage dad, he asked the cast to please project so the crowd could hear better. Cherry and Mock sat up in their chairs like kids caught slumping at school.<\/p>\n

The whole thing felt sort of out-of-body, like a group of theater kids getting together to sound out a project. Except you blinked, and there was Chet Hanks ripping his vape between lines. \u201cI feel like we moved to New York as kids and thought, \u2018Every day we\u2019re going to hang out with artists\u2019\u201d and kick work around, Huang says. \u201cWe used to. But around 2016, 2017, I feel like brands and businesses started to dictate how the art was made. This table read is a big \u2018fuck you\u2019 to that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt creates buzz,\u201d Bada$$ adds. \u201cNow people are excited by it. They\u2019re invested in it already. It kind of forces networks and buyers to pay attention.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Technically, Tuna Melt is a finished product that Huang has been sitting on since 2022. But he hasn\u2019t been able to get it financed. Huang says he asked two of the leads\u2019 agents to send the script to them years ago. \u201cNow that we\u2019re friends, they\u2019re like, \u2018No one ever sent me the script,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cBecause the script is wild. And I don\u2019t think people wanted their actors in it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/p>\n

Some of the \u201cwild\u201d parts include: Malcolm and his younger brother being sexually abused by a Hulk Hogan-esque ex-pro wrestler named Uncle Jerry under the pretense of feeding raw chicken to Uncle Jerry\u2019s pet alligators. Or Veronica waking up during a liposuction procedure while having an allergic reaction to her anesthesia. Or Malcolm and his hitman partner being hired to maim a guy named Keith, who owns a streetwear brand called Keith, for doing one collab too many. (Malcom\u2019s partner embeds a pair of throwing knives in Keith\u2019s shoulders. And then Malcolm asks the store\u2019s only other employee for her number.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Keith of it all, Huang admits, is a little on the nose. For one thing, he tapped Dillane to read the part of the streetwear magnate. For another, the brand is called Keith \u2014 an obvious play on Ronnie Feig\u2019s Kith. \u201cI really like Ronnie as a person, but I just don\u2019t like economies of scale,\u201d Huang says. \u201cAnd they are the most scaled version of streetwear. And it\u2019s like, enough is enough. How many times do we need to see \u2018Kith\u2019 on top of somebody else\u2019s logo? Imperialism in streetwear is kind of whack. This is counterculture. It should be countercultural. So that\u2019s where it comes from.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/p>\n

In the end, as with most things Huang does, the absurdity of Tuna Melt is matched by its depth of feeling. Malcolm works through his self-loathing. Veronica goes off to torment someone new. Keith learns his lesson. And as the crowd of downtown creatives filed out, the cast lingered on Baohaus\u2019 back patio shooting the shit and exhaling cigarette smoke into the apocalyptic yellow-grey sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cYou guys always wear Stone when you kill people,\u201d says Chloe Cherry. Except it\u2019s not Chloe Cherry, really.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-563924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}