TERMINAL USA

Executive produced by James Schamus (former CEO of Focus Features, producer of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Crouching Tiger”) and shot in eyeball-scorching Panavision, this is Moritsugu’s asian freak-out magnum opus that shocked America when it was broadcast on television in the mid-90’s! The director himself plays twins (a drug-dealing bad-ass and a closeted math nerd) in a radically dysfunctional family that completely obliterates the noble myth of the “model minority.”

STARRING Ken Narasaki, Sharon Omi, Jenny Woo, Lenny Lang, Victor of Aquitaine, Peter Friedrich, Amy Davis, Jon Moritsugu
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY Jon Moritsugu
PRODUCED BY Andrea Sperling
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER Tim Innes
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Erica Marcus
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Todd Verow
PRODUCTION DESIGNER Jennifer Gentile
SERIES EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS James Schamus, Alberto Garcia, Marlina Gonzalez
MUSIC BY The Birthday Party, Void, Sugarshock, Monte Cazazza, Michelle Handelman, Brian Burman

Funny, anarchic, provocative and exhilarating. Recalling the works of John Waters, Mr. Moritsugu’s films are wild and aggressively alternative without descending into easy nihilism.
NEW YORK TIMES, Mike Hale, 6-17-2015

“Father Knows Best” meets “Pink Flamingos”… a post-punk soap opera about an Asian American family that single-handedly shatters the clean-cut, hard-working image of the model minority.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 11-1-1994

Jon Moritsugu’s TERMINAL USA – a take-off on American sit-coms – focuses on a squabbling drug-taking Asian-American clan that gives new meaning to the term dysfunctional.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, 1-27-1995

Fans of John Waters-type excess shouldn’t miss TERMINAL USA.
ROLLING STONE, Jay Martel, 12-15-1994

Jon Moritsugu turns the American sit-com family on its head with TERMINAL USA, a post-punk, psychedelic picnic brimming with wholesome depravity.
VARIETY, David Rooney, 2-1994

Jon Moritsugu talked about TERMINAL USA in the first issue of Giant Robot, and the movie is amazing to this day. With the biggest budget but least ambition of any of his works – and I mean that as a compliment – it was made for TV and stars Asian-American mainstays Ken Narasaki and Sharon Omi (of course, Amy Davis steals the show).
GIANT ROBOT, Eric Nakamura, 5-2009

“Punk opus!”
NEW YORK POST, V. A. Musetto, 3-1-2009

Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Toronto Film Festival
Rotterdam Film Festival
Goteberg Film Festival
Copenhagen Film Festival
V’iennale, Austria
The Fringe Fest , Australia
Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF
Stanford University, Palo Alto
Microcinefest, Baltimore
SF Asian American Film Festival

TERMINAL USA aired on PBS Television in 150+ markets in 1994-95.