Gu first needed to find Ted Ngoy but she had no idea how to do it. In English, Mandarin and Cambodian with English subtitles; Not rated, Playing: Regency South Coast Village, Santa Ana, and in limited release where theaters are open; available via virtual cinemas, including Laemmle Theatres. He did as he was told, but then pulled out a knife and stabbed himself, declaring he would rather die than live without her. Where are they now?. [5] Having grown up in Los Angeles, she was doubtful when her children's nanny made a reference to "Cambodian" donuts; she thought all donuts were simply "American." [5] Upon looking into the matter, she learned about Ted Ngoy and became fascinated with the topic. He says to me, Alice, making money its so easy. The documentary goes back and forth between Ngoy and the present-day lives of second- and third-generation donut shop kids or what Gu refers to as Donut Generation 2.0. The Ngoys drove a motor home around California, opening shops in Los Angeles, Modesto, Fresno, San Jose, the Bay Area city of Brisbane, Sacramento and San Diego. "It made me homesick," says Ted. Dear reader, we're asking you to help us keep local news available for all. He built a donut empire and $20 million in wealth, but his fortune built on donuts would crumble and he would lose it all. I cant take credit for it, but I do feel like in the making of this film and having some of these people face feelings that they hadnt confronted in many years, it was very healing. He says his gambling is under control -- though he has no money with which to test this will power. "Before I'd never gambled, but like all the compulsive gamblers in the world, first you throw in a couple of bucks, $10, $20. Whenever Ted won, the family would rejoice with him. Doughnut revenue put their children through college. He was, however, invited to become a government adviser on commerce and agriculture. One night he asked the woman at the counter if saving $3,000 would be enough to buy a doughnut shop. goes to your local theater. The past I cannot change, but I learned the heavy way. Next to the petrol station there was a doughnut shop called DK Donuts. By the mid-1980s, he was a millionaire. COVID-19 has hit her store and most other shops hard. Ngoy was one. Alongside doughnuts, they sell imported American goods - everything from Pop-Tarts to Starbucks Frappucinos. He turned down a job as a security guard because it required standing for eight hours. What was it like?I spoke with him and he was in Cambodia. One night, during his shift at a gas station, the scent of freshly baked goods wafted toward him. "It was a different take on a refugee story,". Ngoy would open more shops and lease them to fellow refugees. In 1985, he and Suganthini became U.S. citizens. He taught them the names of the doughnuts: old fashioned, jelly-filled, glazed. After a civil war broke out and Phnom Penh fell to the communist Khmer. Ngoy asked to visit. When time goes by it gets into your blood and you just cannot get it out," says Ted. until 2014 Once back in Orange County, he bet more than ever. But one night, he had an idea. Cambodia was poor and under-developed after years of war. At school, Ngoy fell in love from afar with a beautiful girl. For the next 45 days, he lived in her room. (Elina Shatkin/LAist). He began placing bets with Cambodian bookies on football and basketball games. You will end up destroying the whole family and no more relationship with the world, just finished. the Naturally he agreed, and set his sisters up with doughnut shops. Ted kept a low profile until the LA filmmaker Alice Gu got in touch a couple of years ago. Ted Ngoy was reaping rewards of that success. He had to guess which room was hers. The couple and their three toddlers arrived penniless at Camp Pendleton, part of the first wave of Cambodian refugees. Gu didn't know about any of that before she started developing this project. As word of Ted's success spread, Cambodian immigrants started seeking him out when they arrived in Southern California. They did business on a handshake, he said, and his tenants always paid. NICK STREET Channy is a stocky man in his mid-forties, and he runs USA Donut in Boeung Keng Kang with his wife. The film flashes back to the horror of life in 1970s Cambodia, a tragic offshoot of the Vietnam war that eliminated thousands of lives. Ngoy doesnt remember how many stores he started or bought -- 40? And she was heavily chaperoned. His tenants opened their own stores and leased them out. One involves reggae and another focuses on Puerto Rican musicians. As far as the immigrant experience and my parents what it really did for me is open my eyes and I just cut them some slack about growing up here in conflict with wanting to be an American kid and their Chinese ways of raising me. Ted resides in Cambodia where he splits his time between Phnom Pen and Kep, a province in Southern Cambodia that's famous for its crab fishing industry. Although there is still some resentment towards him in the Cambodian community, whose hard-earned cash he gambled away, he is also revered by many. Also, significantly for Ngoy, other Cambodian refugees and their children donuts. She would forgive him when he promised to stop, and he would -- for a while. Still homeless, he moved to the coastal town of Kep, on the Gulf of Thailand. The Top 5 newsletter catches you up with LAs top 5 stories in just 3 minutes. Ngoys wife hated his gambling. Ted managed to escape on the last flight out of Phnom Penh but Suganthini's parents were left behind. Then he pulled a knife. All three were taken to the police station but they were too scared to mention the cash in the boot. Ngoy had become an example to other Cambodian immigrants, who began to follow his business model for their own entrepreneurial endeavors. He says he hid in her room for 45 days until he was discovered. He became Ted. About 30 Christys Doughnuts were still in operation, as were hundreds of other Cambodian-owned doughnut shops. Gu is working on developing a couple of music-themed film projects, both documentaries and narratives. His gesture went unreciprocated for days. "You can't find any prettier woman besides her.". in Pasadena, I thought I would just get an exterior scene for context. , chronicles Ngoy's thrill-of-victory/agony-of-defeat rollercoaster ride through the American Dream immigration, capitalism, history, hubris, romance, addiction, family and food. You just have to see the opportunity and go for it. Those are the wise words of Ted Ngoy. They have social media and know how to work it to innovate their parents old donut shops with a worldwide following. Every time I met them I said, 'Sorry son, sorry my daughter, sorry Christy. I did not have time to expand. He is nicknamed the "Donut King. in Tustin sponsored the family, allowing them to live in the church where Ted worked as a janitor. He would have no more donuts to sell so he could be with his wife for the rest of the day. From the wall, he leaped onto the roof and crawled through an open window. The Donut King: Directed by Alice Gu. He was bleeding out and her parents were like, 'Oh, God. The whole community banded together and they all agreed to sell him out of donuts every morning by 9 a.m. He bought a bigger doughnut shop, and offered to lease the original Christy's to a family of Cambodian refugees, who had been working in fast food outlets on low wages. Within a decade, he had become a multimillionaire with a lakeside mansion . Ngoy became a trainee and took over a Winchell's in Newport Beach. A 2005 profile in the Los Angeles Times described him as "broke, homeless, and dependent on the goodwill of his few remaining friends." Today, he makes a living selling real estate in Cambodia. Ngoy built a vast donut shop empire across California and it started in 1970s Orange County. To think about what Ted did years ago letting bygones be bygones. But I still win. Beautiful views aren't the only thing drawing Angelenos to the region. But with great riches come great temptations. He slept under the bed and hid when the maids came to clean. He found a second job at a gas station. In doing the research and finding that it was President [Gerald] Ford who issued the executive order to receive the refugees, a Republican president that was a huge surprise to me given that during the time that we were making this film we were hearing Donald Trumps rhetoric. His sponsor told him people will have their prejudices but they mean well. One of the tricks he learned was to bake doughnuts in small batches throughout the day to keep them fresh - and because the smell of baking was the best form of advertising. . The Donut King is a 2020 American documentary film which tells the life story of California donut shop owner Ted Ngoy. At the weekend the oldest children, Chet and Savy, then nine and eight, helped out by pouring coffee, packing doughnuts and folding boxes. The Ngoys went to Las Vegas for the first time in 1977. Night after night, he watched customers come and go. Ted Ngoy: Well, when I was in a high school in a French school, my wife's Suganthini. He cut his chest sliding under barbed wire. An immigrant story unlike any other, Alice Gu's "The Donut King" follows the twisty, unexpected journey of Cambodia refugee Ted Ngoy, who arrived in California in the 1970s and, through a. Casino operators gave Ngoy free rooms, food, airfare and front-row seats to prize fights. The family also still had the Winchell's so now they had two stores to run. We believe when reliable local reporting is widely available, the entire community benefits. This documentary tells Ted Ngoy's story that is one of fate, love, survival, hard knocks, and redemption. What you've done is incredible.' At the end, I win. Near the station was a doughnut shop. She later discovered that they were among the first to be executed by the Khmer Rouge. Each morning, he walked with the monks, begging for food from peasants, crying as the rocky roads tore at his bare feet. These are kids who are American educated. I never loved you.' The United States alone is home to more than 25,000 donut shops and they produce more than 10 billion donuts each year. [6] Gu persuaded him to and, ultimately, he regarded his return as a 'healing experience,' and his ex-wife and children have forgiven him. 60? It really helped put some perspective on the journey to get here from somewhere else and the struggles that people go through when they arrive in a new, strange and foreign land. He enjoyed meeting the younger generation of doughnut makers, who are innovating and inventing new flavours. He went on to marry Suganthini Khoeun, the daughter of a high-ranking government official. The world moves so quickly now, but I do believe that it is still real and it is still possible. "But many of them were not related, they just lived in the same village or heard of my name. Ted and a lot of the Asians who came aligned themselves with the Republican party. In most of America there's an average of about one doughnut shop for every 30,000 people - in LA, there's one for every 7,000 people. In The Donut King, we learn that a teenage Ted won over his wife, Christy (ne Suganthini), by spending 45 straight days laying under her bed. It was love at first bite. For a year and a half, I struggled with how I was going to get access to that Mission Viejo mansion. What new information did you learn in the making of the film?There was a lot that was new to me. Which donut shop do you find yourself going back to for the sake of eating a donut?I had my out of body experience at DKs Donuts and Bakery in Santa Monica. The families who followed Ngoys lead learned to run businesses and picked up English. Ngoy tried Gamblers Anonymous. Interestingly, largely because of Democratic policy we got a grant for our camera and it came from this girl, who was the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who landed in Arkansas. Every evening, he sat by his open window and played the flute. Ted, Christy and their two kids fled to Thailand. "Using money to provide for others is a feeling as powerful as any drug," he later wrote. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. In 1985, Ngoy and his wife became American citizens assuming the American names of Ted and Christy, respectively, and were enjoying a lavish lifestyle including a million dollar home at Lake Mission Viejo, a vacation home in Big Bear, expensive cars, and vacations to Europe. They went to Europe twice. As many as I could.". [7][3], Ngoy's fortunes improved dramatically, such that by the mid-1980s Ngoy had amassed millions of dollars through his expanding doughnut shop empire, reported as 50 locations throughout California. No days off. The Donut King is told through archival footage, animation, and interviews with family members alongside Ted Ngoy, who has tried to make peace with those who he's hurt including Mel Allison, a 91-year-old baker still at it at Winchell's. . The son of a peddler had no chance with such a girl, no right even to think of loving her. That's because of a refugee who built up an empire, and became known as the Donut King, only to lose it all. Eventually he and Christy were left with just one doughnut shop, which they decided to sell. Just knowing that my great uncle Ted and the story of my parents and hearing Alice say, 'I want to really dig deep on a Cambodian donut shop,' I was like, 'Wow, this is real. So I decided to change.". This is an incredible story of how he helped people. "[9] In a mixed review, Brad Wheeler of The Globe and Mail said the film is "well worth watching" while saying there "are holes in this doughnut story. Once, he enjoyed the warmth of family and the respect of his community. Nearly every independent donut shop in every Southern California mini-mall hides a story and many of them start with an unlikely impresario, a Cambodian refugee named Ted Ngoy. They saw Elvis Presley perform, and Ted played a little blackjack. Their fairy tale romance is so distant, she said, its as if it happened to someone else. "Everybody's happy to see me now, because I changed from the bad guy to the good guy.". Gu says Christy's family then threatened to kill Ted but his mother made a deal with them. ', "If you could turn the clock around, I would do that. "If I need the vote, I cannot gamble. He was Chinese Cambodian, part of a despised underclass. One by one, Ted lost all of his donut shops. Ted Ngoy is a Cambodian American entrepreneur and former owner of a chain of donut shops in California, earning him the nickname the "Donut King." While working a second job at a gas station, Ngoy took notice of a busy local donut shop and inquired of its operators about learning the business. This is going to happen.'". One night, he saw Suganthini on her balcony, and decided it was time to make his move. Tao did everything in her power to help Gu. And it was actually a donut that I refused at first from Mayly Tao, the Donut Princess. I'm not famous. Over the years, Ted and Christy sponsored more than 100 families, often hosting them before setting them up with homes, loans, and doughnut shops. At each stop, they set up the business and trained the families who leased it. So, I just did it. Gu's documentary, It also reminds us that several U.S. presidents welcomed a flood of refugees with open arms. Their youngest son Chris drove them there to pick up the money - but it went horribly wrong. Ngoy and his family enjoyed the fruits of their labor and at one point moved into a 7,000-square-foot mansion in Mission Viejo. Gambling is a devil. They both drank and vowed to be faithful. That is a lie, he cried, and plunged the blade into his belly. He wrapped the note around a stone, and threw it down. Suganthini replied, "Well be careful, if you don't jump into my room, you'll jump into my mum's room.". Then he would return to Vegas in an attempt to win back what he had lost. It took longer than 40 years. "He was afraid of being shunned and feeling lonely - but I forced him!" Ted soon got a job working at Winchell's, which was then the dominant donut chain on the West Coast. 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