My Name: Tony Giroux

https://headliner.ai/my-name-mp3

Uyi

Hey, guys. Welcome to the point of view I am your host, Uyi Agbontaen. In today's episode, I sit down with actor and filmmaker Tony Giroud. We discuss his new documentary series, My Name Is, which focuses on the names people are given and the impact it has on their lives and his acting and filmmaking journey. So onto the show, I haven't done.

Tony

An interview with a mic, uh, like this.

Uyi

No.

Tony

I definitely feel like I'm either on Joe Rogan.

Uyi

You're on Joe Rogan, but without the Joe Rogan budget, bro. So I appreciate you coming down.

Tony

Oh, yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Uyi

And you flew in, right? Recently?

Tony

Yeah, I got in, uh, yesterday.

Uyi

Where did you fly in from?

Tony

Vancouver.

Uyi

OK. You live in Canada?

Tony

Uh, uh, originally French, then I moved, uh, to Canada, my teens, and then I bounced around a couple of times. She lived in London twice. First when I was 21, and then again I came when I was 27.

Uyi

And 2018, where were you in London. Which part of London did you live in?

Tony

Uh, in 2021, I was living in Canada. Water. Then in 2018, I was living near, uh, Kilburn.

Uyi

So actually I grew up in Kilburn.

Tony

Oh, cool.

Uyi

That's when you say Kilburn, it's like, oh, I know Kilburn very well.

Tony

Cool.

Uyi

Yes. Have you lived anywhere else? You lived in France?

Tony

In France? Yeah, I grew up in France.

Uyi

Okay. And then when did you move? Canada. How old are you?

Tony

14.

Uyi

They speak French in Canada as well, don't they?

Tony

Uh, not really. They don't in Montreal?

Uyi

Yeah, quebec.

Tony

Quebec is actually quite bilingual there. The rest of Canada prides itself as a bilingual country, and I find that French is very, very basic. Like, they can't get by.

Uyi

You are impressed.

Tony

I think they want to be a bilingual country, but in my opinion, it was, uh, talking a little bit of French and Fred, it's like, oh, uzoli, toilet or valve. Soar that's the two things.

Uyi

Yes. That's not french.

Tony

Most people it is French, but it's.

Uyi

Just yeah, it's the basics. We can't really talk that much about it because in the UK, we're pretty bad at languages. The Brits are very notoriously bad at languages. We always think everyone speaks English, so the Brits tend not to bother because.

Tony

Also you have the sexiest accent.

Uyi

Do you think so?

Tony

Obviously, UK has so many different accents, but all of them, I find, sounds so nuanced and sexy. And it's got something to it that you don't really need speaking other languages.

Uyi

English is enough.

Tony

British English.

Uyi

Proper british English. When people think about English, they tend to think of people like Hiu Grant. Right. Uh, they think of, like, this really well spoken person. He's very charming English gentleman. And then they get to England and they're like, oh, these actions are not okay. So you were studying acting here, and then you went back to Canada and you pursued a career as an actor.

Tony

Yes, actually, I was doing my masters here, and my agent back in Canada sent me an audition. And then they sent, uh, me an offer. And they said on the Wednesday they said, we want you in Canada on Monday for a fitting. It's a show called Motherland Fort Salem. It's, uh, on Disney Plus. It's a scifi show for young adults about witchcraft.

Uyi

Yeah, I saw the witchcraft bit. Witches are, uh, used by the military to fight evil.

Tony

Yeah, it's actually really cool. The creator's name is Elliot Lawrence. He created a world it's a matriarch, a matriarchal society. And the government works with witches where when women enlist in the army, they learn witchcraft. So the show follows three young women. And what's really beautiful about this world is not only is it a matriarch, so you get a very different perspective on what the world could be. And so it's a really refreshing take.

Uyi

On this world that this person created. It's just a TV show on its own.

Tony

Yes.

Uyi

So the girls who become the recruits, they have powers before, or they just learn witchcraft. Like, anybody can do it.

Tony

No, it's kind of like the Xmen series that some people have and some people don't. And then you can choose to enlist in the army if you have which, uh lineage bloodline.

Uyi

Yeah, which lineage?

Tony

Which lineage? English is my second language.

Uyi

Don't worry, I'm not going to judge you.

Tony

Uh, and I've kind of become world citizen, where I would say my French vocabulary lacks, but then my English vocabulary lacks as well.

Uyi

How long have you been on the show?

Tony

We finished the finale in April when it finished airing this summer.

Uyi

Did you learn any kind of witch trivia? Do you have to do research?

Tony

Uh, I didn't do too much on the actual witch's history, which predominantly was around Fort Salem, but I had read about it before kind of the witch trials that happened there. But, uh, I did do some research around what would be some actual superpowers that we have. And there's this biologist named Rupert Sheldrick who talks about morphic fields. The entire world is connected through morphic fields. And he has a book called Why Dogs Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. And he talks about this concept of why is it that a dog can sense when his owner is coming home, when he's leaving his office? So there's no sense of smell, no sense of hearing, no sense of sight of the owner, but somehow they're connected and they sense that. So that was kind of a rabbit hole that I went down. And I thought it was really interesting, this hypersensitivity that, uh, my character portrayed.

Uyi

It's similar to when you're thinking about someone and they call you exactly.

Tony

Right. Something that happens, it can't be a coincidence.

Uyi

Right. How did it happen? I know what you mean. It's an interesting one. Like, is there a great connection to a more subtle connection out there that we're just not aware of because it's so subliminal or that we're aware of.

Tony

But that we can't prove scientifically, right?

Uyi

Or we can't access it because obviously when you want to prove it scientifically, it doesn't work because when they start to put up these tests with like double blind experiments, then it fails. But then strange coincidences do happen because I have a dog and the dog thing is like well, you could say, well, when you're near the house, the dog has a good sense of smell, right? When you're near the house but you're like, but then what about when I'm far away from the house? But then also, maybe the dog knows your routine. There's two ways of looking at it. The thing is, you can't rule out either one.

Tony

Yeah, some of the stuff that I read in the book and, um, I hope you're here with going this tangent real quick. He did some research with different animals and he was wild. And he talks about how if you teach a bunch of rats within an area in the world a certain trick, and then rats in the rest of the world then have an ease with learning that trick.

Uyi

I've, um, heard of this where he.

Tony

Would talk about how when wolves hunt in packs, if one of the wolves gets injured whilst the pack is chasing an animal, whichever direction it goes, when the pack catches the prey, the wolf that got injured doesn't follow the tracks. He is able to cut a line straight through M to its path, things like that. Or they did experiments too, with messenger pigeons. Messenger pigeons were trained to travel great, great distances and come back to the same spot. And they did things where they cut out the sense of sight and cut out the sense of smell and they still make out a sense of hearing and then the pigeon still makes it. And then they even go to the point of changing the home of the pigeon. The pigeon comes back to where it normally would go and then it flies around a little bit and it is able to go and find its home. So then what Celebrate talks about, his theory is that animals don't understand time the same way we do. They experience time as a nonlinear thing. They don't experience the now, they experience all of time at the same time. So that with the wolf, it's like the future wolf's conscience is talking to the wolf, telling him where to go.

Uyi

It makes you think, right? It does make you think. I'd, um, like to believe there's a deeper connection mhm, but we just haven't proved that there is. The time not been linear. Thing is real, though, right? Like we do think of time in a very linear fashion. We believe that there's a past and there's the present and the future is in the future. But even science says, no, it's all happening at the same time. There is no time, because, like, space and time are the same thing. That's what Einstein said, right? So far he's been proven right. It's spacetime and it bends. So there's no such thing as time. But it's the way that humans perceive the partner of time. We've been, I guess, conditioned m and I wonder whether that's nature or nurture. I guess animals are more natural. They're more in tune with their natural side of being. And we live in a society, so we kind of learn to follow the rules of society. And does that block out all those other signals that you would normally be receiving?

Tony

I mhm always find the are we more like this? Naturally more like this because of society. To me, they're inseparable. So having a conversation actually doesn't lead me to anywhere concrete, because just to think, well, my experience is I'm a human being. Yes, of course, if I was raised with wolf, I might be more wolf than I am human, but truly, there's no way of knowing that.

Uyi

There's no way.

Tony

It's just well, I am what I am in this moment. I find this thing, even with trauma, this idea of when you start diving into the past and there's so much conversation around that today, around, oh, well, I understand because my mom was like this and my dad was like this, and their relationship was not good, so now I can't settle down into a relationship myself. But really, could you say that? But then you look at your, um, astrology, and it also says that you have a hard time with relationships, or it tells you the opposite. There's all these different reasons. It's almost like not taking responsibility for things sometimes. It's like, well, my parents were like that. So I'm like that's.

Uyi

Written by Stars fatalistic View of Life It is written, it's determined. I'm not a fan of astrology or horoscopes. I don't like to believe there is a determined path. So when people say, well, it's just my nature, it's like, yeah, but you can change who you are unless you feel like you can't grow, you can't develop, you can't become a different person, you can change. So to say, Well, I'm like that because of X-Y-Z and people might have valid reasons when it comes to trauma, yet there might be valid things in your past that have shaped you to who you are today. But that doesn't mean you can't change. You can't change things externally, but internally, you are you. No matter how bad things are, you are you. You had a Victor Frankel? Uh, he wrote a book called Man's Search for Me. Yeah, incredible story, because he was in the camps in Poland. I think only one sister survived, and he survived, and he was a therapist, and he came out and had a lot of trauma. They said, how can you just carry on the way you're carrying on, like nothing's bothering you? He said, that happened to me in the past. That's not me.

Speaker C

Right?

Uyi

It happened to me, but it's not me. I determine who I am, and you can as well. But it's hard. It's not easy, but you can decide who you are. From tomorrow, I'm going to be a different person. In a way, we kind of cling to our past anyway, but some people feel like their journey is written. My journey's written. I can't change the path. He's like, you can change the path anytime you want to, and mhm yeah.

Tony

We'Re having so much more awareness and talk around therapy, around self, um, development. A lot of scientific research is coming up around trauma, how we deal with our emotions. And that I do find it can emphasize this concept of I am broken, I have trauma. I have all these experiences now. I'm kind of on the vibe of saying what this is, what I've gone through. And everybody's got a life full of experiences, some that are extremely difficult, like Victor Frankel. And to me, it brings me back to what, you know, the human experience is going to be full of struggle. Naturally. You come to this world, you're crying, the first thing that you experience is pain.

Uyi

We've gone off on a tangent, mhm, which is fine. I reached out to you to come onto the show because you've made a documentary. So tell us a bit about your documentary.

Tony

So my document is called My Name Is, and it follows individuals with nonwestern first names, the link to their identities, and the pressures to conform to Western Head.

Speaker C

I have, I don't know, Peter or Sarah to my side. And I say, Hi, Sarah. Hi, Peter. But with me it's hi. I think they just wait for me to say my name and they're like, okay. Yeah, that's how you pronounce it.

Tony

Okay.

Speaker C

I often have to, um, repeat myself a cup more than once if I say my name, and people don't get it straight away, there's a certain level of retracting in myself and being like, oh, I felt like there's a dehumanized aspect to it. Like I was just this complicated name on a register that would present a challenge in terms of having to say it out loud. What's your English name? Or what's your white name? And I'm like, I don't have an English name or white name, so I will almost self censor myself. Like, I won't try and get them to understand it. I will be like, oh, don't worry, it's complicated. Just call me. It was like a label. Like a label. You're a foreigner. You're made aware that you're different because your name is different. I'm very particular with what I like to be called. I think especially growing up, uh, in a Caucasian background, I think being British was easier than being Indian. People's reactions to me were very instrumental in me wanting to change my name.

Tony

The project first came to creation when I was studying here in London and one of my lecturers steps in to introduce a course. And this is a woman in her late thirty s of darker skin tone. I tell her she's South Asian and she says, oh, hi everybody, my name is Joe. And right away I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I'm wondering maybe is it short for something? And that's kind of just, you know, in the back of my head. I'm not actively wanting to investigate it, but questions start popping up. And when we're making introductions, she then tells us her story and she says, oh, actually I was born a first name Javerria, but in my teens I was picked on so much and name biased that I decided to legally change my name.

Uyi

Oh wow.

Tony

And I thought, oh wow, that's interesting. I've never heard of anything like that. I wanted to do a video segment on that and I approached her about it, pinched it to her, and she was really interested. She has a PhD and does a lot of work within racial bias and she thought we could have a good concept. So she said, oh, let's apply for a little bit of funding. We ended up getting the funding and so I ended up doing it following five individuals. So the documentary is a miniseries and I really wanted to look at the human side of it. What is their experience of it, what it is to have a name that is, I say in quotations, foreign sounding, and just to know the social barriers that come up.

Uyi

I saw the trailer for the documentary and immediately it resonated with me. One, because I haven't seen a documentary about that subject before, but also because I have a name that's different, like a different sounding name that people struggle to say. And then you feel like, oh, I need to try and make it easier for somebody to say my name mhm. And then what people tend to do is they tend to anglicize their name, they make a western version of it, or they just use their western name mhm. My name is Uyi and it's shortened. It's actually Uyiekpen. But Uyi is just hard enough for people to say on its own, right? So when you see it written Uyi, they're like and then when I was a kid, I used to grow up with this thing of having people try to say my name and then I'll say, Listen, just call me Yui because it's easier. And then even when I say so Yui, they'll be like, oh, yui, yui, louie, no, yui. But then you're hearing some of the people speaking in a trailer. It is a thing that what we tend to do is we tend to change our identity so that we get accepted by the community that we're in. It's not that they can't, but they just haven't heard that type of sounding name. And then for them, for some reason, it may be a little bit of an effort to try and pronounce it so the person who owns the name feels like, actually, I need to make the effort to change my name so they don't have to make the effort to say my name mhm. Which is kind of a sad thing to think that I have to change myself so that you can be more comfortable.

Tony

It's really sad and I think and it kind of speaks out of the immigrant story, naturally, m. Because really, at the beginning, when you started talking, you said, have a different sounding name, but different based on what? What is the norm that we're looking at? And really there's so many ways that now, because the world is becoming so much smaller, because of more immigration, the internet and whatnot we can really requestion, well, is there a norm or are they just individuals? And how is it that we make the communities bigger and having more space for difference and for those differences to be celebrated as opposed to having to be assimilated?

Uyi

Yes, London, it's a big city and it's very multicultural, mhm. So I can imagine if you're in some really tiny village in an obscure country and someone comes with a different name, you're like, what's that? I've never had that name before. But when you're in London, well, there are so many different communities, mhm, that have migrated to London, mhm. And so you get a plethora of names. Funnily enough, maybe in the Muslim sounding name might have sounded a bit funny, but today you say, My name is Mohammed, no one's going to look at you like, what kind of name is that? Right. They know my name is Ishmael. They're going to know straight away, my name is Joseph. But there are certain names as well still. But people say, oh, that's a strange name, but you're right. What's the reference point between what name is normal and what name is not normal, mhm. I have a friend whose name is Gary. About three or four years ago, there were only two people in the whole of the UK who were born, who were given the name Gary.

Tony

Really?

Uyi

There are names that are English names that are dying out, like Arnold, that name is not going to last much longer. So there are names that you would have thought, oh, they were really common back in the past. I know, Agatha, mhm, but those names are dying out, mhm.

Tony

I think it's interesting to think of what connotations come with a name, because even as you say the name Agatha, there's some ideas that come to us around what that person looks like, but they think, naturally, what do we associate with these different names? And then how much does that affect the person's sense of identity? Because even myself I have a Western name, Tony. But growing up when I was in France, people always said, oh, Tony Montana, tony Montana. Uh, and then they'd say the references oh, you're talking to me? You're talking to me? Oh, you fucking with me? You fuck my wife and stuff. And then I kind of took that on the performance of it. And I hadn't even seen the film yet. M it became part of my identity because people associated my name with a reference similar to what you said. I think we naturally want to feel like we belong in the community, so we take on what they think of us, what they think of our names, what they think of our skin tone, what they think of our ethnicity.

Uyi

Starbucks. Man. Oh, Starbucks. Did anybody talk about this on your documentary?

Tony

No. No.

Uyi

Like walking into Starbucks and having to give your name. That's the one thing would stand out to me, having to say your name in Starbucks and M, then saying should m I just say my actual name because they don't know how to spell it. And then I have to tell them how to spell it and then they're going to spell it wrong. And the funny thing is, my first name has three letters and the amount of times people will spell my name wrong when it has only three letters. Or you send an email off and then they reply to you and they write your name and it's wrong. And it's like but it's written there. You can see it, which is quite funny. There's that anxiety of having to go and order a coffee in a coffee shop and they're not only having to write your name down, but then you know they're going to call your name out as well and they're going to call it out wrong. No one ever said this in the documentary.

Tony

Oh, actually, people talked about roll call. A few people talk about Roll Call, but then there's another guy, he talks about actually those short conversations with the kishier with the barista at Starbucks. Do you spend the time to try and teach them your name? Because it is also an introduction to who you are as part of your cultural identity. And I think it brings up a really interesting question that in those moments, and maybe that's a question that I posed to you, how important is it that your name is spelled and pronounced correctly in those short little interactions? And I think that's going to change on every individual for you. Is it very important that not just your friends or people that you work with, but that, uh, people that you meet on the street also can learn to pronounce and write your name correctly?

Uyi

So I would normally introduce myself to people as Yui because I know subconsciously, I know consciously, but that's just an easier sound in Westernized version of my name to say Yui. Everybody can say that. And I know saying Uyi is different. My dad would always get really annoyed when my friends would like to call the house and say, is Yui there say why you call yourself Yui name is Uyi and my dad's name is Charles. How there irony. My dad's name is Charles and my mom's name is Pat. Okay? But they named me and my siblings all very Nigerian names, very, very Nigerian names. So all of my siblings have had that situation of having to explain to someone how to say it. So then for years and years and years of people not being able to say my name, I just thought, just call me Huey. But then what does really annoy me is if I write it down, I was saying, but it's only three letters. How can you spell it wrong? Like it's three letters? M it's not so much that you call me Huey or you call me Yuri if you're Eastern European, OK, fair enough. But if you see the three letters and you write the letters in the wrong order, I'm like, but how hard was that to write the letters in the right order? So when I did a podcast and I introduced the podcast, I always say my name properly because I don't want to be like, nah, I'm just going to give people what I think they will say easier. I just say, no, my name is GUI. But when I introduce myself to people, just so I don't have the whole I can just call me UBI is just easier.

Tony

I think it's interesting to hear the projection of your own bias because right away I'm looking to find common ground or find something that I understand and to place you in that box. Okay, I heard you're, but I'm going to put as Huey, how is it that I can fit you into my repertoire of things, try and remind myself when I meet someone, how is it that I can go towards them and be open to the unknown that this is a new individual that I'm meeting? And instead of trying to find a way for it to fit into me, to think like, no, no, no, let's build a bridge here.

Uyi

Making this documentary. This conversation must have resonated with a lot of people.

Tony

Mhm I think now we're seeing more of it on social media. We're starting to see talks about names. We're starting to see a lot of celebrities that have changed their names back to their given names. What's really interesting, I think about those interviews is that the people that are interviewed, they're figuring it out as they speak. So I think it's a very vulnerable time that you're seeing them trying to figure it out, to work through and process all the information. And none of it to me feels like, oh, this is a hard statement about who I am. It's more so, well, this is what I believe and also I interviewed different generations. There was two individuals that were raised in the then three individuals that were in their late 20s, so there was a very different experience and desires of what they may want because the people who were raised in the seventies, they've gone through a lot tougher experiences with it compared to the newer ones. They say, oh, actually sometimes I like having a nickname because then the people can get it right away.

Uyi

Yeah.

Tony

Or some people didn't talk about, you know, if I was to name my kids, I think I'd want to give them a name that it's easy to pronounce. And you think, oh, that's really interesting because then you talk about the experience of your dad giving you your name. That's very Nigerian to think like, oh, well, you know, why is that? And how much has that shaped your identity and this idea of wanting to preserve culture.

Uyi

Yes. What are the interesting things that you learn on your filmmaking journey?

Tony

Well, um, it reminded me that everyone has a story. It opened me up to understand kind of my own bias and what I was talking about earlier, this idea of being brave enough to step into the unknown. And also I think it made me more empathetic towards human mistakes and an understanding that actually to get to know one another, it takes two. It's going to take mutual empathy and mutual compassion and mutual effort. In my perspective. This idea of you introducing yourself and then me saying, Huey or Uyi, I'm trying, but how do we navigate that space where there might be a little bit of friction, which is normal with encountering differences. Right, it's an encounter, but it made me a lot more brave and being less afraid to ask someone. How is it that they want to be called if that's not clear. Because before that I would be really shy. If I heard somebody's name and I didn't quite get it, maybe I would ask one more time, but then after that I feel embarrassed, I would feel ashamed. So I would just refer to them like, man, but really deep down it's because I forgot that and I feel embarrassed. But then through conversations they say, oh well, no, actually I don't mind it at all if you ask me again, because I understand that it's different and put effort into it. And some days know that I won't have the time and patience because I've got like a thousand things going and knowing that somebody might be having just the shitty of a day and they don't have the time to accept a part of me that I'm trying to present to them. M I think it made me see the lines are always a bit blurry.

Uyi

Yes. And everybody's human. M mhm. How's the film been received? Really?

Tony

Well, I think. We did the festival route and we got some awards and to me, the most touching. Aspect of the way it's been received. I think it's made a lot of people feel seen and it made a lot of people think about their identity. And it helped reconciliate people with parts of their identities that they may have lost or put aside or suppressed because of the pressure to assimilate. And then to hear that upon being received, that somebody feels really seen or has a space to feel understood and put words to something that they faced their whole lives but have never had. The language. To me, that was the greatest gift as an artist. And it comes up in conversations. Last week, actually, I was going to a casting for Lululemon, and the girl running the casting, her name was Elon. Uh, I told her that I was actually heading to London and I told her that it was for this documentary. And as soon as I told her what it was about, she said, oh my God, tell me. I have so many stories for you. We started having a chat and said, you have no idea how soon I feel right now. This is something that I've never talked about. And I was like, oh. And so as a director, it's really humbling to be able to bring forth those stories and see what the conversations that come out of it.

Uyi

It's just a name, right? Mhm. It's just a name. But you really identify with your name. You take it like, it is me, mhm. And in a way it is, but it's a name. Like Shakespeare said, what's in a name? But there's a lot in it. There's a lot in it. And it's interesting how different people deal with it. Like you said, some people make that statement of, no, this is my name. Don't change it to that. My name is this. And some people are like, well, it's okay, I understand. And I wonder if it's the same for people who have names that aren't different. Like, if your name is Mohammed, it's the most common name in the world, do you feel a certain way because your name's not different compared to someone whose name is different? Or like, say your name is Karen. I'm sure there's a lot of Karen's out there who are thinking, man, now that's not a great name anymore. Ten years ago it wasn't so bad, but now it has like a negative connotation. Like, I hear the word Karen and I want to think something completely different. Mhm. Yes.

Tony

And I think when you say it makes me think about, well, actually, every individual most likely going to be different in terms of their relationship with their names that we all carry certain labels that people are going to have connotations with on the outside. You know, even myself being a man, being mixed race, being raised in France, having the name Tony, there's so many different labels that people have latched on to me. Some days I'm cool with those. And some days I'm like, no, actually this this is what I want to identify with today. And so if it taught me anything, really, it's to listen to the individual, what they're saying, what their body language is saying, how is it that they want to be treated? Because then to me, that's just how we build community. Not based on inclusion, based on what I think inclusion is, but inclusion on a conversation of what that looks like for the both of us.

Uyi

I think that's a good point. I think we probably listen less now, mhm, than ever. Listening is hard, actually. Actively listen to someone. It's a hard thing to do.

Tony

It's so hard.

Uyi

It's so hard because I think they say the average person speaks about 150 words per minute, but your mind thinks that around 600 words per minute. So you're already thinking way faster than the person speaking to you're, thinking ahead of them anyway. They're speaking, you're thinking. So it's hard to slow your mind down, to say, no, I need to listen to what the person is saying. But then there's now all this noise. There's like background noise, mhm? So even now it's really hard to listen to someone.

Tony

It's so hard to read. In a book once, the author said, in order to truly listen, you have to be willing to be changed.

Uyi

Trying is half the battle.

Tony

Yes, I agree.

Uyi

I used to work in the airport, right? So I used to see all kinds of names. And so you'd always see some name, you're like, oh, this name is really, really different. So for one, Sri Lankans used to have the longest names, sri Lankans and Thais. I said, oh, these names are really, really long. But then I remember once I met a school group, kids from I think it was Uganda, they're coming on a school trip. And then I look at this kid's name and his name is Bill Gates. That's his first name. His name is Bill Gates. And automatically, when I saw his first name, it's one word, by the way. It's not even separated. Automatically, I'm like, I know what's going on here. So I said Bill Gates. And the kid was so happy, right, and said he's like, yes. And then the teacher is like, behind him and I'm, um, saying, um, I said, uh, your parents named you that because they wanted you to be rich. And the teachers said Amen. In the west, like Westerners, they seem to be searching for names that are different anyway when they're naming their kids. A lot of interesting names that are coming up now, which are completely different names than the names they had. David Beckham has named his child Brooklyn, but his father's name is David and his mother's name is Victoria. You know what I mean? This conversation just could go on and on and on.

Tony

It's interesting to touch on when you say our names are who we are. I would actually say our names are who we are if we choose it to be cool.

Uyi

All right, Tony, where can people find your film?

Tony

It is now available on YouTube.

Uyi

Um, repeat the name of it. So my name is my name is okay, actually, tell us what your full name is.

Tony

My full name is Tony Hiu Joong Giroux.

Uyi

Man, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I can't wait to see the film. It's been great having you come on and guest on the show.

Tony

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Thank you.

Uyi

Exactly. All right. Thank you, man. Okay, guys, that was Tony. Julie as always, you can find more details about my guest in the show notes and a link to his documentaries. If you liked this episode, I recommend listening to episode three, the Actor of Jason Wong and episode 24, street Life with Alex Turnbull. You can also find some video clips of episode on Instagram and YouTube at the point of view. See in a couple of weeks.