Who is Arthur Chu?

"Who is Arthur Chu?" follows 11-time Jeopardy champion, Arthur Chu, as he attempts to leverage his viral fame for social good, while battling his personal demons and online trolls. The film is an intimate character study of a singular individual, a millennial searching for meaning at a critical juncture in history. Arthur’s story bridges traditional media with online media. As an Asian-American who grew up in an immigrant family, Arthur’s journey subverts all previous notions of the model minority. The film opens with Arthur’s whirlwind Jeopardy! run. He racks up nearly $300,000 in winnings and creates an international hate-storm. Arthur crushes his opponents and tangles with host Alex Trebek. His strategies— bouncing around the board in search of daily doubles, pragmatic wagers, and hyper-aggressive pace of play— leads some to declare his winning streak a “moneyball” moment on Jeopardy!. While his detractors call him a "thug," or any number of racist epithets, Arthur eats it up and engages with the haters in battles of online wit. In his 12th game, he loses dramatically to a new comer. Armed with a social media platform and thousands of twitter followers, he pushes himself back into the spotlight with newfound success as a writer and public speaker, tackling issues from misogyny online to racism in America. Arthur is determined to not only help our society rid itself of its “f****d up” qualities, he’s also ready to purge himself of his own demons as a long-time angry nerd and an outcast child of immigrants. Back at home in Cleveland, Arthur’s wife, Eliza, faces challenges of her own. She is a science-fiction writer who once had dreams of training to be an astronaut. A few years ago she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, an autoimmune disease causing chronic pain and fatigue. She supports Arthur the best she can, by taking care of the day to day, but she hopes to finish her novel. Meanwhile, Arthur continues to juggle his full-time job as an insurance analyst, while writing weekly for the Daily Beast, Huffington Post and Salon. He ends his first speaking gig in Silicon Valley’s Techmanity conference on a questionable note, and faces his father for the first time after his Jeopardy! run. Arthur and his father have a tumultuous relationship, cemented by his father’s affair and Arthur’s refusal of a career in science. As Arthur’s writing and speaking career gains momentum, he faces his biggest challenge, the gamergate movement, a group of gamers who send death and rape threats to women who criticize the portrayal of women in video games. He speaks to a sold out panel at the Music and Gaming festival in Washington, DC. In retaliation, gamergate summons all its followers and targets Arthur in an online lynching. Arthur gets in over his head and quits twitter. He re-evaluates the priorities in his life and decides to visit Taiwan with Eliza, in order to reconcile with a part of himself that he’s been running away from his whole life. In Taiwan, Arthur realizes he needs to let go of his father’s past trespasses, but also comes to understand his own tragic flaw - he’s too angry and too invested for his own sanity.