Project Description:
PALM BEACH ARCADE follows Lisa Bennett, an Asian-American venture capital analyst, pulled between what her immigrant mother wants, what society demands, and her innermost wishes and expectations.
The story begins with the death of her younger brother â his sole possession: Palm Beach Arcade, a hard-core porn store.
Lisa tries to close out his affairs but decides takes over the store to satisfy her mother; and in her venture capital life, is appointed COO, working for the biggest misogynist in Silicon Valley. Lisa moves between these two worlds, surprisingly finding more power and autonomy in her new realm of adult entertainment than in her more familiar arena of tech.
Lisa turns Palm Beach Arcade from a struggling entity to a moneymaker, and over the course of the series, Lisa uses her entrepreneurial tech skills to build a global porn empire, run by women.
This show is not about porn though, itâs a study in contrast and juxtaposition: clean/dirty, light/dark. Strippers need health insurance, Silicon Valley executive treats women poorly, the booth cleaner is sending his beautiful daughter to college. We can never really tell âgoodâ from âbadâ in the âcleanâ and âdirtyâ worlds of Palm Beach Arcade.
Bios:
Michi Broman has spent a lot of time thinking about fitting in. From not being Japanese enough (She learned kitchen-table Japanese from her immigrant mother but looks more like her white-guy father.), to being the only woman in the room (She had a successful career in tech, working for clients like Microsoft, Amazon and Google.), to starting her writing career later than her cohorts (She stays silent on the topic of music.), she finds that the push and pull between wanting to be seen as a singular standout and wanting to fit into the group is much more complex than she ever could have imagined! These experiences provide fodder for her stories about women thrust into worlds as diverse as a venture capital firm, an Amazon warehouse, a porn shop, and the banks of the mighty Yellowstone River. She lives in LA with her former fish-monger husband.