New Creative Thanksgiving Juice

I know there's a lot going on in the world right now, but life goes on and I just can't help but be concerned with realtively small things.

Today, on the day after Thanksgiving, I'm thinking mostly about these two things:

1) MOJO TANGO -- Jonny Stranger, who was at NYU with me in the MFA program and is now based in Austin, TX sent me a DVD of his second feature. I think the film is still not locked down (it's still being edited), but the version I saw blew me away.

I watched it once. Then, in the middle of the night (4AM), watched it again. It has its flaws and needs a few adjustments (some scenes need to be cut and a few scenese need to be added), but it is going to be a real crowd pleaser at festivals.

Here is one of Jonny Stranger's other works, a short animated film that is a sample of his creative visual sense. Enjoy.




As for MOJO TANGO, he has done an amazing job of making a really entertaining and hip film about two friends and their relationships with women. I've seen lots of indie no-budget films shot on digital video about floundering 20somethings and 30somethings that have since been labeled as mumblecore, most notably THE PUFFY CHAIR, FUNNY HA HA, KISSING ON THE MOUTH, and Jonny's movie is way better than all those. And those movies were reviewed in the NY TIMES.

I tip my hat to you, Jonny Stranger, for persevering and getting your second feature made under remarkable duress. You are a true independent filmmaker. I can't wait for you to experience the love of the audience at festival screenings, especially since the film also authentically captures the hipster Bohemian scene of Austin. If anyone hasn't been there, the hype is for real. It is one cool city, still great for artists and slackers in general.

Anyway, being witness to Jonny Stranger's struggle and now seeing the fruit of that struggle has been humbling and enlightening. I will follow your example.


Now, the second thing.

2) I've been busy since returning to Hong Kong doing Korean-to-English translations. I did the translation (English subtitles) for an old-school Korean television mini series (all 16 episodes). This entails watching the episodes and coming up with English dialog that has same or similar meaning but that also matches the relative length of the original. It's not that difficult, and I'm pretty good at it--I'm relatively good with languages. But it still takes time. It doesn't pay much (especially now since I get paid in Korean won and that currency has plummeted), but it's work I can do at a very flexible schedule and without having to schlepp around.

Because of that job, I really haven't had time to do much else. So, it wasn't until this morning that I realized that the laptop that was stolen from our luggage in the Maldives contained the latest file of the novel that I've been working on--more fitting description is the novel that's been kicking my butt-- for the past 3, 4 years.

I thought I'd backed it up to an external hard drive that I have at home, but it turns out I hadn't. So basically, what I do have of that novel is an old draft from about a year ago before a major rewrite.

I'm not even sure what the point of this is. I'm not really sad about it. It's more like begruding acceptance of a situation.

Basically, I didn't lose it all, so if I can go on and finish the novel, losing the laptop will make for a good making-of overcoming-obstacles story.

On the other hand, it's as if this novel, a hip mystery, is giving me a way out, tempting me to take the easy way out and abandon it.

I ought to, as I know its flaws already, but I've invested so much in it already, that I just couldn't do that.

Anyway, this is what it feels like sometimes to write a book.

On a positive note, I got an e-mail from out of the blue from some prof at UC Berkeley who tracked me down to tell me she is teaching my book BOY GENIUS to her class of 40 students this semester.

This happens to me about once a year, but this is the first time from a really big name school. Very gratifying feeling.

I guess one has to find encouragement in all things.

Two Films That Are Way Way Out There

This comes in the wake of Barak Obama's victory in the U.S. presidential election yesterday.

I'm still feeling high from that victory. I've seen two films since. Both are films that I've been trying to see for quite a while now.

The first is Nagisa Oshima's DEATH BY HANGING(1968), which has been written up in so many books as epitomizing Japan's New Wave but is a really hard film to get to see. It's virtually impossible to find in the U.S., here in Hong Kong, and even in Japan. I looked for it at various video stores in Tokyo a few months ago to no avail.

I won't get into the logistics of how I finally got to see this film, which I first read about more than 10 years ago, but it was a treat. That said, I can't believe it was ever produced. It's one of the strangest most experimental films I've ever seen. It's divided into 7 sections. For me 2 were gripping and ridiculously intense. The others were too disjointed and anti-cinema for me. These sections were like watching Godard from the 80s and 90s where there's no effort whatsoever to accomodate the viewer.

The film is almost unclassifiable. It starts out like a documentary, then quickly turns into an absurd play. Overall, it is a treatise or interactive inspired dissertation on capital punishment and Japan's historical role and treatment of its underclass. I cannot imagine the film finding any sort of audience in Japan. I don't know the facts, but I'd be willing to bet that it made no money. It is just too intense a film, too experimental, too out-there. Indeed, it's an indictment on Japan and simultaneously a call for real soul-searching but made by a film genius.

It is definitely one of those super obscure intellectual films that you have to be a ridiculous film snob to have seen.

The second film was Kim Ki Duk's debut feature CROCODILE (1996), which was trademark Kim Ki Duk. It was bizarre but strangely compelling and original. Even though it was the first feature film the guy made, there were moments of complete originality. In fact, the film contained two things I've never seen before in my life. One, the main character dives into the river, and while underwater blows and inflates a balloon. I've never seen this before in real life or in a movie. Two, the main character picks up a turtle at the river's edge and paints its shell blue before releasing it back into the river. Again, original.

The film was clunky at times and had big gaps in narrative. Still, it had enough elements and signs of promise. The film was strong visually and told the story with pictures, which to me, is always a sign of a filmmaker using the medium. Most films are well-made and do indeed tell the story with the sound off. Try it sometimes. Park Chan Wook's OLD BOY is great to watch with the sound on mute.

Watching a movie with the sound off is also a good way to focus on the picture and see just how interesting or mundane a film truly is. I tried watching FAILURE TO LAUNCH with the sound off. The director truly took no risks in making that film. There isn't a single original or inspired shot in the picture. Instead, just the usual 'coverage' of conventional shots. They might as well have made that film on auto-pilot. Maybe they did. That film quickly dies without the sound.

The point is, CROCODILE was a treat despite its inadequacies and despite the fact that the copy I managed to get my hands on didn't have the best picture or sound quality. I can't believe anyone produced it. It was a truly bizarre film. It was clearly meant to be a low-budget quickie cheap entertainment, but Kim Ki Duk subverted it and turned it into a surreal and at-times visually stunning personal picture complete with his obsesssions and neuroses.

This guy is a true creative force. In his prolific output and sheer originality, the only person who even comes close in the history of cinema was Rainer Warner Fassbinder. And of course, both were complete originals. Not every film of both filmmakers was impressive. They each had some duds, but overall, they made more interesting and original films in a short period of manic productivity than some studios do in a lifetime.

By the way, tonight we will go see QUANTUM OF SOLACE. I can't say I'm a huge James Bond fan though I've seen my share of 007 films, but I thoroughly enjoyed the last one. So Jene loved that film. Hope this one is just as much fun.

Most Infuriating 'How I Became a Film Director' Story in History

I, like most other people, fell in love with movies as a child by watching movies simply as a consumer enjoying entertainment. I cherished the whole popcorn and soda experience and watched anything and everything. It wasn't until I was about 19 or 20 that I was exposed to truly great movies and became more serious about this magnificent medium.

Since then, I've been fascinated with how people get their foot in the door and the circumstances under which they got to make their first feature film. I made a terrible first feature film when I was 24 called FREE COUNTRY that was lackluster on all fronts. I wrote the screenplay myself and financed it by scrounging money from my student loans. Maybe not a great move if you're a sensible person with more practical concerns, but that's a different can of beans...

Whatever the case, I must have read hundreds of books over the years about different filmmakers from the most revered to the most crass to glean how they got their first films made.

In most cases, filmmakers have had to use their own money. This was the case for Godard, who used an inheritance to make his first film. In a few cases, they are able to supplement their own money with other people's money, which was the case for the Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi.

Of course, in those places where there is less emphasis on entrepreneurship and where the state controls the film industry, a small number of filmmakers catch a break while at the national film school and the state finances their first film. This was the case for Roman Polanski, Zhang Yi Mou, and Andrei Tarkovsky...

The point it, no matter who paid for the first film, most aspiring filmmakers find it incredibly difficult to get a break and it is through extreme struggle and luck that they get a chance to helm their first picture after having desperately wanted to make a feature film for a long long time.

Given this state of affairs, I learned something so very infuriating this week in a book on IM Kwon-taek. For those of you who may not know 'IM (sorry, couldn't resist), he is an old-school film director who has also come to be regarded in some circles as the elder statesman and face of Korean cinema. His most well-known films outside South Korea are SOPYONJAE, a period film about a family of itinerant beggar singers; THE GENERAL'S SON series, about a patriotic Korean gangster who fights Japanese gangsters during the 1930s when Korea was colonized by Japan; and CHIHWASEON, a period film about an extremely talented painter who was also a maverick, a drunk, and a womanizer.

Through these films he has won critical acclaim both in South Korea and in Europe. And it is through these films, which are quite impressive, that I first learned about this director, who is in his 70s now and still working in South Korea. But it turns out this is just the tip of the iceburg. The guy has directed 100 feature films since making his feature debut in 1962. During the first half of his career, he was considered something of a hack, who robotically and rather haphazardly cranked out genre pictures as was the industry practice then. He only gained his current reputation in the past 20 years.

Be that as it may, the guy's place as the representative figure of a national cinema--whether such a thing even exists or whether the reputation is deserved is a separate issue-- is similar to AKIRA KUROSAWA's in Japan.

Here is a link to the wikipedia entry on IM Kwon-taek:


Now, here is the zinger. It turns out that the guy's becoming a film director was a complete accident. The guy didn't love movies. He didn't even watch many movies. He didn't try for years to become a film director.

So how did it happen?

During the Korean War (1950-53), he found himself an 18-year-old refugee separated from his family in the southern port city of Busan. To survive, he worked for a time as a day laborer, but quickly found out the work was just too strenuous. So, he got a job working at a shoe store, which some enterprising person had set up to sell U.S. Army issued boots in the blackmarket.

Near the end of the war, the owners of the shoe store went to Seoul, the capital, and left him in charge of the Busan store. He managed that business for another 6 months on his own. At that point, the owners told him to close up shop and come to Seoul. They wanted him to help out in their new business venture, a fledgling movie production company.

Thus began his entry into the film industry. He started out in the props department and began doing all sorts of tasks to help the fledgling movie production company, until he eventually became a film director with his first feature FAREWELL TO TUMAN RIVER (1962 B&W), whose print has since been lost.

To put it simply, IM Kwon-taek became a film director because he worked at a shoe store.

The closest to this story that I can think of is AKIRA KUROSAWA's, who as a floundering high-school graduate who had failed to get into a Japanese university, became an assistant director by answering a newspaper ad and then somehow passing the Japanese film studio's (I think it was TOHO) lengthy interview and examination process.

But even in that case, Kurosawa had already been enamored with films from having seen numerous Russian and European classics under the influence of his older brother and had harbored an ambition to make films.

With IM Kwon-taek, there was no such exposure or ambition. Initially, his working in films was akin to his working on an assembly line at some factory.

Maybe his example is what some people might call FATE or DESTINY?

Whatever the case, it must be so strange for him to see the current brouhaha about filmmaking and just how competitive and popular the film industry has become and that there are even film schools where people pay large sums of money to go to study the craft.

Amazing!!!

OASIS by Lee, Chang Dong

I just read a book on the Korean director Lee, Chang Dong, which I got from the main branch of the HK public library over the weekend.

Lee, Chang Dong has made four feature films in the past 12 years. All four films were serious movies and well-received.

Prior, he was a novelist with two books and no ties whatsoever to the film industry. I have read none of his novels but have seen all four of his films. They are all pretty amazing.

That said, I learned from the book that the guy's father was a leftist intellectual who was blacklisted and persecuted in Korean society of the 1970s and 1980s. This left its mark on Lee, Chang Dong.

From reading the book, I got the impression that this director is one serious person and a real intellectual. Most film directors are not. It is a hands-on medium after all.

Still, the guy's strength as a writer is evident in all four of his films: GREEN FISH, PEPPERMINT CANDY, OASIS, and SECRET SUNSHINE. He wrote the screenplays for all four films. All are complete original works except for SECRET SUNSHINE, which is based on another author's short story. All have tight storytelling structure and form and content are excellently-crafted.

Today, I saw OASIS again. The acting is superb, but the screenplay is even better. Lee, Chang Dong is the master of the subtle exposing of hypocrisy. The film slams middle class aspirations that most people in Korean society have by focusing on two outsiders, a fuck-up ex-convict and a woman suffering from cerebal palsy. This description doesn't do the movie justice. The film is no RAIN MAN or MY LEFT FOOT. It doesn't look for redemption in some vindication of the human-spirit type of story. It's far more desperate and disturbing than that.

My favorite contemporary filmmaker is Kim, Ki Duk. But this guy, Lee, Chang Dong, is intense like Kim, Ki Duk, but only much more cerebral and cautious. The film plays like there was nothing at all left to chance. Every frame seems to have been crafted. This guy must be such a perfectionist.

I was also impressed that in the book, which contained interviews, Lee, Chang Dong repeatedly mentioned Kim, Ki Duk as a terrific filmmaker from Korea. Kudos to the guy for giving credit where credit is due.

These films aren't for everyone, especially if you haven't seen many films. It's like reading, the more you read the better a reader you become. Same thing with films, the more you watch films, the better you become at appreciating them. Of course, this is only relevant to people who have a serious respect for movies. For most people, movies are just a time filler.

Regardless, OASIS is definitely a winner. A haunting film like no other that will stay with you for a long time. The closest European equivalent is FASSBINDER, but Lee, Chang Dong's films are more carefully crafted with less theatrical cavalier quality.

Kim Ki Duk's DREAM at Hong Kong Asian Film Festival

Like I wrote on my last post, last night So Jene and I schlepped out to Kowloon Tong AMC in Festival Walk mall to see Kim Ki Duk's DREAM, which was being screened (one-screening only) as part of the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival.

We, especially I, had very high expectations since the guy's been remarkably consistent in making truly unique films. I love COAST GUARD, BIRD CAGE, and BAD GUY. I also believe that this guy is the most-talented, most-original, filmmaker of my generation. (That is correct: He is the best most-original living filmmaker I have seen in the 30+ years that I've been watching films.)

But, it turns out the guy is only human, and this movie was less than stellar.

Here are some tidbits: The main character speaks only Japanese, but all the other Korean characters can miraculously understand him. He talks to them in Japanese. They answer back in Korean. And nothing, not even one piece of dialog, is used to explain or address this.

But this is just a minor quibble in the overall plausibility benchmark.

Granted that Kim Ki Duk movies aren't usually known for being very plausible and we knew going in not to expect a mainstream narrative, but this movie was just too much. Too much so that it prevented the development of real empathy.

So Jene termed it aptly by saying she couldn't empathize at all with the characters because the things they were doing were outright stupid.

Stupid in what way?

For instance, the main character is put in a situation where he must not sleep. So what does he do? Normal people would drink coffee. This guy starts to stab himself in the head and pound his foot with a hammer.

I actually don't think Kim Ki Duk is one of those gratuitous gore-type directors like Miike, who do gore for fore's sake.

Kim Ki Duk's 14 other movies are magnificent, equally disturbing and sublime, and even more impressive because he wrote and directed every single one of them.

I know the next Kim Ki Duk film will be amazing.

On the whole, a rather disppointing night. Still, while watching the film--the audience was mostly HK Chinese (I'd been wondering what sort of fanbase the guy has here in HK; in South Korea, his movies don't play at all)--there were scenes that really inspired me. I started thinking, I could do this. I've shot scenes like this. All it takes is two actors and a 35mm camera.

Cut to the chase, I began thinking I could make a 35mm feature film. All I need to do is write a script that has very little dialogue. That way it can be shot with novice actors with a 35mm cameral.

Sure it'll cost some money (I figure it can be done for 50-60 thousand dollars), but what the hell am I waiting for? Even a bad movie can get some light of day, and can lead to the next film.

You have to have something to show for yourself.

SOMEBODY'S OLD CHEESE

I forgot that I never posted SOMEBODY'S OLD CHEESE on this blog. It's an 8-minute film that prompted the response video from Jonny Stranger.

Its genesis was a trip I took to Austin, TX two summers ago. I went to visit Jonny Stranger and to make a film with him there based on one of my old plays.

That film never came through in the week I spent there. Still, Jonny and I took turns interviewing each other and thus came SOMEBODY'S OLD CHEESE.



By the way, the woman in the photo above is Elizabeth Regen, who is a terrific actor and writer. I met her when we were both writers at NYU. She played the older sister to Natalie Portman's character in Luc Besson's THE PROFESSIONAL back in the day. She appears in TV shows from time to time. Most recently, she was in the movie BEER LEAGUE.

The guy in the photo is Jerry Ongkeo, a talented rapper from NYC. I've lost touch with him. I hope he is well and wish him the best. I remember eating at his house a few times when I was very broke.

I'm doing some translation work right now. Tonight, So Jene and I will go see a Kim Ki Duk film in a movie theater in Kowloon Tong. I'm very excited. I'm a huge fan of Kim Ki Duk and believe that he is one of the most original and unique filmmakers in the world today. The closest thing to a Kim Ki Duk even in the history of cinema is Fassbinder, and Kim Ki Duk is more original, more intense, and more creative, and more maverick than Fassbinder.


Kim Ki Duk's aesthetic can best be described as most original and most disturbing but not perverse for perversion's sake. And the guy is prolific with barely any misses. Nearly all his movies are captivating. And he writes every one of his own movies. How he manages is beyond me. The guy is unbelievably talented.


That said, I've only seen Kim Ki Duk movies through DVD. Tonight will be the first time I get to see one of his movies on the big screen. It's being shown as part of an Asian Film Festival here in HK.

Reading POLANSKI book

Am reading a bio of Roman Polanski by Jonh Parker that I got from the library.

Very surprised to learn how difficult the guy was. He was apparently the walking paradigm of a termmperamental artist, who'd throw tantrums and start screaming on the set.

I hadn't seen that many Polanski films.

In the past, I'd seen only the following Polanski films, in this order:

CHINATOWN
KNIFE IN THE WATER
ROSEMARY'S BABY
THE TENANT
THE LAMP (early short film Polanski made at Lodz National Film School)

I loved CHINATOWN, I'd attributed a lot of the film's impact to Jack Nicholson's performance and Robert Towne's screenplay. I remmeber being completely blown away by the picture the first time I saw it.

I thought KNIFE IN THE WATER was very impressive, especially considering that it was a debut feature film.

ROSEMARY'S BABY seemed campy to me. My wife and I kept thinking how great the apartment in the film was.

THE TENANT seemed interesting, but definitely too much like a derivative of ROSEMARY'S BABY, but set in Paris.

THE LAMP was a 3-4 minute short that was very creepy and seemed to be signature Polanski. We saw this at the MOMA when they had a screening of many great films from Lodz.


Anyway, reading the book, it reminds you just what struggle and difficulty even such successful directors like Polanski went through. You forget that they, too, were struggling artists at one point.

As ruthless and self-centered as Polanski must have been, he did manage to make some excellent films, as well as, of course, like everyone, some real duds.

I have yet to see REPULSION. I wonder if I can even find that film here in Hong Kong.