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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

DP/30 – Thirst dir. Chan-wook Park

thirst490.jpg
Chan-wook Park is a young legend in the genre film world, already having delivered titles like Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, plus one-third of Three Extremes and J.S.A.: Joint Security Area.. all before his 45th birthday.
We talked, with the help of a translator, about his career, his latest film, Thirst – the first being released domestically by a division of a major studio – and his commitment to both a Korean revival house movement and to anti-piracy efforts.
Here’s the sneak peek…

The full video interview is after the jump…

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9 Responses to “DP/30 – Thirst dir. Chan-wook Park”

  1. LexG says:

    Are there any smokin’ Asian chicks in this?

  2. anghus says:

    my favorite director. great interview. can’t wait to see thirst.

  3. Has anybody out there seen this? I detested Oldboy, but then I loooved Sympathy for Lady Vengeance so I’m not sure where I should stand with wanting to see Thirst.

  4. transmogrifier says:

    Quite frankly the idea of someone detesting Oldboy would usually lead me to advise them to give up watching movies all together, as they just don’t get them (I kid, I kid…..*shakes fist and snarls*), but I think you should just do it. It is like three short story ideas stitched together in an energizing, unpredicatable joy of film-making, and the last act in particular is interesting in its refusal to do simple black and white with regards the power and desire of vampirism.
    If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but you will have definitely seen something, and you’ll want to talk about it after.

  5. MarkVH says:

    Camel that’s funny, ’cause I’m the complete 180 degree opposite – I absolutely loved Oldboy but hated and was genuinely offended by Lady Vengeance, one of the rare times that’s ever happened.

  6. jeffmcm says:

    Was that because Lady Vengeance seemed to be openly and unironically stating that bloody vengeance could be good for the soul? It made me a bit confused but I still adored the movie.

  7. I liked it because it didn’t look like it was lensed through a dirty sink, among other reasons.

  8. jeffmcm says:

    Why should that disqualify a movie (not to mention, my DVD copy doesn’t look like that)?

  9. Triple Option says:

    I saw it over the w/e. I wouldn

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon