“I always feel I am in the tail of the train.”
On June 27, director
Bong Joon-ho met audiences at the Museum of Modern Art and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York. An Evening with BONG Joon-ho was held for BONG to answer questions for one hour at Lincoln Center Theater on the day of its release. The tickets were sold out earlier. People lined up to get tickets sold on the spot. A review of
Snowpiercer in the New York Times on the day helped publicize the event. “
Snowpiercer is an entertaining postmodern film which mixes styles and unfolds its story in an old-fashioned way,” said A. O. SCOTT at the New York Times.
Even after the screening of the film, audiences did not leave BAM famous as a cinematheque for movie fans to see the director.
“Let’s talk our friends out of going for Transformers 4. Let’s go and watch Snowpiercer, a smarter and more attractive film with them,” said Goran TOPALOVIC, the host of the event and the co-director of the New York Asian Film Festival, signaling the start of the event. On the day, director BONG talked with New York audiences. After this event, director BONG continued to actively publicize his film at other theaters in New York while meeting audiences.
-
How did you find out the original graphic novel of this film? What made you make it into a film?
BONG: I am a fan of graphic novels. So, I am a regular customer of a comics store in Seoul. One day, I found Snowpiercer there. Its quality earned the graphic novel a prize in France. But it was not a bestseller. It was not as popular as The Adventures of Tintin(Laughter among the audiences). Strange to say, a good publishing company in Korea published its Korean edition. At the time,Korea was the only nation where Snowpiercerwas published outside France. I picked up the book. It was a really page turner. So I read to its last page on the spot. While leaving the comics store, I made up my mind to make it into a film. It was 2005. Accordingly, it took nine years to produce the film (Laughter among the audiences). Deducting the production period for Mother, it actually took three to four years to complete the project.
- Did you try to keep the original story intact or not?
BONG: The film is quite different from the original comics. The original story does not have characters played by Jamie BELL, TildaSWINTON and John HURT. The character of hero Curtis is different from that of the original. A fundamental difference is that the original version does not have the concept of a revolution. Its basic story line is that Curtis runs into a female lead in the middle and heads for the head of the train. Neither a riot nor an insurrection occurs. But we did not change the original setting where a new ice age compels survivors to take shelter in the train and the rich takes the head while the tail becomes home to the poor.
- What made you decide to make it an English spoken film?
BONG: I thought that it would be strange for the train to carry only South and North Koreans since the survivors are from various nations. Therefore, we needed actors of various races and nationalities. The film shows actors from various nations such as the U.S., the U.K., Korea, Romania and Iceland among others. English accounts for about 70% of the dialogues. We had an international production staff as well.
-
Did the mix trouble you?
BONG: A big chaos never happened. I worked with American and Australian special effects teams for Host and Japanese actors and a Japanese staff for Tokyo. These experiences helped me ease into the work. One problem was labor regulations (Laughter among the audiences). The local regulations dwarfed the Korean regulations in details even though the local regulations have some positive aspects. For example, in order to protect child actors, the regulations made it imperative for child actors to take a 15-minute break after shooting for 45 minutes even though it is natural to protect them. This made me concerned about a classroom scene with 50 children. While the problem was worrying me, the producer told me, “Mr. BONG, don’t worry. I made a Harry Potter film. Then the producer divided child actors into a morning class and an afternoon class and double-cast them to find a breakthrough. I had fun out of learning such knowhow.
- The visual of the train impressed me. Personally, I thought that one part of the tail is reminiscent of a New York subway train (Laughter among the audiences).
BONG: Yes. After the film premiered in Korea, an audience tweeted that he strangely felt like moving into the head of a subway train after watching Snowpiercer(Laughter among the audiences). Although taking subway is an everyday thing, every time I get on a subway train, I always feel I am in the tail of the train.
- Now are we in the head or tail?
BONG: I think that the train already derailed.
- What do we have to do after the derailment? Do we have to make something and start again?
BONG: The beauty of directing a sci-fi film is to directly speak a rather childish message even though the message is somewhat platonic and abstractive. NAMGOONGMinsoo shows what I want to say. Chris makes up his mind to advance to the head. But no matter how far he tries to move forward, he is still in the train. I think that the system of destroying the door with explosives and advancing to the next motor car like that of NAMGOONG Minsoo is a real revolution. I speak the simple radical message in a childish manner through the sci-fi genre.
