Bong Joon-ho: The Movieline Interview

Of course, there's no actual mother in Psycho, but you do have this simple child who may or may not have killed a beautiful young woman, and a fiercely protective mother with whom he shares a home.

Precisely. That's a great reference, and no one has really mentioned it before. During pre-production I watched it over and over again, and it was very inspirational to me. The relationship between Anthony Perkins and his dead mother was also very obsessional. It was a huge inspiration.

Is the Korea we see in Mother -- the crime, the teen sex, the incompetent police and corrupt legal system -- an accurate depiction of the Korea of today? Or did you have fun holding it up to a funhouse mirror?

For example, a high school student turning to prostitution to survive, and sleeping with all the men in her town? A case like that actually happened a few years ago in Korea, and the depiction of the policemen and the bad lawyers is actually a partial reflection of Korean society. But different from The Host, with this movie it wasn't that important to comment on Korean society. I hope the audience doesn't focus as much on that as they do the relationship between mother and son in it, and this larger idea of the role of motherhood.

There's a remake of The Host in the works, right? How is that going?

Yes, Universal Studios bought the rights. I heard there's some producers and a director attached, and now they are developing the script. But I don't care. [Scheduled for a 2011 release, it's being produced by Gore Verbinski and directed by music video director Fredrik Bond. -ed.]

Have you read it?

No no. I have so many new ideas and stories. I don't have any interest in any kind of sequels or remakes.

Was that the first film in which you had worked with special effects?

The Host was my very first experience with digital effects. It was a very difficult matter. At the time, I studied a lot. I read Cinefex and watched many, many making-of documentaries from here in Hollywood. I worked with a visual effects supervisor from here in the States, and worked with a visual effects company called Orphanage from San Francisco. It was a very interesting experience, but also very difficult, because there is no basis for that kind of film in the South Korean film industry. Maybe this was the first trial of a digital effects creature movie.

Would you do another?

A sequel, no. But my next one is a dark sci-fi movie, based on a French sci-fi graphic novel Snow Piercer. It's a train movie.

Are you making that in Korea?

Yeah, but the story is going to involve a lot of languages and people from different cultures, so it's going to be an international co-production.

Pages: 1 2