I’m happy to report that one of the most exciting surprises of the New York Comic Con came during the Oldboy panel, where an exclusive scene from the movie was shown. The footage was greeted with cheers, shrieks, and mass approval. If you want to hear more about exactly what was depicted, I go into detail about the scene and what the attending cast had to say over in my coverage of the panel. So if you’d like to hear me explain how Spike Lee is absolutely attempting to keep Park Chan-wook’s dark vibe in tact, head over and check it out!
While that panel itself was a lot of fun, I was also invited to participate in roundtable interviews with the cast, which granted us some more exclusive content, including two more press only scenes that I can’t say a lick about.
After Michael Imperioli gave us a fun talk, we sat down with actress Pom Klementieff and writer Mark Protosevich to discuss their roles in Lee’s production, what we can expect as far as the adaptation is concerned, and just how twisted Mark’s ending is. Hope you enjoy!
Starting things off, we asked Pom abut the physical nature of her role:
Pom Klementieff: Oh yeah! I had to train in martial arts, like Tae Kwon Do inspired training for two months, like three hours a day. I lost a toenail. [Laughs] It was really ugly. I lost it after the movie because I’m really professional, and after I put a bandaid on it with Angry Birds to make it more cute.
Delving into Pom’s character, we asked if she could reveal any details as to what her character’s role in Oldboy is:
Pom Klementieff: Yeah, I’m the bodyguard of the villain. Thanks to [Mark], I’m a girl!
Mark Protosevich: In the original film there was the Mr. Han character, who was always at the villain’s side. Pom is the equivalent of that character, and when I was writing the script I thought it would be cool if it was a woman.
Pom Klementieff: Yes, thank you!
Addressing the fact that Oldboy is a remake, we asked Mark how much freedom he had to adapt the source material:
Mark Protosevich: A lot. When you’re faced with an adaptation, whether it’s a book, an existing film, a graphic novel, or a video game, a lot of it is purely analytical. There’s only so much of this material we can take, and there’s only so much of this that might work. A lot of it becomes this emotional, gut, creative feeling. A lot of times you’re going on instinct, so there are definitely things in terms of – I’ve brought up the analogy before that a lot of the things that Spike and I talked about were, in terms of intent, like cover versions of songs. I love Neil Young’s “Like A Hurricane,” but Roxy Music does this awesome cover of it. You’re honoring the original, but you’re trying to make it as much your own as possible.
One thing I find boring, even in a cover version, is if the song sounds exactly the same as the original. Then I’ve also heard covers where I barely recognize the original song. It’s finding that balance in between, of honoring the original. Believe me, I have nothing but respect for the original, and our intent was to come from a place of honor and respect, but also as a creative person, you want to bring something of yourself to it. Perhaps boost up themes that are a little more interesting to me and to Spike [Lee].
Mark Protosevich: I first got involved in this because I got a call from Will Smith, who I worked with on I Am Legend, and he said, “I want you to write my next movie, it’s a remake of Oldboy and Steven Spielberg is going to direct it.” Two days later I was on a plane to LA and I was meeting Spielberg. That was going to be the package, and then it completely fell apart.
That may have been the initial interesting hook for me, working with them on this, as opposed to just being asked if I was interested in remaking Oldboy. But when that fell apart, I had become so passionate about the material and had worked out a 30 page treatment, I had the movie clear in my head and the producer still wanted to movie forward, so I said, “I’m in.”
This one really meant something to me. You can get into the whole issue of fundamentalists out there who feel that the original movie should never have been remade, and I respect their feelings and there’s nothing I can do to change that, but there are, in the course of history, some fairly good pairs, in terms of English language versions of foreign films and remakes of classics. I’m glad David Cronenberg remade The Fly. There’s a Japanese version of Unforgiven that’s coming out. See, I’m curious about that! I’m not saying, “How dare they remake that!” I’m curious about that. I think there’s something good to keeping an open mind.
Relating back to the original, we asked if they’d ever met Park Chan-Wook:
Mark Protosevich: I did not.
Pom Klementieff: I met him! At Sundance. I was like, “Ahh! Nice to meet you! I’m a huge fan! I’m half Korean and in a movie by Spike Lee!” He was like, “Oh, great! How was it to work with Spike!” It was amazing.
Touching back on when this was a Spielberg/Smith project, we asked if Mark’s approach changed once Spike Lee and Josh Brolin got on board:
Mark Protosevich: The interesting thing about that whole situation is that I had about three meetings with Steven, and in one of the first meetings he said, “My son will kill me if we don’t make this movie as intense as the original.” In his mind, we were going to go there. Now, I don’t think he ever had that conversation with Will, so who knows what might have happened, but even in those early stages there was encouragement to go for it. One of the other assumptions is that we were going to wimp out and make it a little more palatable for mass audience, and I can assure you that we did not do that.
Then it became the producers and I sitting in a room saying, “Let’s go forward. Let’s get a draft of the script we’re all happy with, then get an actor and a director to put this together.” That became the process at that time. It was a lower budget movie at that point. It was not going to be big, it was a fairly modest production even then. I can’t remember anyone ever expressing that we were going too far. I think we all just jumped in the pool with a hammer and a razor to see what would happen.
Speaking specifically to Mark’s ending, we brought up that a producer recently revealed that it was more twisted than Park Chan-Wook’s ending:
Mark Protosevich: That’s the way he felt. That’s the way some other people have felt, actually, so you can be the judge. You tell me after you’ve seen the movie.
That concludes our interview but I’d like to thank Pom Klementieff and Mark Protosevich for their time. Be sure to catch Oldboy when it opens nation wide on November 27th!