Some of the cinephile loot at Videotheque, and its owner, Mark Wright.

I’ve long wanted do an interview with Mark Wright, who established a remarkable DVD store named Videotheque in South Pasadena a few years ago. Los Angeles has a few stores renowned for their ambitious classic Hollywood and world cinema selections (Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee, Cinefile, Vidiots) but none in the San Gabriel Valley. I first heard about the newly-opened Videotheque on a film discussion board in 2003, and soon became a loyal customer attracted to its great selection (including many imports) organized by country or director, genuinely friendly staff, and fun, cinephile vibe with laminated magazine clippings, film reference books, and colorful collection of Godard posters.

In this day of mail-order rentals and streaming video (not to mention the Great Recession), it’s nice to see an independent brick-and-mortar store thrive–Videotheque recently moved across the street into an expanded space that makes it bigger and better than ever. And it’s still conveniently next to the Mission Station on the Metro Gold Line. Even though I no longer live in Pasadena, I still make regular excursions to the store because there’s no online substitute for browsing its aisles; I always come across titles I didn’t even know were available on DVD. And little touches make a big difference, like the fact that the store rents DVDs with the sleeves/liner notes included. (Thursday nights the farmer’s market across the street doubles the pleasure.) –Doug

Q. When did you first become interested in movies, and when did you decide you wanted to enter the video business?

Mark Wright: There’s an amazing art deco styled cinema called The Tower Theater in Fresno where I grew up that would show occasional kids matinee repertory programs on Saturdays like The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I also remember seeing current release movies at the UA or Mann like Time Bandits and War Games and being scared to death! Those freaky cages suspended in the black mid-air and the kid nearly abandoned in the house fire in the former, and Matthew Broderick and sexy Ally Sheedy almost setting off nuclear holocaust via Commodore 64 in the latter, were tough on the gentle sensibilities of this pre-teen. Madame Medusa, the “Cruella De Ville” of Disney’s The Rescuers also gave me fright on its re-issue in the early 80′s.

My parents watched foreign films and sometimes I joined them at the Tower for kid-friendly ones like the hilarious mismatched buddy movie La Chèvre, with Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard. When we got our first VCR, I would record stuff like The Sting, Mary Poppins and Bugsy Malone off of TV and memorize all the lines. I loved The Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, and Raiders of the Lost Ark like every one else on the block– but near high school seemed to find my way towards the foreign fare that was making the rounds at the time like A Room With a View, Au Revoir les Enfants, Manon of the Spring, and The Double Life of Véronique.

In college, I was a French major and got to live a year and a half in Paris (’93/’94). It’s such a movie lover’s paradise, with endless retrospectives and so many different little (and grand) cinemas. In addition to films by Nikita Mikhalkov, Zhang Yimou, or Almodóvar, I discovered English language filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Atom Egoyan, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, David Cronenberg, and Jane Campion. Pulp Fiction had just won at Cannes ’94, so it was a big deal seeing it in a packed Paris house, prior to its US release.

Auspiciously, Clerks also played to nice acclaim at Cannes that year and I saw it as well; I would be clerking myself a couple years later after graduation, at a new arthouse video store. I worked at Video Paradiso in Claremont for six years, managing the last four, and picked up invaluable retail training. I thought I could give it a go on my own, and found a great stretch of shops on Mission Street, South Pasadena, where I opened Videotheque in March of 2003.

Q. Videotheque is unique, not just in South Pasadena, but in the whole San Gabriel Valley, for specializing in foreign, classic, and rare DVDs. Did you ever worry about finding or building an audience for world cinema in the suburbs?

A. In addition to the chains (Tower Records, The Wherehouse), I used to rent films from a small indie shop in Fresno called The Movies. They carried an eclectic selection and would break out the titles into categories of directors, genres, and interesting subsections. Although modest in size, they had a nice coterie of customers; it seemed if done right, this type of shop could flourish in most moderately cultivated places.

I noticed the same success at Video Paradiso; it didn’t hurt that it was right next to Rhino Records– a great music store and interesting-people magnet–and located in the heart of the Claremont Village, a charming college town with an independent vibe. I got the same feeling while taking in art films and midnight movies at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena, and later when I discovered the Mission West neighborhood’s beautiful trees, craftsman homes, mom and pop shops, coffee houses, and attractive old buildings, it felt like a perfect fit.

Even out in the suburbs, we get the occasional star drop-in. Two favorites who were charming and friendly: Vincent Malle, brother and occasional producer of Louis, once special ordered a couple Hedy Lamarr movies, and the son of Paul Gégauff (French New Wave screenwriter/actor) picked up one of the films his father made with Chabrol, Pleasure Party.

Q. In this day of rent-by-mail, pay-per-view, and streaming video, a lot of people assume a brick-and-mortar store is a losing proposition, but Videotheque always seems robust and lively, and you recently moved into a larger space. How does your store fit into today’s video market? What do you attribute to your success?

A. Thanks! We’ve been so lucky. Our great customers deserve all the credit. We’ve tried to lay out the store in an interesting and attractive way, to keep the collection fresh with new releases of every stripe–big Hollywood hits, documentaries, international titles, classic reissues, cult items, TV, music, kids–while maintaining a bedrock back catalog of the same, and supplementing with hard-to-find rareties & imports, plus a revolving for-sale section of DVD, Blu-ray, screen-printed cinema t-shirts, posters, CDs, vinyl and most recently, several dozen rare Japanese chirashi (promotional lobby cards) of classic and foreign releases.

I’m fortunate to have an amazing, creative, people-friendly and movie-knowledgeable staff who add to the shop’s inviting atmosphere. I know we have customers who use Netflix, order movies on demand, or procure by other means, but so far we’ve managed to remain appealing and valuable, among a host of home entertainment options. We also have the advantage of being a destination away from the couch or computer; hopefully the desire to leave the house and engage in a pleasing retail environment will continue to persist. We aspire to offer the same satisfying experience that I’ve found as a customer at great indie establishments like Powell’s Books in Portland, The New Beverly Cinema or Amoeba Music in Los Angeles, Vroman’s across town, or Nicole’s Foods across the road.

Q. Videotheque has organized public screenings at various venues in the past. Is this something you’re still interested in doing?

A. They were a lot of fun, and a lot of work. Much organizing and promoting went in, plus set-up and breakdown of projector, screen, sound, folding chairs, etc. Sometimes for a crowd of six people! Regarding future screenings, I wouldn’t rule them out but as the Magic 8 Ball might say: “Outlook not so good.”

Q. You’ve always displayed good taste with your acquisitions; do you still find time to watch a lot of movies? How do you keep up with the interesting titles?

A. I don’t seem to watch as much at home as I used to, but still try to make time to get to the big screen. I’m a big fan of all the great programming around town at all the usual suspects like LACMA, the American Cinematheque, the Hammer, the Cinefamily, the New Bev, the Nuart, etc. I read things like Film Comment and Cineaction, and enjoy listening to the crtitics’ round-ups on KPCC’s FilmWeek, or catching At The Movies when I’m at home. For comprehensive listings of everything going on movie-wise in L.A., Karie Bible’s filmradar.com is invaluable, and you can sign-up for her helpful newsletter bulletins, too.

Q. What do you enjoy most about running the store?

A. Turning people on to treasures, from Alphaville to Zelig.

Bong Joon-ho, courtesy of the author

By Hye Jean Chung

The synopsis of Mother, the latest film from award-winning Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, whose filmography includes the critically acclaimed and widely popular films, The Host (2006) and Memories of Murder (2003), is deceptively simple: The titular character is a devoted single parent (Kim Hye-ja) who lives with her twenty-seven-year-old, mentally-challenged son, Do-joon (Won Bin), and takes care of him with a passion that tinges on obsession. When he is arrested by the local police and charged with murdering a teenage girl, her maternal instincts attain a primal intensity as she begins her desperate mission to prove his innocence by finding the real killer. She faces obstacles in the guise of an indifferent police force that bullies a confession out of Do-joon, and a pompous lawyer with a bloated sense of self-importance.

The film shares similarities with Bong’s previous films, which often reveal the dark side of Korean society through satire and irony, such as the inefficient and ineffective nature of government institutions and local bodies of power. In terms of genre, Mother is most closely related to Memories of Murder; both are murder mysteries where the narrative is propelled forward by the quest to find the identity of the killer. Mother is also reminiscent of The Host in its depiction of a dysfunctional family and its focus on a portrait of monstrosity found in the context of contemporary Korea. Although the monster in Mother is less visible and more difficult to identity than that of The Host, its presence is no less palpable. In fact, it is the banality of monstrosity in Mother that frightens, leaving behind a lingering aftertaste of malaise long after the empty-eyed faces of Do-joon and his mother fade from view.

Chung: My favorite scenes in the film are the first and last sequences, both showing Kim Hye-ja [a famous and well-respected Korean actress who plays the main protagonist] and other women dancing. It’s visually striking and humorously quirky, especially considering the dark intensity of what happens throughout the rest of the film. Could you tell us a bit about how you directed Kim Hye-ja for those scenes, and what you asked her to do or portray?

Bong: The opening sequence is quite unexpected because Kim Hye-ja suddenly starts dancing in an open field, without any context. I wanted to make the audience a bit bewildered in the beginning, to make them think, “this film is a bit strange,” and also to realize that this woman is slightly crazy, or to anticipate that they will see her slowly losing her sanity throughout the film. And the audience won’t realize the significance of the setting until much later in the film. When you see Kim’s expression in the scene, you can tell that she is not dancing out of feelings of joy. When we were shooting that scene, rather than her dance moves, our focus was on how to portray the sensation of losing one’s sanity, and the experience of feeling dazed and stupefied through Kim’s facial expression. We didn’t really choreograph her dance moves; they were improvised.

The last sequence is quite different because it was shot in an enclosed space filled with a crowd of women. And I wanted to shoot the scene in a silhouette, and to show the women as one shadowy mass, so you wouldn’t be able to pick out Kim Hye-ja amongst the crowd, and to get the sense that all those women each have a story to tell. The situation is also very “Korean,” because there aren’t a lot of countries in the world where older women dance on buses in a group like that. A Turkish-American journalist came up to me once during a film festival in New York and told me that women in Turkey do the same thing. Before that I thought this happened only in Korea. When I was younger, I would watch those dancing women and think, if I ever make a film about a mother, I would include a scene showing older women dancing on a bus like them. I used to think it was an unsightly scene when I was young, but now I’m older and have a child of my own, I can understand the complicated mix of emotions that makes them want to do that.

Kim Hye-Ja in Mother.

Chung: There must have been a lot of pressure after the incredible success of The Host for your next film. What drew you to the story of Mother, especially at this stage in your career?

Bong: The success of The Host was rather unexpected, so there was a bit of pressure, but actually I prepared the story of Mother long before The Host. After Memories of Murder, in 2003, when journalists asked me which actor I wanted to work with, I answered that I wanted to work with Kim Hye-ja. She saw the newspaper articles and contacted me in person. In 2004, I already had started writing the script for Mother, and continued working on it while making The Host. So Mother had nothing to do with the success of The Host, because I had always planned to make this film afterward. I didn’t want to direct two large-scale films in a row, and preferred to make a smaller, more concentrated film.

Won Bin in Mother.

Chung: I loved the film, but (and this might be a very subjective reaction) I felt an overwhelming sense of despair after watching it.

Bong: It is a dark film. [laughs]

Chung: I actually like dark films! But I was quite struck by the detachment I felt from the two main characters. They aren’t characters that necessarily elicit sympathy or empathy. For instance, you can find similarities between Gang-du in The Host and Do-joon in Mother because they are both mentally challenged, but Gang-du is a much more sympathetic figure. To be honest, Do-joon is rather creepy, with an almost ominous air. In fact, Do-joon reminds me more of the monster than Gang-du in The Host.

Bong: Do-joon does leave you with a strange, queasy feeling. [laughs] I think in The Host, there’s a clear distinction between the good and the bad. The family members in The Host are powerless and seem foolish and clueless at times, but they are good, honest people who are all quite lovable. So they elicit feelings of sympathy and make you want to root for them and stand by their side. Meanwhile, the monster and the monstrous entities of power that persecute them elicit feelings of animosity.

But there’s no clear dichotomy in Mother. The mother character is quite extreme, and goes beyond what most people want to know or see about motherhood. But for me, that was the allure of this film. I wanted to go to extremes, to go as far as I could beyond the precipice, and to not be afraid. There was no hesitation for me. But I don’t want to make films like this all the time, or I’d fear for my mental health. [laughs] Just like actors, directors also immerse themselves in the story and the emotions of the film, so it was difficult for me as well toward the end.

In The Host, the characters try to help one another, despite their own weakness. I didn’t recognize this until much later, while I was actually making the film, but in Mother, I realized that the story is about weak people hurting one another, such as the mentally challenged Do-jun and the dead girl, Ah-jung. So the darkness that you mentioned is inherent in the structures of society, but I think that’s also part of reality. So I wanted to portray that in at least one of my films.

Chung: You said once in a previous interview that you’ve always been fascinated with “the concept of chaos” from a philosophical perspective.

Bong: Did I say that? [laughs]

Chung: Well, that’s what I read. In The Host, you at least gave the audience the possibility of a happy ending and a sense of restored order, however precarious and illusory. But in Mother, it seems that there never was an order to be restored in the first place, that reason and logic fail, that chaos is inevitable.

Bong: Yes, The Host ends with the main character having dinner with his adopted son. But Mother is rife with misunderstandings and miscommunication. There’s also an eating sequence in Mother toward the end, but it’s not a scene of domestic happiness: it’s almost a living hell that you cannot escape.

Chung: You mentioned the “Korean” quality of the dance sequence earlier. But your films appeal to both local and international audiences, and you’re one of the few Korean filmmakers whose films are theatrically released overseas. Do you have a certain target audience in mind when you make your films?

Bong: To be honest, I make films to please and satisfy myself. [laughs] While making films, I don’t think in terms of whether this would appeal to a Korean audience, or whether that would be funny to an international audience, since I’m too busy trying to tell a story that I want to tell. But there is this. For instance, I mentioned the dancing sequence on the bus earlier. People who are not familiar with that in their own national context might read it as a surreal experience or an illusion. But that does not faze me. Even if you haven’t been to New York, when you watch a Woody Allen film, you can imagine what it’s like to be on Fifth Avenue or Central Park, or understand the neurotic personality of New Yorkers as depicted in the film. Since 2000 or so, people who are interested in Korean films have become more familiar with elements of Korean society than we think. So even when translating subtitles, I encourage literal translations that retain the “strangeness” of the Korean language. Although mainstream audiences outside of Korea might still be unfamiliar with Korean cinema, there are also many fans in the film festival crowd who see a lot of Korean films, by filmmakers such as Kim Ki-duk, Hong Sang-soo, Park Chan-wook, Lee Chang-dong, and Kim Ji-woon, so I don’t think Koreans should worry that international audiences will not understand Korean culture as portrayed in films.

Chung: I heard that your next project is based on a French science fiction graphic novel [Jean-Marc Rochette and Jacques Loeb's Le Transperceneige]. Could you tell us a bit about it? Is it called Snow Piercer in English?

Bong: Yes, the English working title is Snow Piercer. It’s a science fiction action film that is set on a train, which is kind of similar to Noah’s Ark, because the film is set in a post-apocalyptic world that is completely frozen over. So the train is filled with survivors, and the dramatic tension arises from the struggles and fights among them.

Chung: I heard there will a mixed cast–with actors from various countries.

Bong: The train will be filled with people from all around the world, so there will be a wide variety of ethnicities and nationalities. It’s highly probable that I’ll be casting actors from Korea, Japan, France and the U.S., and I anticipate about half of the film will be in English.

Chung: I was curious where the film will be set, since it’s a train that hurtles through a post-apocalyptic world.

Bong: The train will travel through a large number of countries. Since it’s a science fiction film, it could be set anywhere. It could even travel across oceans through underwater tunnels. (laughs)

Chung: Where are you planning to shoot your film?

Bong: I haven’t finished writing the script, so the details of the production haven’t been decided. A lot of the scenes on the train will be filmed on a set. As for the external scenes, the location managers are considering several possibilities–places that are cold and snowy around five to six months out of the year.

Chung: Did your experience of working in Japan to shoot the segment that was included in Tokyo! (2008) increase your desire to make more films abroad?

Bong: Shaking Tokyo was a short film that lasted only 30 minutes, but it was the first time that I shot a film overseas. I intentionally went to Japan by myself, without any Korean crew or cast members, and I purposefully created an environment where everyone I was working with were Japanese, because I was curious what it’d be like. But really, maybe because it was Japan, I didn’t find the experience of working with a Japanese crew or working on location that different from Korea. I didn’t face many obstacles or difficulties, and I had a good time.

Honestly I was most curious about working with Japanese actors, because I don’t speak Japanese. All the lines were in Japanese, so I didn’t know what to expect while working with Japanese actors and a script entirely in Japanese. Even if they made a mistake, I wouldn’t know. When I work with Korean actors, I discuss with them in minute detail the subtleties of each word and its connotations, and we try out different ways of saying the same line. So I was a bit nervous what it would be like to work in a language I didn’t understand. But I felt that it was ultimately the same, because we’re dealing with the same range of human emotions. Once we bonded over that commonality, it was quite easy working with the Japanese actors. Later on, even though I still didn’t understand Japanese, I was able to catch the mistakes. If I think about it now, I’m not sure how I was able to do that then. Maybe it was because I was concentrating so intently at the time, but at times I didn’t even have to wait for the translator to explain. That made me realize that it wasn’t that different to make films in a foreign context, with foreign actors, as long as you can relate to them on the level of emotions.

Hye Jean Chung is a doctoral candidate in film studies at UC Santa Barbara. She is currently working on a dissertation project that focuses on location shooting and digitally manipulated visual effects in transnational filmmaking. She has also worked as a translator and a journalist in South Korea. She can be contacted here.