Actor Park Hee-soon of the film No Other Choice said that working with director Park Chan-wook had long been a wish so strong that his wife Park Ye-jin put it on her prayer list.
Park Hee-soon conducted an interview on the afternoon of the 25th at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Jongno District, Seoul. There, he met with domestic reporters and talked about the film No Other Choice (directed by Park Chan-wook), which opened on the 24th.
No Other Choice is a film about Mansu (Lee Byung-hun), an office worker who felt his life was so fulfilled he could say "it's all done," but who is suddenly fired and prepares his own war toward reemployment to protect his wife and two children and to keep the home he struggled to acquire. It is director Park Chan-wook's new work and, with meetings of top actors such as Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin, is considered the most anticipated film of the second half of the year. Among them, Park Hee-soon gave a passionate performance in the role of Choi Seon-chul, Mansu's rival in reemployment.
Park Hee-soon said with a laugh, "Working on a 'Park Chan-wook' project was a long-cherished wish. It was on my bucket list. Even my mother and my wife know very well how much I like the director. So it was always on both of their prayer lists. They prayed that Park Chan-wook would let our son and husband work with him. Both of them were as happy as if it were their own matter. I didn't tell the director about this. No other director is on the prayer list."
He said, "I started theater with the Mokhwa troupe, which makes the most theatrical plays. They pursue very experimental and new things. They make traditional pieces and experimental ones too. They are a group that pursues the new and makes forward-thinking theater. Working with the teachers there, I became very familiar with that kind of work and had many things I wanted to challenge, and when I watched films I thought director Park Chan-wook made the most cinematic movies. I was desperate to experience what his artistic world might be like."
What was director Park Chan-wook like to actually work with? Park Hee-soon said, "Often when you see drama scripts, stage directions even include emotions. But this script had a lot of space. It left a lot for actors to imagine. Some actors ask the director how to express something and get hints, but I wanted to collide my imagination with the director's imagination to see where they met."
He added, "I think Lee Byung-hun had a harder time. Unexpected reactions came out that weren't in the script. I don't think he expected to be so shocked that he'd feel like he was suffocating when pulling out his tooth. Seeing that such a great actor accepted any sudden situation I threw at him and handled it, I thought once again that he is truly remarkable."
Park Hee-soon also said, "The director put into the stage directions that Seon-chul would drink and smack his side twice, but I didn't quite understand that. It's similar to being drunk, but I wasn't sure what purpose or intent it served, so I asked. He said it was like Jack Nicholson's action when drinking whiskey in Easy Rider. It was very intense. I wondered how it would look if Seon-chul did it. So when he drank lightly early on I played it lightly, and when he was completely drunk I exaggerated it so his body would shake. Because the movement was a bit more exaggerated than what the director or Lee Byung-hun expected, they liked it. Lee said at first he thought Mrs. Gong Ok-jin had come, and he accepted it well."
He said, "There was no restraint on me from director Park Chan-wook's imagination. The director is meticulous and methodical and has every scene organized in his head, but strangely he is very open to unexpected variables and actors' imagination. So he accepted a lot, and additionally he would amplify things if he thought it would be more fun. One of those moments that caught my eye while reading the script was when he met Mansu in the bathroom."
Park Hee-soon said, "When he later asked me to come have a drink, I couldn't accept letting someone I had never even seen into the house no matter how much of a good person he was. I said I needed to see his face. So the director added a scene where he comes back and puts in 50,000 won and tells him to be at the bar. It made the character appear boisterous and macho but also affectionate toward people. He shows a side of trying to fix things for his superiors and buys drinks for juniors while inviting them to a barbecue, so although brief it became an opportunity to show a variety of sides."
(Continued in interview ②.)
[Photo] Provided by CJ ENM.
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