Director Ra Hee-chan of Boss revealed the efforts behind actor Jung Kyung-ho's tango scene.
Film director Ra Hee-chan conducted an interview on the afternoon of the 29th at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. At that meeting with domestic reporters, he talked about the new film Boss, set to open on Oct. 3.
Boss is a comic action film that depicts the desperate battles of organization members who fiercely "yield" the boss position to one another for their own dreams ahead of the next boss selection, which will decide the organization's future. Director Ra Hee-chan, who debuted in 2007 with the film Let's Live Right, is presenting his new work 14 years after Mr. Idol in 2011.
Director Ra Hee-chan began preparing Boss in 2019. After receiving the project proposal for Boss from the production company Hive Media Corp., he became interested in the composition of organization members who do not want to become boss and started from the screenwriting work.
Director Ra Hee-chan said, "Around Sun-tae (played by Jo Woo-jin) there are people who want to be boss and people who don't, and I thought they had to get out of it with difficulty. The harder it is, the bigger the dilemma, the more comedic it can be. But as the organization collapses, I paid a lot of attention to maintaining the tension. I tried to shape an organization that is collapsing but still has tension."
Among them, Kang-pyo (played by Jung Kyung-ho) found tango appealing because it originally changed from the piano. Director Ra Hee-chan said, "I had been planning since 2019, and during COVID-19 I think I grew bored with the subject. I wanted to find something more interesting. At that time, thinking about what I should do personally, I happened to start going to tango bars. Even though I'm clumsy with my body, wearing a mask gave me courage and I thought I could go and be active, so I tried it."
He continued, "When I saw actor Jung Kyung-ho I thought 'a female Hwang Woo-seul-hye.' It was so funny. I wrote this version thinking tango would match well. I asked, 'What about this?' and he bit right away. He pretended not to know and did it. Jung Kyung-ho even lost a toenail while practicing," he said, drawing surprise.
Director Ra Hee-chan emphasized Jung Kyung-ho's efforts, saying, "Tango, if done intensely, is intense. It's called the graveyard of dances. Even people who did ballet say tango is the most difficult dance. It uses a lot of energy and can have intense movements. It fits all kinds of music. Because everything can be lyrical, the expressive range is so wide. Actor Jung Kyung-ho keeps walking, and because he has to use energy by planting his feet on the floor, he probably spent a month just on steps. It's a dance where you have to step with the force of pressing the floor."
He added with a laugh, "I'm a bit of a dancer," while noting, "It takes a very long time. I thought it might even be harder than piano, functionally. Kang-pyo, when you see the film, feels like someone who, to professionals, might not look like he dances very well but who has a dream of wanting to dance insanely well, and I liked that. Rather than accomplishing this in a short time, the body doesn't follow, but he is portrayed as a person full of the dream to do it."
(Continued in interview ②)<
[Photo] Provided by Hive Media Corp.
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