Kang Scours New York Subway for Korean Cast of `West 32nd' Film

Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- New York's subway stations have been the set of movies from ``Death Wish'' to Dreamworks Animation's ``Madagascar.'' Michael Kang may be the first director to recruit his cast from the platforms.

Kang and casting director Susan Shopmaker went to great lengths to find Korean-Americans who could fit the characters of Kang's second feature film ``West 32nd,'' which had its international premiere at the Pusan Film Festival last week in South Korea.

``It was a huge problem,'' Shopmaker said at a roundtable discussion at the festival. ``There isn't a huge tradition of Korean-American actors in New York. I found myself on the subway, hanging out in Queens and trying to find actors. There are several actors in the movie that we picked off the street.''

``West 32nd'' is about Korean-Americans' disassociation with both Korean culture and mainstream America. It centers around a second-generation Korean American lawyer John Kim, played by John Cho, who takes on a pro bono defense for a 14-year-old boy of Korean descent who was accused of murdering a member of the Korean mob in Queens.

The idea ``came from a friend who worked at a non-profit organization in New York, where he was working with juveniles,'' Kang said in an interview in Busan, where the film festival is held. ``One of them was accused of a murder and coerced into confession.''

The movie, shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in April and funded entirely by South Korea's CJ Entertainment Inc., illustrates how the film industry is globalizing. The cast are South Korean, Korean-American and Caucasian actors and almost a third of the dialogue is in Korean.

Gangsters and Homemakers

Kang, 37, director of the coming-of-age flick ``The Motel,'' focused on a wide variety of Korean-American characters living in the U.S., from kingpins and gangsters, to bar hostesses and homemakers.

The character-driven script was co-written by Kang and writer-journalist Edmund Kang, who has written about the Korea Town gangs for the Village Voice.

The lawyer Kim, more American than Korean, takes on the case as part of a strategy to rise in his law firm. As he delves deeper into the case, he befriends Lila, sister of the accused, played by Grace Park of ``Battlestar Galactica.'' He falls in with the seedier crowd of Korea Town, led by Lila's childhood friend and gangster Mike Juhn, played by South Korean actor Jun Sung Kim. The young lawyer begins to question his disassociation with his heritage and starts to wonder where he belongs.

Exorcising Demons

``There is a very personal story in there, about my own experience as a second generation Korean-American,'' Kang said. ``I grew up in Rhode Island and not around a lot of Koreans. When I came to New York and found Korea Town, it made me question my own connections to the community. I think I was exorcising a lot of those demons.''

Bilingual Jun Sung Kim is excellent as the erratic, roguish and sometimes violent Juhn, who is trying to weasel his way up the mob ladder. His violence is underscored by his vulnerability when trying to woo bar hostess Suki, played by Jane Kim, who is seeking justice for her murdered boyfriend.

John Cho, who was at the film festival promoting the movie, leaves the audience with a feeling of dissatisfaction in his sometimes wooden performance as the morally torn lawyer. His masterful rhythm in ``American Pie'' and ``Harold and Kumar'' appears slightly off in this movie.

The violence is not stylized like Wayne Wang or John Woo, yet it is gory in respect to its senselessness. Kang's influences include Martin Scorsese's ``Mean Streets'' and Sidney Lumet's ``Dog Day Afternoon'' and ``Serpico.'' Recent styles from Asia have also left their mark.

Second Wave

``The second wave of my education of film was from the new Asian cinema, starting with the early 90s Hong Kong cinema and then even more so the contemporary Korean cinema, like director Park Chan Wook,'' Kang said.

``The hardest thing about Korean cinema is that it's not like Hong Kong cinema, which is all action -- all guns or martial arts. Korean cinema will range from really crazy comedies like `My Sassy Girl,' to really dark, twisted stuff from Park Chan Wook, like `Old Boy.' So I don't think Hollywood knows where to put Korean cinema, or how to market Korean cinema.''

``I was hoping that this film would act as a pop-culture bridge to introduce the Korean aesthetic to the American audiences in a way that they could understand it, because the characters are speaking English.''

Kang's next project, ``Sea of Tranquility,'' is a ``reverse human trafficking story,'' he said.

It's about an NGO worker and an eight-year-old girl who are the only survivors of a shipwreck in the Gulf of Aden, and how they make their way through Somalia back to safety, Kang said.

``What I love about this project is the backdrop. You see the people of Somalia in their everyday life. People who need the most help in this story are usually the ones trying to help.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Heejin Koo in Seoul at hjkoo@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Ruane in Brussels at jruane1@bloomberg.net.