To understand how nervous Josh Kim was as he flew to the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival last month to premiere his film, consider this: When Kim hosted a test screening of "How to Win at Checkers (Every Time)" in October, a veteran director told him he felt nothing — and his uncle fell asleep.
Kim wasn’t crushed by those early reviews. He just started over.
"Initially, I told my producer, Edward Gunawan, ‘You know what? Maybe our movie isn’t great but it’s not bad,’" Kim said. "He said, ‘No, I really believe this film can be really great, really good.’"
They erased everything.
"I was like, OK, let’s start from the very beginning," said Kim in a phone call from his home in Seoul. "This time we will look for feeling now. How does every single scene affect a person’s emotion?"
There was plenty of emotion to tap.
"How to Win at Checkers (Every Time)" was adapted from two short stories — "At the Cafe Lovely" and "Draft Day" — in Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s best-selling book "Sightseeing."
The drama focuses on a pair of orphaned brothers growing up in Bangkok and what happens when the older brother faces the possibility of being conscripted into military service. Told from the younger brother’s point of view, it’s a story of sibling relationships, poverty, politics and the loss of innocence.
A screening at Berlin served as a celebration for Kim as well as the Honolulu writing program that helped him develop the film’s screenplay: the Creative Lab Writers Accelerator, a joint effort of the state’s Creative Industries Division, the Hawaii International Film Festival and the Writers Guild of America, West.
The Creative Lab immerses select participants in an intense, weeklong program to improve both their writing and their understanding of the industry. A year of coaching follows.
Kim, who grew up in Texas but now works in Korea, is the first Creative Lab alumnus to turn a screenplay into a film. But that took some doing as well.
When he got to Hawaii for the inaugural Creative Lab in October 2013, Kim brought an unfinished script he had developed with Hawaii-based producer Chris Lee.
"I felt we were kind of stuck," Kim said. "I felt this was the best I could do. I had no more ideas. We had reached a limit and I didn’t know what to do."
In the accelerator program, the 12 participants critique one another’s works. The feedback was invaluable, said Kim, who wound up scrapping a story line with three points of view in favor of one that focused on life through the younger brother’s eyes.
"They tell you what’s wrong with it," he said. "Feedback is so subjective. If one or two friends say they don’t like it, you can dismiss it. But if 10 people say something is wrong, it’s eye-opening. It’s harder to ignore."
He rewrote about 90 pages in three months.
Kim and his producing team hope to screen "How to Win at Checkers (Every Time)" on the film festival circuit, from Asia to New York. The filmmaker said that while in Berlin, he received a verbal invitation from a HIFF representative to screen it here this fall.
It was part of a transformative experience he won’t forget. As he sat among 800 people for his film’s premiere, Kim felt his nervous anticipation give way to something greater — and he liked it.
"This was the first time where I really began to feel the movie like an audience would feel it," he said. "Before, when I watched the movie, I would be very critical and I wondered what I could do to make it better."
When it was over, Kim felt good, really good. But better than that, as loud and lengthy applause filled the theater, so did the audience.
AND that’s a wrap …
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Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his “Outtakes Online” blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.
