Don’t fault the team behind “How to Win at Checkers (Every Time)” for dreaming too big. After all, the little indie film went from rejection to acclaim and now to a possible Oscar nomination.
The film was selected this month as Thailand’s official entry in the best foreign-language film category at next year’s 88th annual Academy Awards. There are 81 submissions at the moment, but that number will be narrowed to five by the time the rest of the Oscar nominations are announced in January.
“It’s an honor to be selected, but for us as a group, we didn’t think it was possible,” said Hawaii producer Chris Lee, who advised writer/director Josh Kim as he wrote early drafts of the screenplay and helped with casting and crew selection in Thailand, where it was shot.
“It wasn’t something we thought about at all,” Lee said. “I went to a number of distributors before we started making the movie, and I got turned down by everybody.”
Regardless of what happens next, “How to Win at Checkers (Every Time)” stands as the first big success story for the Honolulu writing program that helped refine the idea: 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.
When Kim brought his unfinished screenplay to the inaugural Creative Lab in October 2013, he needed help. The feedback prompted 90 pages of rewrite, but by June 2014 cast and crew were on a set in Thailand. They found enough money for the $340,000 film outside of Thailand and shot there with a crew of 60, Lee said.
Screening in Thai with English subtitles, the film premiered in February at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival. It drew an enthusiastic audience of 800 people and has gone on to play at festivals around the world.
The film is a cross-cultural production victory: Only two of the actors spoke English, much of the crew only spoke Thai and Kim, who grew up in Texas, was directing in a language he started learning only six months earlier after moving from his home in Korea to Bangkok.
“He was very, very concerned about being perceived as an outsider trying to tell a uniquely Thai story,” Lee said.
“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.” It’s Kim’s feature film debut, coming after successful shorts, including “Postcards” and “Draft Day,” which entertained audiences in Honolulu when they screened at the Rainbow Film Festival.
The story 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.
But “How to Win at Checkers (Every Time)” serves as reminder that following your instincts is also important.
Kim and crew wound up rejecting a lot of suggestions from the Creative Lab discussions, in part because they didn’t want to call attention to the lead character’s gay relationship.
“Josh stuck to his guns,” Lee said. “He didn’t want to do ‘the gay tragedy movie.’ It’s been done.”
The movie isn’t about coming out or families finding out, he said.
“It’s about Thai economic inequality. One of the boys is rich, and one of them is poor. The idea is, do you accept your fate, whatever happens, or do you make your own fate?”
And that’s a wrap …
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.
