<Space Vagabond>, which opened at a small movie theater in LA Koreatown.
That theater started filling up with people.
At first, it was curiosity.
But it did not take long for that curiosity to turn into cheers.
[Director Gyeong Chanhyeon’s <Space Vagabond>. Now showing exclusively at a Koreatown theater! Packed with people!]
The headline of the Koreatown Daily, which his roommate subscribed to.
Korean-American Glenn Yeon frowned as he looked at that newspaper headline.
“Glenn! What are you doing today? Let’s go watch that too.”
His other Korean-American roommate asked.
Glenn pursed his lips as if something about it bothered him.
“Why?”
“No, just… because.”
“Because what?”
“The Korean movies I watched before. They were all really bad.”
He had come to America at the age of five.
Ever since he was young, he had always been confused about whether he should call himself American or Korean.
A confusion of identity.
That had been quite hard for Glenn when he was young.
And the words he had heard from punk kids back in school during adolescence.
“You’re all just poor Asian punks. Your skin color proves that. Even if American culture is inside your head, that can’t change your blood.”
He knew nothing about Korea.
At best, he knew just a little Korean he had learned from his parents.
So, since he was interested in movies, he had at least gone looking for a few films, but all of them were bad.
Maybe because the culture was different, none of the comedy films were funny at all, and all the sad films felt artificial, like they were trying to squeeze tears out by force.
And it was not like there were any films that were technically impressive either.
“Hasn’t it been over ten years since you watched a Korean movie? Wasn’t middle school the last time?”
“Would there really have been some huge development in ten years?”
“They say this one’s different. Just watch it first. You know Gyeong Chanhyeon, right? The one who won an award at Cannes!”
“I know who he is. It was the non-competition section, wasn’t it? But I didn’t watch it.”
By now, Glenn was trying to think of himself as completely American.
So he had even decided to keep some distance from Korean culture and settled a little farther away from Koreatown.
Because unless he chose one side, he could not belong to either of the two groups.
Rather than belong nowhere, he had decided he would just become American altogether.
“If you’re not going, I’m going alone. If we want tickets at that theater, we have to leave now. The line there is no joke! I heard some people were lining up from dawn!”
“…”
But this time, the reaction really was different from the start.
Even if it was a small theater, it was the first movie to get a theatrical release in America, and there was also the name value of Gyeong Chanhyeon.
He did not know how much weight that name carried, but at the same time the thought that he wanted to see it sprang up.
“Fine. Let’s go. There are subtitles, right?”
“Of course. Let’s go.”
Glenn returned to Koreatown with his friend after a long time.
Even though it had been a while since he last came, the unique vitality of Koreatown was still the same.
People’s eyes were full of passion, and in the eyes of the hardworking shopkeepers, there was not the slightest trace of exhaustion.
“Huh?”
At the small theater he had visited often as a child, there was a crowd there that did not suit the place at all.
“Ah, damn. Are we too late?”
His friend pressed a hand to his forehead and said to Glenn.
“If you’d spent a little less time thinking about it…”
“Looks like there are still seats left though? Wait.”
Glenn quickly ran through the crowd.
Then, after hearing that only two seats were left, he let out a sigh of relief.
“Hey, we’re the last ones!”
“That’s a relief.”
His friend snorted a laugh as he looked at Glenn.
“You really must have wanted to see it? I’ve never seen you run that fast before.”
“That was because I didn’t want to hear you curse at me.”
“Then run like that more often. Still, you are kind of looking forward to it, right? It’s the first time you’ve seen this theater so crowded.”
His friend smiled as he looked at the mass of people in front of them.
“Hm, I guess I am looking forward to it a little.”
“I’m telling you, it’s on a completely different level from the films you watched ten years ago.”
“…”
As the screening time approached, people who had finished watching the film began pouring out of the theater.
“Wow, that was insane. Is that really something made in Korea?”
“I have to watch it one more time. This is a revolution!”
“Look at the line. Let’s come back tomorrow.”
“No, seriously, is this not crazy? Is a movie like this even possible?”
The expressions of the people coming out of the screening were different.
Their faces, soaked in happiness as if they had found an oasis in the desert, made Glenn’s anticipation swell even more.
“Did people all go in there and do drugs together or something? Why do they all look like that?”
At his friend’s words, Glenn let out a small laugh and said,
“Seriously. Just how good is it supposed to be?”
Can people really make faces like that just from watching a movie?
Does that mean it’s beyond just being a fun movie?
Glenn went into the screening room with his friend.
A screening room packed tight with people.
Word of mouth must already have spread a lot, because it was not just filled with Asians either.
White people, Black people, Hispanics, it was a screening room that could literally represent America as a place where all kinds of races were mixed together.
“What is this…?”
Glenn only blinked at the atmosphere, something he had never seen in his life.
Inside this screening room, there was no racism.
In this tiny, worn-out theater, people of all races were mixed together with one shared purpose, waiting for a single movie.
Click.
The sound of the lights in the old screening room going out.
And then, the movie began.
An actor he had never seen before.
From the first appearance of the actor playing Ryu Seongmin, Glenn was completely captivated by his acting.
Using various acting techniques, as if it were theater and as if it were film, he instantly created immersion for the audience.
‘What the hell… what is this…?’
But that was only the beginning.
How in the world could a movie like this come out of Korea?
He had already known that the character called “Nix Road” used a technology called motion capture.
But this was the same technology used in <The Lord of the Rings>?
What kind of magic had they created?
Glenn watched <Space Vagabond> with his mouth hanging open.
This movie was a chain of surprises.
How in the world could it have technology comparable to Hollywood, no, even better.
All kinds of questions floated around in his head.
But those questions were instantly swept away by the dazzling CG unfolding in front of his eyes.
Bang!
At the scene where Ryu Seongmin’s spaceship, Eagles, perfectly crushed the guards of Planet Selene, Glenn swallowed hard.
“Wow…”
This movie was different.
It also had a charm that was on a completely different level from Hollywood movies.
There were broadly three ways Hollywood used Asians.
A nuisance character who only created obstacles in the story.
A vulgar character obsessed only with money.
And finally, a nerd character with thick horn-rimmed glasses who only liked math.
But Ryu Seongmin in <Space Vagabond> was different.
The hero who saves Planet Selene. And above all, his presence as the alpha and omega of the story was just too perfect.
That was why everyone, regardless of race, had been amazed and immersed so deeply in the movie.
After the screening ended, Glenn came out with his friend.
His friend looked at Glenn’s expression and let out a small laugh.
“Hey, you’re even worse than those people from before. No, way worse than them. Even while you were watching.”
“Let’s come again tomorrow.”
“What?”
Glenn smiled awkwardly and said,
“Should we come in the morning tomorrow?”
“What, a guy who was just debating whether to come or not is now saying let’s come tomorrow morning?”
At his friend’s question, Glenn let out a small laugh and asked,
“You’re not coming? Then I’ll come by myself.”
“Did you get so bewitched by that movie that you forgot I have work tomorrow?”
“Ah, right.”
Glenn smacked his lips in disappointment, but he was already planning to come back alone if he had to.
This movie definitely had value beyond that.
Gyeong Chanhyeon.
Glenn started thinking that he had to find all of this director’s movies.
If a director made a movie like this, then his other movies had to be on a completely different level too.
Snap, snap.
His friend snapped his fingers in front of Glenn, who had gone blank for a moment.
“You okay? What’s with you all of a sudden? Did you lose your mind?”
“I found my dream.”
“What? You said you wanted to be an actor, did that change? Did this make you want to be an astronaut or something?”
“No, that part’s still the same…”
Glenn widened his eyes and said to his friend,
“Someday, I’m definitely going to appear in a movie by Director Gyeong Chanhyeon.”
“What…?”
His friend, surprised, tilted his head and asked back.
“Right now, it’d probably be too early. My acting level is exactly an extra’s level.”
“You do have good self-awareness. Haha.”
His friend grinned, then suddenly grabbed his stomach and said,
“Since we’re here, let’s go to a sundubu place. I’m suddenly craving sundubu after so long.”
“Let’s stop by the DVD store first.”
“To watch Gyeong Chanhyeon movies?”
“Yeah.”
Glenn rented all of Gyeong Chanhyeon’s previous works from the DVD room.
Then, after barely eating his sundubu jjigae and finishing the meal quickly, he went home and started watching the movies as soon as he got in.
Including his debut work, there were three films.
By the time he had watched them all, the clock was already pointing to midnight.
“Wow…”
As if the afterglow of the movies was still lingering, Glenn stared blankly at the TV screen, where nothing more was playing.
After he sat there like that for a while, his friend, who had fallen asleep first, woke up and opened the door, frowning at Glenn.
“You’re still not asleep?”
“I finished all of Director’s movies…”
At the sudden use of that extremely respectful way of referring to Gyeong Chanhyeon, his friend frowned and asked,
“Huh? Then today you watched four Gyeong Chanhyeon movies?”
“Yeah…”
“You became a total fanatic in one day. Seriously…… watching four movies in a day.”
The next day.
After rewatching <Space Vagabond> again from the morning, Glenn printed out a photo of Gyeong Chanhyeon and posters for his movies, including <Space Vagabond>, and pasted them in huge size on his door.
Looking at Gyeong Chanhyeon’s picture, Glenn said softly,
“Thank you.”
The first person in his life to make him proud that Korean blood ran through his body.
The person who made the skin color he had been ashamed of into something he could be proud of.
Thinking that from tomorrow on he would go around the school drama club promoting Gyeong Chanhyeon’s movies, Glenn let out a small laugh.
“I’ll run around hard for you, Director.”
Looking at the photo of Gyeong Chanhyeon holding the camera himself and directing on set, Glenn steeled his resolve.
‘Just three years. Wait just three years, Director Gyeong Chanhyeon. I’ll definitely take the lead role in your movie.’
Chester wore a pleased smile at the impact Gyeong Chanhyeon’s movie had caused in Koreatown.
It was the natural result.
This was the kind of film people would have no choice but to come see once it was showing.
Maybe because of that strategy, calls started pouring in from the small and mid-sized distributors.
“We heard the buzz and watched the film too. Please meet with our Phillips Pictures just once.”
“We’ll definitely support you. This movie is the kind of work that has to sign with our A24 to do well.”
In spite of these contacts, the five major Hollywood distributors still did not budge.
Those lofty companies seemed unmoved even by this kind of news.
They made no contact at all.
“Tsk.”
The word of mouth had already spread as far as it could.
The theater district in Koreatown was already flooded with so many people it looked ready to burst.
There were even rumors that people were coming from nearby states.
It was highly likely to be just a false rumor, but still, it was the kind of false rumor that felt good.
“Hm…”
At this point, it was probably right to give up on the big five distributors that still did not move even after hearing all this.
If they delayed the distribution contract any longer, it might actually backfire.
The place where <Space Vagabond> had become a sensation was LA Koreatown.
A place that was far too small.
The fact that distributors had come looking for it even there was because of the buzz, but no one knew when buzz like that might die down.
Because buzz was basically like foam.
If they signed the contract before that foam burst, they would be able to hold people’s interest…
“Chester. I think the contract with TIC looks the best.”
The employee who had been working the hardest day and night said that with bright eyes.
“For now, it would be a limited release within California, but a distributor at that level would at least have the ability to watch the reaction and then show <Space Vagabond> on screens in a few more states.”
“Yeah, that’s the only one I can see too.”
Excluding the big five distributors, it was the place that had contacted them the most, dozens of times, and with the best terms.
The conditions could probably be improved more, and while the odds were slim, maybe… just as they had heard, it might spread to other states too.
“Alright, let’s go. To TIC.”
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