Andrew Ahn’s debut feature film SPA NIGHT explores its protagonist David’s Korean Americaness through his sexual exploration in Korean spas. David (Joe Seo) wrestles with the expectations of his struggling immigrant parents (Youn Ho Cho and Haerry Kim), as they all come to terms with their place in Los Angeles’ Koreatown.
SPA NIGHT, which won Seo the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize for Breakthrough Performance, is an intentionally muted but deeply moving bildungsroman of discovery. CineVue got the opportunity to chat with director Ahn and actor Seo about the film.
AAIFF ’16 presented SPA NIGHT as its opening film on July 21, 2016. For more information about SPA NIGHT, visit www.andrewahnfilms.com. Check your local theatre listings if you live in New York or Los Angeles to see if it will be showing near you soon! (See below for more details.)
Actors Joe Seo and Haerry Kim, and director Andrew Ahn attend the SPA NIGHT premiere during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival at Library Center Theater on January 24, 2016 in Park City, Utah.
Jackie Lam: How did you know you wanted to get into film?
Andrew Ahn: Joe, you wanna take that first?
Joe Seo: I started theatre in high school. Honestly, in my younger teens I did a lot of things I’m not proud about…I hated myself, I hated other people, I hated being happy and acting gave me a way to escape. It’s something I really treasured because I could just be human for once, and show I have emotions because I was so stoic. [E]ver since then…I wanted to act.
AA: I went into college thinking I was gonna be a doctor–
(Ahn and Seo laugh)
–and very quickly realized I wasn’t passionate about it. I tried to figure out what I was interested in and took a few film production classes and there was something about film that was really hard. As I made bad film, the challenge of trying to improve captured my attention…My mom told me I had to get a job or go to grad school immediately after graduation—no backpacking through Europe or anything—and I asked myself what I wanted to explore, so I applied to film school just knowing it was interesting. I went to Cal Arts and the first year was fooling around…I found my purpose my second year and made these very personal films about my sexuality and how it relates to my Korean American identity. It was a very step-wise process, but I never actually quite knew what the next step was gonna be.
JL: Who are some actors and directors you look up to?
AA: I really love Yasujirō Ozu. John Cassavetes, and by extension, I really love Gena Rowlands as an actress. She’s kind of amazing. And specific films have a lot of significance for me—IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE [by] Wong Kar Wai is so devastating and beautiful–
JS: It is.
AA: And I just really have a soft spot for JURASSIC PARK.
(Ahn and Seo laugh)
JL: But not JURASSIC WORLD?
AA: No! Not at all. Eugh.
JS: My dad was a movie buff too…Charlton Heston, BEN-HUR, all old school films. When I watched RAIN MAIN, I was blown away and intrigued by Dustin Hoffman. [I] looked up all his stuff and he’s done…a completely different array of characters…I’d love to do that many characters. And even more. And also Johnny Depp because he can play so many characters. That’s a testament to what I think an actor should do—be molded…Daniel Day Lewis, of course. He’s amazing.
Joe Seo (David) in Andrew Ahn’s SPA NIGHT
JL: What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers and actors?
AA: For me, it’s to pursue your passion, and to be able to identify what that passion is. Some people have a vague sense of “I want to make movies” but then it’s like “What kind of movies do you want to make and what do you want your movies to do? What interests you?”
The more specific you can get you can get about those interests and those passions, the more unique and more nuanced those things can become. There are so many films being made now, it’s so easy to make a film now compared to twenty, thirty years ago that what it takes to stand out is really difficult. You have to convey passion in your work so an audience can see that you care about the story, which makes them care too. People are going to be able to tell.
JS: Yeah, honestly, you definitely need to be fearless with your passion. You have to be true to yourself. If you love something you have to act on it. [I]f you truly believe it is something you want to do for the rest of your life, go out on a limb and do it. If you have doubts, stop and figure it out. You need to be sure about yourself and what you love first. The road of being an artist is just, tough, to say the least. I think it’s doable.
JL: You guys ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to get funding for the film. Could you speak more about that?
AA: We wanted to shoot the film as early as June 2014, and I had quit my previous day job to find funding and go through traditional models of financing. Some people were interested, but they were afraid to be the first investor. So we decided to do a Kickstarter in October 2014. We did a lot of prep…The exciting thing about Kickstarter is you’re not trying to convince one person to give you sixty thousand dollars, you’re trying to convince many people to just give ten dollars. The ask would be a lot smaller, you just had to ask—
JS: (laughs) A billion times–
AA: A lot of times. It was a lot more work than I thought. I had a really great producing team…we raised sixty-two thousand dollars on Kickstarter. We put in sixty-two thousand dollars of work.
JS: At least sixty-two thousand dollars of work.
AA: Every dollar was hard-earned…I love Kickstarter and it offers so much. We also raised an additional thirty-five thousand because there were investors who invested when we hit our Kickstarter goal. It was great marketing for the film and it made the film real. Like, oh, people are depending on us to make this film. There’s sort of extra motivation.
JS: And those people are the real fearless people…I want to thank each and every one of them because they’re the ones who really made it possible.
JL: Would you consider using Kickstarter again?
(Ahn and Seo laugh)
AA: Maybe. I, like, lost weight, I was so stressed out—it’s so much work. And there’s only so many times you can go to your immediate circle of friends to ask for money…I highly recommend it to other people.
Haerry Kim (Soyoung) and Joe Seo (David) in Andrew Ahn’s SPA NIGHT
JL: How did the idea of SPA NIGHT evolve after its conception?
AA: The inspiration for the film really started from the location. It’s the fact that gay cruising at Korean spas is this intersection of my two identities. When I first started writing, it was all set in a spa and it all happened in one night. It’s why it’s called SPA NIGHT. The script was 30 pages, and it was much more experiential, and the narrative was much more subtle. But I realized it was incomplete.
What I was interested in talking about was the intersection of gay and Korean identity and if I stayed in the spa, it would be just about the sexuality. I had to bring in the culture, Koreatown, and the character’s family…As the script developed, I realized the center of the film wasn’t the spa experience, it was the family experience…The heart of the film doesn’t lie [in the spa].
JS: I would say that the spa acts as a mystifying space for David to pursue his sexual exploration. It’s a fantasyland for him. When I read the script, I told Andrew, “Hey, this is really artistic.” (laughs)
JL: Where do you see yourselves in five years?
AA: Oof. Joe, you go. (laughs)
JS: Just to be an actor who…I’ll still be working, hopefully…as long as I’m making stuff that’s meaningful to me and the community I’ll be really happy. And I hope to…not just [make] commericial blockbuster films. I would love that too, but at the end of the day, I would be more happy with things that are impactful.
AA: I’d like to have another film under my belt. SPA NIGHT took four and a half, five years. I want to show off a different side of me as a storyteller…and (laughs) be able to make a living…being an Asian American artist is a very complicated thing in our society right now—trying to sustain a career and hit personal as well as career life goals can be difficult. We’re both in as great a position as any and I hope to able to capitalize on it.
Joe Seo (David) in Andrew Ahn’s SPA NIGHT
JL: What’s your favorite or most memorable fan interaction?
AA: We screened SPA NIGHT at the Jeonju International Film Festival in Korea and this young man came up to me after that screening, and told me I was the first person he’s ever told he was gay. I was so honored in a way that SPA NIGHT inspired him to be able to take that first step. I was also very scared for him. I was like, OMG, find friends!
(Ahn and Seo laugh)
AA: Go meet a community of gay Korean people, because it exists. That sort of reaction is as good as you could get…People connect to [SPA NIGHT] in different ways. At Sundance someone I’ve known for a long time–he’s the child of immigrants and he’s Mexican–and he connected in the film in a way that I was a little bit surprised. I thought it was such a specifically a Korean American story…He understood family pressure, wanting to make your parents’ sacrifice worth it. That was really special to me, I realized this film is small in some ways, but big emotionally.
JS: …When people come up to me [even people who are Caucasian] and say, “That film really spoke to me”–that is a great feeling. That was what this film was about. To me, that’s greater than any award. That’s what any artist would love to hear and it means so much to me. As Andrew said, this film is as American as any Western movie.
JL: Anything else you’d like to share?
AA: SPA NIGHT will be in [New York] theatres on August 19 and Los Angeles on August 26 and if it does well, it will expand to other cities.
JS: Please tell your friends! See it again!