Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
I went to Montreal for the first time last weekend for a screening of Surrogate Valentine and a small coffeehouse gig at the Pop Montreal festival. The five day music/film festival sprawled across 58 venues with about 450 artists, including big names like Arcade Fire, Stephen Malkmus, and Kid Koala. I flew in from New York, which was merely a 52 minute flight… pretty painless other than waiting through customs lines and lack of sleep after a whiskey party at my host’s abode before the 4am trip to the airport… but that is a tale for another time.
Let’s talk about Poutine. Say it with me: Cheese Curds, Gravy, Fries.
I was in Montreal for three days, and somehow I ended up eating it every day. I tried not to, but it just sorta happened. How I managed to survive, I don’t know.
Poutine #1:
My hosts in Montreal picked me up from the airport, and after a croissant and a 2 hour nap, took me out to get lunch. We sat down at this Poutine place called Banquis, and I thought we’d share a plate, but it was every man for himself. Believe it or not, this is the smallest sized order. I struggled to eat half of it. You can’t really see the cheese curds, but they are there. Chillin’…under the gravy…and fries… and onions… and mushrooms, bacon, peppers, and more fries and gravy. This thing weighed as much as a child. Homeboy across from me ate his whole plate- it was the same size sans fixin’s.
Really?
I’ve had it before, about 6 years ago in Toronto, but according to my hosts it’s not the same there. Montreal-eans get all protective about their poutine. To be honest, I forgot what it tasted like- but I felt like these cheese curds were more firm and chewy. It was pretty good, but the portion and thought of eating that much alone kind of turned me off. That’s a lot of heart attack right there. I vowed not to eat any more cheese on this trip.
In the middle of eating this, I got a call from Kid Koala, who Eric Nakamura put me in touch with since he’s based in Montreal. He was amused, and perhaps slightly worried that I was eating Poutine so early in the day.
“that stuff’s for late night, after drinking…”
He invited us to come by his studio, which was a mindblowing experience, but I’ll save that for another post.
Kid Koala in his natural habitat.
I was lucky to visit Vancouver last month, for the first time… been hearing a lot of great things about it, and was excited to check it all out.
Greeted by some totem poles
I was picked up by my host, Canadian Animator and Filmmaker Jeff Chiba Stearns, whom I met in Eugene earlier in the year.
Nearly four years after making the award winning horror film Silk, Taiwanese director Su Chao-Bin returns with a fantastic swordplay film called the Reign of Assassins. With the support of producers John Woo and Terence Chang, Su manages to weave an elaborate story about a desperate search for the mummified remains of the famed Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The film is filled to the brim with plot twists, secret identities, and physics bending martial arts. Similar to his other films, the director skillfully blends many different genres such as action, romance, and comedy.
GR: You have taken a highly unusual path to a film career. You started out as a high tech engineer who became a screen writer and a director. Can you describe your path to cinema?
Su Chao-Bin: First of all, I’m very lucky. At the time, I had a masters [degree] in computer science, and Taiwanese guys have to take two years of military service. When I left the army, I was already twenty-six or twenty-seven that was already pretty old. I also worked in the high tech industry for a year. At the time, my life looked the same as my years in school. So, I thought it was time to make a change. Movies were still a dream… a far and away distant dream.
That’s why I consider myself lucky because at that moment I applied for a website job at Music Television (MTV) in Taipei. It was a pretty popular website. They hired me because I drew a comic introducing myself and sent it along with my resume. In the end, they didn’t hire me as an engineer but as a copywriter. The opportunity put me in touch with the business. Music Television still isn’t the movies, but the television business. After three years, I felt a little bored with TV.
So, I decided to apply for school in the states and continue my studies. I applied for a program called interactive cinema in the Media Lab of MIT. That’s the only way I could get connected to the cinema. Just before leaving for the states, the president of MTV Taiwan called me. He said, “I have a friend who is planning to shoot a movie and he’s looking for a screenplay. Do you think you can write it.” I said, “of course, I can write it.” But I’ve never written a screenplay before that moment. So, I locked myself in my apartment for two weeks and came out with the screenplay for The Cabbie. It was made, and that’s how I started my career. That’s why I say that I’m very lucky.
GR: At the time your career started, Taiwan cinema was mainly limited to small art house films. Did you fit into that environment?
SCB: At that time, the Taiwanese film industry was at their lowest point. The number one box office for a local film was one million Taiwan dollars. That’s roughly like thirty thousand US dollars. The business, at that time, was really bad. Maybe they were looking for new voices. When the Cabbie came out, I got a lot of attention especially from Sony/Columbia. They hired me to write Double Vision. Actually it was a spec screenplay. They liked the story and said, “You can do it.” That’s how I got further into the business.