Bangkok is a Great Place to Observe

An interview with Pen-ek Ratanaruang, writer/director of 6ixtynin9, showing as part of the Midnight Madness at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.

In 6ixtynin9, the main character Tum suddenly loses her job. She goes home, and nearly kills herself. The next morning, she hears a knock at her door, and opens it to find a box stuffed full of money. A few minutes later, she hears another knock, but this time opens the door to find two tough talking boxers who have realized that they mistook the broken "6" on her door for the "9" marking the room in front of which they were supposed to leave the box. Complications ensue, bringing half the Bangkok underworld, a few businessmen and police officers, and several corpse-sized boxes to Tum's apartment.

This is the basic story of 6ixtynin9, the second feature written and directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang, showing in the Midnight Madness section at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. In many ways a very playful film, yet with a degree of seriousness underneath, 6ixtynin9 shows the obvious influence of films written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. But the influence has been fully assimilated, as the stylistic ticks we might associate with QT have been incorporated into a fully functioning narrative anatomizing contemporary Bangkok, replete with finely sketched characters, memorable images, and striking edits.

Ray Privett spoke with the Bangkok-born, U.S. educated writer/director in July at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, where 6ixtynin9 was screening in the Independents' Forum. They subsequently refined the interview through email exchanges as he jetted around the world to show the film. Young, friendly, intelligent, and extremely talented, with a strong commitment to and grasp of film and Thai culture, Pen-ek Ratanaruang will surely be a leading director of Asian pop cinema for years to come.

Ray Privett: Let's talk about your background.

Pen-ek Ratanaruang: I was born in Bangkok, but I lived in New York City for about ten years, from when I was in tenth grade until after college. I studied art history at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in the late 70s and early 80s, and afterward for a few years I worked as a graphic designer at a small firm. Then I went back to Thailand. I didn't really know what to do. A friend asked me to work for him in an advertising agency, and I did for awhile. Eventually I quit and joined a friend who worked in a production house, and started directing commercials. Two years ago I made my first feature film, Fun Bar Karaoke, and now I've made 6ixtynin9.

RP: Tell me about where 6ixtynin9 came from.

PR: I suppose half came from my imagination, and half from the front page of the local news. In Bangkok, all sorts of wild things happen, and you could make two fantastic films of surreal magnitude just by adapting the material everyday. Parts of this story came from the front page, but they were often modified and put together in different ways. My memory must have collected the characters, events, and so forth. When I started writing, they just popped out.

The original idea was that I wanted to make a thriller where the heroine suddenly finds a lot of money, and then all sorts of things happen after that. I also wanted to make a film in which, for the first twenty minutes, the heroine doesn't speak. Sometimes I watch Peter Greenaway movies, or Jim Jarmusch movies, and the characters barely speak, but they're still very interesting. Takeshi Kitano, the Japanese filmmaker, does this, too. He barely speaks at all.

RP: He has a great face, as does Lalita Panyopas, who plays Tum. This brings us to the visuals of the film. There are a lot of visual jokes within the film. There is the 6ixtynin9 itself, of course, but there is also the deaf guy answering a telephone, which is a terrific scene that takes a second to understand, though the gag comes off quite well. Then there are all the shots of chickens getting cut up, which match with something else across the cuts that come immediately after.

PR: I watch a lot of movies. I guess I copy them a lot. Copy is the most straightforward word, though you could call it influence or whatever. I didn't go to film school, and I didn't study film. I just watch a lot of films and read a lot. Obviously a lot of the films that have influenced me are Western films, in particular American films.

RP: You've obviously seen the films Quentin Tarantino has directed.

PR: Yes, I like Pulp Fiction, and I love Jackie Brown. But my true hero is Woody Allen, who works very consistently.

What primarily interests me in terms of film language is structure. The structure dictates the way I write, shoot, and cut. I try to get from point A to point B, and everything is subordinate to that. You call them "visual jokes," but when I was writing, shooting, and even editing, I didn't think 6ixtynin9 was a comedy. I didn't think it was all that funny. But everywhere I go the film gets the same reaction, so I guess it is a comedy now. I knew there were jokes here and there, but I didn't think it would be laugh after laugh. When I was writing, I thought these things would seem natural. If I were in her position, what would I do? Then what would I do next? And next? I wrote the film a little like how the Coen brothers write their films. They don't have a full story in their heads; they just write. I started from scene one and just went. I found myself writing myself into a corner, then having to write myself out of it. Perhaps that has to do with why, to me, some parts feel contrived. But the film moves fast enough that people usually don't have time to question it. Though if you watched the film six or seven times, you'd probably be able to get me on a few points. But it's just my second film, so, so what?

Much of my background is in television commercials, and they rely so much on visual tricks and being "visually interesting" most of the time. And I suppose you can see that in the style. However, with 6ixtynin9, I decided that none of that was going to get in the way of the story and the performance. But when I saw the first rough cut in its entirety, I nearly had a hard attack. I thought it was quite boring. My editor and I realized that this is Tum's story. You sympathize with her and want to know what she is going to do next. We realized scenes that took you away from her had to be dropped. This made the film move much more quickly.

RP: Part of what distinguishes 6ixtynin9 from many similar films based on a premise, such as finding a bag stuffed with money, is how it performs an anatomy of Bangkok, and of Thai society in general. You have this woman who comes from up north, who gets a job that doesn't work out. Then this box shows up and so many strands of Thai society collide in her apartment.

PR: When Thai filmmakers make films, usually you find a very touristique, exotic picture of rural Thailand. I'm a big fan of Bangkok. Though I was born and raised there, and I live there now, I love the place very much. But my time abroad gave me a certain distance. I've kept myself an outsider in some ways mentally, though physically I'm obviously in the system. I live there, I pay taxes, and so forth.

Bangkok is a great place to observe. I think it's one of the great cities of the world. The surface is very Westernized. We have McDonalds and 711s, and people dress Westernized. I do - look at my shoes: they're DKNY brand. But on the other hand we are still Thai. The same people who drive BMWs and own high-rise buildings go to the fortune-teller every week. I know people who, when they buy a new car, have to go to the fortune-teller to decide what color it should be.

RP: How did you try to draw out that paradox in the film?

PR: I didn't push it to the foreground. But I always paid a lot of attention to how people relate to the place they live. For the ten or twelve years that I've been back in Thailand, one thing I've noticed is how architecture affects your state of mind. You seem to be more calm and relaxed when you live in a house with a pond down on the ground, whereas if you live in a high rise you are more restless. This isn't a criticism; it's just an observation.

For me, the flat is a more Western idea of living. You're off the ground. Everyone who lives in this flat where the heroine lives is very nice, but they're also very superficial. There is all this shooting, but no one comes to find out what is going on. When someone actually does show up, they come at the wrong time, and they want something. The woman from downstairs wants the fish sauce. The police officer wants to go out on the fire escape so he can catch the drug dealers and be in the newspaper the next day. These nice people live together, but they don't communicate unless they want something.

On the other hand, you have all the people in the mafia, who are bad according to the laws, but they are still kind of cute, and they are very dedicated to each other. They live on the ground, in a Thai house that holds a Thai boxing academy. The boss loves the underlings, and the underlings love the boss. They're very loyal to one another. They are "criminals" because the law considers what they do criminal activities. That has nothing to do with what they are like inside.

RP: Do you see this as reflecting how Thais, and perhaps others as well, interact? That the more Westernized you are, the less loyal and friendly you are?

PR: This is a symptom of big city living. You're always on the run. You're always in a hurry, so you don't have time to be truly loyal to anyone. The entire world is so obsessed with making things faster, cheaper, more convenient, and more practical. The more you succumb to that the less human you become.

In my opinion, Western Civilization has replaced humans with machines so much that if you live in a big city you hardly interact with other human beings. You get your tickets from machines, your cash from machines, and your drinks from machines. You don't have to be loyal or friendly to machines. When they break down, you throw them away and buy new ones.

RP: In a very curious twist you have the guy who runs the big, Westernized business that lays off Tum be linked to the gangsters in the criminal underworld.

PR: It's quite common in Thailand that powerful businessmen, who are also powerful politicians, are involved in criminal activities. We all know it, but no one says anything. Putting it in my movie was a way for me to say something.