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M (Putthipong Assaratanakul) Photograph courtesy of GDH 559
Interview by: Louise Salter - The Lab Mag
Editor: Greta Stromquist
Film: How to make millions before Grandma dies
Interview with Film Director Pat Boonnitipat
THE LAB MAG Welcome to this Lab Mag podcast with film director Pat Boonitipat. The film How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies centers on the complicated relationship between family members as they deal with their dying grandmother.
Thank you for joining us.
I thought that a beautiful place to begin is at the beginning, which is you, your childhood, and your family. And can you tell us about you?
PAT BOONNITIPAT How do I begin? Actually, I started to want to become a filmmaker very late in life. Usually, filmmakers would start their love for cinema in their childhood, but for me, I started when I was in my university year, and I came across this film by Naomi Kawase, the Japanese female director. I went to a film festival where her film was being screened, but there were some technical problems. The subtitle that should have been in English came out to be in Spanish, so I couldn't understand a thing. But I sat there throughout the movie, and I cried a lot. So that's when I experienced, this is so new to me, this kind of experience without even understanding what they're saying, that's when I wanted to become a filmmaker.
LAB It's an interesting time to be in a world where a lot of international films are opening up cultural dialogue. Can you tell me about where it was set?
PB Yeah. In my hometown, in Bangkok. It was filmed in this less well known Chinatown, and the writer also spent his childhood nearby. It's this very beautiful small Chinese community that has a train track that cuts right through it. So we fell in love with the place, but we didn't think it would be like this phenomenon and people would come here. We just loved the place and we tried to express it as sincerely as it is.
LAB Tell us, how did you weave this story together?
PB There were two writers for this movie. It is me and my writers who wrote the genesis of the movie. We would sit together for like four or five days a week for five or six hours a day. We would just throw in our memories, our scenes from life, and we just started to talk about our uncles, our aunts, especially our grandmothers. And we would just talk about the littlest things about them, like, oh, they're this kind of person, this would irritate them. For example, my grandmother would always care for the one that she found struggled the most. And I think this kind of thing we all share in common. When we find this kind of little things, we would collect them and then we arranged them into our script.
L to R: Amah (Usha Seamkhum) and M (Putthipong Assaratanakul) Photograph courtesy of GDH 559
LAB So you started with all of these ideas, and then did you go back in and go, all right, we'll have some sort of structure. Like did you organize it, that there'd be points along the way that you had to hit?
PB We tried to have a structure. The story is quite simple. It's about a guy who takes care of his grandmother. I was trying to figure out what is exactly the conflict of the story, the thing that would grab our attention because I also wanted this film not to be an art film, but I wanted it to be accessed by so many people. As you follow him into his grandmother's life and then you start to fall in love with her, you start to live with her and you start to recover a bond that had been missing. The audience would know instinctively that at some point the grandmother would pass away. It somehow reflects how you view life. Like you start to love someone by the time that you know that the love must come to an end at some point. And I think that that became the structure of the movie.
LAB The relationship between M and his grandmother is beautiful. And that scene where he bathes her, it's so intimate.
PB The way that we work together, me and the actor and actresses, we tried our best not to expect anything while we were shooting. The way I work with them is that I will do my best not to make them feel that anything that they're doing is wrong. I mean, they just can do anything freely on set. They can just improvise. What was wonderful is that those two actors, they're very close to each other. They felt very free to just hug each other. The grandmother would hug him all the time behind the shoot when the camera cut, they would hug. And also the guy knew that the only way that he could excel in this movie was to really support her because she was very new to acting. She was, she never acted before. So he really gave all his attention in supporting her. So that kind of real life relationship somehow I think reflected in the chemistry, in all the scenes that they're shooting together. If it's not like technical stuff, it went very smooth.
LAB So tell us why did you choose to make this film now?
PB While we were exploring the neighborhood that we talked about, me and my writers, we visited that neighborhood so many times during the process of writing. And the site that we always see is the site of old people sitting in front of their houses waiting for someone. The district is very packed, so mostly there are row houses. These houses would share the same wall, so there would be very little ventilation. The only ventilation is through the front door and the back door. So if you want good air or you want the sun, you have to sit in front of the porch. So it became the habit to be sitting in front of the house and almost every one of them is like 70 or 80. We had a chance to speak with a lot of them. And they share a common story that the children have already bought a house somewhere else and they would visit them weekly or monthly or even like a few times a year. So that's when I knew what's the purpose of this film?
L to R: M’s Mother (Sarinrat Thomas) and M (Putthipong Assaratanakul) Photograph courtesy of GDH 559
LAB Your film explores the relationship between family love and money. And now, in western culture, this is considered somewhat toxic. You're supposed to love only unconditionally. Can you talk about this regarding Chinese and Thai cultures? Is it different? Is there a more open understanding and conversation about money?
PB Actually, in our culture, we don't talk about it. The thing is that we hardly talk about love at all. For example, my grandmother, sshe never say she loves anyone. I mean, she wouldn't, she would never, never, never say that she loves my mother or say that she loves my uncle or even me or all the nephews. We never heard that kind of word. We never hears that kind of word. So it became very complex for us to understand the concept of love. For example, I live in a row house and it would consist of five floors, we would live on the third floor. My grandmother also lived on the third floor, but my grandfather, my late grandfather, he passed away right before I started shooting. He would live on the first floor and at lunch and dinner, he would call on the phone to the third floor and ask for food.
Like he wanted his grandchildren to bring down the food for him. And when we heard that we would race for it because we know when we give food to him, he would give us money, maybe one uck, two bucks or three bucks, and that somehow reflects our cultures that a lot of Thai Chinese families gave money to express love. That's what we learned. And it passed on from generations to generations. So it became one of the concepts of this movie is that we express love through money. If we keep doing this, how this sort of relationship will be, for example, from the scene of the movie that M got only the silver belt. That really did happen with our screenwriter after he took care of his grandmother for like, almost like in the movie. And when she passed away, she left him only a silver belt. So that became like the genesis of the question of the movie. He thought: did she really love him?
LAB Speaking of this, M's cousin, she seems to have come to terms with this very complicated layer of care and money. And then there is a surprise that she has an OnlyFans account, which is very current. What are your thoughts about the idea of buying affection in a world where loneliness is everywhere? How do you feel about that?
PB This character actually exists. She actually exists. She's a cousin of my writer, but she took care of her grandfather, but she didn't get anything at the end. But we thought that, oh, what would happen if she got something? We tried to imagine her life after she took care of her grandfather. In Thailand, we used to, especially Thai Chinese family, we used to live in a multi-generation house. In the house, they would consist of many generations, but we are in the transitional period, like the vertical structure became like a horizontal structure. So nowadays each house would contain only one generation. For example, the grandmother, grandfather would live in the daycare or in their house if they can still take care of themselves. But if not, we would hire someone to take care of them in their own house.
I think the shift happens because of so many things. But one thing is that when you live together in the multi-generation house and your descendants taught no beliefs, the belief system started to change. It became so complex to live together, it became almost like a suffering to live together, like patriarchy. And so the structures shift, but as it shifts, I think we also see that it also creates a new problem, for example, like loneliness or lonely death. So I just wanted to record this. I cannot decide what, whether it's good or bad, but I just try to reflect in this film.
L to R: Mui (Tontawan Tantivejakul) and M (Putthipong Assaratanakul) Photograph courtesy of GDH 559
LAB You do see the two cultures, the old and the new being portrayed by the grandmother's traditional ways versus her son who has clearly done really well in life, and he's now opting for this new shiny, as you say, horizontal life that doesn't include her. She yearns for her old life. And you really understand that the reflection of the two cultures before M moves out and moves in with Amah. He sits around gaming and really taking the shortcut wherever he can in life. Do you think that that's sort of reflective of young people today?
PB I had a chance to teach in the high school, and I took a lot of high school students to interview. I really wanted to know what was the thought of their future or how they would manage the money. What is their concept of a dream life? And the answer is quite fascinating, and I think it's quite realistic, is that they find that there weren't much chance for them to make it in life, especially money wise. So they somehow came to this conclusion. It's smart to earn something quick and then spend it to gain the happiness instantly. They're not buying into the concept of saving money and then to use it later when you're in order, or to grab the money real fast and then spend it on the things that attract them. So that kind of concept somehow captivated me, and I think you can really see the difference in each generation by this kind of decisions. So M is a character that reflects that kind of thinking process.
LAB Is that to do with the state of the world?
PB Exactly. It is, or even though they try to study hard and get into good universities when they graduate, the amount of salary is not that much different. Education systems now became less important than how quickly you can start making money and in what way can you start making money. So everything became like, the priority is to make money first, the method come later.
LAB Now the women in the film, to me, they seem to have the most clear-eyed understanding of the family dynamic. Which is particularly well summed up in the conversation between Amah and her daughter when she says the son gets the inheritance and the daughter gets cance - which is quite a line. Can you talk about that moment and the greater truth behind it?
PB This dialogue came from our writer. He thought about this dialogue and we find that it's very poignant. It hit me real hard because my grandmother, she also had cancer stage four cancer, but she somehow managed to survive that. And my mother, she also got cancer and she's exactly like in the movie that she's the only person in the family that's now taking care of my grandmother. It's so clear that my grandmother loves her elder son the most, but my mother still does what she does. I didn't understand this at all. I didn't understand this concept at all. So I moved in, I moved back in to live with them and I tried to observe them and then I started to understand it from her point of view. And this dialogue fits this situation well.
LAB It's a very powerful moment in the film. The film starts in a graveyard and it ends in a graveyard and death is coming to all of us. It's inevitable. Can you talk about the rituals that we see take place?
PB So in Thai Chinese system, we believe that when you die, you become a spirit and its spirit lives in the graveyard. We call it a house. So that's why we call it a home. A house. If you have enough money, you would consider buying a big graveyard so that that graveyard could fit your grandfather, your grand grandfather, and also your grand grandmother and also your grandmother. And it would fit several bodies so that after they die, they could live together in a family. I find that really fascinating and because also, I have to attend this every year since my childhood and it became a very vivid memory. You have to drive a long, long way to the countryside. And then there's a certain thing that you have to, you have to scatter the flower and you have to light the incense, and then you have to pray.
And then somebody would light the fire cracker and we would have this family talk. We would catch up like, okay what have you been doing for the past year? Okay, oh, now this cousin is getting into university. This cousin is doing well, this cousin is struggling. We would catch up about things, but I hate it because it's so hot, because the weather would be so hot. And I would never want to go until I started working on this film. I went back and talked to them. But what really strikes me is that because this kind of graveyard is not self maintenance, it requires a lot of maintenance. Every year, if you would visit the graveyard, you have to pay a good sum of money for people to redecorate the hill. They would put grass on the hill and they cut the grass.
You have to pay a lot of money. So you can tell right away if somebody is not taking care of their own burial plot, it would become a mess. It would be like, this tree would grow. The grass would grow so tall and even the coffin will stick out. So you wouldn't let it happen if you take care of it. But the year that I went back, it changed a lot because only about 20% of the burial plot is being taken care of. The rest were mess. I mean, it's not green at all. It's like totally a mess. So that it strikes me that the time is changing now, and you might not have a chance to see things like this again.
LAB Does that reflect on people's views about ancestry?
PB There's a dialogue in the movie that M said to Amah that, oh, after you die, you just become dust. You become dirt. You wouldn't know what would happen to you. Even your grandkid visits, you wouldn't even know that dialogue came from the actor himself. I really liked his thought, so I put it in the script. So I think that somehow reflects the new ways of thinking through a death of a younger generation. They're not believing in spirits anymore. The maintenance cost, it is high and it requires a lot of contribution from every member of the family to go there. So I think it would last not for too long.
L to R: M (Putthipong Assaratanakul) and Amah (Usha Seamkhum) Photograph courtesy of GDH 559
LAB And so I have to ask you, what scene are you most proud of?
PB Personally, I really like the scene after him and grandmother. We sit in the brother's house. After that scene, they were walking along the railroad track and talking about the burial plot. I really like that scene. I mean the fight, but the way it was shot, it wasn't trying to dramatize that fight, it was just observing it from afar. And then eventually the fight resolved itself even though they didn't understand. I mean, M didn't accept what grandmother was thinking and Amah didn't accept what M was thinking, but they somehow continued to live together.
LAB And what gave you the most headaches as a director?
PB The biggest headache is because it is my first feature film, and I worked in television before, and the way I used to approach shooting is much more different. And when I was shooting television and I didn't have much experience, I tried to shoot everything to deliver information to the audience. I mean, bit by bit, one by one, one by one, okay. If this person talks, you do close up. If they're walking blocking you, you do wide shot and stuff. But in this film, I tried my best to improve my filmmaking skills in order for the audience, when they watch this film, they could interpret the film by themselves. They could relate to the film in the level that they want to. I mean, if they don't want to laugh, they don't have to laugh. If they find this dialogue funny, they can laugh with that, I treat it as a comedy. So that kind of intention required so much effort in filmmaking skills. So I did a lot of homework and tried to make it work.
LAB And what's the best advice you've ever been given?
PB There's so many good advice that I got, but I would say that, I once read an interview via - I love reading interview from filmmakers. I think that somehow you could learn so much. And there's an interview from Bong Joon-ho and I love his films. And he said that when he was writing his character, he tried to make them like an onion, that it has a layer. He didn't explain much further, but I try to interpret it in my own way. It's like, okay, onion has a layer. Okay, so it mean that when you peel them, there's still more layers and layers and layers. So that's my own interpretation. So the way I try to write my character is that I try to not put everything about this character in one scene, but as this film progress, you try and you see a deeper layer of this character and it becomes like almost a discovery. Like, oh, you just connect the puzzle that, oh, what kind of person this guy is, or she is.
LAB And what story do you think you are going to tell next? What's next on the horizon?
PB Oh, I have nothing. Nothing. <laugh>. I have nothing, nothing at all. But I'm looking, I'm looking for something. For some ideas.
LAB That's really exciting. Well, thank you so much for this beautiful interview and I wish you all the luck in the world.
PB Well, thank you so much for having me.
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