Aviva Press

As Mars space exploration matures and the ability for people to be able to travel to the moon becomes a reality, the premiere of "Robot Stories" (based on four
stories about love, death and family through experiences with robots) impeccable timing is simply superb! Award-winning writer/director Greg Pak was interviewed by Maria Esteves on January 12, 2004.

ME:  Did you become an established writer/director through the International Film Fest Community?

GP: The film festivals helped a huge amount over the years, particularly the Asian American Film Festivals. I'm Asian American. My father is Korean, my mother is White American. Over the years, most of the films that I have made not all have had Asian American actors in them and the first place those films screened were at Asian American film festivals like the Asian American International Film Festival in New York and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and other festivals in Los Angeles, DC, Dallas, San Diego, Chicago and even in Canada Toronto, Van Couver and Montreal. Those festivals were hugely important to me particularly in the first couple of years that I was in film school.

ME: What film festivals was "Robot Stories" introduced?

GP: We did our official world premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October 2002. We were one of the films that was in competition. They put me on the panel. The film recieved the best screenplay award which was an amazing experience.

ME: What inspired the making of the film "Robot Stories"?

GP: I grew up reading science fiction, watching "Twilight Zone". I particularly love the kind of stories that deal with technological change from a human perspective. Ray Bradbury short stories were really important to me as a kid. I grew up reading Ray Bradbury. I loved the way he took robots, Martians and rocket ships
and put them in the contents of very concrete human stories. I loved the dark sense of humor combined with sort of genuine humanism. I think that is a clear inspiration for Robot Stories.

ME: The idea of Robots?

GP: I've always been fascinated by them. I guess my childhood generation. I'm 35. I was 8 or 9 when the first Star Wars movie first came out. I grew up playing with the robots that are in the second story in the movie Robot Stories. The second story "The Robot Fixer" deals with a mother whose adult son is in a coma and she's trying to reach him by finishing his robot toy collection and I grew playing with the toys that you see in the movie. Exactly why? I can't tell you. I don't know. Just the idea of mechanical people walking around is compelling to millions including me!

ME: Why Robots?

GP: Another reason why today robots are interesting to me and why they were interesting to me when I was writing Robot Stories is because like all the questions that come up when you talk seriously about robots and artificial intelligence are the same questions that really come up when you talk about the human heart these sort of questions like who am I? what am I doing here? What is my purpose? If you think seriously about artificial intelligence actually coming into existence those are the kinds of questions robots are going to have. They are going to be programmed in certain ways, but if they are genuinely artificially intelligent, they are going to have these same questions that we have. The existential questions of life and death. That's one reason why I think robots are very interesting when you are thinking about telling stories.

ME: I can see the third story, "Machine Love" coming to fruition.

GP: Sure! I think that will happen.

ME: At what point in your life you became interested in the film industry?

GP: It was around that time when I was at Oxford that I had the chance to get involved with practical filming. I was hungry for something creative at that point because I've been working in politics for a year after I graduated from college and something was missing. At Oxford, I had the first chance to get involved to make videos and short films. As soon as I started doing it I knew that's what I needed to do. From Oxford, I went to NYU and did the graduate film program.

ME: What was the first film you directed that pushed you to the public consciousness?

GP: The first short film that I ever had in a festival was called "Visiting Aunt Sue" which I don't talk about because it was a training project but it was very important to me personally as a filmmaker. It was the first chance I got to see my stuff up on the big screen with all audience and to have that experience of connecting with an audience. It was a 4-minute black & white silence short film about a kid whose going to visit his aunt who is this older woman who had a stroke and moves around with a walker. You see her basically on the verge of a second stroke trying to cook this big meal for him, meanwhile, that's cross cut with him hanging out with his friends. Every time you see him he's eating.

ME: What year was that?

GP: That was 1993. It played in festivals and on PBS in New York City. The first short film that started playing in a lot of festivals was called "Mouse" an 11-minute short film about a guy chasing a mouse around his apartment while trying to escape the conversation about pregnancy with his girlfriend. It played in dozens of festivals, public televisions in a lot of different cities. It's actually going to play nationally as part of this color vision which will be on PBS this month January 16th. Color Vision is the name of the series. It's a bunch of short films by filmmakers.

The other short film I made around that time was quot;Fighting Grandpa" a personal documentary about my Korean grandparents. Basically asking the question was my grandparents ever in love? That film won many awards and played in many festivals it also got picked up by Cinamax. "Asian Pride Porn" and "All Amateur Ecstasy" are digital short comedy porn films that became infamous at atomfilms.com. "All Amateur Ecstasy is the third most viewed comedy at atomfilms.com. Each one of those films help me make contacts and now Robot Stories is my big baby!

ME: Would you say that Robot Stories is the first one that pushed you to the public consciousness?

GP: Yes, Robot Stories is the film that's taking me to the next step!

ME: What films and screenplays have you directed and what is the total number of awards honored for each?

GP: "Robot Stories" received 23 awards, "Fight Grandpa" short documentary received 20 awards, "Mouse" received 7awards, "Po Mo Knock Knock" 7 or 8 awards, "All Amateur Ecstasy" got an audience award, "Asian Pride Porn" received 2 audience awards, "Mr.
Lee" got 2 awards.

ME: Any new projects currently in the works?

GP: My co-producer on "Robot Stories" Karin Chien is the producer of my next feature film which is called "Rio Chino" a western set in 1869. The hero is a Chinese gunslinger and he's got a Mexican heroine. This is a non-traditionally cast western adventurous/romance. We are trying to shoot late 2004. That's a project I have been dreaming about for 12 years. That's the project I had in mind when I started film school. Hopefully it will happen this year!

There is a film that I wrote will premiere at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival in January it's called "MVP" directed by Harry Davis. It's essentially a courtroom drama/drug thriller. It's about a criminal lawyer in Detroit who is trying to resign but his sister needs his help because her boyfriend has been arraign for a drug related murder. So now the lawyer gets pulled back into this world he's trying to get out of. He's supposed to be helping his wife form an educational program for kids. Basically trying to start a new life with his wife but his sister needs him to help.