Chapter 33: Overtaking
At seven on Friday evening, the livestream opened on Cha Myunghoon's personal channel.
The broadcast title appeared on screen.
[From 24 Theaters to #5 at the Box Office]
[Meet Before the Light Reaches Director Baek Geonwoo]
Geonwoo sat across from Cha Myunghoon and pressed the small microphone attached to his collar once.
On a monitor placed beside the desk, the chat scrolled rapidly.
[This is the dark horse movie you talked about in Busan, right?]
[I already watched it.]
[My neighborhood finally started showing it this week.]
[The director is really young.]
[Whoa, is he really a director? Not an actor? He's seriously handsome...]
[Forget being as handsome as an actor. He'd crush most actors.]
Cha Myunghoon looked toward the camera.
"During the Busan International Film Festival, I introduced this film as a dark horse."
Geonwoo nodded.
"I remember."
"But now you've become a dark horse at the box office too."
Cha Myunghoon smiled.
"You climbed all the way to fifth. Congratulations."
"Thank you. I'm simply grateful that so many people have shown the film more love than I expected."
"That makes this reverse climb by an independent film even more interesting."
Cha Myunghoon asked,
"Did you expect this level of response from the beginning?"
Geonwoo shook his head.
"No."
He answered honestly.
"I hoped for it, but I never expected it."
"When we opened during the first week, my only thought was that we needed to survive in theaters."
A small smile appeared on Cha Myunghoon's lips.
"You only opened in twenty-four theaters, correct?"
"Yes."
"There were many posts from people saying they wanted to watch the movie but didn't have a theater nearby."
He turned to the monitor.
"I found several of them. Let's show them."
Audience posts appeared.
[I live in Suwon, but there was no screening, so I went all the way to Yongsan.]
[The round trip took more than two hours, but I don't regret it.]
[I traveled from Incheon to Daehangno. The trip home took longer than the movie.]
[My friend laughed at me for traveling to Seoul to watch an indie film. After I came back, they said they should've come too.]
[I live in Daejeon, but none of the screening times worked, so I took the first train to Seoul on Saturday.]
[At this point, is this watching a movie or going on an expedition?]
[Recruiting expedition members. Anyone going from Busan to Seoul next week?]
[Please show it at a theater near me too. I'm avoiding the internet because I don't want spoilers.]
Cha Myunghoon turned back toward Geonwoo.
"During the first week, it wasn't the movie going to the audience."
"The audience went looking for the movie."
Geonwoo also looked at the posts.
He remembered the audience members he'd met in Daehangno on opening day.
"I'm grateful, but I also feel sorry."
"Sorry?"
"There were people who wanted to see the movie, but we couldn't get screens close to them."
He smiled faintly.
"Of course, I'm proud too."
"Still, those people filled your twenty-four theaters first."
"That's right."
"Because of them, we were able to get more screenings."
Cha Myunghoon turned to the camera.
"So the audience found the movie first."
He smiled.
"And after that, the theaters started following the audience."
The chat filled with comments from viewers saying they'd had similar experiences.
Cha Myunghoon read several before turning one page of the documents in his hand.
"I heard filming was stopped once during production."
"Yes."
"There were sparks from the lighting equipment?"
Geonwoo nodded.
"If we'd reacted even a little later, someone could've been seriously hurt."
"Was anyone injured?"
"Thankfully, no. We stopped filming immediately."
"Normally, you would replace the equipment and continue."
Cha Myunghoon continued.
"But you delayed production by two weeks."
"I wanted to rewrite the script."
Cha Myunghoon looked at him.
"I heard this wasn't a small revision."
"I rewrote it from the beginning."
The chat sped up.
[From the beginning?]
[He threw away the script while already filming?]
[What happened to the scenes they'd already shot?]
Cha Myunghoon asked the same question.
"You had already filmed part of the movie by then."
"What did you do with those scenes?"
"I threw them all away."
Cha Myunghoon looked up from his documents.
"Your production budget couldn't have been generous."
"That's why I thought about it even more."
"But you still decided to reshoot everything."
Geonwoo nodded.
"I knew I'd regret it forever if I finished the movie as it was."
"I wanted to make my first feature properly."
Cha Myunghoon paused.
"How much did the script change?"
"Almost everything."
Geonwoo explained.
"The way the incident begins."
"The reasons the characters respond the way they do."
"Even the truth Seorin discovers at the end."
"You didn't revise it. You completely tore it apart."
Geonwoo smiled and nodded.
"That's right."
"How long did it take to finish that script?"
"The first draft took four days."
The chat exploded.
[FOUR DAYS?]
[A feature screenplay in four days?]
[This is more shocking than stopping filming.]
[Did you even sleep?]
Cha Myunghoon read the final comment and laughed.
"I want to ask the same thing. Did you sleep?"
"Not much."
"The draft you wrote in four days became the current movie?"
"After finishing the first draft, I kept revising it during the remaining time."
"I also rebuilt the entire shooting plan from the beginning."
"The actors had already prepared their characters using the old script and even started filming."
"That's why I apologized to them first."
Geonwoo's voice remained calm.
"Delaying filming and throwing away what we'd already shot were both my decisions."
"How did they react after reading the new script?"
"Thankfully, everyone liked it."
Names like Han Yura and Kang Taejun began appearing in chat.
[I want to know how different the first script was.]
[Show us the old footage.]
Cha Myunghoon glanced at the chat.
"Any plans to release the original footage?"
"No."
"None?"
"No."
"Haha. Very firm."
Cha Myunghoon placed down the documents.
"You threw away an entire shooting script and reshot scenes you'd already completed."
"That's a difficult decision even on a well-funded production."
"Impressive."
"I was confident it would become a better movie."
"Were you confident it would succeed?"
Geonwoo thought briefly, then shook his head.
"No."
Cha Myunghoon laughed.
"Haha. Now you're being modest."
He looked into the camera.
"And yet that film is currently fifth at the box office."
Then his expression became more serious.
"I don't want to tell people to support Before the Light Reaches simply because it's an independent film."
Geonwoo listened.
"This is a film worth paying the same ticket price you would for a commercial movie."
"The people who traveled far to find a theater weren't doing charity for independent cinema."
"They were simply audience members who wanted to satisfy their desire to watch an entertaining, good movie."
Geonwoo bowed his head.
"Thank you."
Cha Myunghoon gave his closing greeting toward the camera.
A broadcast-ending notice appeared.
Once the studio lights dimmed, Geonwoo removed the microphone from his collar.
Cha Myunghoon stood and asked,
"Will you write your next movie yourself too?"
It was a question he hadn't asked during the livestream.
"I already have a script."
Cha Myunghoon stopped.
"Already?"
"Yes."
He looked at Geonwoo for a moment before smiling.
"Then you've given me a reason to invite you back."
