It’s been six long years since the Bong Hive was born, and thrived so much, with the world premiere, Palme d’Or and eventual Best Picture win of Bong Joon Ho’s masterpiece Parasite. It was a film that stole the hearts of the community and reminded us just how rich the South Korean writer and director’s oeuvre to that point already was.
The cast of Mickey 17 knows this: the actors bringing to life Director Bong’s latest picture, his first entirely English-language film which adapts Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, are, like us, cinephiles first and foremost. “He was always one of those directors—I had a similar experience with [David] Cronenberg—who was on such another level that they’re not accessible,” Robert Pattinson, who plays Mickey Barnes in the film, tells at the world premiere in London. “When I heard [Director Bong] was doing a movie all in English, was in LA, wanted to do meetings… I just felt like meeting an alien. I was so excited about it, he’s so wonderful.”
Steven Yeun, working with Bong Joon Ho for a second time after starring in 2017’s Okja, agrees that the filmmaker exists in a league of his own. “I love getting notes from Director Bong,” he says. “He’s so generous, he loves his characters. When he talks about them, it’s not through judgment, it’s this little aspect of that character that he really likes.” Both Pattinson and Yeun name the director’s sophomore feature, 2003’s Memories of Murder, as their favorite of Director Bong’s works. Yeun summarizes the magic of it all: “You just want to live in his frames—you want to contribute to that frame.”
