Bong Joon Ho’s Translator Sharon Choi Publishes Essay on Her ‘Parasite’ Oscar Season Journey

Sharon Choi, Bong Joon Ho’s awards season translator and the undisputed MVP of Oscar season, had a front row seat to the legendary awards season run of “Parasite.” Choi attended the Cannes Film Festival alongside Bong and was front and center when “Parasite” made history as the first South Korean film to take home the Palme d’Or. Months later, Sharon would take the stage at the Dolby Theater as Bong received Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, Best Director, and Best Picture. “Parasite” is the first South Korean film to win Oscars and the first foreign-language movie to ever be named Best Picture. In between Cannes and the Oscars, Choi traveled with Bong to various festivals and award ceremonies and experienced firsthand the adoration for both the director and “Parasite.” The translator and aspiring filmmaker reminisces on her whirlwind Oscar season in a new first-person essay published on Variety.

“The past six months has been a blur of new cities, microphones and good news, with endless orders of honey lemon tea as I tried to preserve my voice,” Choi writes. “Driven from one crowd to the next, I shook hands with hundreds of people whose eyes shone with the excitement of having watched a special film. Moments alone were still riddled with the absurdity that I was sharing hand sanitizers with a man whose films I’d organized movie nights for in college. Somehow, despite having only micro-short films to my name, I got sucked into the heart of Hollywood.”

Choi explains that she first met Bong when she was asked in April 2019 to interpret a phone interview with the director. Choi was in the middle of trying to start work on a new screenplay when the offer came in, and she had prior experience translating for Lee Chang Dong for a week during the press tour for “Burning.” Bong’s team ultimately asked Choi to travel to Cannes with him, and she vividly writes about the night “Parasite” was unveiled for the first time.

“There was palpable electricity in the Grand Theater Lumiere when the film premiered at Cannes,” Choi writes. “It was moving to see a film about my home country touch people from so many different cultures. The two years I spent in the U.S. as a kid had turned me into a strange hybrid — too Korean to be American, too American to be Korean, and not even Korean American…Two cultures are usually just one too many for a film to contain. And yet here was this story that seemed to effortlessly break through all barriers. Originally, I was only needed at the festival for two days to do English press, but I ended up backstage at the closing ceremony sweating with anticipation until ‘Parasite’ was the only one left on the list of films to win an award.”

As for what it was like translating for Bong, Choi writes, “My job was made easy by his consideration, and it helped that I was already familiar with his language as a filmmaker and a thinker, having written college papers about him. Yet I was constantly battling impostor syndrome, and an anxiety that I might misrepresent the words of someone so beloved in front of people I’d grown up admiring. The only cures for stage fright were ten-second meditations backstage, and knowing that I was not who they were seeing.”

Now that Oscar season is over, Choi is returning to her normal life and her aspiring filmmaking career. Choi told press backstage at the Oscars that she is currently writing a screenplay herself for a new movie. Visit Variety’s website to read Choi’s essay in its entirety.

Bong Joon Ho’s Translator Sharon Choi Publishes Essay on Her ‘Parasite’ Oscar Season Journey

Sharon Choi, Bong Joon Ho’s awards season translator and the undisputed MVP of Oscar season, had a front row seat to the legendary awards season run of “Parasite.” Choi attended the Cannes Film Festival alongside Bong and was front and center when “Parasite” made history as the first South Korean film to take home the Palme d’Or. Months later, Sharon would take the stage at the Dolby Theater as Bong received Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, Best Director, and Best Picture. “Parasite” is the first South Korean film to win Oscars and the first foreign-language movie to ever be named Best Picture. In between Cannes and the Oscars, Choi traveled with Bong to various festivals and award ceremonies and experienced firsthand the adoration for both the director and “Parasite.” The translator and aspiring filmmaker reminisces on her whirlwind Oscar season in a new first-person essay published on Variety.

“The past six months has been a blur of new cities, microphones and good news, with endless orders of honey lemon tea as I tried to preserve my voice,” Choi writes. “Driven from one crowd to the next, I shook hands with hundreds of people whose eyes shone with the excitement of having watched a special film. Moments alone were still riddled with the absurdity that I was sharing hand sanitizers with a man whose films I’d organized movie nights for in college. Somehow, despite having only micro-short films to my name, I got sucked into the heart of Hollywood.”

Choi explains that she first met Bong when she was asked in April 2019 to interpret a phone interview with the director. Choi was in the middle of trying to start work on a new screenplay when the offer came in, and she had prior experience translating for Lee Chang Dong for a week during the press tour for “Burning.” Bong’s team ultimately asked Choi to travel to Cannes with him, and she vividly writes about the night “Parasite” was unveiled for the first time.

“There was palpable electricity in the Grand Theater Lumiere when the film premiered at Cannes,” Choi writes. “It was moving to see a film about my home country touch people from so many different cultures. The two years I spent in the U.S. as a kid had turned me into a strange hybrid — too Korean to be American, too American to be Korean, and not even Korean American…Two cultures are usually just one too many for a film to contain. And yet here was this story that seemed to effortlessly break through all barriers. Originally, I was only needed at the festival for two days to do English press, but I ended up backstage at the closing ceremony sweating with anticipation until ‘Parasite’ was the only one left on the list of films to win an award.”

As for what it was like translating for Bong, Choi writes, “My job was made easy by his consideration, and it helped that I was already familiar with his language as a filmmaker and a thinker, having written college papers about him. Yet I was constantly battling impostor syndrome, and an anxiety that I might misrepresent the words of someone so beloved in front of people I’d grown up admiring. The only cures for stage fright were ten-second meditations backstage, and knowing that I was not who they were seeing.”

Now that Oscar season is over, Choi is returning to her normal life and her aspiring filmmaking career. Choi told press backstage at the Oscars that she is currently writing a screenplay set in the world of Oscar season, which she has firsthand knowledge of now following her run with “Parasite.” Visit Variety’s website to read Choi’s essay in its entirety.

Behind the Scenes of Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-Winning ‘Parasite’ PR Campaign

Publicist Mara Buxbaum is still in a good mood two days after the Oscars and staying up all night in Koreatown as Bong Joon Ho and the team behind “Parasite” celebrated their historic four-Oscar win. Did Director Bong drink as promised? “We all did, we all drank all night,” said Buxbaum on the phone Tuesday. “We had so much fun, drinking Soju and beer. We ate and laughed and gave speeches. It was very moving.”

You can’t blame Buxbaum for being emotional. She’s the first to recognize that success has many fathers, and that when it came to pushing Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” to Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and International Feature Film, “it takes a village.”

But Buxbaum did jump on board the “Parasite” train early. I ran into her back in Cannes in May, envious that she was hanging out with the Competition jury as the guest of Yorgos Lanthimos, watching all 22 films without a care in the world. It was her reward for a job well done on “The Favourite,” which was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Director, and won Best Actress for Olivia Colman.

Bong Joon Ho and Mara Buxbaum.

Anthony Breznican

The president of Hollywood PR agency ID-PR, Buxbaum had been to Cannes many times, accompanying other clients including Sean Penn, Jake Gyllenhaal (who worked on Bong’s “Okja”), and Winona Ryder. But when she first watched “Parasite,” she she was left “speechless.” As the jury left the Palais after the late screening, they ran into Bong’s entourage. The jurors couldn’t say anything, but Buxbaum locked eyes with him and bowed: “Oh my God! Amazing!”

She saw what could happen. As she said, “I chased Bong.” In the next days she reached out to Bong’s agent and manager, his producing partner, and his Korean distributor, CJ Entertainment. (She later connected with its North American distributor, Neon’s Tom Quinn, who acquired the film at the script stage.)

“You felt you were in the hands of a great auteur filmmaker,” she said. “He had a clear vision with that perfect screenplay. The actors were working together at the highest level. The crafts were at the highest level. It was so disciplined, so entertaining. I forgot I was reading subtitles, I was so taken away by his storytelling and filmmaking prowess. The movie felt original, fresh, relevant, and universal. I couldn’t believe that an arthouse foreign-language movie could be so accessible and commercial. It felt like something I hadn’t seen before.”

“Parasite”

Neon

A few months after Cannes, when the film won the Palme d’Or, Buxbaum got on a Skype call with Bong in Korea to finalize the deal to represent him and his movie, starting in Telluride.

She told him: “I see a Best Director, Picture, Screenplay campaign. I believe you deserve to be on that path. I passionately want to help ensure that.” Buxbaum was going with her gut, that what she experienced other people would share. And at Telluride, that faith was borne out. “I’ve been on tons of campaigns and projects where that is not always the case, and you wind up feeling alone because people don’t always love it the way you do.”

She politely refused to listen to the conventional wisdom that a foreign-language film couldn’t win Best Picture because no movie ever had, not even “Roma.” “The rules don’t say you can’t do it this way,” she said. “You can, if you love it that much, if you think it’s deserving. All you can do is get the movie seen, get people thinking beyond Best International Feature Film.”

By Telluride, Neon had a promotional schedule for Bong around the film’s October 11 opening in North America. Of course, it all came down to Bong’s willingness to work hard, beyond the Toronto, New York, and London festivals; he and his family moved into a Los Angeles apartment. “He worked tirelessly not just for North America,” said Buxbaum, “but throughout the world to bring this movie everywhere.”

Director Bong Joon Ho, center, and the cast of “Parasite.”

David Fisher/Shutterstock

Neon pursued the beats of the campaign step by step, which included hiring Oscar consultants Perception PR and launching the awards campaign with the Hollywood Film Awards. The campaign evolved as the opening weekend delivered strong box office, with lines around the block.

“This movie had a grassroots feel to it,” said Buxbaum. “It was special, equally because as we believed it, others believed it too. The love for movie kept building like a snowball that got bigger.”

Early press champions out of the festivals, from Vanity Fair to IndieWire, clued the rest of the media to check out the film. “People came on board,” said Buxbaum. “There was an underdog quality of this movie. Others felt they could champion it and be part of this history, too.”

The SAG Ensemble nomination was the gamechanger for Buxbaum, who was in London with Bong and broke down crying when she heard the news. “This is real,” she told him. At the show, the audience stood and cheered when “Parasite” was first introduced with a clip. When “Parasite” won, the room erupted.

Taika Waititi and Bong Joon-Ho at Entertainment Weekly’s ‘The Must List’ party, Toronto

Christopher Polk/Shutterstock

That meant the movie had support from the actors, but “Parasite” did not win the DGA or PGA. It did win Original Screenplay at the WGA and BAFTA. Bong himself was the special sauce.

“You have to make the journey easier so that people want to wrap their arms around you,” said Buxbaum. “Bong is that person. People kept falling in love with him and his voice throughout his process.”

Even his rivals adored him, from old fan Quentin Tarantino and new friends Todd Phillips, Taika Waititi, and Martin Scorsese, who Bong movingly tributed on Oscar night. “They all loved him, but they also had such a good time,” said Buxbaum. “He wants to talk movies with them.”

During the long campaign, Bong relied on his adept translator, filmmaker Sharon Choi, who’s writing a book about her unexpected journey from Cannes through the Oscars. One night when she got sick and couldn’t show up for the Academy’s International Feature Film panel, Bong used a different translator — and spoke more English than he had all season.

The director always wrote his own speeches, delivered with a genuine smile, throughout. “He was tired,” said Buxbaum. “But he showed up 100%. He doesn’t look to anyone, doesn’t fabricate any of it. He’s a man wholly authentic and himself.”

That’s the magic of what happened with “Parasite.” In the end, everyone just wanted to ride that train.

Bong Joon Ho Statue and Museum Proposed in South Korea After ‘Parasite’ Oscar Wins

Who’s ready to kneel at the statue of Bong Joon Ho? The New York Times reports that conservative political candidates in the South Korean city of Daegu have proposed to build a museum and statue to Bong following his history-making Oscar wins for “Parasite” at the 92nd Academy Awards. People are also lobbying for Daegu to rename streets in honor of the South Korean filmmaker, whose additional credits include “Memories of Murder,” “The Host,” and “Mother.” Bong was born in Daegu in 1969 and lived there before his family moved to Seoul while he was in elementary school.

The proposal to erect a Bong Joon Ho statue is somewhat of a change of pace for conservatives and their relationship with the filmmaker. According to the Times, South Korea’s right-wing leaders have been highly critical of Bong’s films throughout his career. Conservative presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye even called out Bong’s “Memories of Murder” and “The Host” for spreading “anti-American” and “left-wing messages.” These films were also criticized for showing “government incompetence.” Not even Bong’s adored “Parasite” converted critics into fans after it won the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the first time a South Korean film took home top honors at the prestigious film festival. The Times reports that conservative politicians slammed “Parasite” as a “commie flick” not worth watching.

The Oscars has reportedly shifted Bong’s image into a more favorable light among the right there. “Parasite” won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. These are the first Oscars ever awarded to a South Korean feature film in the Academy Awards’ 92-year history. Park Yong-chan, a spokesman for South Korea’s far-right Liberty Korea Party, told the Times in a statement: “‘Parasite’ has written new history. This is a monumental achievement that spread the power of South Korean movies and culture around the world.”

While the Bong statue and museum is just a proposal for now, one thing that is definitely happening following the “Parasite” Oscar wins is Bong joining The Criterion Collection. Criterion has announced “Memories of Murder” and “Parasite” are set to join its library later this year.