Sharon Choi, Bong Joon-Ho’s translator, has a gift for making things clear. So it’s ironic that she was misunderstood, the week after the Oscars, in a series of news stories asserting that she plans to write a screenplay about awards season.
In a lengthy, lovely piece for Variety about her experience as the Oscar-winning director’s interpreter, Choi explains that she is working on a script — but that it is not about awards season in Hollywood.
“And no, I am not writing a feature on the awards season,” writes Choi, who is a film student when she isn’t translating for Bong.
Also Read: Bong Joon-Ho’s Next Film After Parasite? There Are Two
She clarifies that she is working on a film, however — and that that film is “a small story set in Korea that’s close to my heart because, as director Bong quoted the sincere words of Martin Scorsese, ‘the personal is the most creative.'”
Choi was referencing Bong’s quotation of Scorsese as he accepted his award for Best Director, and led a standing ovation for the Irishman director.
Soon after Bong received his Oscars for directing, screenplay, and best picture, news stories began to emerge that Choi planned to tell the story of her own personal story about once upon a time… in Hollywood… in award season.
Choi became something of a celebrity herself for accompanying Bong to so many awards shows and helping interpret his remarks for the American press.
But with the Variety piece — really, read the whole thing — she asserts that those stories were their own kind of make-believe.
Parasite is still in theaters and available as video on demand.
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