'The Chairman is a Gangster'
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By Andrew Salmon
With hallyu likely to continue wowing global markets in 2013 I am furiously working on a Korea-set feature film script.
In order to lure a maximum audience, I am blending genres: corporate drama, legal melodrama and good, old-fashioned farce. It is about a loveable chairman/thug and how he subverts justice, to comic effect. I had planned to call it ``The Godfather,” but as that has already been taken, my working title is “The Chairman is a Gangster.”
Below is the outline. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
The film begins, Gangnam-style, in a swanky room salon where an obnoxious youth is hurled into the street, sporting a shiner. He waves his fist comically as he gets on his cell phone. ``Papa,” he sobs.
We cut to a plush bedroom where our hero sits in bed in silk PJs. Next to him, discarded unread, lies a corporate report, but he is engrossed in ``Scarface” on a giant TV screen. His cell phone rings. He answers, listens and turns comically puce. He presses a button beside the bed.
Immediately two beefcakes, ``Muscles” and ``Lunk,” enter: They are our hero’s corporate security. ``What up, boss?” they intone in unison. “Round up some gangsters!” he orders. ``We’re gonna bust a joint in Gangnam!”
Next, we are in an ``undisclosed location” where the gangsters/corporate security have lined up the room salon employees. ``You horrible little oiks!” our hero spits, laying into the miscreants with a metal pipe. ``Who’s the Daddy?” (Audience sniggers at this macho justice.)
We cut to a courtroom. Muscles and Lunk, shame-faced, are ushered off to pokey. Our hero stands defiantly in the dock. ``Kidnap and torture are serious offenses,” says a kindly looking judge. (Audience gasps) “Two hundred hours community service!” he adds with a wink. (Audience bawls.)
Next scene: A deluxe Seoul hotel. Another obnoxious youth is smashing the place up in a cocktail-fuelled rampage ― yes, it’s Son Number Two! (Audience cheers.) We cut to a newspaper report describing the scene and that fact that no charges have been brought. The camera pans down to the bottom of the page ― to an ad for the chairman’s company. (Audience chuckles knowingly.)
The scene switches to the courtroom again. Our hero is facing his latest financial misdemeanor rap. ``Chairman, you are out of order!” barks the judge. “Four years!” Our hero, gobsmacked, is led off. (Audience, astonished, falls silent.)
We cut to a corporate lobby group where a pusillanimous-looking bureaucrat is addressing reporters. ``We h-h-hope this i-i-incident does not increase a-a-anti-business sentiment!” he quavers. (Audience guffaws.)
Next, we are in our hero’s boardroom. On the wall are Kim Il-sung style portraits of our hero, underlined with the admonition, ``Treat the Dear Leader as God!” A slick-looking exec stands up. We can’t run this company without the chairman’s brilliant crim…er, business mind,” he says. ``How do we spring him?”
At the back, a cunning-looking lawyer raises his hand. ``Why don’t we suggest to the judge that the chairman has put on weight and felt depressed while in pokey,” asks the brief. ``Then we can bust him out on medical grounds!”
Cut to jail. Inside, our hero is furiously wolfing down galbi while reading a tragic novel.
Next, we see a newspaper front page. ``Chairman released from jail due to health risk,” reads the headline. The copy reads: ``Chairman’s company converts part-time workers to full time; admirable show of economic democratization.” (Audience howls at this crafty ploy.)
The next scene is a newspaper business desk. An eager cub reporter asks his editor, ``Shouldn’t we report this more aggressively?” he asks his grizzled editor, pointing at the story. ``Foolish naïf! We have to consider our advertisers!” he responds. “Go and cover something juicier: A foreign bank here is about to pay dividends to its shareholders. That’ll have the public yelling blue murder!”
Cub reporter exits, bemused.
Next, we see him collaring the kindly judge outside the court. ``Don’t you consider this an injustice?” the reporter asks, pointing at the newspaper. ``Justice?” splutters the judge, incredulous. ``What has justice got to do with anything? My job is to prioritize the economy!” (Audience shrieks.)
The final scene: Outside a luxury private hospital, an ambulance pulls up, siren blaring. Our newly chubby hero pops out and, twirling an umbrella, quick-steps into hospital between two long rows of bowing quacks and nurses. As music rolls, we see the term, ``Emergency Room” has been replaced by ``Temporary Boardroom.” (Audience applauds.)
It needs tightening up, but I think the comic potential is obvious, so if any readers have any film contacts, kindly pass them along. Obviously, this farce is too ridiculous to have any factual basis. Justice could never be so blatantly laughed at in a developed nation......could it?
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.