Posted July. 10, 2003 22:00,
Two young women are talking as they watch the poster of the new movie `A Mixed Dog` ˝How could they destroy the image of Jung Woo-sung such badly?˝ ˝I wonder why he chose this character ˝
30-year-old actor Jung Woo-sung, who played a James Dean-like role in such movies as `Beat` and `Chasing the Sun,` is now a crook who idles his time away wandering the neighborhood in cheap running suit in a new move `A Mixed Dog,` set to be released on July 16.
He has been carrying a smart handsome boy image in many commercial films, but in his new movie, he is called `a mixed dog` instead. And Jung is telling about why he took on this role and how it was to be a mixed dog.
˝Isn`t a crook nicknamed `a mixed dog` living here?˝
Why I decided to play this character? I liked the title of the movie a lot. It gave such an indelible impression. The roles I had played were all closed-type of persons, but this character, Chul-min, is wide open. I like to idle time away myself. So I can say there is Chul-min inside me. But before we began shooting the film, I was feeling worried and nervous as an actor. Then, Director Kwak Gyung-taek asked me to drink together. First, I told him, ˝We begin shooting tomorrow.˝ But he insisted, ˝You won`t be that busy.˝ So we drank a lot. And I really became Chul-min, you know.
˝Once, I saw a mixed dog fighting and it was ˝
They bite and never let it go.
It took four days to finish the scene in which Chul-min fights with Jin-mook (Kim Tae-wook) at a police station. It was a dogs` fight, indeed, without sound effects. There was no mercy and Kim was taken to hospital after the scene.
Why they fight so hard? Chul-min was a kind of premature kid who never felt loneliness and pain. Even when his mother died, people saw him in tears and said, ˝he must have yawned.˝ Then, Jin-mook kills his dog. And he realizes that what is like losing something you love so dearly. So he needs pain. When he wins the fight, he thinks of his mother instead of the dog. He has grown up.
˝Why you are such a troublemaker?˝
Being such an annoying son to the father (Kim Gap-soo) in the movie, I thought of the relationship with my father in the real life. We have not talked to each other that much. And I kind of felt envious of the relationship between Chul-min and his father. They are like friends, sometimes good and sometime bad. There was a scene, in which Chul-min asked his father if he regretted giving birth to him and the father told what he really felt. I was moved. Chul-min is a sympathetic kid who feeds on his father. Being loved so much like that, however, he will be able to grow up and stand on his feet when the time comes.
I`ll show people clearly about it this time: about myself
Some say my good image until now is destroyed because of this movie. But I don`t think so. Of course it is one of my jobs to satisfy the fantasies of people who like me with a hansome and cool image in advertisements. But what matters is to become mature as an actor. Acting vividly reveals what kind of life an actor has been through and what kind of person he is even though he is acting another person`s life. In this regard, the one who influences me most is myself.
" Hey, time flies like an arrow, really it does.
What I will be doing 10 years later? Well, it`s hard to imagine. Maybe I would not be acting. But I try to be patient. I know that I will surely be doing what I have dreamed of.
It is to be a director. Have I studied about movie directing? No. But this was also the case with acting. I started acting 10 years ago not knowing anything about it. But I learned a lot while filming movies. I single-mindedly do what I have to do. So when acting, I only think about it. After ten years of acting experiences, I naturally learned all the things I have to know about acting.