Despite It All (1)
13.
The first sign was a visit from someone on the PR team. The day after I met Team Leader Jang from PR, I came back from lunch with the three senior editors and found a woman from PR waiting for us.
“Senior Yoon.” She called to Yoon Seo-hoon with easy familiarity. “We’ve got a shoot scheduled for next week. I came to let you know.”
“Already? Has a whole month gone by that fast? All right. Have you eaten?”
“Just enough.” While the two of them exchanged small talk, the rest of us drifted back to our seats in a loose cluster.
I asked Senior Kim, “What kind of shoot is Senior Yoon doing?”
“Oh, Mok, you probably don’t know. You know the PR team started a YouTube channel, right?”
“Gyeongseong Bukbuk?”
“Yeah. That ridiculous, fart-sounding name. Anyway, there’s a segment on there called Novel N Movie—they review novels that were adapted into films. One of our staffers and a film critic just chat freely about them. It’s quietly popular.”
Then I remembered what Team Leader Jang had said the day before. That guy appears regularly in our content too. So it was a film channel.
“Yoon Seo-hoon’s actually a huge movie buff, believe it or not.”
“I figured as much. Senior Yoon loves books, after all. People who like reading usually like movies too.”
Either way, I filed it away and stopped paying attention. I figured I’d go watch the recording sometime when they filmed it.
“Senior Yoon. But last month, the film critic completely outplayed you. You know the editing team worked their fingers to the bone trying to cut it so it wouldn’t look that way, right? Team Leader Jang said so too, so this time he wants you to do a little better. We still have our pride as a publishing house, after all.”
“Don’t go borrowing Team Leader Jang’s name to say what you want. If you’re going to talk nonsense like that, then get lost, jerk. Tch. So what book is it this time?”
“Moon Geon-hyung’s Despite It All. It came out as a film a few months ago and was a massive hit.”
The movie Despite It All.
It had been the horror film that shook Korea that summer to its core.
They said it had raised the curtain on a whole new era of Korean horror.
Well, at the time I was too busy with job hunting to see it.
All the color drained from Senior Yoon’s face. “Despite It All…?”
“The Korean Literature Division is reissuing the book in a revised edition this time. That’s why Team Leader Kim from the Korean Literature Division came by the PR office earlier and asked us to help out. They want to use Novel N Movie to stir up some attention and bump the sales numbers.”
“…”
“Anyway, it’s an important shoot, so please take good care of it. We’re counting on you, Senior Yoon—”
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“I can’t watch horror movies.”
The woman laughed as if she thought it was a joke.
“Oh, come on—”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
It was hard to call that a joke. His face was so pale it had gone almost blue.
“They’ll edit in short clips from the movie during filming, right? I might pass out just from watching those.”
For a moment, silence fell.
One second passed. Then two. Then three.
Whoosh.
The woman’s gaze suddenly turned to me.
Then Senior Kim’s. Then Senior Yang’s.
I wasn’t stupid enough not to understand what that look meant.
“I don’t know movies very well, so I can’t do it. We can’t just talk about the book the whole time. I’d have to hold a conversation with the film critic.” I was fine standing in front of a camera.
But I’d spent so much time outside after leaving home, struggling to make a living, that I’d barely watched any movies at all. I’d read books whenever I could find the time.
That was when Senior Yoon finally turned to me. “Help me out just this once, kid.”
“C-couldn’t you do it?!” the woman cut in at once.
She looked a little nervous, and with a flimsy smile, she said, “I just thought of this, but if Hyunsun-ssi appears on the show, I think it’d really help PR too. I’m sure Team Leader Jang would love it.”
Ha. I wasn’t the kind of man who moved because of talk like that.
I was notorious for being stingy with my sentimentality, after all.
“I’m sorry, but—”
“Double.” The woman suddenly held up a V-sign with her fingers. “We’ll double the appearance fee.”
“You can just decide that on your own?”
“I have no doubt Team Leader Jang will approve.” Her eyes burned with enthusiasm.
At this rate, anyone would think she’d come to tempt me, not Senior Yoon. How was I supposed to refuse for good?
As I wrestled with it, two words sprang into my head.
Film and novel.
Novel and film.
Why were those two circling around in my head? Get lost. Hm? Wait a second.
Come to think of it, film was…
“Give it up, give it up. Mok’s stubborn as a mule. If he decides something isn’t for him, he won’t budge. Just find someone else from another team this time.” Senior Kim was just about to step in and mediate.
“All right, then.” I answered. “I’ll do it.”
A moment later, the woman thanked me over and over before heading off.
Senior Yang slid his chair over toward me. “I didn’t know our youngest would fold for only a million won.”
“I’m a man who’s pretty damn obsessed with money.”
“Well, you did take three million won without blinking, didn’t you?”
I brushed it off with a joke like that.
But in truth, I hadn’t been won over by money, nor had I been softened by sentiment.
I’d accepted the offer because of one word that had flashed through my mind a moment earlier.
Screenplay.
If film could be interpreted not as “video” but as “text,” then this was worth doing.
Before long, the team leader who’d gone off to eat with the upper management returned.
When we briefed him, he gave his approval without hesitation.
After all, no matter who went, it was still time and manpower being put to use.
He only tossed out one joking remark: “Just don’t get pushed around like Yoon Seo-hoon does.”
And just like that, the unexpected Gyeongseong Bukbuk appearance was set.
Then quitting time came.
“Senior Yoon.”
I called out to him while he was packing his bag.
And as the junior who had handled his leftovers, I made my demand with great dignity.
“I’m going to need your help.”
I was treated to tail soup for dinner by Senior Yoon.
Then I went to his officetel. It was about 535 square feet, give or take.
Nice.
Once I paid off my loans, I’d have to move somewhere like this too.
No—if possible, somewhere bigger.
“Mok. If it hadn’t been for you, I might’ve fainted on set. To be honest, I was so scared I couldn’t even bring myself to read the novel version. I bought it, but every time I tried, I failed.”
“What’s so frightening about it? Ghosts?”
“Ghosts too, but I really hate that kind of thing. The suffocating direction, the atmosphere, the music… Ugh. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it.”
I snorted. For all his decent frame, he really was a coward.
Still, every human being had at least one thing they were afraid of.
I, for one, was terrified of the government opening up my skull and looking inside.
…Or maybe everyone would be afraid of that.
Anyway, we sat down on the sofa first.
Senior Yoon turned on YouTube on the TV and showed me a previous Novel N Movie episode. He and a heavyset man in a bow tie sat at a slight angle from one another.
On the monitor between them, supporting clips were playing.
Novel N Movie
Senior Yoon: Above all, this novel depicts the war the author experienced in childhood, and similar things, with a very sharp and incisive eye.
Film Critic: Haha. The thing about that kind of description is, you know, it can be a little long on the page, right? It might even make you sleepy. But the director turned it into a single, explosive scene and handled it with real sensuous force.
Senior Yoon: Well, it’s hard to call it boring, because it also expresses the characters’ psychology so richly.
Film Critic: Haha, exactly. That’s the thing about description, isn’t it? Once you convert it into images, it hits you much more directly. In the end, a strong performance from the actors was enough…
“That film critic really knows how to fight for dominance.”
I didn’t bother saying that Senior Yoon was the one getting pushed around in that fight.
Senior Yoon clenched his fist. “Ugh— that pig is seriously unbearable. He keeps saying film is king, that novels are always below film. And he’s so slick when he talks, too. I wanted to put that pig in his place at least once.”
Which meant he’d never managed it once.
I studied the film critic’s words in the video more closely.
For all his bluster, “There’s a bit of ego there, wanting to step on the senior, but more than that, he’s got too much confidence in film as a medium.”
“Yeah. That’s why he gets invited on shows so much. People these days love crude, provocative stuff.”
“Hmm.”
Then there was no changing his attitude.
Honestly, that side of him was probably part of why Gyeongseong Bukbuk had benefited in the first place.
But knowing it and just taking the hit were two different things.
First, I needed to understand the weapon the enemy was using.
More specifically, the weapon only the enemy possessed.
“Senior. What do you think is the key difference between film and a novel? I mean, film’s one decisive advantage.”
“That, I can tell you for sure.” Senior Yoon shifted to face me properly. “Film, you see, is parallel.”
“Parallel?”
“Yeah. Say there’s a novel sentence like, ‘The man was sad and happy, relieved and empty all at once.’ That’s very serial, right? If you turn it into a film, you take the actor’s performance, the objects, the background—everything—and cram it into one scene so it hits all at once.”
“Hmm.”
“Then the scene becomes wonderfully complex and parallel. The audience feels all of it instinctively.”
I understood immediately.
“So film is easier than a novel, from the public’s point of view.”
“See? I knew you were sharp. Exactly. And every time I get to that point, I—”
He swallowed a groan.
“...I think I’ve lost to that pig.”
Fair enough.
Senior Yoon had been losing the whole time.
“And honestly, I feel like literature has lost to film too.”
“I don’t think so.” I stood up from the sofa.
I ambled over to the bookshelf on one side of the living room.
As you’d expect from a book lover, there were a lot of books.
“I was thinking about it earlier. Film starts with ‘words’ too, doesn’t it? The screenplay.”
“Th-that’s true, I guess?”
“It’s pointless to say one is better than the other when you’re talking about novels and screenplays. But if the novel is the original text of the screenplay, then there’s something worth trying.”
My fingers slid along the book covers. “There must be something in the novel Despite It All that the screenplay Despite It All couldn’t capture.” Not “didn’t capture.” Couldn’t capture.
There was a point, no matter what you did, that a screenplay simply couldn’t make.
Finding that point in the novel was the key.
My hand stopped moving.
The book my fingertips had landed on was Despite It All.
I pulled it from the shelf.
“Senior. I can borrow this, right?”
In a certain screenplay academy research institute in Seoul, film critic Kim Bong-woon, who was serving as a professor, received some unexpected news.
“Yoon Seo-hoon can’t come on Novel N Movie?”
“Yes. He said he can’t watch horror films, and asked if we could excuse him for just one week. An email came in.”
“Tsk, tsk. He must be trying to run away because I’ve been putting him through the wringer.”
He hadn’t liked Yoon Seo-hoon from the start.
Just because it was a publishing house, did that mean they could send over some lowly editor instead of an actual critic?
It had bruised his pride, so he’d been pressing Yoon Seo-hoon down ever since.
Of course, for an editor, Yoon Seo-hoon was actually pretty decent.
But Kim Bong-woon made his living with words.
There was no way the other man could beat him at that.
“Then who’s filling the slot? Are they bringing in a literary critic? Or an author?”
“No. They say it’s a rookie editor named Mok Hyunsun.”
“What?! A rookie? What does Gyeongseong Publishing think I am…! Maybe I should just get through this contract and quit.”
“But he isn’t just a rookie.”
The assistant held out a phone.
On the screen was a two-shot from a video call with Park Jeong-shin that had made a modest splash not long ago.
Kim Bong-woon frowned at the two handsome faces. “What is this? They’re trying to bulldoze me with looks?”
“And apparently he’s the son of writer Mok Pilhyun. People who read a lot know his name pretty well.”
Handsome, and born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Perfect conditions for poking at a man who’d gotten where he was by sheer self-made effort.
“Ha… fine. I’ve got it. You can go.”
“Yes, Professor.”
After the assistant left, he let out a small, mocking snort. “This time, I’ll crush him properly.”
As if to carry out that resolve, he played Despite It All on his computer.
He had already watched it three times, but that didn’t matter.
Two hours later, the film ended.
Kim Bong-woon let out a groan of admiration from deep in his chest.
“Hah— as expected, the original really was surpassed.”