A High Society Closure

February 14th is the day of love . . .or so they say . . .it says a lot about our own personal love lives that a group of people should find themselves on a movie set on Valentine's day (and Chinese New Year) where instead of Tigers and fireworks or candlelit dinner, we went to a Christmas party, for the last day of filming for Aditya Assarat's High Society.  

P'Juke and Ananda

The director, Aditya Assarat (P'Juke) said to me that he wanted me to see the inner-workings of a film set, well, thank you to p'Juke and Ananda, I spent an afternoon and a night, thoroughly entertained and fascinated.  It is the inverse of fashion and all that I know, as on film, the life (life in the movie) comes to life . . . a paradox in terms no? 

My involvement here, as was Jolanda's, Louis', James', Potsy's etc etc were that we played Ananda's friends so in actual fact, played ourselves, and he played a movie star (himself) - he was hanging with his friends, all international kids back home in Bkk for the holidays.  Well, there is a very fine line of where art imitates life and life imitates art . . . it was blurred that night and I imagine in the film, where I imagine that line went backwards and forwards like a pendulum. . . 

Hardly, reality but if it looks on celluiloid like we were having fun, chances were that we actually were having fun.

Jolanda and I

James

High Society is a movie by Aditya starring Ananda about a "dek nok" a specific type of Thai who is Thai yet not due to his years abroad exists as an outsider yet an  insider, this is explored through his instant stardom as an actor upon his return from abroad and his relationships with his foreign girlfriend who comes to visit him and later his very Thai girlfriend . . .well, how much of that is actually reality? He has the freedom to leave it all - that I can relate to rather well.  Again, it begs the question of where does real-life start.  I was on a fate forest (feng-shui reasons) clearing mission that took me to Khao Yai - I was supposed to spend the weekend away but justified an early return as a film set is not reality . .yet the Christmas party did after midnight turn into a real party and the water shots turned to vodka . . .so I did drive home in the early morning of the 15th from a parallel universe after all. 

cigarettes, beer and vodka - product placement dream

Potsy and his doppelganger doll

Ananda

MCOT (I have for the last 6 months ended my days of listless joy to consult the President of the organisation on intellectual property and special projects) will be supporting this movie, in a way in which the Thai film industry has yet to see and hopefully it will finally give a small industry with a lot of soul that has always sustained itself, the appreciation and support that it deserves.  

It is something to be proud of that our independent films go to Cannes and other festivals(our commercial ones save for a few do not), our artists are at the Guggenheim, and we are funded by foreign funds but it is a perhaps a tad bit shameful (or to be quite frank, completely and utterly embarrassing) that we do not have institutional support for this little diaspora of creatives.  This of course is a vast generalisation and I am fully aware that there are a few individuals, great individuals, who give support and patron, yet, these men are far and few between. . .just a thought.

Hey, we had fun though . . . can't wait to see the film.