by Brad Balfour

G21 Contributing Editor

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NEW YORK, NY, USA - Winner of over 23 film festival awards, director Greg Pak's anthology of four robot-related science fiction stories makes for an impressive debut. Taking a decidely indie direction, Pak gives an insider spin to his science fiction.

In one tale, "My Robot Baby," a couple (Tamlyn Tomita and James Saito) must care for a robot baby before adopting a human child; in "Machine Love," an office worker droid (Pak) learns that he, too, needs love with unpredictable and humorous results. In the most fatalistic and philosophic story, "Clay," a dying sculptor (Sab Shimono) choses between natural death and digital immortality. Only one tale isn't really scifi -- "The Robot Fixer," tells of a mother (Wai Ching Ho) who tries to reach her dying comatose son by completing his toy robot collection.

Before putting this film together, Pak made a series of humorous shorts, studied political science at Yale, history at Oxford and film production at NYU. He was also the cinematographer of "The Personals," an Academy Award winning short doc, and was named one of the 25 Filmmakers to Watch by Filmmaker Magazine. After a string of three-star reviews in the local papers, the lower Manhattan based Pak hopes to see this film surge on as a national release.

G21: HAVE YOU ALWAYS HAD A LOVE FOR SCIENCE FICTION?

GREG PAK: Ray Bradbury was my first literary hero. Harlan Ellison and Kurt Vonnegut were two of my other big science fiction favorites. I don't know where it came from -- it just must have been in the air, but I've loved science fiction as long as I can remember. "Twilight Zone," Marvel Comics, "Shogun Warriors," "Star Wars" ... all that stuff embedded itself in my consciousness at a very young age.

G21: WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO DO A GENRE FILM AS YOUR FIRST FEATURE?

GREG PAK: First, I love genre -- science fiction, westerns, horror, samurai, gangster movies...I love them all. And I wanted to make a movie I wanted to see myself, something fun, something different. I've seen so many low-budget coming-of-age stories, romantic comedies and college-buddies-talking-about-sex movies, so why not a robot movie instead?

The other big thing was that I thought I might actually have something to contribute to the genre. I love the giant action scifi movies Hollywood churns out. But I also love emotionally true and intimate storytelling. And I thought it could be a pretty great thing to try to make a small science fiction film which seriously considered the human, emotional impact of technological change on an intimate - as opposed to epic - level.

We've called it "domestic science fiction" or "science fiction from the heart." It's a kind of science fiction we haven't seen that much of for a while.

G21: WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS AS AN ANTHOLOGY?

GREG PAK: I've always loved short films and short stories, and the various stories which make up "Robot Stories" just naturally fit into that short form. But the nice thing was that, as I worked on them, I realized they could fit together as a feature -- they had a natural emotional progression, from birth to death, and a natural technological progression, from less advanced to more advanced forms of robotics and artificial intelligence. In the end, I pulled the trigger on doing it as an anthology because I felt that the whole would be greater than the parts, that the whole thing would work as a cumulatively satisfying emotional experience.

G21: WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DOING AN ANTHOLOGY FILM AND A FULL-LENGTH FEATURE?

GREG PAK: The most important thing remains the same -- working with actors and crew to find the emotional center of a scene or moment. But the scale is totally different. I'd made a bunch of shorts with crews of two or three. We had a 30-person crew on "Robot Stories". So many more details, so much more logistical complication, and, ironically, so much less rehearsal time. What made it work out so well was that I had tremendous producers who really took care of me -- they handled the crazy logistical stuff, leaving me the space to concentrate on my cast and creative crew as much as possible.

G21: THE FILM LOOKS GREAT, YET IT WAS SHOT IN DIGITAL VIDEO. SO HOW DID YOU MAKE IT LOOK SO CELLULOID-LIKE?

GREG PAK: We shot the film on digital video, using the Sony DSR-500 DVCAM camera. We also shot PAL, which made a big difference. PAL is the European standard of video which has about 25 percent more lines of resolution than the NTSC standard used in the US. So we had finer picture quality to begin with. And in the end, we transferred to 35mm film, which is the format we use to project the movie in theaters. Transferring to film gave the images a kind of depth and texture which people associate with film -- it really made it all come together.

G21: HOW HAS THE SCIENCE FICTION COMMUNITY RESPONDED TO THE FILM?

GREG PAK: We've had tremendous response at conventions and science fiction film festivals. The key for us was realizing we needed to set people up for the fact that the movie isn't "The Matrix" -- things don't blow up.

Instead, it's in the tradition of Bradbury's short stories and the "Twilight Zone" -- intimate stories about the human heart in a world of technological change. People have really responded. We've won a bunch of awards from the science fiction film festivals, including audience awards from the Fantastik Film Festival in Sweden and the Boston Fantastic Film Festival.

G21: YOU CAST A LOT OF ASIANS -- WAS THAT A CONSCIOUS DECISION OR JUST WHO YOUR FRIENDS WERE?

GREG PAK: I always saw the characters the way we cast them. I'm biracial, half-Asian and half-white. And I just saw most of these characters as Asian or biracial.

I compare it to Ed Burns making movies with Irish people in them or Scorcese casting Italians. It's not that the movies are only for those audiences; they're for everybody. And the fact that they're about a specific ethnic group actually make them more emotionally complex, specific -- and thus, more resonant and universal.

G21: HOW HAS THE ASIAN COMMUNITY RESPONDED TO THE FILM?

GREG PAK: The Asian-American film festivals across the country have been tremendous.

We've been the opening or closing night film for most of them, which has been a tremendous experience. And we won awards at the Asian American International Film Festival in New York, the DC APA Film Festival, and the San Francisco Korean-American Media Arts Festival. But the really amazing thing has been the response we've been getting as we gear up for this theatrical release. Asian American individuals and groups are doing incredible things to support the film and help get word out about the release.

G21: YOU'VE WRITTEN A FILM FOR SOMEONE THAT WAS SHOWN AT SUNDANCE. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE IN WRITING FOR OTHERS AND IN DEVELOPING YOUR OWN IDEAS?

GREG PAK: I've written two screenplays for hire since finishing "Robot Stories," which has been great, both for giving me the ability to pay rent and for giving me the chance to grow and improve as a storyteller.

The big lesson I learned on the first gig for hire was that at a certain point I needed to remember that it wasn't my story; it was the director's film. My job was to figure out what story the director really wanted to tell and do my best to get it down on paper in a dramatically compelling and coherent form. Now to a certain extent I had to make that story mine in order to write the characters and find the emotional center of each scene. But I also had to be able to let go, to change everything if necessary in order to match someone else's vision. It's a tough combination of thought processes -- you have to totally take it personally and not take it personally at all at the same time.

G21: AFTER THIS WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO SOMETHING COUNTER TO THIS FILM?

GREG PAK: The next movie I want to make is a Western. And after that I have a horror-romance. I guess I have genre on the brain for the moment.

G21: SO WHAT'S HAPPENed SINCE THIS HAS MADE THE CIRCUIT?

GREG PAK: I got those two writing assignments. I got two producers for my Western, "Rio Chino", which features a Chinese gunslinger and a Mexican heroine in the Old West, for which we're now raising money. And now I'm living the dream of seeing my movie open theatrically across the country. This is such a crazy, topsy turvy business that you never know what'll happen tomorrow, but so far it's been a heck of a ride.

G21: DID YOU ALWAYS THINK ABOUT BEING A FILMMAKER?

GREG PAK: Actually, when I was a kid, it never really occurred to me that someone made the movies I watched. I wanted to be a writer since I was nine or so, so I guess storytelling was in my blood from the start.

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