John Hsu talks the creativity behind Dead Talents Society
In John Hsu’s Taiwanese comedy horror movie Dead Talents Society, your (after)life literally depends on your ability to go viral. So when the nameless, talentless girl The Rookie dies, she must bring on the scares and navigate the perils of the fame it may bring, or risk fading away forever. With the film now streaming on Netflix, director John Hsu recently sat down with contributor Andrea Thompson to discuss influencers, hustle culture, female ghost stories, and the beauty in found family and being ordinary.
Andrea Thompson: Let’s just start with what is essentially the film’s thesis, how we’re seen or how we’re not seen and deemed invisible. It’s very different from your feature debut Detention. What exactly prompted you to make a film about this particular subject?
John Hsu: Yeah. In terms of Detention, the reason I got the job is because I’m a gamer. And since it’s an adaptation from a video game, they want something familiar with the gaming culture, to take the job. That’s why that became my first feature. And to me, Dead Talents Society seems very personal in terms of genre and also in terms of the emotional core or the theme. It’s something, you can even say autobiographical. Yeah. It, um, like, uh, for example, the story of New Girl and the relationship between her and her family is exactly like mine. Yeah. And we even have the cabinet full of trophies in my parents’ place. And, uh, yeah, I just wrote it, wrote everything that I feel like it’s, uh, it had something to do with this topic in terms of my experience. And into this story. I remember the first inspiration for this film was because I was taken to a horror film premiere. It was a film that was directed by someone else and we were just there as invited guests. And as someone who is familiar with the genre, it’s not easy for me to get scared. So, uh, I remember like during the whole screening, I was kind of bored.I know exactly when the ghost is going to come out. I know exactly when is the time for them to do a jump scare. And I started wondering about something different than the story. And then in one scene in the movie, the ghost in the film was crawling on the public toilet floor in some kind of a school late at night just trying to scare the protagonist. And I remember watching that scene, I suddenly felt so sorry for that ghost. Because she’s trying so hard, that floor looks extremely dirty. And you can also tell from her twisted face that she’s like trying really hard to do that performance. To do her job. But as an audience, I didn’t get scared by her. So it was like something that, she’s trying so hard, but it’s in vain. And I remember eventually I was crying during the screening for no reason. I had no idea what actually happened during that time, but I remember after watching that film when I was outside the cinema and I was talking to my producer saying, we should probably make a film about how difficult it is for ghosts, trying to scare people.
