After making his name as the director of blockbusters like Fanchan and Top Secret, Songyot “Yong” Sukmakanan, 39, has now turned his attention to the ugly reality of Thai youth behavior in new cable series, Hormones. Here, he opens up to BK about censorship, taking ecstasy and true happiness.
 

Studying things you hate is a real torment. I ended up having to study business management at ABAC for two years as I couldn’t get into the major I wanted at Chulalongkorn or Thammasat. It’s the most down I’ve been in my life.

Studying at university is the last chance to enjoy your education. That’s why I quit from ABAC and went to study motion pictures at Chulalongkorn as I loved taking photos.

Take failure as the momentum to prove yourself. My first movie, Dek Hor (2006), was badly criticized by people at GTH (movie studio). I went and cried alone in the toilet because it was my first failure in a solo project. But I gathered my strength and told them I wanted to fix it before it was released. It finally got the green light and made B50 million at the box office.

I get bored easily. After making three movies in a row, I got fed up. So I tried to do something else to open up my world, which is why I became chairman of the Thai Film Director Association (TFDA) and directed a lakorn [TV soap] as well as being an acting coach for Academy Fantasia.

I was afraid of losing the instincts of being a moviemaker. I was invited to direct a lakorn called Coffee Prince so I decided to give it a try. But in the end, I realized that I couldn’t work at the fast pace needed to make lakorn.

My world was very narrow before I became chairman of the TFDA. I had been making movies for years but I had never had the chance to meet all these great Thai directors. I was like “What the hell was I doing before?”

Thai moviemakers have huge egos. I’ve learned this as chairman. We are as close as brothers socially but when it comes to work, we have totally different ideas. It prevents us from pushing forward together on big issues like censorship.

Directors and censorship officials live in totally different worlds. It’s like we speak a different language. I was totally shocked when I heard a member of the censorship board (a motion picture teacher at Chulalongkorn) say to Thanwarin, the director of Insects in the Backyard, that she just directed the movie because she wanted to see a naked guy. That’s so low!

There are tons of directors, but not all of them are cool. I found many love being a director just because they love to dominate other people. I think cool people are the ones who have a real passion for their profession, no matter what it is.

True happiness is transforming pictures in your mind into a movie and then finding that the audience feel the same way you do.

I love trial and error. I tried most bad things as a child. I smoked since I was in elementary school, got caught trying to read a porn magazine and played hooky a lot.

I tried ecstasy once because I was curious. I wanted to know what it was going to be like. It made my brain catch every single feeling and I felt surrounded with happiness. I realized how valuable the moment was for me so I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down everything I felt. The next day was totally painful. I felt really depressed and didn’t want to do anything, not even talk to anyone.

I’m lucky I tried drugs when I was grown up, as I realized what I could lose if there were bad consequences. I could have been thrown out of the movie industry just for taking drugs once. I can’t lose the work that I love most.

To fix a problem, you must accept it first. When I started doing Hormones, I just wanted to portray the reality of teenagers’ lives. But when we did our research, we found that this reality relates to jealousy, sex and drugs. The thing that shocked me most was the fact that girls are the ones who ask guys to have sex with them and that they do it at home with their parents in the house.

Watching girls fight because of men makes me feel down. I can understand why they do drugs and have sex but I don’t get why they have to fight over guys.

Love can fix any problem. I feel those kids who make trouble are hungry for love. If they get the full love of their family then they won’t act out like that, for sure.

I want to have children but not a partner. I know that I will love my kids with all my heart but I’m not sure how long I would love my partner. It would be a disaster if we got a divorce.

I want to have a daughter, even though my heart knows that having a daughter these days is a real headache. I think my daughter can survive all the obstacles on the path to becoming a lady.

No answer about life is 100% correct so I don’t try to put any clear answers in my work. Like Hormones, I just want to unveil the truth and educate adults that this is what our teenagers are like.

People love to listen to those who don’t judge them. I uphold this principle with everyone I know.

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