On February 9, 2020, local time in the United States, at the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" won four Oscars at the same time: Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Film, and Best Original Screenplay.
"Parasite" has entered the history of Korean cinema and world cinema, becoming the first Korean film to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and the first Korean film to win an Oscar. It is also the first non-English film to win the Oscar for best picture since the Oscars were held. After Alfonso Cuarón, the Mexican director of "Roma" last year, the director in film history won the best director award for "non-English film".
"Parasite" won the Oscar for Best Picture Scene
Winners of the 92nd Academy Awards
Back at the scene of "Parasite" winning the 92nd Academy Award for Best Picture, the entire creative team came to the podium, director Bong Joon-ho stood on the side because he had already taken the stage to receive the award many times, and the female producer Ms. Kwak Sin Ae greeted in Korean, translated Sharon Choi and explained it as "I'm speechless", followed by the same speech in Korean as Bong Joon-ho.
After Guo Xin'ai's acceptance speech, amid the applause and cheers from the audience, Ms. Miky Lee came down to the microphone in front of the crowd cheers, and did not use Korean after greeting in English, as Bong Joon-ho did. In addition to the directors and the people who helped Parasite, she also thanked her brother for their support. (For details, please see the video below)
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Who is Miky Lee?
"Parasite" won the Oscar for Best Picture Live Review
What many may not know is how much of an impact this lady has had on the entertainment industry they've been watching and listening to for decades. Moreover, if you pay attention to the oscar trends, you should know that since "Parasite" won the Palme d'Or in Cannes, director Bong Joon-ho and the main creative team have continuously participated in major film festivals in Europe and the United States, all the way to create momentum for the 2020 Olympic publicity. (There are even many domestic and foreign media commentators who have felt tired of Bong Joon-ho's appearance and think that the publicity is excessive))
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
Just before the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020, The Hollywood Reporter published an in-depth story about Ms. Lee Mei-kyung. The "Guide" translates and deeply interprets this article, bringing readers a little-known secret behind the mystery of "Parasite" from different perspectives.
From 'Parasite' to BTS: Meet the Most Important Mogul in South Korean Entertainment
From Parasite to BTS: Meet the most important tycoons in Korean entertainment
South Korea's first integrated film company, founded by Miky Lee, first invested in DreamWorks and then gradually built a $4.1 billion entertainment empire. The empire supported a generation of Korean filmmakers, including Bong Joon-ho. Now, Lee is making inroads into Hollywood.
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Since "Parasite" won an eight-minute standing ovation from the audience at the Grand Theatre de Lumière in Cannes last May and finally shone through the scene, Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" has broken precedent time and time again: the first Korean film to win the Palme d'Or, the first foreign film to win the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Group Play, the first Korean film to be nominated for an Oscar (six nominations), and on the upcoming February 9, The $162 million social thriller has a good chance of winning best picture, which will make it the first non-English-language film to win the award.
Bong Joon-ho won the Palme d'Or in the main competition section of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival for "Parasite"
On January 19, 2020, "Parasite" won the Screen Actors Guild Awards Jean-Baptiste Lacroix/A, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Group Play
The person who pushed Parasite and even South Korea to the forefront of international cinema is Lee Mi-kyung, the heiress of a media mogul whose $4.1 billion entertainment empire is a base for Korean cultural exports, from TV dramas with millions of viewers around the world to K-POP concerts on stages around the world, to films that dominate the Asian film box office, and perhaps soon to the West.
Lee Mei Kyung, 61, is the vice president of South Korea's CJ Group, overseeing its sprawling entertainment and media business. It's hard to find a link in the film, television, and music industry chain where CJ isn't involved; CJ has its own expertise in production, financing, licensing, marketing, and even cinema. In addition to the specific projects that CJ is directly responsible for, Lee Mei-kyung also created the foundation for the overallization of the Korean entertainment industry, and at the same time paved the way for local artists to develop in the world. In fact, there is a clear thread between CJ's investment in the local film industry and the rise of filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho, which means that "Parasite" would never have happened without Lee Mei-kyung's support.
After learning that "Parasite" won the award, Bong Joon-ho and Lee Mei-kyung embraced and celebrated
"Vice President Lee himself is a huge fan of film, television and music." Bong Joon-ho said CJ invested in and released four of Bong Joon-ho's films — Memories of a Killing (2003), Mother (2009), Snow Train (2013) and now Parasite. "She's a real movie buff, she's seen a lot of movies and has managed to bring her movie craze to the business world."
Bong Joon-ho said: "'Snow Train' is a very bold project for the Korean film industry and has a high budget for production, and it was CJ who made it possible. ”（The Weinstein Company/Photofest; Justina Mintz/Turner Entertainment; Show East/Photofest）
In the early years, Lee Mi-kyung's fanaticism for promoting Korean cinema was like evangelism.
"I used to take DVDs with me to Warner, Universal, Fox, and sell Korean movies, Korean movies, Korean movies to anyone I had the opportunity to contact. No one thought Korean films were up to the mark at the time, and Lee said the key turning point was park's "Old Boys" winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. "Since then, I've never had to say anything about the long reasons for lobbying."
Therefore, 15 years later, when "Parasite" swept the Cannes Film Palace, Lee Mei-kyung's previous preparations made the international film industry no stranger to South Korea. In 2006, Bong Joon-ho met distributor Tom Quinn in Cannes and established a relationship with Magnolia Pictures. Last year, Quinn's Neon Company received the North American distribution rights to Parasites, CJ's tenth cannes film.
CJ was founded in 1953 by Lee Mei Kyung's grandfather Lee Byung-cheol as the sugar and flour manufacturing arm of its expanding trading company, Samsung. Over the next 40 years, CJ grew the food and beverage business and expanded into the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, but never with the media.
At the same time, Lee Mei-kyung was fascinated by the humanities and studied languages and linguistics at top universities in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Fluent in Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese, she then enrolled at Harvard University for a master's program in Asian Studies, where she found herself adept at introducing Korean culture to korean-American classmates who had already incorporated Western culture.
The information shows that Ms. Li Meijing's education resume is quite rich. After receiving her bachelor's degree from Seoul National University, she went to National Taiwan University to study Chinese and linguistics, and studied Japanese at Keio University in Japan, where she received her master's degree in Asian Studies in 1986. She also studied Chinese literature and history at Fudan University.
When Lee's grandfather died in 1987, the Samsung Conglomerate (which at the time also included retail, electronics and other businesses) controlled by the family chaebol was divided up by Lee Byung-cheol's heirs, and the CJ Group was divided among Lee's brother Lee Jae-hyun. Li Meijing just graduated from Harvard University and joined Samsung America in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In late 1994, while working in the new business unit, a lawyer who often worked with the company called and proposed an investment: "Steven Spielberg, David Gerfen and Jeffrey Katzenberg (the future DreamWorks Big Three) want to build a studio." Are Samsung interested? ”
In 2011, Li Meijing and Hollywood tycoon and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg Ryan Miller/Getty Images
Lee Mei Kyung told her uncle about The DreamWorks proposal, Lee Kin Hee, the president of the Samsung Group. Lee was interested in the hollywood activities of other Asian electronics giants at the time— Sony's acquisition of Columbia Pictures and Panasonic's divestment from Universal. But the deal didn't materialize, as Samsung was more focused on the hardware business.
"I realized that whoever becomes our equity partner needs to communicate in the same language." Spielberg told Time magazine after the deal failed.
Fortunately, Li Meijing spoke with content. In the spring of 1995, DreamWorks re-evaluated Li Meijing. This time, Lee finally struck a deal and persuaded her brother that CJ would invest $300 million in DreamWorks (at a time when CJ was spinning off from Samsung as an independent entity) to acquire a 10.8 percent stake in the film in Asia (excluding Japan) and distribution rights. "There are two people, without whom there would be no DreamWorks." Katzenberg said, "Paul Allen (first investor, with $500 million) and Lee Mei-king. ”
For CJ, the DreamWorks deal marked its transformation into an entertainment player. Li Meijing said in the CJ Group conference room on the 22nd floor of the Century City Tower: "No one planned it, everything happened like this. Wearing an edgy loose Philipp Plein knit and Chuck Taylor's black leather turtleneck top, Lee looks more like a record label employee than an executive sitting at the top of the parent company's organization.
CGV's SCREENX format big screen (courtesy of CJ Entertainment)
Divorced and childless, Li Meijing, who currently lives in Orange County, Calif., says the environment is completely different from the environment in which she grew up in the 1960s. South Korea's postwar infrastructure and peninsula geography meant that basic household appliances had to be imported and were very scarce, Lee said, "you look at these American-made, refrigerators, cars, motorcycles, beautiful clothes — it's like a completely different world." ”
In order to talk to Lee About Movies, it's important to get to know her passionate, diverse, and complete list of favorite movies: Mad Max, Love Story, Raptor Freaks; the works of star-studded European movie stars such as Marcelo Mastruanni and Sophia Roland, Catherine Deneuve and Alain Delon; Michael Simino's Year of the Dragon ("The Dragon is so charismatic that Asians can look cool"), Blue Velvet, Raising Arizona, John Waters' Pink Flamingo (She is a huge fan of the film and once gave the dvd disc of the film as a gift to Bong Joon-ho.) "Our generation, even Bong Joon-ho's generation, calls ourselves Hollywood kids because we've been fed by its content." Li Meijing said, "I think the United States does have a wide range of creative freedom. ”
Li Meijing at the CGV theater (Photographed by Claudia Lucia)
Lee Began to think about what he could do about South Korea's cultural industry, but CJ had to transform to realize those ambitions. "We have always been a food company and even after expanding into the biochemical and pharmaceutical sectors, we are still very B2C (business-to-consumer)." In order to transition to media, CJ must build South Korea's entertainment industry from scratch.
Lee Mi Kyung said of South Korea in the mid-90s: "We don't have multiple cinemas, we don't have chain theaters, we only have some video stores. "Lee Mei-king and his brother decided to invest in cinema construction not only to impress Hollywood partners, but also to expand the local film market." At the time, Hollywood content alone could be called a superpower. So when we're a distributor of Spielberg-directed film productions, it means a lot to South Korea, and it really gives you strength. Our plan is to combine DreamWorks content with huge energy with local Korean content. ”
In 1998, CJ's first multiplex theater opened, and today, its subsidiary CJ-CGV is the largest cinema chain in the country, accounting for about 50% of the market share. The construction of other theaters has followed, and as a result, the number of Moviegoers in South Korea has quadrupled (in the late 1990s, the number of movies per capita per capita was 0.8 per capita, and now the per capita number of movies is 4.0, which is the highest number of movies per capita in the world), which has made South Korea the fifth largest box office in the world.
Rich Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, said: "From the very beginning, Li Meijing and her brother had a bold vision. "IMAX first partnered with CGV with five theaters in 2005, followed by 174 theaters with South Korea, China, Vietnam and Turkey." Lee Mei Kyung and CJ were groundbreaking in recreating the modern movie-going experience. Rich Gelfond said.
Bob Iger, Li Meijing and Katharine DeShaw, curator of the Oscar Academy Museum, at an event in 2019.
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Academy Museum Foundation
CJ's strategy of promoting local content by building theaters has worked. With the opening of the first cinema, CJ set up a dedicated fund to support domestic filmmakers. The arrival of CGV coincides with the rise of a generation of Korean authors and directors such as Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook and Kim Ji-woon, whose work has attracted the attention of local (the market share of domestic films has grown from 10% to more than 50% today) as well as international audiences.
Lee Mi-kyung is also ambitious to turn Korean K-pop music into global pop music. Although K-pop artists now regularly tour the world, many international fans have their first live experience through KCON concerts. Ten years ago, Lee Mei-kyung had the idea when she watched a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) tournament (CJ has a male channel that broadcasts mixed martial arts matches), "Ah, we can do these things with K-pop as well." (Bulletproof Youth Group BTS is the most popular K-pop artist, having their second U.S. performance at KCON in 2014) Today, six countries, including Mexico, France and Abu Dhabi, have hosted KCON performances and attracted more than 1 million viewers. In addition, CJ's music channel Mnet passes through the weekly chart-charting show M! Music Countdown and the annual Mnet Asian Music Awards provide the biggest stage for all musicians in South Korea, and this well-made extravaganza even makes the Grammy Awards seem bleak.
Thanks in part to Mnet Japan, Japanese occupiers MAMA and KCON have a huge share of K-pop consumption on the two performance stages, and are also the largest remake market for CJ's original movie TV shows (courtesy of CJ Entertainment).
Lee Mei-kyung said she has nurtured the Korean entertainment industry into a cultural force that has extended South Korea's soft power throughout Asia and beyond, and now her goal is to further expand the global influence of the Korean entertainment industry. As the only south Korean film company that can distribute directly to the outside world, CJ has distributed more than 140 films in the United States and more than 50 films in other regions. CJ has a huge library of films, scripts and non-scripted IP resources. To date, 57 of its films have been remade in 14 countries.
Lee Mei-kkei at the CGV Theater (Photo: Claudia Lucia)
CJ has set up local subsidiaries in six other countries, including CJ ENM America in the United States, to expand the market mainly in developing regions and expand its footprint in established regions, which is a common tactic in the Hollywood film industry. CJ's goal is to produce and fund two to three English-language films a year, with 17 currently in development, and its partners and flops with works ranging from Universal Pictures and Kevin Hart to CJ's hit comedies "Sunshine SisterS Tao" and "Extreme Careers." CJ also produced Drake Doremus' original film End, Begin. Moreover, CJ is working with HBO's Adam McKay to adapt Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" into a limited-edition drama, and the specific details of the project have not yet been finalized, and Lee Mei-kyung said that if it is remade in the United States, the support staff of the film will be Hispanic or Filipino.
"Parasite isn't a global movie in terms of cast, but its theme is something that everyone faces." Li Meijing said that the universal theme of "basic human respect" is the cross-cultural content she hopes to focus on in the future. "I'm excited to be this bridge. Walk past me. As long as you can cross the bridge of my body, it means that we have all succeeded. ”
By Rebecca Sun on February 7, 2020 in Hollywoodreporter.
Translation: Gan Bubble
Original URL: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/meet-important-mogul-south-korean-entertainment-1275756
postscript
"This is a historic moment," Ms. Lee told the media at the "Parasite" celebration at the end of the Oscars gala. "I don't know what this means for Hollywood, but I definitely know what it means for us. This opened the door for Korean filmmakers. ”