Listening to Korean Cinema: Podcast Without Honor and Humanity

In the second of our short series highlighting some of the podcasts which cover elements of Korean cinema, we take a look at the snappily titled ‘Podcast Without Honor and Humanity’…

Launched in early 2011 Podcast Without Honor and Humanity hasn’t even celebrated its first anniversary but having reached its 39th episode has managed to spawn more episodes than some podcasts produce in two or three years. A consistently entertaining show which has the occasional guest-host but is often helmed solely by self-effacing host Jake Feltner (aka Jake McHugeLarge), Podcast Without Honor and Humanity provides a knowledgeable perspective on Asian cinema in a manner which manages to be both accessible and – on occasion – is unashamedly geeky. This is a podcast that’s largely interested in celebrating Asian cinema across the board rather than focusing on a single area or dwelling on cinematic shortcomings. I asked Jake about his background and the show in general…

[Martin Cleary] Hello Jake. Can you introduce yourself and talk a little about how you became interested in producing a podcast?

[Jake Feltner] First off, thank you for this opportunity! Honestly, I’m just about as typical as an Asian film fan gets. As I grew up, Bruce Lee movies and Akira served as my introduction to Asian cinema. Then over the years, for whatever nebulous reason, I kept returning to Asian cinema and everything just snowballed from there. The impetus behind the podcast really just started off as a scratch that I needed to itch. I’ve been a rabid listener of numerous movie podcasts over the past few years and I had always craved an Asian film podcast that focused exclusively on genre films. I love Podcast on Fire, the VCinema Show, and East Screen/West Screen, but for my ravenous podcasting appetite, the amount of Asian genre film coverge wasn’t satisfying me. Eventually, I gathered all my pocket change, as well as my courage, then decided to start up the kind of podcast that I would be most attracted to.

[MC] Where did the name Podcast Without Honor and Humanity come from?

[Jake Feltner] It comes from the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series by Kinji Fukusaku. It’s a series and a director that have had a massive effect on me. I had picked up the Yakuza Papers dvd set one day and that night we had a massive snowfall in our town. With waist-high snowfall outside, I sat my ass down with assorted salty snacks and tore through the 5-film series in one day. This turned out to be a formative moment in my growing appreciation for Japanese cinema and that was before I even realized this was the man who would direct Battle Royale over 25 years later! The cheeky play on the name was something that I thought was fun and different, until I realized I ripped off Podcast on Fire’s name! It’s an unwieldy name, but I’m stuck with it and I’ve learned to love it.

[MC] Can you describe the format of the show?

[Jake Feltner] I always begin the show with a series of shoutouts. The shoutouts come from a strange place which is the wild world of the fighting game community. I’m a huge fan of 2d fighting games and it became a bit of a thing to give shoutouts to good things, bad things, and everything else in between. So I just sort of co-opted it into a way for me to talk about recent movies I’ve watched as well as anything including video games, television, food, or anything else that’s on my mind. I’ll then review two movies where I’ll either try to have a tenuous connection or have them be disparate enough to provide variety. I’ll close off the show with feedback if I received any, run down all of the websites and podcasts that I endorse, and then let everyone know what I’m covering next month.

[MC] How do you choose the films that you’re going to discuss?

[Jake Feltner] I always try to steer toward genre movies and if it doesn’t fit comfortably into that category, I at least want the movie to have a strong genre bend to it. This impulse doesn’t come from a desire to differentiate myself from other podcasts, but more just from my personal affection for genre movies. I just find genre movies far more fascinating and rewarding compared to movies that are supposed to be good. The strange alchemy that makes a genre movie even work in the first place is immediately intriguing. By all accounts, a giant radioactive lizard movie should never work, nor should a movie about a paranoid delusional who is convinced his boss is an alien be so emotionally affecting. These movies, more than any other less esoteric films, highlight the volatility of creative collaboration. If you look at a film like Alien, if they had anyone other than H.R. Giger design that alien, would this movie be anywhere close to as transcendent as it is considered right now? I mean, this is an incredible movie outside of that, but sometimes something as simple as creature design really fires up the imagination and awe in an audience and that’s sometimes what it takes to make something extraordinary. It’s a nebulous sort of x-factor, but the pursuit and discovery of that just can’t be matched when you’re watching something like, say, The King’s Speech. At least that’s the only way I can put it so I can cover up the fact that I’m a goober who just likes his movies with blood, boobs, and bullets.

[MC] Do you have a particular tone or audience in mind when you’re planning a show?

[Jake Feltner] That’s the toughest aspect of podcasting for me to figure out. Since I’m running solo the majority of the time, it’s best to be as light as possible without sounding like a guy in a room cackling by himself to a dumb blonde joke. I also try to stay away from engaging in self-adulation at a film’s expense. If I had a negative feeling about some innocuous scene in a film and then go on a colorful expletive-laden rant for the sake of guffaws, then I’m just an asshole who’s more focused on self-promotion rather than communicating with other like-minded folk about a movie. The one thing I know about my audience is that they are well-versed in Asian cinema. I would estimate that at the very least, half of my listeners are just as, if not more knowledgeable about Asian cinema than me. Since the luster of Asian cinema has died down, the people that would posit themselves as Asian film fans are in for the long haul. I’ll happily oblige their requests for films to review since I’m confident in our community.

[MC] Are there any other podcasts that have particularly inspired or influenced you?

[Jake Feltner] The first podcast that I ever listened to was actually Podcast on Fire, because when I found out what podcasts were, I immediately searched out an Asian film podcast and this was the only game in town. Unfortunately, I’m a late adopter when it comes to technology so I couldn’t fully appreciate podcasts at the time. Running through a stack of blank cd’s was a fact of life! So aside from being uniformly excellent, the fact that they were my introduction to podcasts was certainly formative. The podcast that has been the biggest influence on the show is The Gentlemen’s Guide to Midnite Cinema. This was the podcast that really got me back into listening to podcasts and whose format I ape shamelessly. Similar to the alchemy that makes genre fare work, these gentlemen have the podcasting version of that on lockdown.

[MC] You cover Asian films generally – mainly from Japan, Korea and Hong Kong – but is there a country whose cinema you gravitate more towards, or do you try to keep a balance between ‘the big three’?

[Jake Feltner] My interests tend to fluctuate between the three over time. There was a time when I ended up paying very little attention to Hong Kong, but since I started the show, it’s rekindled an interest in the staggering breadth of their output. It’s simultaneously suffocating and exhilarating! Currently, Korea is the most exciting industry to follow out of those three. There are certainly directors currently going wild in Hong Kong and Japan, but Korea has the lion’s share of directors I’m most anticipating (Na Hong-jin, Ryoo Seung-wan, Im Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee-woon). If I was in a desert island situation and could only pick one country’s output for the rest of my days, I’d probably end up going with Japan. It’s just a combination of accessibility, diversity, quality, and volume which is just too hard to pass up. Honestly I could never neglect any of these countries’ output for any significant amount of time.

[MC] You’ve covered a whole stack of Korean titles on the show including (*deep breath*) Yellow Sea, Sector 7, White: The Melody of the Curse, Children…, Bedevilled, Nabi, Loner, Troubleshooter, Epitaph, No Mercy For The Rude, Truck, Secret Reunion, Die Bad, 301/302, A Flower in Hell, Friend and The President’s Last Bang. It’s a very general question of course, but what do you particularly enjoy or find interesting in Korea’s output?

[Jake Feltner] With as many Korean movies that I’ve watched, that’s still such a daunting concept and I’ve struggled over the years to really pinpoint it. At least initially, what really drew me to Korean films was its bite, its cynicism. These are insane examples, but I think they represent in their own weird way what initially set Korean films apart. You take a light, fluffy romantic comedy like Romantic Island that has your typical romantic comedy plots, but then it also has this straight out of left field plot about a terminally ill father who hires thugs to murder him so his family can get the insurance money(!). Then there’s Sex is Zero that has a dude eating a rat poison and semen sandwich(?!) at one point and then at another having a young woman nearly bleeding out from the after-effects of an abortion! Ultimately, I guess it’s just a general sense of intense passion or aggression that drives many of these movies and is what makes them so damn alluring. I think Korean cinema is at its best when it has a bite to it and so many of these movies are just scathing, but also have a genuine emotional core to them even when they’re at their most garish.

[MC] What was your first experience with Korean cinema?

[Jake Feltner] Just like so many other people, my first experience with Korean movies was Oldboy. Over time and after reading so many Asian film blogs, I kept hearing about this Korean movie that was just searing everyone’s minds. When I was finally able to see it in 2004, it genuinely blew my mind. It had this monster of a story hook and had this insane mix of surreal imagery, savage violence, emotional heft, and it was just so damn gorgeous to look at! I quite simply had seen nothing like it and couldn’t even compare it to anything else out there when I was desperately pleading with my friends to watch it. It wasn’t until I had ordered a group of dvds that consisted of Friend, Guns and Talks, A Bittersweet Life, and Failan (a real monster haul in retrospect) that I began to realize that Korean cinema was actually this thing, this culture of cinema that I had to consume.

[MC] Back to the show in general – do you have any particular favourites out of all of the episodes so far?

[Jake Feltner] My favorites are any of the episodes that I’ve had guests on. Having Coffin Jon from VCinema on the show and lending his fantastic insight was a true pleasure. My girlfriend, Yoori, has also been a treat as a co-host for numerous reasons. She’s not much of a film fan and I think it’s nice to bring someone who doesn’t exist in our echo chamber. There’s a certain degree of raw honesty on display, even when she feels she doesn’t know how to articulate her stances. She also drops invaluable Korean knowledge that I would never have been aware of. Something as simple as pointing out just how colorfully vulgar the Korean language can be is incredibly fascinating as well as something I would never be aware of. For some reason, English subtitles just aren’t capturing Koreans at their most vulgar, which is to say they’re not capturing Koreans at their most loveable!

[MC] What lies in store for the future of Podcast Without Honor and Humanity?

[Jake Feltner] I’m looking to have more frequent guest hosts which is something I’m really looking forward to. I also take a real pleasure in staying connected to the people who listen to my show, so I’ve been making a stronger push lately to hop on Google Plus or Skype and just shoot the shit with anyone on any given Saturday night. I’m also looking forward to having an online viewing party some time in December for Mighty Peking Man.

[MC] So how can people find the show and where can they find you online?

[Jake Feltner] To listen to the show, you can download episodes at podcastwithouthonorandhumanity.libsyn.com or you can search for my podcast in iTunes. If anyone wants to get a hold of me, I can be reached at . You can also join the Facebook group by plugging the podcast’s name in the search bar [Note: ].