Chalong at 84: One living legend revives another
Chalong Pakdeevijit is still directing at age 84, although he's been making TV series for the last 20 years, which are surely a little easier to do than movies.
But now Chalong is ready to make another feature film, and it’s a doozy – a big-screen version of his most popular TV action series, “Angkor”.
Slated to hit theatres in 2017 – fully 17 years after the series aired on Channel 7 and became the talk of the town – it’s about a young woman named Angkor who’s the daughter of a Cambodian general and has the “tiger spirit” roaring inside her.
When the Khmer Rouge comes to power, Angkor flees to Thailand, but remains close to the border and gets involved in the fighting in her homeland, surviving battle after battle because she can actually turn into a living, leaping tiger.
Obviously the story is partially set in Cambodia, so Chalong – who has Bt80 million to spend – plans to shoot a third of the scenes there. The basic concept remains the same, but it’s being “updated” to the present. How that jibes with the disappearance of the last Khmer Rouge fighters in the 1990s isn’t quite clear, but perhaps the “updating” simply refers to the use of computer graphics. Chalong wants the effects perfect to capture Angkor’s transformation into a tiger.
The casting agents are on the lookout for a sexy actress with “beautiful tanned skin”. Fair-complexioned lasses need not apply, and doesn’t that make a nice change!
Chalong completed his last movie, “Sudkheed Mangkorn Chaophraya”, in 1996, but his glory days were in the 1980s, when he had a string of blockbusters, mostly action films. His “Thong” franchise did particularly well with audiences, beginning with “Stab” in 1973 and continuing in 1982, 1988 and 1990. The franchise began with a search for gold (thong) supposedly stashed in Laos during the Vietnam War and then in subsequent releases the hunt for the treasure carried on elsewhere.
Chalong was last year named a National Artist in the performing arts and has earned several lifetime-achievement awards from various institutes. But if he can pull off “Angkor” the movie – he’ll be 86 when it hits the screen – we’d better have some more honours ready for him.
Peach of a life
Actor Patchara “Peach” Chirathiwat has the full support of one of the country’s wealthiest families – his own.
He told GM magazine recently that his father sent him overseas to study music when he was young and it was his mother who encouraged him to accept the role in “Suckseed” that made him famous.
But Peach hastens to add that, despite his soft and fuzzy nickname, he was never spoiled as a child. If he misbehaved he got whacked with a coat hanger or a golf club (the latter happily a plastic toy). And if he wanted something bought for him, he’d only get it on a special occasion or if he earned it through good grades.
Of course the Chirathiwat can afford just about anything it desires, but Peach learned early on that doing honest work is what brings in the money – and more, that it makes life complete. “There has to be something else in life besides money,” he says.
Our boss would love to hire this guy.
