David Choe’s Dirty Hands: Interview with Harry Kim
Turning the video camera on his best friend and future art world darling, filmmaker Harry Kim hit pay dirt in filming the exploits of David Choe, whose expressive, graffiti-influenced, illustrative work has been talked up in the art world, featured in porn magazines, as well as leading to lucrative corporate projects ranging from Scion and major media corporations to album covers (Linkin Park & Jay-Z) to graphic novels. Dirty Hands: The Art & Crimes of David Choe follows Choe from the very beginning as a Korean-American kid going out tagging at night in Los Angeles to his art world success. Personally, Kim came across as an enthusiastic, fun guy enjoying talking about his film as well as the highs and lows of basically filming his best friend 24/7 for years on end.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the whole project started spontaneously without much thought or worry. As Kim himself said, “This was never a planned deal; we never said in the beginning “oh we’re going to make a feature doc”. I mean when you watch the documentary, it starts off when he was just starting to work and we were both just a couple of broke, poor kids. So again when we first started it wasn’t like we sat down together and said ‘hey we’re going to make this feature length documentary that’s going to take a ton of years and a lot of money and time’.”
Instead what had started off as a ten-minute film school piece then grew into a thirty-minute short documentary; with Choe happy to film as an excuse to hang out with his best friend all the time, Kim simply stayed around and shot everything going on in David’s troubled personal life and budding art career. Much of Choe’s early notoriety came from his frequent graffiti tagging on the streets of Los Angeles, often featuring his famous whale character. At one point, Harry films David tagging the side wall of an LA freeway underpass with lightning speed while retaining attention to detail.
Curious as to how Choe’s and Kim’s relationship withstood the years of constant filming and scrutiny, I asked Harry how it was negotiating that fine line between objective filmmaking whilst maintaining a close personal relationship. His response was simple and pragmatic to say the least, “…it went through stages really; when we first started he wanted me to shoot stuff so I said ok and was happy to shoot and put footage together. Then once we did the thirty minute piece he wanted more shooting so I just kept on being there and it’s like anything else, you put a lot of years around someone with a camera and they get used to it (laughs). So it just became the two of us and he came to enjoy the fact that I was following him with a camera, because it allowed us to hang out. That became a major factor in filming going as long as it did because it was a great excuse for us to hang out together all the time.
There a few different ways to look at it because we are both friends and I am making a movie about him but there’s also the other side of it where I’m his friend and the older you get, you only get to see each other off and on and that’s it. What anybody spends all their time doing is whatever their career is or whatever their life is into. So the things that happened not only drove the documentary but drove us to hang out more too as friends. And to be honest, there were times where I didn’t go as far as I could have. But in those cases no one would have, even a documentarian. So I didn’t get everything on camera but it was out of respect for him. I felt though that I captured his personal story and that to me was the most important part of doing this project, so it didn’t have to be a 20/20, camera in the bag, expose where you’re catching someone at their lowest point.”
However, Choe’s increased celebrity also brought with it great financial gain as he received commissions from large corporations to do projects for them. For someone who came from nothing to suddenly be flush with cash, I was curious to learn how that sudden windfall affected the man and again Kim was easily forthcoming with his opinion, “…well he did take it in stride, I mean he still is who he is but at the same time he had been a sort of Holy Roller Christian and then all of a sudden there was this huge wave of recognition where fame and fortune showed up and he decided he was going to go that way. So it did change his life in that it was going in one direction and then suddenly he chose another path. His attitude towards money and people changed too because once he had money he could see how people would act towards you once you had it.
Sometimes he just messes with people because he has money or he’ll buy whatever he needs for school or what have you, or he just enjoys himself with it. He has more money than he’d ever imagined he would have so he really is just a big kid with a lot of cash (laughs). And the thing is, he doesn’t have a high standard of living and doesn’t have to spend the money he has on shit that other people would although he does have an entourage now (laughs). You come away with that in the movie where he has this Peter Pan-thing going where he wants to be a kid forever and now he can live that lifestyle. ”
In terms of where to go from here, Kim is doing a series of theatrical dates now in Los Angeles and San Francisco while also beginning work on a DVD release. Because of troubles during the film’s initial rollout in 2008 at the Los Angeles Film Festival as well as other stops of the fest circuit, the film is currently without major distribution. However, while open to a deal from an outsider company, Kim is instead going it alone thus ensuring a proper release for the film and shepherding it along so that both current and future audiences can see where one of the art scene’s more dividing current figures got his start.
*To keep track of latest news on Dirty Hands as well as screening dates, go to www.dirtyhandsmovie.com