[HanCinema's News] Kwak Min-gyu Talks About "Made in Rooftop"

Kwak Min-gyu is no stranger to South Korean independent film. While the lead in last year's "The Boy From Nowhere" he also had a more recent credit in "Aloners" where he voiced a strange man who repeatedly contacts a credit card company's customer service hotline for aid regarding their services in conjunction with a time machine. But in "Made in Rooftop" he takes on a very different role as a young gay man, for which Kwak Min-gyu was recently interviewed.

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Kwak Min-gyu expressed surprised when he was first offered the role, not because he had anything against taking on a gay role, but rather because he had put on weight recently and didn't seem himself as a logical fit for a story about beautiful young men. However, he was interested enough by the script to lose a little of it. Eventually, Kwak Min-gyu realized it wasn't actually integral to the concept of the film that he be good looking.

The concept of "Made in Rooftop" is focused on realism, despite having genre trappings of romance. There's deliberate build-up as the Kwak Min-gyu and his romantic opposite Jung Hwi get to know each other in dark alleys, eventually culminating in a first kiss at a public park. Kwak Min-gyu described the kiss scene as being the most memorable for him, as he was convinced it was going to be no good.

Apparently, this was part of writer/director Kim-Jho Gwang-soo's design. He wanted to maximize the bashfulness of the scene because that was what a first kiss was supposed to feel like. Kwak Min-gyu also noted in the interview that originally he wanted to be a comedian, not an actor. In a comment that seemed to work as a metaphor for the film, he said that life just goes where it wants to go, and that love is the most important part or you just don't want to do anything.

Written by William Schwartz