Your film has a lot to do with vintage Thai genre movies, but almost nothing in common with other recent Thai cinema. When and how did the idea for the film take shape in your mind?
I started thinking about it around four years ago. The first impulse was to try to define and explore an authentically Thai style of film-making. I'd seen films from other Asian countries and recognized that they had certain distinctive national traits. I felt that Thai cinema once had its own style and character too, and I wanted to go back to something that had been lost. I guess the problem in Thai cinema has been the lack of continuity. The industry has been through so many upheavals and setbacks that its tradition kind of died out.

So I watched as many old movies as I could- especially the set of nine vintage titles restored and reissued by the Thai Film Archive. Most people nowadays look down on old Thai movies. They're considered somewhat embarrassing- cheap, low-quality work. But I was knocked out by what I found. I thought it should be possible to combine retro elements- faithful to the old styles of filmmaking- with more modern pacing and film language. It seemed feasible. But many of my contemporaries in Thai film circles were strongly against the idea. Many people told me I was crazy.

I used to work as a director of commercials to try out some of my ideas. In a commercial for Wrangler jeans, I experimented with tone, color and lighting; it was a first attempt to recapture those retro styles. And then in a commercial for noodle soup I experimented with re-coloring the images- in much the same way that I went on to do in the film

It isn't only vintage film style, is it? You also refer to some theatrical traditions?
The first confrontation between Dum and Mahesuan, when Dum shoots the snake in the tree above Mahesuan's head, is staged against a painted backdrop. The idea was borrowed form Likay, a type of folk theatre which is also very Thai. You can still see Likay performances in country fairs, even now. What I like most about Likay is that it's so minimal. The audience has to make a great imaginative effort to fill in the pieces that aren't shown on stage.

Is the film a generalized pastiche of retro styles or are there references to specific old movies?
A bit of both, actually. There are several scenes and images which are 'quoted' from old movies; some people in the Thai audience will recognize them. The shoot-outs and raids are not modeled on particular scenes from old movies bit they're absolutely in the style of the action genre of the 1960s.

Dozens such films were made then, and the genre became known (contemptuously) as Raberd poa, Khaow pao kratom- "Bomb the mountain, Burn the huts" movies. The idea that the hero should die, so that everyone cries on the way out, was a staple of those movies too. The comedy elements, such as the character Sgt Yam, were taken from Mitr Chaibancha's movies, which always had a lot of slapstick humor. But the presiding inspiration was probably the director Rattana Pestonji, who was never exactly in the mainstream of the industry in the 1950s or 1960s. He was a cinematographer who began directing and producing his own, very idiosyncratic films, and he was very conscious of the need to create a genuinely Thai film culture and film industry.

Was it hard to explain the project's rationale to your relatively young cast and crew?
It wasn't too hard to get the crew on-side because most them had worked on Nonzee's films Dang Bireley's and Nang Nak, which I wrote. I knew all of them well, and so I had many chances to push them into looking at the old movies and picking up the references. Even if they didn't quite see what I was after, I guess they had faith that I would come up with something good.

In casting, I didn't look for experienced actors for the main roles. Rather I looked for people who had the kind of charisma you used to see in film stars of the 1960s. Some of those vintage stars weren't that great as actors, but they did have terrific charisma. That's much less true of most actors nowadays. I ended up casting several virtual newcomers. Since the dialogue throughout is very non-naturalistic, rather like dialogue from old novels, it helped that the main actors didn't have previous experience in Thai production. Of course, some of the supporting actors are experienced veterans. For instance, Sombati Medhanee, who plays Fai, was in many action movies in his youth. When he arrived on set, he said he'd been there a thousand times before!

How did you achieve the color effects?
I wanted that lurid, over-saturated color because I think it's very Thai. When I travel up-country, the temples, houses, clothes and posters I see are all like that: bright and colorful, very appropriate to a hot country. Sometimes the way that clashing colors are mixed together is quite daring. It's not unique to Thailand, by the way. You can see similar thing in India and in parts of China. And Thailand, of course, used to be called 'Indo-China'.

The current generation tends to regard such things as 'low-class' or 'bad taste'. The fashion these days is for something cooler, more European. And so it took a certain defiance to get the color we did.

I worked on the color as much as possible in the design and in the shooting. We really did paint walls pink, green and so on, and we lit the sets to highlight the colors. Then, after the editing, we transferred the negative to digital-Betacam tape and reworked much of the color on video.

Almost every shot in the films was 'treated' in some way, either by tweaking the color grading or by repainting the colors themselves. And when it was finished, we transferred the result back on to 35 mm film for release.

You had some interesting retro ideas for promoting the Thai release?
Yes, films used to be promoted with novelizations, radio plays and so on, and we revived those ideas. But in the past the novelization would come first, followed by the radio serialization, all paving the way for the big movie. We did it the other way around. My wife and I wrote the novelization, which was published as a book after the film's release. And we did the radio version while the film was showing in the theatres. We also tried to replicate the look and style of vintage advertising print ads. I looked at a lot of old newspapers to get the hang of the old style, and found a lot of it very funny. There was a kind of exuberant vulgarity in the old days. For example, I saw one movie promoted (against a Hollywood monster movie playing at the same time) with the line: "Dinosaur, get out! A Thai movie is coming!" The sad thing is, everyone went to see the dinosaur anyway.

Interview by Tony Rayns, translated by Duangkamol Limcharoen (Bangkok, 11 March 2001)