Following the North American premiere of Dead Talents Society at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, we talked with writer-director John Hsu and lead Gingle Wang. The new horror-comedy “follows ghosts who want to become the spookiest of urban legends and most successful and famous stars in the underworld through their scare tactics and performances amongst the living.”
You can check out our four-star review here. We explain that Wang’s performance as The Rookie “embodies all the fears and doubts we, the living, have and makes them a part of her as she struggles in death.” We also praise Hsu for creating “an impressive world” and presenting “a strong and important message.”
HGL: The film was a great combination of horror and comedy, but it also addressed some serious topics. Where did the idea for Dead Talents Society come from?
John Hsu: My first film was Detention, a mixed historical/psychological horror film starring Gingle (laughs). That film was very serious, talking about a very dark period in Taiwan’s history, and it was so hard to have any humor in it. I’m a comedy guy; most of my short films before that were comedies, so I kind of told myself I was going to make a comedy after detention (laughs).
After making Detention, it was such a huge hit in Taiwan, and both Gingle and I were both confused about the hype. It took me quite some time to get back in a theater, trying to avoid that kind of PTSD after the film.
I remember the first time I got back to a theater, I was grabbed by my producer of Dead Talents Society. She said we should go see a film to make me feel better. We went to a horror movie premiere event, and I am kind of immune to the horror genre. I watch too much horror, so it’s really hard for me to get scared. I remember there was kind of a surreal feeling, all the other people in the audience were screaming, I felt so out of place.
There was one scene with a female ghost, she was getting her hair all twisted up, and crawling around a public toilet floor, all full of dirt and shit and you could see how much effort she was putting out in the character, to try and scare the audience. It didn’t work for me (laughs), but I suddenly empathized with the ghost and cried during the movie when everyone else was screaming. After the screening I talked to my producer about making something about the ghosts in horror films, seeing their perspectives, it might be a totally different story, so that’s where the idea came from.
HGL: The character of The Rookie is very interesting. Even though she’s dead, she still has to deal with serious situations and important topics. How fun and interesting was it for you to play this character?
Gingle Wang: I feel like this character is very different from the roles I’ve done before. One of my favorite cartoon films is Inside Out and I really feel this character relates to Sadness from the movie. To understand this character more, I observed how she looked, how she talked, how she looked at people, and her body language.
I feel like she was really interesting because I think people resonate with her situation a lot—her family issues and her self-value. It really resonated with me as well because I am not an actress with a performing arts background. I really don’t know how to deal with the press and the crowd, so I felt that of all the characters I’ve played in my career, this one was the closest to me.
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HGL: There is a theme throughout the film: the pressure to succeed and success being important. Was it hard to balance the serious tone and ideas with the horror/comedy?
John Hsu: I think in the beginning, when we were writing the script, it took us quite some time to figure out why I was empathizing with the ghost, like that premiere event. Then I suddenly realized the reason I was empathizing with her was because I am the ghost. It’s like with every horror film, with so many ghosts, only very few are going to be remembered. We were really talking about ourselves, a person who was trying to be seen and get our work recognized by other people. We’ve been spending our whole lives trying to do that, especially coming from an Asian family, that is even more serious.
Our parents always want us to become someone who is seen by the world and recognized by the world, and that somehow becomes kind of a curse to our growth. Once we figured that out, it became the perfect theme for this concept. Every ghost is trying to be seen, trying to be scarier. That’s how they become an urban legend, so that gave us the idea to combine these elements together.
One part is like Monsters Inc., but it could also be Mean Girls, or The Devil Wears Prada. They are all talking about the same thing: In order to be seen and to have success, what kind of price do you have to pay, and how much of your own identity and values are going to be lost during the process?
HGL: Newbie has quite a story arc throughout the film. Do you find working one-on-one with other actors easier than with some of the emotional scenes you had to do alone?
Gingle Wang: I feel like it really doesn’t matter to me. During shooting, I just want to be the character, so I don’t mind who I’m working with or who I’m acting with because I’m her, and she’s me, so I don’t mind who’s around me.
John Hsu: Also, that was kind of rare to me—all of them, the five main characters, they are actually becoming very good friends. That’s the first time in my career that after the shoot, they really became a team. We like chatting to each other every day.
Gingle Wang: We have a group chat, we just talk about shit (laughs)
John Hsu: We talk about everything and make fun of everyone, and when we’re on a press tour in Taiwan, it’s a scorcher. I remember we were taking photos on the high-speed train, trying to make fun of each other.
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HGL: Many moments in Dead Talents Society are hectic and fast-paced, with things happening quickly. When those kinds of scenes were being filmed, did you allow the actors to improvise along the way, or did they stick pretty close to the script?
John Hsu: It was really both. If there was a certain part of the scene we needed the actor to keep up with, they stuck to the script. However, I’m the type of filmmaker who believes that if you are making the actors comfortable, they can give their best performance, so I did my best to make sure they had some space to improvise.
Some of the improvised lines became part of the script, sometimes part of a punchline, and even on the emotional side as well. For example, after the climax, when Gingle’s character was finally chased down by the influencer but they still got away, and she was crying so much, they were all hugging, and she said the line, “I’ve already given everything I have,” that was improvised.
Gingle Wang: I wasn’t really sure the lines were from the character or from me (laughs). I feel like, at the time, because I was struggling with my career, I didn’t really know who I was and didn’t know how to lose myself. I felt like I just wanted to shout it out and give it my all, and I didn’t want to care about it anymore.
John Hsu: That’s what the scene was about. When I saw the scene, I was crying. I was like she was being possessed, and I had to say, wake up, wake up, that’s not you.
Gingle Wang: And when I woke up out of it, I said, “That was me!” (laughs)
HGL: What was the most difficult part of shooting Dead Talents Society?
John Hsu: One was about the rhythm because, as you said, there are a lot of fast-paced scenes, especially the comedic scenes, and in Taiwan, the actors and production teams are not used to this kind of fast-paced stuff. The audience there is much more comfortable with a slower pace in films. It was kind of new to everyone, they had to keep up with the pace so that required a lot of practise and rehearsal to make sure every department was working together to keep up.
The other difficult part, I think, was the ghost party scene. We had more than a hundred extras, and every one of them was a ghost, so they all had different looks. Our costume design team and makeup team had to hire dozens of people to help get everyone to have a different look.
Gingle Wang: I feel like it was the martial arts part for me, even though she’s a really shitty ghost (laughs). For the training part, we had to design her moves and poses to be very clumsy because the more clumsy she looks, the more it relates to the character. For instance, the part with Catherine when she breaks my back, moving on the floor, and jumping off the building, that was hard for me. I’m not a really active person but it was all a great experience.
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HGL: The wonderful thing about TIFF is that it exposes films to a broad, diverse audience. What do you hope the audience takes away from this film after watching Dead Talents Society?
John Hsu: Hopefully the theme of the film, that we’re spending our lives trying to get other people’s recognition to make sure our life has meaning. At a certain point in your life, you’ll figure out it doesn’t matter what other people think about you because if you don’t feel good about yourself, your life really means nothing. That can be very terrifying, and it happened to me and to Gingle as well.
At today’s screening, one of the volunteers approached us and said she also had the same feeling as Gingle’s character, and her parents were never satisfied with what she was doing. She was very emotional and thanked us for the message of the film: that it’s okay not to become someone super special.
Our goal is to have this story seen by a lot of people and for those who suffer from this kind of trauma to be comforted and realize that it’s okay to just be you.