Interview: Sue Kim on "The Speed Cubers" her Oscar finalist
Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 3:56PM by Nathaniel R
After screening the moving and very engaging doc The Speed Cubers we were shockd to learn that it was a debut Figuring there was a story we sat down with director Sue Kim and as it turns out, we were right. Though she comes across as genuinely humble, twenty years of experience on sets helped her to be fully formed as a filmmaker the first time out of the gate. She'd been producing commrcials for 20 years before directing her first short The Speed Cubers. As the mom of a cuber, she knew the world intimately and knew how she wanted to frame the story. After a pitch to Netflix and the benefit of a few years of archival footage from The Cubicle, to help shape the backstory, "we were able to focus our filming efforts pretty precisely."
Kim and her team shot for six months up leading up the Speed-Cubing World Championships. We were delighted to hear what convinced Sue to try her hand at directing and what it was like to make a movie with no antagonists and two heroes, speed cubing champs Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs...
[This interview has been edicted condensed for clarity]
NATHANIEL: This is your first directing job. Was it everything you hoped it would be? Will you be pursuing that now.
SUE KIM: I went into this not expecting to love it. I’ve been a producer all this time and honestly, I just didn’t have the confidence. We were having trouble finding a director and the thing is, I’m a cubing parent. My son is a speed cuber. That’s how I found the story. I know the world and the personality quirks. I kept telling my producing partner what the story was and which storylines we should explore. He pulled me aside and said ‘You’re just going to have to direct this. Otherwise you’re going to drive the director crazy and always be in his ear.
[Laughter]
SUE KIM: He had to convince me. I trust him so I took the leap. I didn’t know how much would come to me intuitively but the experience was amazing. The crew was amazing and tight-knit. The months in the editing bay when it came together -- I’m so used to executing other people’s creative visions so having the platform and the opportunity to execute mine? I’ve been bitten by the bug. I’m already developing my next film. I just want to get back out there and shooting again.
Great. Since you were part of that community as a parent, did that make the access easy?
SUE KIM: The Parks are very understandably protective of Max. They want to make sure that whatever he does doesn’t harm him emotionally or cause undue stress. They had been approached by bigger media outlets -- I think ESPN, Megyn Kelly, Vice ? -- about doing profiles on Max and they’d always said no. They were worried he would be portrayed one-dimensionally: here’s the kid with the disability that’s good at this one thing. They just weren’t interested unless he was shown as a full person that he is. I flew down to meet them and because I’m a Korean-American and a cubing parent, and I’m the same generation, there was a lot of bonding and shared experience.
Max Park and his mom
Once you’re a cubing parent… This universe is really idyllic with decency and good sportsmanship. It’s very self-governed universe. Everyone knows intuitively that they can’t act out. There is no bad behavior allowed in this utopia. So they understood that I’d never do anything to harm either this world or anyone in it.
We have to get into SPOILER territory here. Speed Cubers is in the genre of the sports doc and with competitions you can’t know the outcome in advance. Did you have a plan B or were you like ‘let’s see what develops!’ ?
SUE KIM: [Laughter] That’s a really good question. I did but my plans were for if Max won and Felix lost [or vice versa]. What happened was they both lost in a shocking way, neither of them podiumed. That was a scenario that I did not see coming. In my mind if one of them won, to see the aftermath. How would they react with success or defeat. I knew that either one would be wonderful to the other but I did not picture that they’d both lose so solidly. What happened was that they really bonded in their shared grief of losing this thing they held in such high regard. But even in the midst of their own personal disappointment they were both looking out for the other. It was so touching and so indicative of their character.
At first I panicked. I was like ‘oh my god, what just happened to the film?!?’ But then I knew this was a much better ending. It’s more real and deep than a Hollywood ending.
[/SPOILER] I totally agree. One of the reasons I loved it -- i’m not really a competitive person or interested in sports -- was that it was actually this portrait of good sportsmanship which is not something that is dramatized often. Usually in a movie your hero wins (after a setback) so you don’t have to actually consider whether they’re a good sport!
SUE KIM: There’s no antagonist. And I couldn’t create one. There is no one in that world that is a bully or awful. They’re the loveliest young men and women. If there’s no antagonist and we just have two protagonists, what’s the central conflict what’s the tension point that a viewer will engage with?
Right.
SUE KIM: I was hoping that what would happen with the audience is that by the time you get to the World Championships, you wouldn’t even know who you are rooting for because you love them both.
The short came out in the summer on Netflix. What's your biggest takeway from the response?
SUE KIM: It was weird, in that it came out in vacuum in the time of COVID and the lockdown. There were no premieres, no screenings. It just kind of happened. We immdiately had flattering reviews but I went online to see what real people were saying. The thing that struck me was it felt like people reacted to the film because they needed something humanity-affirming. Because of where we were specifically last summer with the pandemic and quarantine and George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and the election cycle. It was such a toxic time in our media consumption. It felt like people were clinging to this story as a beacon hope. ‘We’re not necessarily doomed. There’s still good in us. Look at these kids!’
Reader Comments (2)
Not just the best short doc of all shortlisters, but the best short of all shorts' categories! Thank you, for the interview!
I loved Speed Cubers, I watched it in December and was in shock, who would have thought it would be so exciting and immersive.