Dungeon Monkey Party: My Weirdest Interviews

Stockholm, 1996: Jackie Chan was in Sweden, promoting Rumble in the Bronx, and since the Swedish distributor knew I'm a big fan, I was booked to make a long interview with the legendary Chinese actor. The interview went fairly well, besides the fact that I had to concentrate really hard to understand what Chan said, but he was impressed by the fact that I - unlike the other journalists - had seen so many of his movies.

There was one movie Chan mentioned several times. He seemed to be very proud of it. Dungeon Monkey Party. What? Dungeon Monkey Party? I had never heard of that one, but I didn't tell Chan - and he gave me detailed descriptions of how the apparently famous fights were staged.

Then, a couple of weeks later. I was shaving or taking a shower when it struck me: Dungeon Monkey Party... Dungeon Monkey Party... Of course! The movie Jackie Chan was talking about was DRUNKEN MASTER, PART TWO!!!

Stockholm, 1996: Italian horror director Dario Argento was guesting the Stockholm Film Festival, and I was doing interviews for a pilot of a proposed TV show. Now, I'm a big fan of Argento's, at least up until Opera (1986), so I was looking forward to this. However, another journalist who was supposed to interview Argento before me, didn't show up, and people told med Argento was really pissed-off and needed to be calmed down - something that made me nervous. But everything was fine when I arrived and we did the on camera interview, which turned out pretty well.

Except for one detail. I don't remember what I asked the man, but Argento's answer was long. Very long. Never ending-long. And during this looong answer, his English got worse and worse. I had no idea what the hell the guy was talking about, and my thoughts started drifting away. Were there any parties that night? Maybe we should go to a restaurant?

Suddenly I noticed Argento was looking at me. The crew was looking at me. They expected me to comment on what Argento just had said and ask him a new question. And I went blank. I was just sitting there. Staring. Sweating. All my questions were gone. After what felt like an eternity, I came up with a question and saved the situation.

The TV pilot was never sold.

Cannes, 2005: The Pang Brothers, Taiwanese directors Danny and Oxide Pang, were at the market at Cannes with a promo for their upcoming movie Re-Cycle (which premiered the next year and turned out to be a turkey). I managed to get an interview with the Pang Brothers, who are most famous for the original version of The Eye, and I met up with them in a corner in the market area.

Danny and Oxide looked very tired and slightly uninterested in answering my questions. One of them was leafing through a magazine during the interview. But what made things even worse, was the fact that they had problems understanding what I said - while I had a really tough time understanding them. Here's the strangest part of the interview. I think I mentioned the Swedish vampire movie Frostbitten, which I worked on, so I just had to ask them this:

Me: What do you know about Swedish movies?

Pangs: Swedish?

Me: Yes, movies from Sweden.

Pangs: Sweden?

Me: Sweden is a country. I am from Sweden.

Pangs: Hm.

Me: So, you don't know of any Swedish directors?

Pangs: Stephen King is good.

Me: He's an American and a writer.

Pangs: Yes. He's good!

Me: But you must know of ... Bergman?

Pangs: Who?

The interview went on like this for a while. It got weirder and weirder. Then I thanked them for letting me talking to them, I scratched my head, and went out for a beer.

The interview was never published.