12
8 DAYSwhat‘s up with...
Eric Khoo 52
The filmmaker on
his new retrospective
DVD box-set and the
joys of directing Jack
Neo.8 DAYS: You have a DVD box-set,
Eric Khoo: Director’s Collection,
coming out soon...
ERIC KHOO: All my films — from
Mee Pok Man to Tatsumi — are in
there, except [the erotic omnibus]
In the Room because that’s rated
R21 [which isn’t allowed for sale
on DVD]. In France, In the Room is
rated ‘12’ (laughs).
[The classifiers
here] have got the
numbers wrong
(laughs). The box-
set also has some
of my short films,
including Cinema,
the segment I did
for 7 Letters.
Was it
emotional to re-watch
these films as you were prepping
the box-set?
I’m so happy that I finally got to
restore Mee Pok Man and 12
Storeys, because I was never
really happy with the previous DVD
editions which were transferred
from the 35mm prints that were
so badly scratched! When we were
doing those films, the budget was
very lean, so I never supervised the
colour-grading; the cinematographer
did that. So when I first saw those
films, I thought it was pretty good,
but I think it was more of what the
cinematographer wanted. But now I
could actually get the colours that I
have always wanted the films to be.
This year also marks the 20th
anniversary of 12 Storeys. What
attracted you to make a slice-of-
life drama about HDB residents?
We thought it’d be kind of cool to
do something really Singaporean,
and that’s one of the reasons the