Inside The Campaign To Make “Parasite” A Very Unlikely Best Picture Winner

The most Oscar-nominated film this season is Emilia Pérez, which is entirely in Spanish. It landed 13 noms — smashing the record for a non-English-language film (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma had 10 each) and just one shy of the record for any film — including best picture. And it’s not the only non-English-language film up for the top Oscar; so, too, is the Portuguese-language I’m Still Here. Until recently, such a scenario would have been unimaginable. Then came Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. This is the inside story of how that off-the-wall Korean film made history at the Oscars five years ago.

Hello, World

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, founded in 1927, was originally called the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But for most of its history, it wasn’t very worldly — the vast majority of its members were based in L.A., New York or London, and, outside of its best foreign language film category, it almost exclusively nominated English-language films for its awards, which came to be called “Oscars.” Pre-Parasite, only 11 predominately non-English-language films had ever been nominated for best picture. One winning? That wasn’t a serious possibility.

MARK JOHNSON (CHAIRED ACADEMY’S FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM AWARD EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, 2001-2011/2013-2018) It broke my heart that American audiences, even Academy voters, didn’t have any kind of discipline with subtitled films.

Still, people all around the world cared about the Oscars.

BONG JOON HO When I was in middle school, there was a film magazine that I subscribed to, and there was always a supplement that listed the best picture winners throughout history. I was like, “Oh, these must be very important films.”

At the Academy’s Governors Awards in 2015, just months after the first set of #OscarsSoWhite nominations and before the second, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced the organization’s “A2020” mission: to double the number of people of color and women in its ranks by 2020. To help meet those numbers, the Academy began to look to parts of the world beyond those from which it had historically invited new members. In many such places, people speak a language other than English and, unlike many English speakers, aren’t deterred by subtitles.

BONG It was in 2015 when I and some Korean producers and actors became Academy voters. I knew there was that issue and this effort by the Academy to be more inclusive. Looking back, I feel like me becoming one of the first Korean filmmakers to become a voter was part of that effort.

In 2015, 12 percent of the Academy was based outside America. By 2019, the year of Parasite‘s release, it was more than 25 percent, with members hailing from 75 countries across six continents. English-speaking Academy members were also beginning to broaden their horizons.

JOHNSON I give a lot of credit to TV. Netflix, in particular, aired things in Spanish, Korean or other languages, and didn’t seem to have a problem finding popular audiences.

At the Oscars ceremony in 2019, the year before Parasite won, best picture went to Green Book, sparking backlash. Largely overlooked in the fallout: A non-English-language film, Roma, was almost certainly the runner-up. Alfonso Cuarón accepted best foreign language film for it by cracking, “I grew up watching foreign-language films and learning so much from them and being inspired — films like Citizen Kane, Jaws, Rashomon, The Godfather and Breathless.” Just months later, the Academy renamed the award best international feature film.

LARRY KARASZEWSKI (CO-CHAIRED, WITH DIANE WEYERMANN, ACADEMY’S FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM AWARD EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, 2018-2020) It was something that had been discussed for many years. It just wasn’t a front-burner issue. But once he made that joke? In all my years of being a part of the Academy, that was one of the few times when a major change was proposed and not a single person was like, “No.”

JOHNSON I think “foreign,” for a variety of political reasons, became a nasty word.

KARASZEWSKI The use of the word “foreign” implies an otherness that we no longer wanted to associate with.

Karaszewski and Weyerman also helped to provide Academy members with easier access to non-English-language films.

KARASZEWSKI To vote on the shortlist of foreign language films [to determine the five nominees], you had to see all of the shortlisted films, and the only way you could do that was by being in L.A. You had to belong to this “international group.” A lot of people put down that group, but it was 200 or 300 really committed people who saw three or four films a week and really cared. Still, Diane and I decided that it was too limited a group. When our [Academy members-only] streaming app started, we put the shortlisted films on there for the international group, and we did a lot more screenings outside of L.A. The first year we did that was the year that Roma almost won best picture. The following year, we decided to open up, for the first time, all 10 films on the shortlist to every Academy member through the streaming app, so anyone who watched all 10 films could vote — and it went through the roof. I can’t give you exact numbers, but it went from a fairly small group of people voting to a lot of the Academy. The first year we did that, Parasite won best picture.

Seeds of Parasite

Bong established himself as a master filmmaker with his six features before Parasite. His greatest champion in America had long been film exec Tom Quinn. They met in 2006, when Magnolia, where Quinn worked at the time, distributed Bong’s film The Host. Later, in 2013, when running the label Radius-TWC for The Weinstein Co., Quinn rescued Bong’s film Snowpiercer from purgatory.

CHRISTINA ZISA (RADIUS-TWC PUBLICIST 2012-2015, NEON’S EXECUTIVE VP PUBLICITY 2017-2020, NEON’S PRESIDENT OF PUBLICITY 2020-present) Snowpiercer was supposed to be a Weinstein Co. movie. There were some disagreements on the cut of the film, and The Weinstein Co. basically shelved it. Tom had a long history with Bong, so he was like [to Harvey Weinstein], “What do you mean you have a Bong Joon Ho movie that you’re not releasing? What the fuck are you doing? I want it. Give it to us.”

In 2017, Quinn formed Neon, a production and distribution company that made a name for itself that year when it acquired I, Tonya and ushered it to major awards recognition. A year later, Quinn, on the basis of a script that hadn’t yet been shot, bought from CJ Entertainment, Korea’s biggest film studio, the North American rights to Parasite.

TOM QUINN We were going to pursue whatever film Bong made post-Okja. We bought it for what at the time was quite a large sum for a foreign-language film.

Parasite tells the story — alternately comedic and dramatic — of a poor family infiltrating the lives and home of a rich family in present-day Korea. It was loosely inspired by personal experiences.

BONG When I was in college, I tutored a middle-school boy from a very rich family. I’d like to emphasize that it was a boy, not a girl like in the film — there was nothing going on between us! What happened was, my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, was already tutoring that boy in English. The family was like, “We also need a math tutor.” I was horrible at math, but she introduced me to the family. That’s how I ended up infiltrating that household. Of course, I was fired after two months because my math was horrible. It was 30 years ago, but I still have vivid memories of the first time I entered that house. I remember they had a private sauna on the second floor, and at the time it was inconceivable to me that a private home would have a sauna. Of course, in Parasite there’s a sauna on the second floor.

Gained in Translation

When Neon became involved with Parasite, it had fewer than 30 employees, and no L.A. office. Quinn’s first hire at Neon was Christina Zisa, who had helped to guide Radius-TWC to back-to-back best documentary Oscars.

ZISA I was like, “Yeah, I will follow you into a fire.”

QUINN She’s the captain of the ship. Nothing happens at Neon that Christina hasn’t either generated herself and/or approved.

For I, Tonya and later Parasite, Neon also retained a small but mighty team of outside consultants, including Perception PR’s Lea Yardum, Cinetic Marketing’s Ryan Werner and ACME PR’s Nancy Willen (for whom Quinn had worked in the 1990s as an entry-level publicist).

ZISA We were asking, “Who’s the best in each lane?” It was just about having the most well-rounded team that we could have.

Parasite, which Bong made for $11 million, was finished in March 2019, the year in which the Korean film industry turned 100. The Cannes Film Festival invited it to have its world premiere in competition in May.

Prior to Cannes, people who would be working on Parasite had a chance to see it for the first time.

ZISA I saw it at a staff screening at the Alamo Drafthouse. After, we were on the subway platform and I was like, “This is a perfect movie.”

LEA YARDUM The first time I watched Parasite was on my laptop, not in a theater, right before Cannes. I’m embarrassed to say that, but it’s true. Sometimes, for lack of time or other reasons, you end up seeing a movie that way. But it taught me something: that the movie played extraordinarily well even on a laptop.

Bong was asked to do some pre-Cannes press. Though he spoke some English, he would require assistance.

JOSH HAROUTUNIAN (PUBLICIST) Ahead of Cannes, my friend Nico Chapin asked me for recommendations for a Korean interpreter. Nico was working at Cinetic and desperately needed someone for an interview with director Bong. My company had just done the campaign for Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, which became South Korea’s first film to make the Oscar shortlist, and there was only one name on my list: Sharon Choi, the best interpreter I’ve ever seen in any language.

Choi, then 25, was born in Korea and raised there except between the ages of 8 and 10, when she lived in L.A. and learned English. An aspiring filmmaker, she later returned to America to attend USC, where she would introduce friends to the films of one of her idols, Bong Joon Ho.

SHARON CHOI I remember the first time I saw Snowpiercer. It was the first time I saw English and Korean coexist on a big screen. I got really emotional. It was kind of unbelievable to me.

Choi graduated in 2016 and returned to Korea, where she was working as an assistant to a U.S.-based director for whom she served as a translator during one Q&A, which led to the Burning gig. A year after that, she received a request to help Bong with a single interview.

CHOI CJ has a team of interpreters they work with, but director Bong wasn’t happy with them, so they were searching for a new one.

BONG We met just before Cannes during a telephone interview for The New York Times or something. Because it was a telephone interview, I never saw her, I just listened to her great voice and amazing translation. After the phone call, me and the person from the distribution company at the same time shouted, “She’s amazing!”

ZISA Bong was like, “She is the best interpreter I’ve ever had! We need her!”

CHOI They called me the next day asking if I would come to Cannes for a day or two. I’d already booked a trip to Europe — a solo backpacking trip — and already planned to go to the south of France, so I just switched around my dates to be there. I stuffed my cheap Uniqlo shirt into my backpack. I didn’t know the fancy dress code at Cannes, so I didn’t have the right shoes.

Cannes Conquest

On May 21, immediately following the world premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Parasite had its world premiere in Cannes’ Grand Lumière theater. Attendees ate it up, with multiple instances of mid-film applause and an eight-minute standing ovation at the end.

CHOI It was electric. It felt like everyone was on the same frequency. I’d never felt so connected to a group of people like that before. Maybe at a political protest or a BTS concert.

ZISA Tom doesn’t watch our movies ahead of Cannes — he likes to embrace the films with the audience — so his first time seeing the movie was in Cannes.

QUINN I obviously had read the script, but seeing this dialogue come alive was thrilling. A little footnote, which I’m embarrassed to tell you: I had to go to the bathroom in the first 20 minutes of that screening. When you have great seats at the Lumiere for a competition screening with your friend, the last thing you should do is get up; if you get up, you look like the biggest asshole. But the movie was so good that I did not get up, and held it for the entire screening, to the point where once it was over, I had to rush as quickly as I could to the bathroom.

Also in the audience was Mara Buxbaum, president of ID, one of Hollywood’s top PR firms, who’d briefly crossed paths with Bong when her client Jake Gyllenhaal was promoting his work in Bong’s 2017 film Okja. She was at Cannes as a guest of another client, Yorgos Lanthimos, who was on the competition jury, and accompanied Lanthimos to every screening.

MARA BUXBAUM I walked out and thought, “We just saw the Palme d’Or winner.” It was molecule-changing. And then all of a sudden I saw Bong — and the whole delegation — leaving, and I was like, “Oh my God!” It was like The Beatles. I just lost my shit. The next day, I looked up who represented him. I called [his U.S. agent] and started a full-court press: “I have to represent him!”

BONG A first impression is so important. I remember when I first met Mara, sensing how gentle and peaceful she is. She has this distinctive smile, and that sort of captured me. I felt like I could really trust her and tell her all my secrets.

BUXBAUM I was working with Bong before the end of the summer.

After the premiere, Choi was asked to stay in town.

CHOI They were getting more and more interview requests from English-language press. Every night they’d be like, “I’m so sorry, but can you just stay for one more day?” And then eventually they were like, “Actually, can you just stay until the end?” So I had to cancel my eight-person dorm hostel bookings and stay in Cannes.

Bong was among a select group of filmmakers asked to be at the fest’s closing ceremony, indicating that they had been awarded some prize by the jury presided over by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

BONG It was my first time attending the closing ceremony.

CHOI When they announced Atlantics for the Grand Prix, the second-place prize, we were just screaming backstage because there was only one award left [the Palme d’Or].

BONG It felt like walking on clouds from that moment for the entire day.

ZISA I was like, “This is going to be a great marketing tool for this movie.”

The Palme convinced Quinn that the sky was the limit for a Parasite awards campaign.

BONG When Tom said, “We should do this,” it felt quite surreal and unrealistic for me.

YARDUM I remember Tom saying, “This is a multi-category movie. This is a movie that can break through.”

BONG I didn’t know how these campaigns went. My previous film, Mother, was the Korean submission for the foreign language category that year, but there wasn’t any campaign.

CHOI They just told me, “There will be things in the fall, so keep an eye out. We’d love to have you come to L.A.”

Others needed more convincing.

QUINN I was honestly surprised, and a little annoyed, that some very smart journalists and friends in the industry said, “Looks like international [the international feature Oscar] is a lock!” I’m like, “What about all the other categories?”

To be or not to be

Over the summer, Neon and CJ began huddling.

ZISA It was CJ’s first real involvement in an Oscar movie. CJ was essentially our go-between, especially at the beginning, for all the talent. At the time director Bong had a U.S. agent and manager, but no one else had U.S. representation.

QUINN CJ committed a million dollars of P&A to help support our total budget, which was extremely generous of them.

BONG Miky Lee [vice-chair of CJ] and CJ decided to support the campaign. And with Mara, it was like all the gears were working together to create a very dynamic and real campaign.

BUXBAUM Neon made a commitment to Bong, and Bong made a commitment to Neon, around what this was going to take.

Choi was coming along for the ride.

CHOI There was a period of time where I didn’t hear anything, so I was like, “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” But eventually they reached out sand said, “We’re doing this campaign.”

BUXBAUM Bong kind of speaks English. He understands it — like, I can have dinner with him and we can have a conversation. But it was very much his decision to say, “No, I want to have a translator.” I was worried because I was like, “Will he be less accessible?”

QUINN It would’ve been an old-school colonial mistake to say, “You should speak English across the Academy campaign because that’s what Academy campaigns require.” The reality is that the center of his universe is Korea, and therefore he should speak in his native tongue.

From A to Z

QUINN I was sort of frustrated over the summer, wondering, “How are we going to break through across the Academy?” Around that time, I watched Ira Deutchman’s documentary about Don Rugoff and Cinema V [Searching for Mr. Rugoff], looking at how Rugoff [a trailblazing New York exhibitor and distributor] built that company, the films he supported, the careers he changed, the tastes that he unlocked. It opened my eyes that what we were doing wasn’t anything new. Costa-Gavras’ Z had already been down this path. [The Greek-language film, which Rugoff distributed, had landed a best picture Oscar nom in 1970.] Rugoff used to open everything in one theater in New York, and that was the inspiration for us to do the same, hoping to pop a massive per-screen-average. It wasn’t a popular idea. I got calls from colleagues saying, “This doesn’t make any sense, Tom. You’re going to leave money on the table.” But I said, “Where I’m going is farther than you know.”

Parasite made its U.S. theatrical debut at New York’s IFC Center on Oct. 11. Every screening that weekend sold out.

ZISA TV news stations were going down there to cover the lines for Parasite’s opening weekend, which is pretty fucking crazy if you think about it. You could see that it was taking on a life of its own.

QUINN I very much give Costa-Gavras’ Z and Don Rugoff credit for that.

Reviews were through the roof.

QUINN We were at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for most of the summer.

Launching Pad

Then came the fall film festivals: Telluride, Toronto and New York. Many films are made — or seen for the last time — at them.

BONG It was really the Telluride Film Festival that started off the campaign.

ZISA We had to bring in oxygen for the Koreans.

BONG I remember not recognizing people that I knew very well.

CHOI I had just come off a student film where we had no money, not even for granola bars. So to go from that to the most prestigious festivals, surrounded by filmmakers that I was just talking about with my friends, breathing the same air as these people? It was also very eye-opening to see the really rich side of this industry. I was trying to pretend that I was calm, collected and composed. But inside I was just screaming.

ZISA In Telluride, there were hundreds of turn-aways at our first screening because of the word-of-mouth from Cannes.

YARDUM Our phones were ringing, and we were getting texts from people, “Can you get me in?!”

BUXBAUM [Telluride fest director] Julie Huntsinger at the beginning programmed it in a really small theater. She was like, “Trust me.” Everyone started talking about it. And then by the fest’s last day, people couldn’t get into the Palm [one of its larger venues]. Same thing in Toronto. There were lines around the block. It just became a thing.

After the fall fests, campaigning begins in earnest for those who want to take a leap of faith.

QUINN The amount of work that goes into these campaigns is extraordinary; it’s an outsized job that takes over your life. I remember sitting with Bong in Telluride, and I said, “I want you to make a human decision about what’s important to you,” because you have to choose to do this, to commit yourself to a campaign. And at that point he made the decision to do it — to truly do it.

The campaign

Some doubted that the Parasite Oscar campaign, with its limited resources, could compete against the likes of Universal (1917), Sony (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Warner Bros. (Joker) and Netflix (The Irishman). But not the people working on it.

YARDUM It makes it a little bit easier sometimes to have fewer people because you all know everything, you all share information, there are no silos, the war room is a few people and those are the people going out into the world and doing the work.

ZISA We have to be practical in how we spend our money, so I think we are more honest with ourselves in terms of what actually moves the needle. You’re not going to see 50 billboards for a Neon film. For Parasite we had really beautiful character design-driven posters that we put up during the campaign. Truthfully, when you drive around L.A., you’re seeing a million billboards. Unless you have something special that makes you stand out, then you’re just one of a million, especially during award season.

They also played it smart.

YARDUM The film wasn’t Writers Guild signatory, for obvious reasons — it was a Korean film — but we brought that to the attention of Neon and said, “If possible, we should talk to the Writers Guild about grandfathering the project in.” You have to go to the Writers Guild to explain why it wasn’t signatory when it was made, and you have to do all the things that would’ve made it signatory [an expensive process of retroactively adhering to the terms of the guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement]. We said to Neon, “We think that this is important for the movie. The Writers Guild Awards are nicely timed for when the rest of the awards story is unfolding.” They thought about it, and ultimately we were able to do it. It’s something that we felt was a key moment, when the film later won the WGA Award.

QUINN I hate to say it — this is some of the gamesmanship — but we also knew that Quentin wasn’t going to be in the WGA race [he never joined the guild], so could we make a mark there? That was the calculation.

They held screenings in places where screenings aren’t usually held.

YARDUM We had the opportunity to screen in Koreatown and have a little reception at a Korean restaurant there. I remember feeling a little unsure if Academy members would make the drive to downtown L.A., but they did.

And they held off sending screeners [DVDs were still mailed to voters back then] until early December.

ZISA We felt like, “Let’s give people as many opportunities as possible to see this movie on the big screen, because that’s where it’s going to make the biggest impact.” If people have their DVDs, they’re less likely to come out to screenings. And if you’re watching a movie with subtitles and you’re sitting at home and you’re distracted, are you going to feel the same as when you’re watching it on a big screen with an audience, and you’re feeling that moment when the movie switches halfway through and everyone has that collective “What the fuck?!” moment?

Release the #Bonghive

But the campaign’s ace in the hole was Bong himself. The filmmaker, then 50, was game for anything — he even did The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon — and proved to be a great campaigner.

ZISA Bong is one of South Korea’s greatest filmmakers, but in the U.S. he wasn’t really known that well. So a lot of what we were doing during the campaign was introducing audiences and Academy members to him.

BUXBAUM He’s one of those people that has an incredible ability to connect with people in a way that starts from humility, so it’s never off-putting.

CHOI There’s this very childlike quality to him. He’s incredibly funny and so not serious about how much of a genius he is.

YARDUM Every time he went somewhere he had a new story. When he was honored at the African American Film Critics Association’s awards, he was talking about how, when he was in film school, he created his own subtitles for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and hadn’t realized that there were that many curse words. The whole audience burst out laughing.

Choi was with him every step of the way. People got a kick out of the words of this large man coming out of the mouth of this small woman.

QUINN They were the greatest comedic duo on the circuit.

CHOI After the first trip, it became clear that director Bong and I worked very well together. And honestly, it wasn’t like I had anything else to look forward to.

YARDUM Sharon was the secret weapon. I was blown away by how incredibly well she captured his spirit. I credit Sharon’s work in representing Bong in English for a lot of the success of the campaign.

On social media, Bong’s fans began calling themselves the #Bonghive, a play on Beyoncé’s #Beyhive. But Bong seemed skeptical that it would all lead anywhere. In an October 2019 interview with New York, when asked for his thoughts about the fact that no Korean film had ever been nominated for an Oscar, he remarked, “The Oscars are not an international film festival. They’re very local.”

Eventually, though, Neon convinced Bong to temporarily relocate to L.A. ahead of the avalanche of pre-Oscars award shows, the Oscar nominations announcement and then the final round of Oscar voting.

CHOI By January the hype was so big that no one wanted him to leave L.A.

ZISA There was an element of, “Who knows when this will come again, so let’s give it everything that we have.”

QUINN He was at first in the Sawtelle area, then Santa Monica.

ZISA He brought his wife. His son came to visit.

CHOI I remember finding it funny that he stayed at an apartment in Santa Monica. I imagined he’d want a ginormous mansion with a pool and the hills and the Hollywood life. But he just wanted something contained, familiar, cozy and comfortable. He hates the sun, so L.A. is kind of a horrible place for him — but thankfully it was January and gloomy a lot of the time.

BONG I have zero talent for having fun, just “hanging out.” I’m such a workaholic. Even in Seoul, I don’t really “have fun.” So during the campaign, when I managed to get some time for rest, I would just write scripts and think about my next projects. I would go to Amoeba Music to geek-out over CDs and DVs. That was how I relieved my stress. It’s like paradise there.

But the campaign kept him plenty busy.

CHOI We’d go to award ceremonies and events, and I would see all these Hollywood stars in the corner being like, “Oh my God, that’s Bong Joon Ho! That’s the guy who did Parasite!” And then lining up to meet him.

BUXBAUM He was so hardworking. He was a trouper.

CHOI We always shared the same car going to these events. By the end, there was a lot of napping in the cars.

Collecting Hardware

At the Golden Globes on Jan. 5, Parasite, as a film not in English, was ineligible for either of the two best picture prizes (they went to 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), but it won best foreign language film. Bong’s remarks (“Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films”) made a big impression. It was just one of many memorable acceptance speeches that he gave throughout the season.

CHOI No one believes it, but he truly came up with them in the moment. I always kind of hoped that he’d give me something ahead of time, and every ceremony I’d be disappointed.

BONG When I go up onstage to do a speech, I can say one sentence and have Sharon translating that sentence, and that buys me time to think about the next.

The Oscar nominations were announced Jan. 13. Joker led all films with 11 noms; 1917, The Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were right behind with 10. Parasite landed six: best picture, director, original screenplay, international feature, film editing and production design. (One of the people announcing the nominees — and pronouncing Korean names correctly — was Korean American actor John Cho.)

BONG I don’t know why, but they announce so early, like five in the morning. Tom and CJ had this idea to gather everyone and shoot a reaction video, so it was the people from CJ and Neon, [Parasite star] Song Kang-ho and our producer, Kwak Sin-ae, all together. I was too shy and felt too much pressure about the nominations, so I stayed in the apartment with my wife, and we watched it on an iPad. We got more nominations than we had anticipated, so it was an incredible day.

QUINN We were all sitting around Song Kang Ho, who was holding a mug of coffee, looking dapper as ever. Then we were all going crazy. And lo and behold, as jubilant as he was, Song never spilled a drop.

YARDUM As excited as I was about all the nominations, I was disappointed that we had not been successful in getting Song Kang Ho nominated.

QUINN I set out to deliver for Song Kang Ho what I thought he deserved, a nomination. We failed.

BONG I thought, “Is it because our actors were in this amazing ensemble that they couldn’t focus on one single actor?”

At the SAG Awards on Jan. 19, the nominees for best ensemble included the casts of best picture Oscar nominees The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Parasite, only the second non-English-language film ever nominated in the category. Bong wasn’t eligible for personal recognition that night, but attended to support his cast. It was not an night-off for Choi.

CHOI Whenever director Bong didn’t need me, I was paired with the actors to interpret for them.

Throughout the evening, each nominated cast came onstage to introduce a clip of their film. When Parasite‘s did, unlike any others, they received a standing ovation.

ZISA That was the moment when we were all like, “Are we going to win?!”

CHOI It was very emotional to see them get that kind of recognition, very unexpected.

At the end of the ceremony, Eugene and Dan Levy announced the best ensemble winner: Parasite. The crowd roared, giving the cast another standing ovation as Bong beamed with pride and took photos on his phone. The fact that this huge guild of actors — composed mostly of Americans, known for being populist and employing a non-preferential ballot — selected Parasite was a big deal. Best ensemble SAG Award winners don’t always go on to win the best picture Oscar, but when there’s a best picture Oscar surprise it often comes from a film that first won best ensemble (see: Shakespeare in Love, Crash and Spotlight).

BONG I was just screaming. I went nuts.

QUINN I was as crazy with joy that night as I was the night we won best picture. It, for me, was the bellwether: “We can do this.”

BUXBAUM SAG changed everything. All of a sudden we were like, “Holy shit, this is real.”

QUINN Christina started saying this thing: “If it’s not going to happen for Parasite, when is it going to happen?” Her saying, “If not now, when?” made so much sense to me. So we all said it. It was this sort of mantra.

ZISA Anytime I wanted to do something and it was pushing budget, I was just like, “Tom, if not now, when? There’s only one time that you can be the first non-English-language film to win best picture.” So that was basically how I pushed through everything that I wanted to get done.

BONG That afterparty was the craziest one we had during the entire campaign. Everyone was singing, dancing and doing karaoke. It was truly a night of madness.

ZISA Of course, we were drinking a ton of soju and doing shots, so yeah, I said my little speech, “Parasite for the win!” Then Tom was like, “We’re fucking winning!”

Further encouragement came from the Oscar Nominees Luncheon on Jan. 27, at which each nominee is called to a set of bleachers to pose for a “class photo.”

JANET YANG (ACADEMY GOVERNOR-AT-LARGE, 2019-PRESENT/PRESIDENT, 2022-PRESENT) I remember specifically at the Nominees Luncheon that when director Bong’s name was called, there was a very long applause for him. You can gauge a little from that about the popularity of certain films. I remember thinking, “Wow, people really love him.”

But Parasite was far from a sure thing: 1917 had won the top prizes of the producers, directors, cinematographers and sound editors guilds and at the Golden Globe, Critics Choice and BAFTA awards.

As the Oscars neared, Bong was exhausted and Choi was ill.

CHOI I was fairly sick for most of January. Even for the Globes, I was coughing and making sure all the snot was out of my nose backstage before going up. By around the time of the Oscars, people were starting to get concerned that I’d be really sick for the ceremony, so for anything that wasn’t too important, I’d try to be in my hotel and rest. One night there was a party or something, and I wasn’t there, and I was kind of happy to hear that I was missed.

Then it was time.

CHOI I only had one suit — one Theory jacket and pants — and that was what I wore for everything. But Neon wanted me to wear something nicer for the Oscars, so they arranged a stylist, and I just wore whatever looked best. But I always wanted to look a bit muted. I didn’t really want to stand out.

The Big Night

The 92nd Oscars took place on Feb. 9, earlier in the year than any prior edition. On a rainy afternoon, the entire Parasite team rode over together in a sprinter van.

CHOI I was incredibly nervous. If I ended up onstage, that meant Parasite won an award, and it would be very historic for Korean cinema and for Korea, so it would be remembered. And to have all that saved on the internet forever? I felt a lot of pressure to make sure I performed well. There was also a conversation about whether or not I [as someone not announced as a winner] could actually go up onstage. But the Parasite team was like, “If someone stops you, push them. Do whatever you can to make sure you go up on that stage.” So I was kind of nervous that someone would try to stop me.

The group walked the red carpet.

Then, inside the Dolby Theatre, they excitedly posed together for personal photos before finding their seats.

BONG I remember being seated on the aisle seat, and next to me was Song Kang-ho. Next to him was Miky Lee. In terms of how I felt? I was just like, “I did everything I could. I did my best. I have zero regrets. And after this, I can finally go home to my puppy, Junnie.

ZISA It was my first time. You get into that room and you’re in the place where you’ve watched it happen on TV for so many years. I was sitting with a few Neon people and director Bong’s wife and son.

CHOI I was seated at the back next to the [nominated] production designer, Lee Ha-jun, and we weren’t talking much because we were both so nervous.

It was widely expected that Parasite would win best international feature. But before that came best original screenplay, which pitted Bong and co-writer Han Jin-won against Tarantino. Diane Keaton and Keanu Reeves announced the winner: Parasite. Bong noted in his speech, “We never write to represent our countries, but this is the very first Oscar to South Korea!”

CHOI Director Bong never prepared a speech — except for one time, for the international feature Oscar, which he didn’t even get to use. When he was speaking Korean, he wouldn’t really be saying the Korean version of the speech that I’d be saying in English. Instead, he’d read out all the names of his Parasite team, but no one in the crowd would know because they don’t know Korean. We’d planned that, but he didn’t get to use that because he won best screenplay first.

Bong was quickly made into a GIF after turning around during Han’s remarks, staring at his new Oscar and bursting into giggles. But giggles gave way to nerves when Parasite lost the next two awards for which it was nominated, best production design and film editing. Then came best international feature, presented by Penélope Cruz, a star of one of the nominees against which Parasite was competing. Parasite won.

KARASZEWSKI Bong actually says, “This is the first time this award has ever been given out with this name.”

As the ceremony neared its end, Spike Lee came out to present best director.

BONG Sam Mendes was sweeping all the other ceremonies, so I thought it would go to him — 1917 is such a strong film — and if not Sam, Quentin. That was what was going on in my mind. I was completely defenseless when Spike said my name. Usually they say, “The award goes to …” And then the name. But he skipped that and just said, “Bong Joon Ho!”

CHOI With all the other categories, I made sure to stand up and wait on the aisle, ready to go onstage. For best director, I stayed in my seat. I guess I really didn’t expect that to happen because Sam Mendes had been winning all season. So I was totally not prepared and sprinted out in my heels when I heard his name.

QUINN I had gone to the bathroom and couldn’t get back in. Spike Lee was up on the monitor, and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could read his lips and he was saying, “Bong Joon Ho!” I said, “You’ve got to let me in! I’m going in!” And they let me in.

ZISA Bong’s wife was crying, his son was crying, everyone was so excited.

Bong was just the second director of Asian descent to win the prize (Ang Lee had won twice). He gave one of the most gracious acceptance speeches ever, heaping praise and gratitude on his fellow nominees, including Martin Scorsese, who received a standing ovation in the middle of Bong’s remarks.

CHOI That speech was incredibly beautiful. Up onstage, I could feel the warmth in the room.

BUXBAUM Even Sam Mendes seemed happy.

Then, after the In Memoriam montage and the presentation of best actor and actress, screen legend Jane Fonda came out to present best picture.

LYNETTE HOWELL TAYLOR (CO- PRODUCER OF THE 92ND OSCARS) We knew she’d deliver the gravitas that you need for best picture.

JANE FONDA I knew what I thought should win. I thought Parasite should win. This Korean movie was extraordinary and unlike anything I’d ever seen. But I knew it wasn’t going to win because it was a foreign-language film.

CHOI I kind of thought 1917 would win, but I don’t know, something in me was like, “Something’s a bit weird tonight.” And the production designer and I were just like, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

QUINN I was like, “This is it. Make sure you hear her correctly. Don’t presumptively jump out of your seat.”

ZISA She opened the envelope, and before she said anything I was like, “Oh, she’s going to say Parasite.” You could tell that she was happy.

FONDA When I stood there and opened the envelope, my jaw didn’t drop because instinctively I knew I was on camera, but I couldn’t believe it. I was so surprised and happy that I couldn’t say anything for what felt like a couple of minutes.

When Fonda said “Parasite,” the entire room leapt to its feet. Even vanquished competitors looked genuinely thrilled.

FONDA I just remember an explosion of applause, so obviously I wasn’t alone in my surprise and happiness.

STEPHANIE ALLAIN (CO-PRODUCER OF 92ND OSCARS) Lynette and I looked at each other like, “Oh my God,” because we knew how big it was.

BONG When Jane Fonda called out “Parasite,” people just lost it and started screaming, and that actually made me feel even more calm.

QUINN I was jumping up and down. I was ecstatic. I just couldn’t believe it.

YANG I was sitting a couple of rows behind director Bong and Miky. I just screamed.

CHOI I was so out of it that I carried my bag all the way to the stage. And then I just threw it, at one point, next to some actor. I was in such shock that out of all the interpreting I had done, I did my worst job. I was cutting people’s speeches in half. Also, because there’s this huge timer in front of you, making sure you don’t go over time, and because I knew that there were a lot of people wanting to speak, I just wanted to make sure that my part was as short as possible. I remember finding it hard to breathe because I was in so much shock.

BONG Of course, it was my fourth time up on the stage, so I had nothing left to say. I made sure that the producer and the studio had enough time to say their part.

But as Miky Lee — the godmother of Korean cinema — approached the microphone, the lights dimmed and the microphone descended into the stage. Then Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Charlize Theron and others in the front row began loudly protesting: “Up! Up! Up!”

ALLAIN We knew, “We’ve got to not go over a certain time limit or our ratings will drop.”

HOWELL TAYLOR Glenn [Weiss, the telecast’s director] was in our ear like, “Lynette, Stephanie, what do you want to do?” My phone was dinging with network executives saying, “Get out. We’re done.” We had to make a decision in a split second, and we looked at each other and were just like, “No way.” Miky Lee has done so much for Korean movies, and this was her moment. We were like, “We may never get asked to do this again because of this decision right now,” but we just said to Glenn, “Bring the lights up.”

ALLAIN I think we wrapped at 32 [minutes past the hour] instead of 30 or something. Anyway, it didn’t matter, because the moment was brilliant.

The Academy had been slammed for a lack of diversity among that season’s nominees, but its winners proved to be tremendously diverse.

JOHNSON It was quite joyous because it signified a major step for our Academy. I’ve always said about the Academy that it’s like steering an ocean liner. It takes a long time for it to turn, but it eventually does.

FONDA This kind of thing would’ve been unimaginable back when I first started in the late ’50s, early ’60s.

Fun fact: Bong — and Choi — were the first people since Walt Disney, 66 years earlier, to accept four Oscars in one night.

CHOI It was crazy. I was getting texts from people I went to elementary school with. Pretty much everyone who knew my number was texting me congratulations and nice things. And it made my parents really happy that they can show me off to everyone they know now.

Parasite‘s haul was the biggest of any film that season and tied Fanny and Alexander and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the most wins by a non-English-language film ever. The New York Times opined, “Parasite may actually have rescued the Oscars.” In one sense that may have been true. In another, it wasn’t: The telecast’s ratings came in at an all-time low: 23.6 million viewers.

HOWELL TAYLOR We were bummed out that the ratings were down. I think that the running time has a lot to do with the ratings, and our show was long.

Partying

When the show ended, the night was just beginning. Bong and company went through the backstage photo and interview rooms then to an engraving station at the Governors Ball.

BONG Kwak Sin-ae and I were there with Renée Zellweger because she had just won best actress, and I remember joking with her about how many trophies we had to get engraved [while she waited].

Bong then went to the Vanity Fair party before heading, at around 1 a.m., to Soho House West Hollywood, a large and expensive venue on which Neon and CJ had decided, in an optimistic moment weeks earlier, to splurge for a viewing/afterparty.

ZISA The fire department had to come because there were so many people who showed up that didn’t RSVP that the parking lot of the Soho House [through which guests enter] was packed with people. They stopped letting people in for a while.

YARDUM Colleen Camp [the actress/producer/event organizer] was calling me telling that there were very important people getting impatient at the door. Gina Wade [who was producing the party] came up with the brilliant idea to open up BOA [Steakhouse] next door, so they got the bar open there and we managed to stop the bloodletting. A little alcohol goes a long way!

CHOI I remember director Bong, at the Neon party, had to go up onstage to give a speech to the people there. I was getting ready to follow him up, and he was like, “Don’t come up. Your job is over. Have fun. I will speak English.”

Then, as had been the Parasite team’s custom all season, they ended the night at a Korean restaurant.

BONG Our entire team was there. We just drank soju and ate Korean food.

CHOI Director Bong left at around 4 a.m., and he gave me a really big hug at the end. We’re Koreans; we’re not huggers. Especially in a work relationship, we never hug. It was one of the few times that he gave me a hug, but this time it was a real hug because it was all over, the months of this. Then he got in his van and left, and I burst into tears. I’d never cried during the whole campaign, but I started sobbing. It was just so many emotions that I couldn’t handle. They were tears of gratitude, relief and love for director Bong and the people that I’d worked with — I’d spent all my days with these people, and it felt like we were in battle together, and then it was all over and we knew that we were going home and probably wouldn’t see each other again.

On a lighter note, Choi soon discovered that she had many new admirers.

CHOI I remember searching my name on Twitter, and so many Viagra ads came up with my name as a hashtag. I was like, “I guess this means that I made it.”

The Aftermath

Before the Oscars, Parasite had been playing in 1,000 theaters. After the Oscars, even though the film was already available on DVD, Blu-Ray and VOD, it expanded to 2,000 theaters, and continued to do big business. Neon had dug deep into its pockets to support the film’s release and Oscar campaigns — spending around $5 million on the latter, although the two were sort of inseparable — but it proved well worth it.

QUINN We spent $20 million to get to $54 million [at the U.S. box office], and really, that’s an incredible spend-to-box office ratio. It was a global campaign [the film grossed an additional $209 million elsewhere]. Some of that was the consumer-facing part that affects box-office, but also directly impacts the Academy campaign. So yes, there are very specific sums in there that were screeners, travel to awards shows, etc. But it was a very efficient, targeted spend to deliver what was an historically effective Academy campaign.

Days after the Oscars, President Trump, speaking at a rally, opined: “How bad were the Academy Awards this year? And the winner is … a movie from South Korea? What the hell was that about?” Neon tweeted in response, “Understandable, he can’t read.”

A week after the Oscars, Parasite‘s Korea-based contingent flew home. They were greeted as heroes — hundreds met them at the airport, and President Moon Jae-jin applauded them for “instilling pride and courage in our people” — but also got a taste of the new reality that soon enveloped the whole world.

BONG The Oscars was still dominating primetime news, and I was getting showered with interview requests, but at the same time there were all these new progressions with COVID.

CHOI The coronavirus peaked almost right after, so, very quickly, Parasite became something of the past.

QUINN The irony is everything seemed possible at that moment — except the thing that happened.

COVID, which Trump called “the China virus” and “kung flu,” sparked a surge in hate speech and violence directed at Asians in America.

CHOI When I saw it on the news, I thought it was like a one-off thing that happened, but then I was hearing from people I know that random people on the street would start acting violent around them and saying hateful things to them. It was a cruel reminder of how when something really good happens and you progress, something always manages to pull you back down.

The year after Parasite, due to COVID, the Oscars were held at L.A.’s Union Station, with only the nominees and presenters, and their plus-ones, in attendance. From Korea, Bong, with Choi, presented best director to Chloé Zhao, who was born in China, for Nomadland.

Five Years Later

For the entire Parasite team, the ensuing years have brought news both happy (Song was named by The New York Times as one of the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century, and his daughter, Judy, became an intern at Neon) and sad (Lee Sun-kyun, who played the father of the rich family in the film, died by suicide in 2023 after being accused of drug use). Meanwhile, the Academy has continued to broaden its horizons.

QUINN The floodgates have opened completely. Is Drive My Car possible without Parasite? Is Minari possible without Parasite? Is Yura Borisov being nominated for Anora possible without Parasite?

JOHNSON I never thought it would get to where we are now. I’m overjoyed.

YANG Last year, in every awards category, there was at least one person not from America who was nominated. That was the first time that had ever happened.

Remarkably, a Neon-distributed film has won Cannes’ Palme every year since Parasite; in 2024, the winner was Anora, which is now the favorite to win the best picture Oscar.

This year, on Feb. 7, Parasite was rereleased in Imax. On March 23, the Academy Museum will debut an exhibition about Bong. In between, on March 7, Warner Bros. will release Bong’s first feature since Parasite, Mickey 17 — on which he reunited with an old friend.

CHOI I’d been working on a script of my own, and finished that, but shelved it. It wasn’t ready. Then director Bong hinted that there was this English-language thing coming up and it would be great to work with me on it. Obviously I made sure to let him know that I’d always be down for any filmmaking thing that he has going on. When director Bong received the manuscript [of the Edward Ashton novel on which the film is based], it was in English, so I translated that to Korean so that he could read the novel in Korean. He wrote a Korean screenplay based on that, and I translated that into English. Once pre-production started, I was in London with him going to meetings and discussions with the crew and getting the movie ready. On set with the actors and crew, I was interpreting for director Bong. Then I was with director Bong for the entirety of post-production, ’cause someone had to make sure the English was there. With ADR there was still more work with non-Korean crew and actors. So I was pretty much on this project from day one to now, as we’re promoting the film. I was obviously grateful and excited about the Parasite campaign and doing that with him, but this was really what I wanted to do — to be in his filmmaking world.

BONG Nothing about how I worked on Mickey 17 was different than how I worked on Parasite. On the outside, Mickey 17 seems completely different — it’s a different genre, you have Robert Pattinson dangling from a spaceship, it’s a sci-fi film — but essentially it’s a story about humanity.

Meanwhile, the second Trump administration is cracking down on “DEI” initiatives like the one that led the Academy to diversify itself, paving the way for Parasite‘s historic showing at the Oscars.

But across the Pacific, over in Korea, several Oscar statuettes serve as a reminder that things once were — and might one day again be — better.

BONG The international feature award is safe and sound in the Barunson [Parasite‘s production company’s] office. And the writing, directing and best picture awards that I received are in a display case between my kitchen and living room. I pass by it, and sometimes it still feels unreal that they’re there and this is what life has given me.

This story appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Don’t miss Scott Feinberg’s past Oscar Issue oral histories: “They Got the Wrong Envelope!”: The Oral History of Oscar’s Epic Best Picture Fiasco (2018); “Harvey Always Wanted More”: Weinstein, Spielberg and the Oral History of the Nastiest Oscar Campaign Ever (2019); ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and Its Unprecedented Oscar Run in 1992: “It Was a Giant Moment for Everyone” (2022); An Oral History of the Epic ‘Titanic’ Oscars at 25 (2023); and ‘Schindler’s List’: An Oral History of a Masterpiece (2024).