This year’s Cannes Film Festival boasted new films by marketable auteurs Quentin Tarantino and Terrence Malick, but it was Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite that took the prestigious festival’s top prize. The decision was unanimous, and now, months later, critics and audiences alike agree.

Parasite, which centers on two families on opposite ends of the economic scale whose lives become intertwined, melds Bong’s trademark talent for defying genre categorization and his cutting examinations of capitalism into a film that will take your breath away. That it’s at the center of a storm of awards season buzz — it is the first Korean film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and is shaping up to be a major Oscars contender — feels like long overdue recognition for the filmmaker.

Bong, whose past work includes monster movie The Host (which became the highest-grossing South Korean film at the time of its release) and murder mystery Memories of Murder (now back in the news as the real-life case that inspired it has apparently finally been closed), seems surprisingly calm about it all. Where does he keep his Palme, now? “It’s in a spot where you can see it from the kitchen and from the living room,” he says, raising his arms to make his next point. “It’s displayed in a way that makes it seem very insignificant; it’s not on a pedestal, like, ‘Ahhh!’ It’s just — plop — there. Like this.” Reaching forward, he gently bats at the potted succulent on the table between us, almost knocking it over.

With Parasite now finally seeing its North American release, he’s poised to have audiences just as helpless in his hands. In an interview with Polygon, the director discussed his filmmaking process, as well as putting together the perfect cast, past traumas bubbling to the surface, and “big brother” Martin Scorsese.

[Ed. note: Major spoilers for Parasite follow.]

You previously expressed some nervousness that certain details of Parasite wouldn’t translate for a non-Korean audience. Do you still feel that way?

I think I exaggerated my worries at the time. I said that at a press conference right before the team and I left for Cannes, and reporters were already asking, “Don’t you think the film will win a prize? It’ll probably win!” [Laughs] Of those reporters, half would be attending Cannes, but half wouldn’t be able to go; those people would have to wait a long time, until after everyone had seen it and we’d returned to Korea and started screening it, and I felt sympathetic towards them for having to wait so long. I said that the movie had to be seen by Korean people, in Korea, to get the real, 100% experience as a sort of balm; that was the context.

I noticed that some details, KaTalk and jjappaguri, are translated to English as WhatsApp and “ram-don;” how much oversight did you have on the translation?

I’ve worked with [translator] Darcy Paquet on almost all of my movies. He’s an American living in Korea, he created a website on Korean film, he’s a cinephile when it comes to Korean films, and he’s married to a Korean woman. It’s a combination of a Korean who can speak really good English and an American who can speak Korean really well, and because they work together so well, I’ve always received wonderful, high-quality subtitles.

In this case, with Parasite, there were a lot of particularly difficult things. Jjappaguri, Taiwanese castella cakes, flicking stink bugs, a specific kind of cave cricket; there were a lot of difficulties. But Darcy did an amazing job, whether it was calling jjappaguri “ram-don” or equating the Seoul National University documents with Oxford [for relative scale]. Over a long period of time, we both very patiently and carefully would look at the context, too, like, “In this dialogue, the thing that’s important is getting across the sense that these people are really rich and the scale of their house, so …” I would sit next to him and keep pointing out this stuff, and Darcy would tell me what he was thinking as well. The subtitles took a lot of work.

Speaking of translation, I’m curious about the line in Okja that’s deliberately mistranslated. When Steven Yeun’s character is introducing himself—

—“My name is Goo Soon-bum!” [Ed. note: “Soon-bum” is an old-fashioned, “dumb” name.] It’s just such a weird, not really funny instance of offbeat humor; it’s unfunny and corny in a very Korean way. But if you translate it directly, I thought it would just be even less funny, so I appealed to my co-writer, Jon Ronson, because I knew we’d have to do something different. We could just put some other instance of offbeat humor in there. So the subtitle is, “Try learning English. It opens new doors.” And then he opens a door and jumps out of it. I mean, that’s not that funny, either. Anyway, I thought there was no other way except to make them totally different.

Lee Jung-eun, who plays the housekeeper in Parasite, also appears for a second in Okja, and I recently discovered she provided Okja’s voice, too.

Actually, I’ve worked with her three times, including Parasite. The first time was Mother. She was in a small supporting role. After the young woman dies, at her funeral, [Lee] is one of the women who gets into a fight with Kim Hye-ja. She’s such a great actress. I first saw her in a musical in which she was playing a big role, and she sang so well, her voice was like magic. Her voice goes to a hundred.

That’s why I asked her to do Okja’s voice, but making pig noises is very hard. You have to breathe in, not out. [Demonstrates a pig snort] You have to do it like this. And she had to express so much emotion like that! It was very tiring. I would feel bad if only her voice appeared in the movie, so I thought, “Let’s have her face on-screen, too.” So she’s in the scene when Okja is rampaging through the underground mall, as a woman in a wheelchair. She’s looking at — and being shocked by — herself.

I understand Park Myung-hoon, who plays her husband, comes from a musical theatre background as well.

Not just musicals; he’s done a lot of theatre in general. I actually never saw him on stage. Around the same time that Okja came out, an independent movie called Ash Flower came out. In that movie, he played a big supporting role as a character who was drunk for pretty much the entire two-hour runtime. But in each scene, the way he was drunk felt different. This way, that way — but always drunk. He was so good; I thought, “Man, that actor is great.” And I ended up getting him for this movie.

You’ve worked with Song Kang-ho so many times at this point. I think the story of how you met is familiar with Korean audiences, but maybe not to American audiences. You were an assistant director at the time.

Yeah, it was when I was a first AD. It was 1997, and at the time, he was not so famous. He had done some supporting roles, and it was still when he had to go and audition for parts. It was really right before he got famous. He exploded with this movie called No. 3, and it was right before that. Lee Chang-dong — who made Burning — had cast him in a movie called Green Fish, where he played a supporting role as a gangster, and he was so good and realistic that, in the Korean film industry, this rumor started going around that Lee Chang-dong had cast a real gangster. Of course, that wasn’t the case; he was just an actor. But he was so convincing that people believed he was a real gangster.

I was so overwhelmed by that performance that, while I was a first AD, our director didn’t really know who Song Kang-ho was and didn’t care, but I lied and contacted Song, saying that the director was interested and if he would come meet with us. We didn’t audition him or ask him to read dialogue or anything, he just came by and I made him coffee, and just talked. I was so curious about what kind of person he was. That was the first time we met. Right after that, he did No. 3 and became very famous, then with The Foul King and Joint Security Area. He became one of the top stars.

As for me, I’d made Barking Dogs Never Bite, which was a total box office disaster. For my second movie, Memories of Murder, I thought, “I’d really love to work with Song Kang-ho,” but my debut had been a disaster. I thought I was about to get chased out of the industry, and he was a star. But he remembered that meeting fondly.

Do you two hang out even outside of working?

In the old days, we’d hang out and drink a lot, but now we’re older and in our 50s, we don’t drink as much. [Long pause] Well, we don’t really drink any less. But it’s not like the old days. That said, I think, in the scene, and with the cameras, that’s the best time.

You’re known for storyboarding all of your movies, and I know you used to do cartoons for your school newspaper. I’m curious how you got into doing that.

There were times when I thought I wanted to be a cartoonist. If I weren’t a film director, I think cartoons would have been a good alternative. But I never properly studied drawing, so my drawings are strange. But when I’m prepping films, it’s good preparation — and comforting to me — to do the storyboards. It’s fun, too, like drawing a whole comic.

Do you the storyboards while you’re writing the scripts, or does it come one after the other?

One after the other. Actually, like any other writer-director, when directors write a script, maybe they already have the image and sound in their brain, and then we express it by words. It’s already there, in the brain. But the format is a script, and you have to give it to the actors and to the studio, so you have to put it into words. You still think of it in scenes. I guess it might be different for writers who don’t direct. I’m sure they also already have the images and sounds, but I think you could also think of it as, “Well, I’ve written it, and they’ll take care of shooting it.”

You’ve said you like to write in public spaces; do you often get recognized when you’re out?

They’re very quiet coffee shops, and there are some positions in which it’s easier to write. Somewhere there’s an outlet, and you can keep your back to people. I’ll write for about two hours and then get up and walk with my iPad to the next coffee shop, about 10 minutes away. When you walk, you get a little fresh air, and I’ve heard moving around is good for you while writing. When you write in an office or at home, you end up sleeping. You can’t sleep at a cafe since you can’t lie down. I think that’s good, and it’s become a habit. I wrote Parasite half in Seoul and half in Vancouver.

My son was there, so I was there for family reasons. All in all, I wrote for about four months. Even though I was only in Vancouver for four weeks, I wrote a lot of it — the ending, and a lot of the important story beats — there.

You mentioned having the sound in your head as well. Jung Jae-il’s score for Parasite is so wonderful. Was that always what you imagined?

Directors, production designers, actors, you all have to communicate. “Control” isn’t a great word for it, but the thing that’s hardest to control is the music. It’s a very different art, and it’s not like I can write the music, myself. Clint Eastwood and John Carpenter, they do their own scores sometimes. But music, whatever I think of or want in my head, it’s very hard to communicate that out loud. It’s fine to use temp music, but you can’t ask someone to just copy that. Composers and musicians all have their own opinions, too.

Jung Jae-il is a good friend of mine, and the thing I’m grateful for is that he tries so hard to give me what I want. There’s a track called “The Belt of Faith” that’s about 8 minutes. It’s the biggest piece of the score, and has to encompass a lot of scenes; it has to change scene-to-scene to match the emotions. We went over that dozens of times. Around that time, I was afraid Jung Jae-il would never work with me again because he’d suffered so much for this piece of the score. I’d go to him with a script and he’d chase me out. But I was very grateful.

Where did the idea come from to use the scholar’s rock? There were a bunch of them around my grandfather’s apartment but I never really got what they were.

My dad used to collect them, too. He quit doing it because they were so heavy. We’d go to mountains looking for these scholar’s rocks, basically just picking up rocks. It’s a weird thing. I’m 50, and there’s no one in my generation — my colleagues, my friends — who collects these things anymore. Rocks? Why?

In the movie, that this young guy is giving it as a gift is a strange thing. The vibe in the movie is strange, too, with him saying it’s symbolic. I can’t let anyone unfamiliar with scholar’s rocks pass it over, I have to create that odd mood. For actors and directors, I think that’s a big feat. [Laughs] Even though I’m the one who said it, I know it sounds weird. But, for foreigners seeing this stuff, thinking, “That’s weird, why is that in there? Does that have to be there? Is it a symbol?” Well, the actor outright says it’s a symbol, so it’s even weirder. “So maybe it’s not a symbol?”

At the beginning, it’s supposedly metaphorical, and then by the end, it’s a literal weapon used to smash in somebody’s head. I think the rock brings an extra layer to the story. It feels like this cursed object, and it ends up being covered in blood. It tells the whole story of all of these horrible events. I don’t remember why I thought of it at first, but that’s how it ended up.

And why peaches?

When I was in college, I went on this training trip — just going to drink, really — and one of my friends said he was severely allergic to peaches. I thought he was kidding. And then some other kid went to a nearby grocery store and tossed it at him as a joke. Even though it didn’t hit him directly, he turned bright red and had an attack. It was a really traumatic event. Those kinds of memories always bubble up when you’re writing a script. Peaches are so pretty to look at, but you can attack someone with them. I felt that was very cinematic.

Lee Sun-kyun’s character is part of an IT company and is seen working with some VR technology; is that something that interests you at all?

The production company that made Parasite is also involved with a lot of VR. The CEO is someone I know very well; he’s very quirky, and does a lot of stuff with VR. I don’t have any interest in VR or 3D. I’m more interested in IMAX. I think it’s more cinematic, I guess.

Have you ever planned to shoot any of your films in IMAX?

I want to, and particularly film IMAX. The two movies I’m working on now aren’t really the right scale for IMAX, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to do it.

And of the two projects you’re working on, I know one is an English-language film. Are you working on the script, yourself, or working with a partner as you did with Okja and Snowpiercer?

I wrote both of those scripts in Korean, and then added an American writer to help polish them. I think it’ll be like that, but we’re in early stages so I haven’t properly started writing yet. I’m more working on research and the synopsis.

In an interview, you said you have regrets on every film you’ve done; what could you possibly regret about what you’ve made?

There’s a lot, but it’s a secret. I’m very cruel to my own films. Even with Parasite, I watched it again the other day, and kept thinking, “Why did I do that that way?” I keep discovering new things wrong with it. I think all directors do that. But once it’s done, it’s done. It’s not like I’m going to roll out a new version every year.

Do you often rewatch your work?

I get curious about audience reactions, so that’s how I’ll end up rewatching my work. Cannes was the world premiere, so I was definitely curious, then. I watched it again at Toronto, and again yesterday for the New York Film Festival. But, again, I keep seeing things I could have done differently each time.

What kind of movies do you like to watch?

I really want to see The Irishman. I’ve heard it’s big brother Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece. But I really can’t find the time. The promotion schedule is so tight, there’s no opportunity to see a three and a half-hour movie. But I really want to see it.

Have you met Scorsese before?

In 2017, right before Okja’s New York premiere, I had the chance to go to his office, which is in the DGA building. There’s a lovely screening room there, too, with film prints that he’s collected. I talked to him for about an hour. There’s no movie he hasn’t seen, even Korean films. We talked about what he’s seen and his past work. It was a glorious day. I’ve loved his work since I was in college. Who doesn’t? Anyone involved with movies must feel the same way.

Was there one movie that really impacted you when you were younger?

Hitchcock’s movie were big for me, but I think the experience I had that was almost close to traumatic was with this French movie, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear. It’s in the Criterion collection, now, as it’s a pretty famous movie. It’s the kind of film that will put you in a cold sweat. You can only feel anxious while you’re watching it. I was in elementary school when I saw it on TV, and I was so overwhelmed that it kept appearing in my dreams. I couldn’t escape it for about a week. It was the first time I was so taken by a movie.