Production
According to historical records, after the death of his Mongolian-born queen, Noguk, King Gongmin descended into a life of homosexual debauchery, hiring a team of handsome male bodyguards of noble birth to serve in the palace in 1372. When one of the bodyguards made King Gongmin’s second wife pregnant, Gongmin tried to kill him to quell the scandal, but was killed by the bodyguard’s friends instead. But some historians disagree with this account, insisting that Gongmin was slandered in an attempt to justify the founding of the Joseon Dynasty, and that the youths were just bodyguards.
A Frozen Flower takes its title from a song of that era which described the sexual relationships between men and women. It is the fifth feature film by director Yoo Ha, who wanted to make a change from his previous works by doing a historical film, saying, "I always felt uncomfortable with the genre but I felt I should try to overcome those feelings. It is also a new challenge for me to focus on a melodrama." He also stated that the film was "a love story between men."
Jo In-sung was on board from the beginning of the project, and turned down other acting roles to make A Frozen Flower his last work before enlisting for military service. He chose to appear in the film without knowing the exact details, having faith in the director following their earlier collaboration in 2005 on A Dirty Carnival. Jo began training for the role in August 2007, learning martial arts, fencing, horse riding and geomungo. The casting of Joo Jin-mo as the king was announced in December 2007.
The budget for A Frozen Flower was $10 million, and the film went into production on 16 April 2008. It was the first film to shoot at the newly built Jeonju Cinema Studio.
Read more about this topic: Frozen Flower
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)