Miami Connection
Only through the elimination of violence can we achieve world peace.
We don’t have too strict a curatorial ethos at Leith Kino (something that those of you who attended last week’s screening of Freaks (1932) and endured the tonal handbrake turn from Charlie’s thoughtful introduction of a complex ‘disability horror’ film to the pyrotechnics of the neon-drenched, Taekwondo-filled trailer for Miami Connection are likely to agree with). Most of our choices relate to the two-pronged desire to support a space for regular communal film viewing in Leith and to show films that are ‘under-seen, undervalued, or underappreciated’.
There are many reasons why a film may fall into this latter category and we’ve tried to explore these in film choices so far by showing films which previously failed to gain traction due to distribution hurdles, a focus on marginalised communities, or simply being an uncomfortable fit for more conventional exhibition spaces. I’m personally very interested in these cultural processes and the possibilities of ‘taste’: what makes a film ‘good’ and ‘valuable’ within a reception context at any particular time, and worthless in others?
“What makes a film good?” is likely to be on your mind throughout the 83 minutes of Miami Connection. It’s certainly not the alien and poorly delivered dialogue. It’s not the horrendous acting. It’s not the nonsensical plot(s) that only become remotely understandable after 30 minutes of Taekwondo action. To be honest, you may be inclined to agree with those North American film distributors who were approached to help release the film in 1987:
“This is trash. Don’t waste your time”, they said.
Perhaps you’ll take the somehow even more dismissive view of the Cannes Film Festival 1987 selection committee (admittedly a lofty goal for this production):
“It isn’t a movie”.
Or you might surprise yourself and find agreement with Christopher J Olson’s reading of the film as “a genuine piece of outsider art”; or share Anora director Sean Baker’s fondness for this “brilliant”, “incredible” film in which “every frame has something wrong with it in a beautiful way”.
Either way, you’re just going to have to come down to Leith Kino on Sunday 22nd February to find out! (But be quick, only 6 tickets left at the time of posting this!)
Miami Connection tells the story of Dragon Sound, a pop-rock band of college-student, Taekwondo-practising orphans who are under threat from a biker gang and a group of cocaine-dealing ninjas from Miami. (Despite the name, almost all of Miami Connection takes place in Orlando).
It’s a film working with many influences. Some broader elements are clearly a result of the late 1970s and 1980s popularity of Hong Kong kung fu films at the US box office or the rising trend of ninja iconography in American film and TV. But most are much more specific to its writer, co-director, and star Young-kun Kim, a Korean grandmaster of Taekwondo who emigrated to Florida in 1978 and quickly set up a successful franchise of martial arts gyms.
Kim was seen on a South Korean talk show by filmmaker Richard Park (of such famous films as My Name is ‘Twin Legs’ [1982}, Shaolin: The Blood Mission [1984], and Chinatown 2 [1993]) who immediately reached out to suggest they collaborate on a film together. Kim was keen on the idea. He saw it as a way to put Orlando – a city he loved, and one which loved him back – on the map, and raised over $1 million from friends, students, and his own business to produce the film. Production took 6 weeks and it was mostly an illegal affair, the local sheriff’s department letting it slide out of genuine admiration for Kim. Real independent filmmaking!
Taking into account the speed of production, and the lack of experience in its cast and crew, it’s amazing some elements turned out as well as they did. The music – songs like “Friends” and “Against the Ninja” – is legitimately fantastic. Its songs were written in a matter of days by Angelo Janotti and Kathy Collier (who play Tom and Jane in the film and were engaged in real life at the time) using lyrics supplied to them by the filmmakers.
It’s also a rare example of a North American film from the 1980s exploring the Korean diaspora – not just through Taekwondo but in side characters and filming locations. As a genre of film, martial arts action in North American production was much more often a product of Hong Kong expats or white filmmakers who were aping from Asian productions so this is a valuable outlier.
Some, like Douglas Laman of Collider, have even suggested that the quirks of Miami Connection that on first watch confound the viewer were actually amazingly forward-looking for their time. The smorgasbord of genre things going on in the film – from martial arts hyper-violence to rock opera music, from comedic interludes to emotionally fraught scenes, even the cartoonish image of bike-riding ninjas – is seen by Laman as much closer to the recent Everything Everywhere All at Once than the stricter genre boundaries of its contemporaries like The Terminator.
Despite all these attributes, and despite the goodwill that carried Miami Connection to completion, its premiere screening was disastrous. Not only did audiences hate the film but Kim himself was appalled by its gratuitous violence. So upset was he that Kim used all his remaining money to buy out Park’s share and re-edit, re-dub, re-shoot the ending, in the hopes of weaving a bizarre pacifist philosophy into this bloody action film. This new version played at 7 Orlando cinemas but fared no better with audiences and critics. Considered lost for nearly 25 years, Miami Connection only resurfaced when Zac Carlson, programmer at the Alamo Drafthouse in Texas bought a copy of the film for around $50 on eBay. After a rapturous response at his cinema, Carlson persuaded Kim to let them distribute the film (after multiple attempts to convince him it wasn’t a prank) and it began a second life on the midnight movie circuit.
To return to the question of “What makes a film good?”. For me, Miami Connection’s greatest strength emerges from all of its “bad” qualities. Kim was sincerely grateful to his community when he made the film: to his friends, students, the local sheriff department, anyone who supported the production. This sincerity is absolutely palpable in the film. While it’s “bad” qualities certainly make for a “bad” film, by conventional standards, they also reveal cracks in the artifice of filmmaking which let this genuine warmth between cast members and their city shine through. It’s hard to leave a viewing of Miami Connection without a legitimate sense of hope in the power of friendship (and rock n roll and Taekwondo). Something we all need right now.
Miami Connection screens at Leith Kino on Sunday 22nd March. Final tickets available here.
(Lots of information here was from two books: David Morton’s Motion Picture Paradise: A History of Florida’s Film and Television Industry and Christopher J Olsen’s 100 Greatest Cult Films)