April 22, 2008

Here Mirage Man Comes To Save The Day

Vulture has an interview with Marko Zaror today. He's Chile's first and only martial arts movie star. His first film, Kiltro, seems to be based on the ancient martial art of slapping dudes in the face and yelling. Actually, the trailer is just insane. VH1 could have saved a lot of money by stopping production on Viva Hollywood! and just broadcasting Kiltro on a loop.

Anyhow, he switches it up in his new movie Mirage Man and highlights the ancient martial tradition of cutting some eye holes into blue pantyhose and becoming a home-made superhero. Mirage Man is a cult phenomenon in Chile. But it wasn't always that way:

VULTURE: Did people in Chile think you were crazy for doing this?
MARKO ZAROR: Everybody. You can see a little bit of the spirit of my country in Mirage Man in the way they put down the superhero, saying "Oh, you're a clown, you're a creep." They were really like that to us. In Chile, when you do something new, everyone's first reaction is to put you down. You really need to make it big for them to recognize you. First, the whole world has to say you're the best and then my country will say, "Okay, maybe you are awesome."

I should move to Chile. Clearly their culture is more reflective of my world view, which is that you are a clown and a creep until proven otherwise.

Here's the Mirage Man trailer. It doesn't have any subtitles, but if you need subtitles to recognize this is great, you should go back to Figuring Out What's Great School.