frodolagging⁷⁼¹ ARIRANG

Director Bao Nguyen and coproducer Jane Cha Cutler talk to Vanity Fair about the making of their new documentary, BTS: The Return. A thread 1. Vanity Fair: Can you tell me a bit about how this documentary came about? Why did you decide to make a documentary about BTS? Bao Nguyen: I went to go see BTS at one of their SoFi [Stadium] shows. I love live music, but that was the loudest concert I’ve ever been to, and just feeling the energy of the group onstage was something that was really inspiring to me. If you go to a BTS concert, you know that they can really bring the crowd in in an intimate way through their dialogue with the fans. When they were having one of these conversations with the fans and talking about going on hiatus soon, it reminded me of the Homeric myth of The Odyssey—BTS being Odysseus about to go into the military, and ARMY being Penelope, longing for their heroes. So that just made me think this could be an amazing film. I talked to Hybe about that. It didn’t work out at that time, because military service is very private and secretive, as it should be. It was a few years later, when they came out of the military, that James Shin [president of film and television at Hybe America] reached out to me and told me, “Remember when you pitched me this idea of BTS being The Odyssey? Well, they’re back, and we’d totally be interested in working with you.” He was in talks with This Machine and Jane [Cha Cutler], and Jane and I had been developing a project in the past for a while that didn’t work out. So I jumped at the opportunity to work with Jane.