Legendary film producer Charoen Iam-Phungphorn, whose Five Star Studio has been one of Thailand's leading movie studios for 40 years, died yesterday morning from complications of a lung infection. He was 62.
The funeral rite takes place at Wat Thatthong.
Charoen was a respected figure in the Thai film community known for his frank, instinctive decision-making style that resulted in a lot of commercial hits and, in the past 15 years, arthouse titles that were screened internationally.
Besides film-making, which he ran from his office in Rama IX, he also owned a top-end massage parlour called Plaza in Makkasan.
Charoen's brother, Kiat, founded Five Star Entertainment in 1973. When Kiat unexpectedly died in 1981, Charoen was left in charge of the operation. In the 1970s and '80s, the logo of five golden stars spinning around a blue globe was seen as often in Thai theatres as the rotating earth of Universal Pictures or the circling stars on snow-capped peak of Paramount. Five Star was then known for a mix of flicks with mass appeal and its willingness to work with up-and-coming directors.
Under his watch, the studio produced some of the lasting gems of Thai cinema, including a drug-addict drama Nampu and a coming-of-age film set in the Muslim South Peesua And Dok Mai (Butterflies And Flowers). In the late 1980s, he worked with director Bandit Rittakol on the famous comedy franchise Boonchoo , about a bumbling country boy who comes to study in Bangkok, which became one of the company's most successful films.
In the late 1990s, Five Star surprised many by being the studio that championed two mavericks, Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Wisit Sasanatieng, who would go on to become leading film-makers with international reputations. Charoen funded Pen-ek's first film, Fun, Bar Karaoke , in 1997, as well as six more films by the director.
Wisit also made his first film, the 2000 post-modern Thai cowboy flick Fah Talai Jone (Tears of the Black Tiger ) with Five Star.
Both directors had been pitching their scripts to other studios before Charoen took them in.
Charoen was an old-school Chinese business owner who relied more on intuition than balance sheets.
Deals were often done in man-to-man verbal promises: once, he even bet a certain well-known director a brand new BMW if he could wrap the film within budget (he didn't).
For the past eight years, Apiradee Iam-Phungphorn, Charoen's niece, had been his right-hand woman in the studio.
In an interview with the Bangkok Post many years ago, Charoen said:
I still believe that a good movie must come from a script, and to spot a good script remains the most essential part.
"That's what Five Star will continue to do. That _ and many things else."
