Learning to Connect with MIAMI CONNECTION

If you’re at least a casual consumer of movie discourse, you’ve no doubt seen or heard of the legendary “worst movie ever made”, The Room. The film premiered in 2003, then was followed in 2013 by a behind-the-scenes account penned into a very popular book, and in 2017 that book was adapted into an Academy Award nominated movie. All the while, midnight screenings filled with devoted spoon-flinging fans appeared in niche theaters in every major city, and the mastermind behind the supposed “worst movie ever” gleefully toured the country, meeting countless fans and no doubt making tons of money. 

The story of The Room sounds unbelievable. It has to be a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly, right? Well, not exactly. The Room essentially followed in the same footsteps as Plan 9 From Outer Space - a 1959 film that long held the title of “worst movie ever” while it steadily built a cult following through late-night TV reruns. It was later showcased and honored by the 1994 Academy Award winning film Ed Wood. Sounds pretty familiar.

If you think about it, there has long been a deep love and admiration for such “bad” films. Look no further than Mystery Science Theater 3000. Since the 1980s, MST3K has spawned over 200 episodes dedicated to lampooning the “worst” movies of all time, like Manos: The Hands of Fate and This Island Earth. The truth is that we as a movie-going audience absolutely love this stuff. It’s undeniable at this point. It’s no wonder why I jumped at the chance to bring Miami Connection, the action equivalent of The Room, for the viewing pleasure of my unsuspecting Movie Club friends. For the uninitiated, Miami Connection is a 1987 martial arts film that combines classic 1980s elements of biker gangs, rock bands, ninjas, cocaine, and having adventures with your best bro friends. In this case, the friends are actually a family of unrelated orphans. The main plot centers on a Romeo and Juliet romance between one of the orphan brothers and the leader of a drug-dealing biker gang’s sister. Of course, the two groups don’t get along, so the gang repeatedly harasses the orphan brothers. Luckily for our protagonist family, one of them is a badass taekwondo black belt and he’s taught his brothers how to fight. This dude is played by Y.K. Kim, the director and visionary behind Miami Connection, who is like 20 years older than everyone else and still in the process of mastering the English language. Oh, and there’s also a subplot that involves one of the orphaned brothers reuniting with his real father. Yeah...there’s a lot to unpack. But instead of nitpicking all of the laughably insane fragments of this movie’s existence, I want to focus on the larger question above us - why do we like “bad” movies? How can something be bad if we genuinely experience something positive from it? What can Miami Connection teach us about this contradictory phenomenon?

Let’s start at the absolute earliest point of our introduction to the movie: the title. Apart from the first seven-ish minutes of the movie, none of Miami Connection actually takes place in Miami. Instead, we follow our intrepid band of heroes (a literal band of heroes) as they go to college, eat Korean food, play gigs at the local club, scope out babes at the beach, and kick some motorcycle-ninja drug trafficker ass up and down the streets of Orlando.

Orlando? The land of Sea-World, Disney, and putt-putt golfing? Yes, long before The Book of Mormon lovingly ridiculed the family-friendly central Floridian tourist destination, a 40-year old Korean-born taekwondo instructor named Y.K. Kim composed his own ode to Orlando, unseen to the world until writer and producer Zack Carlson brought Miami Connection forth from film purgatory. For some background, Kim is much more than the sleeveless, high-kicking caretaker of his adopted family we see in the film. Kim was a major figure in the Orlando community, where his chain of successful martial arts schools granted him enough financial and social capital to finance his own film and recruit locals to play parts. According to IMDB trivia, Kim’s local fame allowed him to film in locations around Orlando without requiring any permits! It seems that Kim’s popularity has risen since the late ‘80s, likely thanks to the re-release of Miami Connection. I mean, how many other people in this world can say that former *NSYNC member and Robot Chicken voice actor Joey Fatone blurbed about their most recent book? 

Upon viewing the first cut of Miami Connection, Y. K. Kim regarded it as “garbage”. He says of the early cut that it didn’t connect; “the picture is connected but it’s not connected!”. Some of you are probably chuckling to yourselves, “it’s still garbage yuk yuk yuk!” Okay, that’s fair. Please understand, though, that Movie Club isn’t about tearing down films. There are other great mediums in which you can get your kicks by making fun of bad movies. Instead, Movie Club aims to explore the movies we watch. We introduce each movie via an elaborate presentation, explaining its significance in cinema history while also explaining its significance to our personal lives. There’s an intimacy to our club proceedings. Yes, we all love film as an artform, but above that we all have a fondness for sharing our favorite flicks with our friends. To borrow Y.K. Kim’s phrasing - it’s about connection; a connection between us and film, and a connection between us as film lovers. As such, I could think of no better Movie Club film to kick off our “Clips”. For while the city of Miami is downplayed to the point of nonexistence in Miami Connection, “connection” is baked into the film’s DNA. 

Take, for instance, Kim’s personal connection to Orlando. Upon initial release of Miami Connection, Kim pounded the pavement to promote the film by hanging posters, shaking hands, and signing thousands of autographs. Also take into account the fact that Miami Connection’s cast is comprised almost entirely of Kim’s martial arts students, who stuck around for reshoots after the supposedly “garbage” first cut, and some of whom gradually took on more responsibility when the film needed help (costar Joe Diamand started as a stuntman before taking on producing and writing roles). But the kind of connection I really want to talk about is a bit more abstract. 

Joe Diamand getting a taste of Y.K. Kim’s taekwondo

Films like Miami Connection are amazing for the same reason that most people might say they are horrible - we can see the work. I’m talking about imperfect line delivery, sloppy cuts, bad ADR, questionable story decisions (why make 40-year old Y.K. Kim an adopted sibling of a bunch of young 20-somethings?) --- you know, all of the telltale signs of an amateur film crew with absolutely no experience or training in making film. But the beauty of the whole thing? They DID IT! They finished a feature length film despite having little more than a dream, a collection of taekwondo experts, and carte blanche filming permission from the city. As my favorite critic Film Crit Hulk writes about on many, many occasions - every single shot, scene, and sequence that makes it into a film is a damn miracle. I don’t care if Miami Connection or other films like it get mocked relentlessly, the fact that this film was actually finished and brought before our eyes is, in my opinion, an achievement worthy of our respect. Not only that, I think we can learn a lot from films like Miami Connection! 

Like I said, we can see Kim and his crew working, because it’s hard for them. They’re not good at this! But neither am I; most likely, neither are you. As much as I love watching INSERT YOUR FAVORITE AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR HERE’s work, such polished craftsmanship makes movie-making feel like unattainable magic. And that’s not a bad thing! I’ve been getting that sense of awe and wonder at films since my childhood, and I hope it continues for the rest of my life. My goal is to live out my elder years like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, watching movies and eating takeout every night with my best bud. But low-budget B movies offer wonderment in a different way. When we see the puppet strings in the production (sometimes literally) it reminds us that movies aren’t magic. They’re really, really hard work done by hundreds of hardworking people! And when a movie ends up like Bart’s soapbox car Li’l Lightnin’, it may not have achieved surface-level beauty, but there’s beauty in its very creation; beauty in the back-breaking and pride-crushing sinkhole that is filmmaking (especially without a big budget). To willingly take on such labor, as Y.K. Kim and his cast did, either comes from madness or an intense need to say something; to connect to the world.

And yes, as with all things in a profit-driven industry, there’s a swath of B movies that are intentionally made to make a quick buck, to wit: Roger Corman’s prolific filmography. I love those films too, but that’s a separate thing. I’m talking about auteurs within the B movie genre, and I don’t think it’s a step too far to say that Y.K. Kim is an auteur. He used Miami Connection as a way to promote his personal ideals, which largely come from martial arts. As he says in the film:

“[Taekwondo] is a way of life. It makes Dragon Sound stick together. To be strong and gentle...taekwondo is best!”

This belief is at the heart of the movie. Now, whether or not Kim’s message connected with audiences is arguable, but what certainly did connect was the effort. Yes, theaters might fill with people who love to make fun of Miami Connection, but I believe that underneath the laughter is a sense of respect. It’s the same reason we rewatch Dolemite, The Room, Plan 9, Repo!, and so many other “so bad they’re good” movies. Deep down, we all respect a big swing, even when it’s a big miss. We’ve all been there, or at least we’ve all thought about what it would be like to take a big swing if we weren’t too afraid to do it. These films are great because we see ourselves in them; not in the characters, but behind the scenes in the director’s chair and in the writers’ room. When we laugh at the absurdity of this film’s existence, we laugh not just because of poor acting or odd plot choices, we laugh because we empathize with Kim and his crew for trying and failing on so many levels, as we’ve surely done many times in our lives. But when the movie lands, like in the genuinely riveting action sequences and the totally fun concert shots (“Friends” and “Against the Ninja” are actual bangers, don’t deny it), we laugh even harder! We can empathize with those rare moments in our lives when we took a big swing and it totally paid off. There’s almost no greater feeling in the world.

Dragon Sound reunited for one night only at Fantastic Fest 2012!

All of this is invisible to us in big studio films. Yes, studios can swing big and miss (Costner’s Waterworld, for example) but when they do it’s harder to empathize. There’s so much power and money woven into their films, and rarely is there a recognizable voice or persona behind the scenes with whom we can relate. The empathy-driven connection between audience and filmmakers - not the film itself or characters within - happens most frequently with low-budget/indie/auteur works, especially in the ones we call “bad” because so much of our lives are spent worrying about failure, worrying about people laughing at us. Films like Miami Connection remind us that failure is a natural part of life, particularly when you push the bounds of what you thought you were capable of. And yeah, people are going to laugh, some in a mean way. But most laugh because they feel the failed attempts in their own lives, and what better way to conquer that pain and fear than to laugh at it? 

Some of us have had our own Miami Connection in our past. Some of us haven’t, probably because we’ve been too afraid to take the plunge. This is my first published essay, and it’s launching on a brand new site with my friends’ brand new podcast, and all of this could bomb super hard within a year. It’s a big swing, and we don’t know how it’s going to go. But we at Movie Club came together because we love bonding over movies, and I’m sure there’s more people out there like us. Like Y.K. Kim with Miami Connection, we’re looking to connect, and we’re putting ourselves out there in order to do it. If you love exploring films of all kinds, from all places and times, and you don’t mind putting up with our templated website, our cheap audio equipment, and our lack of experience - let’s stick together.

“To be empathetic and analytical...Movie Club is best! ”

<3 MC Chris