Episode 76: Rain Falls on Everyone (feat. Kelly)
I’m joined in this episode by Kelly, who you may remember as the Kinki Kids fan from Episode 63 (“Fantastipo and a visit to the Daddy Ranch”). For this episode, we took a look back at Rain’s Hollywood double header: Speed Racer (2008) and Ninja Assassin (2009).
All I remembered of either was the terrible reviews they received when they were released—not to mention the stink of box office flop—so imagine my surprise when I discovered that Speed Racer is now considered…great! A masterpiece! The greatest movie of all time! And Ninja Assassin has found a niche among film fans as a cult classic specifically for Rain’s martial arts performance.
The impetus for the episode came while I was working on my BigBang series. I was looking back at Rain’s incredible run in the American media back in the mid-2000s and lamenting the fact that this era has essentially been erased in the current K-Pop narrative.
For those of you too young (or just not tuned into pop culture) to have witnessed it first hand, here’s a quick recap:
January 2006, Rain holds a concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The concert got a big write-up in the New York Times:
The performances at the Theater at Madison Square Garden on Thursday and Friday are merely a prelude. "This is for the American music industry," said [JY]Park, "basically introducing Rain, giving a taste, and everybody is coming.
May 2006, Rain gets selected as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and the blurb said it all [emphasis added]:
“Yet even if Rain, whose style virtually clones American pop, fails to make it in the U.S., the trend he represents is here to stay. Rain is the face — and well-muscled torso — of pop globalism. Before he visited the U.S., Rain already had a fan base, thanks to Internet music sites, satellite TV and DVDs of his soap operas. Those are the same media that make it easier than ever for growing numbers of Americans to get their fix of Japanese anime, Bollywood films and Korean music — and vice versa. Pop culture no longer moves simply in a single direction, from the West to the rest of the world. Instead, it's a global swirl, no more constrained by borders than the weather. Rain, after all, falls on everyone.”
February 2007, Rain’s debut film—I’m a Cyborg But That’s Okay (2006), directed by the great Park Chan-Wook—is nominated for the Golden Bear at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival. The film lost the main award but took home the Alfred Bauer prize for “opening new perspectives on cinematic art.” The film did not hit with the Korean public but was generally well received on the festival circuit.
May 2007, Rain’s fans “pave the way” for K-Pop fans hijacking legacy American media polls by voting Rain the MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON of 2007… beating out Stephen Colbert’s fans by almost a quarter of a million votes.
May 2007, Stephen Colbert gives Rain the “Colbert Bump” by featuring him in a segment on his extremely popular comedy show, The Colbert Report. The segment included a parody “Korean pop music video” which is an amazing time capsule of what the stereotype of Korean pop music was like pre-the second generation K-Pop Wave hitting America a couple of years later. Rain is then announced as having been cast in the Wachowskis’ highly anticipated post-Matrix follow-up: Speed Racer.
April 2008, Speed Racer is released.
May 2008, Stephen Colbert and Rain have a dance off on The Colbert Report in a huge “water cooler moment” appearance that is remembered as one of the best Colbert moments by the mainstream American media. The moment was covered as “content” by the burgeoning content mill ecosystem that hadn’t yet really hit its stride yet but anyone chronically online in 2008 would have heard about it. From this point until the release of Ninja Assassin, Rain gets covered in mainstream American media outlets like Entertainment Weekly as well as American online news and gossip sites.
July 2008, Rain is a featured guest at Comic Con in San Diego.
November 2009, Ninja Assassin is released to a middling response and turns back towards the Asian market before enlisting in the Korean Army to perform his mandatory military service in 2011.
Obviously, this isn’t everything that happened in those tumultuous years and Rain had more on his plate than just a failed movie at the time but I still think what Rain accomplished in those three years from 2006-2009 was incredible. He went from being The Biggest Star in the Rest of the World to name recognition in the American entertainment industry (and online culture vultures) and not just starring in a Hollywood film, but having a Hollywood film built around him. He may not have been a household name with your mom but he would have been on the radar of the tastemakers and culture-pushers of the time. Popular gossip bloggers like Perez Hilton covered Rain; Oh No They Didn’t! had tons of posts on Rain, where he (and his abs) were a commenter favorite. This may not seem like a huge deal but this stuff absolutely laid the ground work for everything to come. Like the prophetic 2006 Time Magazine blurb said: “Rain falls on everyone.” Or to put it in 2024 terms: “Rain paved the way.”
Some of the other things mentioned in the episode:
Golden Bomber’s Kyan Yutaka arc welding on stage.
For whatever reason, I have fond memories of Wacky Races.
Taylor Swift review without an author.
Fuma starts his own fan club.
The trailer for Lost Man Found—we’re not sure where it’s available in the US.
My review of Tashan (2008).
The tracks played are:
“Moonlight Walker” by A.B.C-Z [Now available on Spotify! Also check out the MV on YouTube!]
“踊るなよ -Do Not Dance-” by Golden Bomber [Official MV]
“He’s Singing in Korean” by Stephen Colbert
“Keep On” by the Brady Bunch
“Go Speed Racer Go” [Speed Racer original theme song]
“Tashan Mein” sung by Vishal & Saleem; music directors Vishal & Shekhar [For a taste of how bonkers the movie got, check out “Dil Dance Maare”.]
“Switch to Me” by Rain with JYP [Official MV]
“Candy” by Faky [Official MV]
“Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps” by Mari Wilson [Theme song to Coupling]
“Picasso” by SHINee [WATCH THE INCREDIBLE SHINEE WORLD V LIVE VERSION!]