Watch what you say when you’re in Poo’s taxi. It may just end up on the silver screen.

Taxi small talk unearths gems

THAI TAKES
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Watch what you say when you’re in Poo’s taxi. It may just end up on the silver screen.

HEY, I have one g (gram) of ice. Last night I slept with a rich man and he gave me ice. I will sell it to you for 2,500 baht (RM250),” an 18-year-old attractive female student said in Thai over her mobile phone.

The driver’s ears pricked up on overhearing the telephone conversation. She was a passenger he picked up at Hotel Novotel Bangkok.

After the student alighted at Bangkok’s Central Rama 3 shopping mall, Robert Poo informed a policeman about her drug deal.

That night, at home, he jotted down the conversation in his notebook, hoping one day it would be immortalised in a Thai movie.

Poo is not your typical Thai taxi driver. He is a 60-year-old faded actor and director who drives a taxi to make a decent living (about 20,000 baht or RM2,000 a month) and to mine his passengers for “authentic dialogue”.

The last time Poo, whose real name is Chaikorn Chitcha-uw, acted or directed was about 10 years ago. In his prime, he was cast mostly as a bad guy (because of his fierce beard).

He had appeared in about 30 movies as well as directed a movie and a TV series called Mr Joke (Thailand’s Mr Bean).

Asked why he quit acting and directing, Poo, whose stage name is Robert, after his favourite actor Robert De Niro, said: “I’m an old man.”

His friends in the movie industry has asked him make a comeback. But Poo told them he couldn’t hack it.

“I can’t do fighting scenes,” said Poo, as he jabbed, crossed, jabbed and crossed the air as if re-enacting a scene from a forgotten movie.

“If the scene requires me to fall on the ground, I can’t do it as it will be painful.”

But how about directing?

“I’m too old,” he said. “In Thailand, except for a handful of directors, when you pass 55 your career as a director ends.”

Now Poo, who has been driving a taxi on and off for the last 10 years, dabbles in script writing.

“As a taxi driver I meet passengers of diverse backgrounds – rich, poor, politician or prostitute – and I listen to them talk,” explained Poo, who displays a montage of his acting and directing days on his taxi’s right passenger window with the caption – “Yes, I’m a director”.

“When I go home I write down interesting experiences and dialogues in my notebook.”

So far he has sold a script for 50,000 baht (RM5,000). His storyline (a smart dog which assists the police to nab drug pushers) was turned into a TV comedy series called Mak Ma Ma (Come here, dog).

Last year, Poo wrote a movie script and sent it to a good friend who is a director. It was rejected. The director told him the plot was not original and “not in trend”.

That story was about a broke university student and drug pusher. “The morale of the story is drug pushers end up in jail,” said Poo, who took along a scrapbook of his movie career to the interview.

This year he got an idea for an “in trend” movie script when on a visit to another friend’s dog training school.

“The dogs could do many tricks -swim, open doors, run and stop suddenly. And I thought why not write a story centred around a dog,” he related.

Excitedly, he added: “Recently one of the most successful Thai movies was Ma-Mha 4 Ka Krub (a 2007 Thai comedy-drama film about a pack of ‘talking’ stray dogs in Bangkok).”

Ma-Mha 4 Ka Krub (Mid-Road Gang), according to Wise Kwai (thaifilmjournal.blogspot.com, a blog on Thai films), “is the first Thai live-action feature to star an all-animal cast of principal players”.

Currently Poo is writing the script of his new movie idea: a broke university student who is a drug dealer but finds redemption after befriending a smart dog.

I pointed out: “Isn’t that the same storyline as your rejected movie script?”

“Yes, but this time the star is a dog,” he said, grinning like a puppy.

“Will you be able to sell it?” I asked.

“When the movie opens in cinemas, please come and see it with me,” Poo confidently replied.