How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies follows M (played by Putthipong “Billkin” Assaratanakul), who learns that his grandmother Amah (played by Usha “Taew” Seamkhum) is diagnosed with stage 4 intestinal cancer. Instead of feeling sad over the limited time Amah has left, M devises a plan to secure his future; he decides to take care of his dying grandmother in hopes she will leave her house to him as inheritance. Once he puts his plan in action, M discovers that familial love is not quite as simple as he believed.
As M spends more time with Amah, he begins to remember what it felt like to be loved and cared for by her when he was a child. Along the way, he also sees how different his uncles behave since learning about Amah’s condition and realizes how much they’re driven by self-interest. Through Amah’s unwavering love for her family and for him specifically, M learns that perhaps there are things in life more valuable than money and material things. Following the movie’s U.S. theater release, Asia Blooming spoke with director Pat Boonnitipat about his career journey, the film, and more.
While Boonnitipat majored in communications management, an experience in college changed his career path to filmmaking. “While I was studying, I had a chance to watch a movie by a Japanese female film director. Her name is Naomi Kawase, and the film was The Mourning Forest,” he began. “This film was a narrative film, yet it was somehow vague. The special thing about that is that, when I was watching it at the film festival, the film that was sent to the film festival was incorrect. Somehow, the subtitles that should have come in English were shown in Spanish instead. I didn’t understand a word, but by the end of the film, I felt that the movie had such a big impact on me. That was a very unique experience for me, and I think somehow that sparked my interest in the experiment of narratives and films.”
After working on various projects as cinematographer and TV director, Boonnitipat made his film directorial debut with How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies. For this project, he worked closely with a group of talented people, including the scriptwriter, Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn. “It all started with my scriptwriter. He wrote a little short story about his grandmother, and it was very touching, though the genre was totally different. It was somehow a slapstick comedy, but the essence of the relationship between the grandmother and the grandson was very touching. So, I totally got hooked,” the director said. “We met for like, four days a week, and we just chatted the whole day. We just chatted about anything, but we’d focus on the questions of what this movie was actually about, and what are these characters really like. Then, the rest was just the process of sharing your life, interviewing people, and finding good elements.” Together, they arranged the theme of the film along with its elements to create an outline.
While writing the story, another thing that helped the director was actually living M’s experience. “I actually moved out from my grandmother’s house, but during the process of writing, I intentionally moved back in to talk more with her and to get to know her more,” the director shared. “I wanted to get the insight and material for my work, so that it’s somehow parallel with what the main protagonist does with his process of going back and living with her. I started to remember things that she does, and that became the anchor of what M would feel when he moved to the grandmother’s house. Not only did he learn new things about her, but he started remembering things, too.”
Another parallel Boonnitipat saw was between M and M’s actor himself. “I talked a lot with every actor, especially Billkin, who played the main character. Fortunately, he shared a lot of feelings in common [with his character, M]. He’s very close to his grandmother, who’s still alive, and he’s a very sensitive person.” He continued, “I think he somehow intertwined this connection. [So when playing his role] it’s about shifting the focus of his emotions towards the relationship he has with both people. It’s kind of like he was being more his authentic self the more his character realized how much he cares for and loves his Amah.”
Considering that he wasn’t sure whether this project would be both his first and last film, Boonnitipat revealed that his goal was to make a timeless movie that people could enjoy. “For me personally, I think romantic relationships can drastically change through time. I think it changes according to the social norm, and it changes at a much faster pace than the relationships you have with your family,” he started. “I just wanted to make something that would surpass time; a film I could rewatch again in 10 or 20 years and not have it feel old.” Even the characteristics of each character were intentional in a way that he hoped would be relatable. To achieve this, he said, “At first, when we started writing the script, we weren’t sure if it’d be a success at the box office or if it’d even cover its own budget. So, I wanted to expand the range of our audience. By doing that, my scriptwriter and I tried hard to be very specific with which emotion or information it should convey to people. In commercial filmmaking, you have to be very, very specific, but in art house filmmaking, you have to let more information be generated by the audience themselves.”
By the end of the movie, M discovers that what Amah has given him is far more valuable than her money or her house — it was the rest of her time. Before that, though, there is one line Amah says that stood out to Boonnitipat when filming and when first watching the film in its entirety. “When M and Amah were walking back from the grandmother’s eldest son’s house, M was blaming her for wanting that burial plot so badly. She just answered jokingingly, kind of like joking about what would happen after she died. [She told M] that if he spread the flowers carelessly for her, she would come back to haunt him,” he started to explain. “I added that line while we were shooting because I felt the chemistry between the two of them could be pulled out with it. Looking back while the movie was screening, though, I loved that line.” It somehow shows how different M and Amah are in death, so it also reflects their different outlooks on living.” While M and Amah had different outlooks on life and death, M grew to understand Amah through spending time with her, and he came around to honoring her wishes as an expression of his love for her.
How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies was released in Thailand on April 4, 2024, and in the U.S. on September 13, 2024. The film was the highest-grossing Thai film of 2024 and broke box office records in several countries.
