Benny Platonov Gupter Puncher/Oli Johns
Ok, what’s it about?
Benny Platonov will save the eight-hundred and fifty-seven homeless of Hong Kong.
Why?
Benny’s a writer, an artist without the art, but that’s just a detail. The art will come, the words will come.
Yeah, but why the homeless?
Benny has a heart. He cares. And the opposite, he hates.
Oh, who does he hate?
Them. The rich.
Anyone else?
His students, those he teaches at the University. They are all rich kids. ‘What do they know of suffering?’ he asks pretty much every lesson.
So, he’s bitter then?
Yeah, possibly. He’s a lot of things. This is what literature can do better than film, right? It can get inside someone’s head, or it can show more sides to a person without making it seem out of character.So, Benny is many-sided, a dreamer, a romantic, but also unsure of himself. And he can be a real cunt sometimes.
The Story Behind This Book
I sat in the red light district of Hong Kong [Mong Kok], talked to whores, tried to talk to the homeless in broken Cantonese, and slowly came up with a story.