Robot Stories and More Screenplays

by Greg Pak

"2004 may end up being American cinema's year of the robot, with Pak and his independent sci-fi movie getting the jump on Hollywood."
- Wired

Price: $14.95, Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 1-59702-000-1, Pages: 236

Winner of 35 film festival awards, Robot Stories is an acclaimed independent movie, written by rising Asian-American director Greg Pak. In four intertwined stories, people struggle to connect in a technological world.

- In My Robot Baby a couple cares for a robot before adopting a human child.
- In The Robot Fixer a mother reaches out to her dying son by completing his toy robot collection.
- In Machine Love an office worker android learns that he, too, needs love.
-In Clay an old sculptor chooses between natural death and digital immortality.

Praised as "the kind of science fiction sophisticated audiences crave and deserve," the screenplay is a rich and rewarding reading experience, and follows in the literary tradition of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury.

This collection includes Pak's scripts from his popular comic shorts Asian Pride Porn, All Amateur Ecstasy, Mouse, and Cat Fight Tonight. It features original commentary by the author and a foreword by Tony Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang.

Reviews:

- 3/3/04: NPR - Fresh Air: National Public Radio interview with Greg Pak.

"As the title says, Pak uses an ostensible sci-fi motif to link his four pieces. What truly binds them, however, is a subtle exploration of the tension between the human and the synthetic, and the sometimes fuzzy distinction between the two. The film also has a distinguishable arc, beginning with an exceedingly nontraditional 'birth' and closing with a triumphant death...He's an uncannily assured visual storyteller...The result is a quietly impassioned, genuinely stirring indie rarity."
- The Village Voice

"A tremendously powerful set of vignettes. Writer/director Greg Pak uses four stories about robots to create wonderfully human moments. The stories are quick and to the point. The visually compelling and well-acted stories do not exist in the same world; tied together by theme, each is its own stirring narrative. Robots as toys, robots as children, robots as office tools, and robots as deceased loved ones teach the humans around them various lessons without hammering the audience. Quiet subtlety abounds throughout these terrific shorts. Even the opening credits animation is a wonderfully self-contained story. Another must-see."
- Bobby Kirk, Playback St. Louis

"It will be interesting to see what [director Greg] Pak can do with a film that gets a little more funding and wider release. Then again, a big studio and a big budget wouldn't have improved Robot Stories. It's fairly close to perfect already."
- San Francisco Chronicle

"Robot Stories is composed of four separate, exemplary tales about the nebulous boundary between man and machine. An independent production devoid of expensive, and unnecessary, special effects, it offers crisp glimpses into a near future in which the intelligence is artificial but the emotion is real."
- San Antonio Current