Three times in the theater. Twenty-odd more at home. Six years of having thoughts about Parasite, and roughly four minutes total in which anyone has let her share them. This week Sherry Mandujano gets an hour.Mandy had never seen it. She takes notes throughout, and most of them are some version of "what genre is this," because the film keeps answering differently. The conversation follows it wherever it goes: production design, then class, then smell, then a woman scaling a wall sideways, then a formal grievance against the screenplay concerning facial hair. Nobody in this movie comes out looking good, and by the end that includes the people watching it. Press play.Guest SpotlightSherry Mandujano is an actress, singer, and director based in Los Angeles. Originally from the Bay Area, she trained at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, studying theatre performance and classical voice, before moving to LA. Her screen credits include The Young and the Restless, This Is Us, I'm Dying Up Here, Baskets, and Downsizing. On stage she's appeared in Real Women Have Curves, Man of La Mancha, and Songs for a New World, and she made her directorial debut in 2021. She performs regularly alongside Mandy in Miscast LA.Instagram: @sherry_mandujanoIMDb: Sherry Mandujano Referenced in This EpisodeThe Main EventParasite — 2019, directed by Bong Joon HoLee Jung-eun — Moon-gwang, the housekeeperPark So-dam — Ki-jung, the "art therapist"Song Kang-ho — Ki-taek, the Kim family fatherSuseok — the Korean scholar's stone traditionJjapaguri (ram-don) — the noodle dish in the stairway scene92nd Academy Awards — where Parasite won four, including Best PicturePalme d'Or — Cannes 2019Other Films Mandy Brought UpBeing John MalkovichThe Talented Mr. RipleyMiss CongenialityStarship TroopersTelevision, Games, and Assorted NerderySquid GameThe Potato Lab — Sherry's happy-ending K-drama counterexampleGame of Thrones and the Red WeddingThe Golden GirlsMagic: The GatheringIcarus, who flew too close to the sunPast Episodes You Might LikeSquid Game Season 2 with Jimmy AquinoMarried North of the Wall: Game of Thrones with Jeremy Klavens Fact-Check CornerThe peach fuzz isn't poison. Sherry says the Kims "poisoned the housekeeper with the peach fuzz," and Mandy repeats it. What the film actually shows is the Kims exploiting Moon-gwang's peach allergy to produce symptoms that Mrs. Park reads as tuberculosis. She gets framed for being sick, not poisoned.The Oscar categories. Sherry's count is correct. Four wins at the 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020, under the official names Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. It was the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture, and it took the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019, also a first for a Korean film.The production design claims hold up and it’s just crazy. Sherry's account of the crew salvaging real doors, windows, and gates from neighborhoods slated for redevelopment is confirmed by both Bong and production designer Lee Ha-jun, who also made silicone molds of real bricks from those sites. The entire semi-basement neighborhood was a built set, constructed in a water tank in Ilsan so it could be flooded and drained on schedule. The Park mansion was a set too: a real plot of land with a ground floor built on it and the upper floor added in post. Da-hye's age. Mandy says "they're only like nineteen or whatever." The film never states an age. Da-hye is confirmed as a high school student being tutored for her English exams.The ramyeon. Sherry calls it "the pot of ramyeon," which is accurate as far as it goes. The dish is jjapaguri specifically, sold to English-language audiences as "ram-don," built from two instant noodle brands with sirloin dropped in. It’s another one of those class comments of the film, taking fifty-cent packages of instant noodles and topping them with sixty bucks of Wagyu and serving it to a kid as a snack. Connect with the ShowFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens (both with K's) TikTok: @mandymiscastMake Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join, where episodes arrive ad-free and early, and the show goes deeper between installments.Listening on Apple Podcasts? Leave a review. Mandy reads them on air and will absolutely say your username out loud.Make Me a Nerd is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Pete Wright. Theme song: "Wonderstruck" by Jane and the Boy....
