In Hollywood, Almost Like Starting Over- Peter Chan

Amidst the frantic violence and action of Hong Kong cinema, Peter Chan's romantic dramas cannot but attract notice. Having arrived in Los Angeles three years ago looking for a respite from the pressure of sudden fame, Chan sifted through over 100 scripts before selecting The Love Letter, backed by Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks, as the first film with which to establish himself in Hollywood.

Like most Chinese immigrants freshly arrived in a new land, Chan says that since nobody knows him here, there's no pressure on him. This has allowed him to essentially start all over again.

"Little Italy is shrinking, while Chinatown is getting bigger and bigger. That's nothing to be proud of, since we all came here because 'home' wasn't good enough." Chan sits in his office, in which hang large framed publicity posters for his well-known films He's a Woman, She's a Man and Comrades, Almost a Love Story. When he addresses the outflow of film people from Hong Kong in recent years, there is no avoiding the topic of "1997," when Hong Kong was turned over to mainland China. Against the brilliant sunlight outside the window, the topic seems a bit out of place.

Chan relates that the heavy burden of the 1997 handover was like a pesky nightmare, or a lingering cloud. "It impacted every decision Hong Kongers made. Everyone there lived in a pressure cooker, anxious to get as much done in the shortest time possible."

Life in a pressure cooker

Now 37, Peter Chan was born in Hong Kong, moved with his family to Thailand when he was 12, went to the United States for university, and returned to Hong Kong at the age of 21 to join the film industry. During his 13 years in Hong Kong, Chan directed a number of films, including Alan and Eric-Between Hello and Goodbye and He's a Woman, She's a Man.

He's a Woman, She's a Man, a 1994 comedy depicting a well-known record producer surrounded by a group of homosexual friends and searching for his own "sexual orientation," was such a box-office success that the film company wanted Chan to film a sequel. Although he wasn't very interested in the prospect, Chan could hardly refuse the demands of the market. So he told the film company that, if he must do a sequel, it would be under the condition that he would make a somewhat "smaller" film. That film turned out to be Comrades, Almost a Love Story. In just a few years, Chan also served as executive producer for 15 films, keeping him so busy he could hardly catch his breath and nearly lost his orientation. Three years ago, Chan decided to leave Hong Kong to get far away from the pressure of fame.

Chan's feelings at starting anew in the United States were already reflected in the plot of Comrades, Almost a Love Story. This film follows two mainland Chinese over a period of ten years, 1985-1995, as they emigrate to Hong Kong and then go to New York. This period, in Chan's view, also happened to be "Hong Kong's best ten years."

Chan had always wanted to make a film about emigration to reflect the "rootlessness" of Hong Kong's people. He adds, "By following major events that transpired over a decade, from the stock market crash of 1987 to the sudden death of Theresa Teng in 1995, the audience will think back to what they were feeling in those days, thus making a connection with the characters in the film." A clan of drifters

Peter Chan's family has its own saga of drifting. His paternal grandfather was an overseas Chinese in Thailand. Chan's parents "returned to the motherland" in 1951 in response to the "New China, New Hope" campaign. When they left Thailand their family business there was confiscated, but in China they soon discovered they weren't "real Chinese." Yet, having joined the Communist Party, they couldn't go back. They had little choice but to flee to Hong Kong, where they raised Chan and his siblings.

For many Chinese, "Hong Kong has never been the final destination," says Chan. Chinese people have run around here and there for the past few centuries, and Hong Kong has just been a waystation between all that running around. In Comrades, Almost a Love Story, Theresa Teng's image and voice appear throughout the film, producing a distinct impression of "drifting." This singer, who achieved fame throughout Asia, was born in Taiwan, gained fame in Hong Kong and mainland China, and then pursued a career in Japan, becoming an international superstar. She had homes in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and she lived for a time in France; her life's journey ended unexpectedly while she was on holiday in Thailand.

This story of the journey of two Chinese people from the "old mainland" to the "new world" garnered Comrades, Almost a Love Story Best Picture honors at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards and the Hong Kong Film Awards, and was selected for the Asia-Pacific, Tokyo, and Vancouver film festivals. It was after viewing Comrades that Kate Capshaw, wife of Steven Spielberg and a successful actress in her own right, invited Chan to take his filmmaking art to America.

Like going back in time

Casting away the burden of fame and coming to America was like a breath of fresh air for Chan. "At first all I wanted to do was take a vacation for a year or two, but I ended up with something better and a lot more than I needed," says Chan. "Here, nobody knows you, nobody has any expectations of you, and you need not care about what people around you say." He describes the experience as "almost like going back in time, to how it felt working on my first film."

"Hollywood has so many resources, but I don't really need them much since I make dramas, not action films. So it's useless to give me too much money." Although the cost of his making a film is eight, even 10 times greater than in Hong Kong, US film companies still wonder: "How come this director is so cheap?"

"Polished" is not normally a term used in praise of Hong Kong films. So how is Peter Chan able to reconcile art and commerce?

Chan explains, "Hong Kong cinema has always been sort of an 'orphan,'" as the colonial government took a completely hands-off attitude toward the movie industry. "Maybe that was a good thing, because it made Hong Kong directors market-oriented. Because if your film doesn't make money today, you can forget about making another one tomorrow. This has made it easy for me to adapt to the US, since as long as you're responsive to the market, basically everybody is speaking the same language."

The Love Letter, which opened recently in the US, was backed by investment from Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks company, and stars Kate Capshaw. The story, adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name, is set in a village and tells of a torrid love affair between a female bookstore owner and a young college student. However, Chan insisted that an additional role not appearing in the novel, that of a fire chief who has secretly loved the leading lady ever since high school, be added to the script. According to Chan, this makes the film somewhat reminiscent of Comrades, Almost a Love Story, as the male lead has loved the female lead for 20 years yet cannot find the words to tell her. In this way, "It's very Chinese," remarks Chan.

An LA Times movie reviewer said that the cast "glows under the breezy yet tart direction of Peter Chan, a top Hong Kong director making his Hollywood debut." The reviewer added that Chan "has a flair for bringing both humor and seriousness to the often confused and conflicted passions of the heart." Breaking through love story cliches

"When you work in Hollywood, never believe you cannot change the script. You must speak your mind about the characters-your visual feelings. That's the only way they'll know your views are better than those of the directors they talked to before you," he says.

In Hollywood, Chan has worked hard to go beyond the cliches of the typical Hollywood love story.

Hollywood movies typically end with a big embrace between the man and woman. "I'm not kidding you, whenever they see Comrades they ask why at the end the two characters just laugh, and don't hug and kiss?" Chan explains, "It took lots and lots of communication and lots and lots of meetings. This is vastly different from the educational and cultural personality of Chinese, since we just shoot it and don't talk about it."

For his follow-up to The Love Letter, Chan is already working on several scripts, one of them an adaptation of his old film He's a Woman, She's a Man. Chan feels he's still pretty lucky, because-thanks to some hard work-even though he's working in Hollywood he need not make "formulaic" American films.