Different ways of operating
While Chinese actors have yet to achieve their breakthrough in Hollywood, directors have found they have to adapt to certain differences.
Sense and Sensibility, taken from Jane Austen's 19th-century novel of the same name, was Ang Lee's first production for a Hollywood studio. The main challenge that he faced was dealing with his cast. While shooting in Britain, he found that he always had to give people a clear account of his ideas, on matters both large and small. This partly reflects the high standards that British actors work to, but it was also a trying experience for someone from Taiwan, where the education system is not known for equipping people with the ability to express their own opinions. "It's not odd for Hollywood to get a foreign director in," says Lee, "but it is rather odd for them to pick a Chinese director." Because of the lack of precedents, he had to give himself a lot of encouragement.
There is also a big difference between work attitudes in Hollywood and the East. As Morgan puts it, Hong Kong and Hollywood each have their own ways of operating.
The way it is done in Hong Kong is that the New Year release slot is always reserved for Jackie Chan's latest movie. Only once the dates are confirmed do they begin to think about a script. For First Strike, director Stanley Tong came up with a storyline, then flew to Canada to check out locations. Shooting began in August and wrapped up in January, and with the finished product due by early February, there were just two weeks left for post-production work.
"Hollywood, on the other hand, is willing to put money and time into developing the script," says Tong, adding that they don't start recruiting a production team until the writing is finished. And post-production can stretch on for up to six months. Also, there are plenty of A-list and B-list actors to choose from, so it isn't always necessary to plan things around one particular star. After breaking into the mainstream
However, as Edmond Wong points out, "The industry system in Hollywood may crush individual creativity, because directing power is not vested in a single person but rather in a vast commercial system."
"Hollywood is a big machine, and its hard for little cogs like us to change it," admits Peter Chan, director of the DreamWorks-funded film The Love Letter. But Chan also believes that directors can use the system to attain success, then start making pictures for independent production companies and choose more alternative stories. According to Chan, John Woo and Ang Lee are already in that position.
After making the hit action film Face/Off, John Woo said "I don't want to make any more big films. I really want to make pictures for an independent production company in the US." Having established a foothold for himself in the mainstream, he now hopes to start making movies with a more individual style.
Ang Lee has always made a point of keeping his distance from Hollywood. Even after making Sense and Sensibility, which ends with the happy pairing off of the good-looking lead couple, and which caters nicely to mainstream tastes, Lee believed that he "hadn't moved any closer to the Hollywood mainstream." He approaches movie-making with a non-Hollywood mindset, and his method of production involves "filming abroad (in the UK, for example), then editing back in New York."
After Sense and Sensibility Lee chose an even "colder" subject for his next film, The Ice Storm, which is set in the 1970s and depicts the crumbling values in an American family. It was a theme that put even more distance between him and Hollywood. Says Lee, "It's an art film that overshot its budget-just what movie bosses are most afraid of." As graceful as dancing
As Hong Kong's movie-makers continue their advance on Hollywood, how can their success best be measured?
In the early 1980s, Jackie Chan tried to bust into Hollywood but returned chastened to Asia. Over a decade later, he was so successful in his second attempt that Time magazine crowned him "the real action hero." Hong Kong director Tsui Hark made two films in the US during the last two years, but they didn't do well enough at the box office and he has now returned to Hong Kong.
Perhaps it is not completely fair to measure a filmmaker's value by how much his movies gross. Even top directors have the occasional box-office flop, like Steven Spielberg's recent slavery film Amistad, which wasn't even screened in many countries.
If box office is not the criterion for being a hero, then what kind of impact can Hollywood's ethnic Chinese contingent, less than a dozen in number, have on the US film industry-which has an annual output of some 400 feature films? Perhaps the answer is to be found in the movies themselves.
One of this summer's blockbusters is The Matrix starring Keanu Reeves. It topped the US rankings for three weeks when it came out, and was released in Taiwan in early June. Previews on television showed Reeves, dressed in a Chinese outfit, going through a familiar-looking kung fu routine. The film's martial arts consultant was Yuen Woo-ping, a well-known figure in the Hong Kong movie industry, who worked on Drunken Master and choreographed the classic routines in the Once Upon a Time in China movies.
Discussing the film, Yuen says that he was greatly interested by the producers' idea of blending "Eastern martial arts" with "Western special effects." Six months before filming began, he and his assistant went to America to begin training the actors, beginning with basic martial arts techniques. In a television interview the film's director said: "We absolutely love the slow motion stuff in Hong Kong movies, it looks so graceful, so poetic."
Cinema has cleverly created a fusion of East and West, and for Hong Kong filmmakers, the strategy of "pulling each other across" to Hollywood, one at a time, seems to be working.
The premiere for Peter Chan's The Love Letter was a star-studded affair, with actors and directors like John Travolta, Warren Beatty and Steven Spielberg on hand. But Chan says: "Nothing made me so happy as having Jackie Chan there. For Americans, it represents a lot to see two Chinese together like that. And it was not only a sight for the Americans, but for Hong Kong people too." Chan says that it would be good to get a few more people across.
John Woo, who together with Terence Chang has set up Lion Rock Productions, loves to cook big meals for his compatriots. When he goes down to the supermarket to buy lobster, he has to get ten at a time. Meanwhile, in Peter Chan's brightly lit office, the sound of voices speaking English with a sprinkling of Cantonese can occasionally be heard from next door. It turns out that fellow Hong Konger Stanley Tong has the neighboring office.
United as they are, Hollywood's Hong Kong filmmakers are unlikely ever to find themselves orphaned in America.