What is Chu Yen-ping's secret?
The Chinese lunar year is coming to a close, and it seems that Taiwan films are entering a frosty winter of their own. Not only are fewer and fewer features filmed each year, the take at the box office is also increasingly meager.
Of the 238 Chinese-language movies shown in Taiwan throughout 1992, only 40 of them were made in Taiwan. In 1994, the number of domestic movies dropped to 28. As of the end of November 1995, the number had dropped to 22.
Watching movies has long been a principal leisure-time activity for the people of Taiwan. The trouble is that in the last several years, most filmgoers have chosen to see foreign (that is, Western) films. In 1993, the number of Taiwanese viewers attending Western films broke the 10 million mark for the first time, while "loving admirers" of Chinese-language films fell to only half the audience of foreign pictures.
Fujen Catholic University associate professor of communication arts Chen Ju-hsiu observed in his "Survey Report on the Cultural Conditions of Taiwan Film in the 1990s" that there is a demand in the Taiwan market for about 500 motion pictures per year. In the ten-year period between 1984 and 1993, when the production of local movies was gradually decreasing, movies from Hong Kong and the West stepped in.
Not only is Taiwan's movie market obviously lopsided between Taiwan, Hong Kong and Western films in terms of distribution; there is also a readily observable gap in terms of box office profits. Over the past years, no Taiwan movie has ever ranked among the top ten in sales. If it were only Hong Kong flicks competing with those of Taiwan, Hong Kong would almost completely dominate the local scene, and Taiwan films would snatch at most one or two spots.
Taiwan's Champion of the East
In response to the dull production environment, the Government Information Office in 1995 doubled its subsidy for Taiwan film producers to NT$100 million. After this tremendous increase in funding was announced, the number of applicants mushroomed. Over 70 potential projects competed for subsidies allotted for only 17 films, leaving more than 50 out in the cold.
It is quite common for film professionals in Taiwan to depend on subsidies for shooting. Few and far between are those who rely mostly on support from film companies, Chu Yen-ping being a prominent example.
In 1994, confronted with the brawny Hollywood superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hong Kong kungfu kings Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and the slapstick master Chow Shing Che, Taiwan's movie scene proffered up Shi Xiaolong, the little monk from the Shaolin Temple in mainland China, and the plump Taiwanese child actor Hao Shao-wen. Together in the forceful farce Super Mischievous, they played tricks on the master and elder disciples.
Strictly speaking, there is not much content in Super Mischievous. It depicts the legendary Oolung Yuan (or "Boondoggle Monastery"), nestled all alone deep in the mountains. Hidden in it is a book of kungfu secrets. Good guys and bad guys alike are consumed with the desire to possess it. Only because of two little monks, one clever and cunning, the other an adroit kungfu fighter, the good master is rescued, the monastery saved and the villains vanquished.
Although this comedy has a simple plot and loose structure, it was the second highest grossing Chinese-language film at Taipei's box offices. In Taipei City alone it raked in NT$9.8 million. Its distributor estimates that total box office sales islandwide exceeded NT$200 million.
Thus, with the help of the movie's two little monks, Chu Yen-ping earned enough money to sustain his motion picture company for three years.
Chu Yen-ping has also released a new film for the long school holiday that runs from Christmas through the upcoming Lunar New Year. This time he has recruited the "four little superstars," idols of today's Taiwan youth, for the military drama When the Bugle Sounds. They finished shooting the film in mid-December, but in order to put the movie out for the Christmas season, they hurriedly pushed through the editing, sound and post-production work in the amazing span of one week.
Mission: clobber Jackie Chan
After staying in the movie industry for more than a decade, and having filmed over 100 movies, Chu Yen-ping admits he is "not an artist," but rather "a movie factory that puts out products to match the season."
When students are on holiday, it's time for the picture companies to make a buck. During Lunar New Year, Western New Year, Youth Day, summer vacation, and the month of October with its string of public holidays, you're always sure to be able to catch one of his features. Whenever the bottom line is the topic of discussion, the buzz in the biz is, "Hong Kong has Wong Ching, but Taiwan has Chu Yen-ping."
Most artists who choose the path of filmmaking are frantically in love with movies, and they view each of their works as the effort of a lifetime. Chu Yen-ping's attitude is exactly the opposite. He doesn't place a particularly high value on his own creative output. As soon as a picture is made and he watches it once to make sure it's okay, he lays it aside.
His reasons are that from forming the concept and writing the script, to shooting, editing and adding sound, he has already viewed each procedure a dozen times. He has seen the movie 100 times or more. "I've watched it 'til I'm sick of it. I don't want that torture anymore," he says in a manner both frank and funny.
In fact, he admires those directors who are willing to starve for the sake of their films, but he admits that making movies for the sake of money is only natural. He works hard at filming, so he can maintain his mother, wife and children in the lap of luxury.
Movies are Chu's profession, not his obsession. He has no ambition to leave great works behind, and he is very well aware of his limitations. "Everybody knows I'm the king of Taiwan. But once I get out of Taiwan, I'm not so impressive. I can't even make it in Hong Kong."
This man who dominates the Taiwan movie scene jokes that nowadays his aim is to beat the monarchs of the box office, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Whenever he kicks off a new film, he leads his cast in worshipping Tiangong, Lord of the Heavens, hoping to invoke good fortune. Together they shout, "Beat up Jackie Chan! Knock out Jet Li!"
Cash but no prizes
The money man of Taiwan movies nonetheless harbors one "teeny tiny" regret. The yearly Golden Horse Film Festival once invited Chu Yen-ping to be one of the announcers. Although he is good at throwing audiences into a fit of roaring laughter, he declined the invitation, because "the first time I would go up on that stage, I couldn't bear to fake a smile and give the award to somebody else. What if I burst into tears?" Although over the course of shooting such a vast number of films he has been nominated for the Golden Horse, he has never won. "I do feel a little regret," he says.
He is used to precisely defining his movies before he starts shooting, and 99% of his works are for the purpose of sales. The only exception is his film of a few years ago, A Home Too Far. It is the very one with which he is most satisfied up to this point.
A Home Too Far was based on author and historian Po Yang's novel about the struggles of a group of Chinese Nationalist soldiers when they are left behind in the borderlands of Thailand and Burma after mainland China fell into communist hands 40 years ago.
This movie is strikingly different from his other films, a serious work with an aim to survey the depths of the human psyche.
Chu Yen-ping frankly states, "A Home Too Far was a movie I targeted for the Golden Horse Awards. When I didn't get recognized, it amounted to a failure."
Manna from heaven
The work in which he invested the most of himself ended up with no prize. Ever since, he realized even more clearly, "Everyone has his strong suit, and mine is commercial work."
Maybe it was really a case of, "The rarer something is, the greater its value." When the Taiwan movie industry was not prosperous, Chu Yen-ping, with his talent for "laugh-jerkers," set several records: He is the director with the greatest number of films, the director with the highest income, and the only director to have two movies running at the same time while investment in local movies was going through a slump.
When talking about how he got into this business, Chu admits, "It would be phony of me to say I was interested in it. Actually, my success was an outcome of the times. It's all thanks to the Lord of the Heavens, who has endowed me with this fate."
He went to study in Soochow University's foreign languages night school, located next to Central Motion Picture Company's "Cultural Village," a large studio set open to tourists. At the time, kungfu movies were all the rage in Taiwan and extras were often needed to play passersby on the streets, or people who lie down and die as soon as they get in front of the lens. Chu Yen-ping got a day job in the studio as a "gopher." Over a period of time, he attracted the attention of a director who invited him to serve as production secretary and learn about filmmaking. From there he climbed the ladder all the way to deputy director.
He was thinking about switching to another profession after college, because show business wasn't secure enough. But to his surprise, he found himself seated in the director's chair before he even graduated. When director Tsai Yang-ming was shooting The First Mistake, he was very hot and had more projects than he could handle, so he gave one to Chu Yen-ping. Thus, Chu Yen-ping directed his first film, The Clown, which catapulted comedian Hsu Pu-liao to stardom.
When Hsu Pu-liao first stepped into the business, he was anything but famous. Chu Yen-ping even looked down on him a little. When he heard the man's stage name was Pu-liao (meaning "no hope"), he wondered how such a person could ever make it. He considered replacing Hsu with the top Hong Kong comedian of the day, Michael Hui. But although they shared the same surname (Hui being the Cantonese pronunciation of Hsu), "the difference in price was too great." He used Hsu Pu-liao only as a last resort, but accidentally struck the bull's eye. The movie unwittingly fired the "Hsu Pu-liao torpedo."
The early 1980s were when the two traditional mainstay genres of Taiwan film, kungfu flicks and sentimental romances, fell out of fashion. Taiwan's new movies began to emerge.
The new generation of films concerned themselves with the local humanistic landscape of Taiwan. One example is In Our Time, which united four different directors and four different stories and received much adulation from the critics. The combination of Hsu Pu-liao and Chu Yen-ping offered another alternative for the audiences.
In tattered tailcoat and trousers and with a little moustache on his upper lip, Hsu Pu-liao's screen image and performance echoed that of British-born comedian Charlie Chaplin. After Hsu Pu-liao became popular, he received incessant film offers. Chu Yen-ping and Hsu Pu-liao worked together for five years and shot almost 40 films. At the beginning, both of them were paid NT$60,000 per film. While Chu's pay was elevated to NT$300,000, Hsu became the hottest face in show business, and his pay rocketed to NT$2.6 million per feature.
Hsu Pu-liao might be described as Chu's "magical elixir." That period of time was his most prolific. He made as many as seven or eight movies a year. That is to say, 365 days of every year, he was filming.
Unfortunately, the comedian Hsu Pu-liao, who always had a tint of tragedy to him, became entangled with drug use and the underworld. So even though Chu Yen-ping shot a lot of Hsu Pu-liao films, the movers and shakers of organized crime who came to control Hsu's movies usually just paid the director with the symbolic gift of a watch. "During that time, our family didn't have much money, but we had a bunch of Rolexes," he says.
In 1985, while the Hsu Pu-liao vehicle The Clown and the Swan was showing in the theaters, its star passed away. Hsu's death was big news, and whether people liked him or not, they flocked to his final piece out of sheer curiosity. The box office burst at the seams. Chu Yen-ping was both elated and despondent. For some time he was filled with insecurity, wondering whether his movie career could last, now that he'd lost his box-office guarantee.
After the Hsu Pu-liao era came to an end, Chu picked up the TV host Hu Kua and singing starlet Lan Hsin-mei, neither of whom were particularly hot at the time, to shoot The Naughty Family. The film flopped, and all Chu's eight other contracts were automatically cancelled. In no time he plummeted from the zenith to the nadir.
Afterwards, Chu submitted the script for Bighead Brigade, which depicted several fresh army recruits and their embarrassing mishaps. But the script was turned down by a number of companies. Chu had no choice but to gamble by forming his own company. Unexpectedly, Bighead Brigade brought in more than NT$50 million at Taipei box offices, making his co-investors ecstatic.
Chu thus re-emerged specializing in soldier stories, but he eventually washed up in this genre, as well. His motion picture Motley Platoon was badly trounced by a batch of similar shows, as well as a wave of Hong Kong kungfu comedies and zombie movies that made great inroads into the Taiwan market.
Ugly folks and kids
Chu Yen-ping deducted some secrets from his successes and failures. He sarcastically describes himself as specializing in ugly folks and little kids. In particular, every film he makes with children stars is bound to succeed.
From the kiddie star "Little Bin-bin," to Yen Cheng-kuo, Tsuo Hsiao-hu and Chen Tsung-jung of The Kung-fu Kids, to two "treasures" he accidentally dug up while watching TV--Shi Xiaolong and Hao Shao-wen--Chu's childlike and innocent portrayals seem to always entice the audience.
Chu Yen-ping has fallen and risen again in the movie world a number of times. What is it that has helped him to attain such stature in Taiwan's commercial film market? He declares, "I rely on my market intuition. That is, I shoot entertaining films."
An analysis of Chu Yen-ping's movie marketing niche reveals tales in which the protagonists are little-known underdogs. The Clown and the Swan is a slapstick depiction of a good-hearted if somewhat homely "little guy" in hot pursuit of a girlfriend. In The Kung-fu Kids we meet three good little children, raised by their grandfather and all masters of the martial arts, who go to the big city in search of their family and perform brave exploits along the way. Bighead Brigade, which assembles a cast of famous television personalities, is a farcical look at soldiers.
His pictures have probably left an impression upon many a moviegoer, but they might be hard pressed to give a clear description of what exactly the actors were doing on screen!
Just for laughs
As a rule, Chu's works do not have a rigid plot structure. He uses no special techniques or camera angles. What usually appears on the screen is the actors' exaggerated body language, transmitting the humor of ordinary folks.
"Movies are extremely speculative, a gamble, a risk," says Chu. He had not anticipated that Super Mischievous would be such a financial success. "If I had that kind of talent, I wouldn't have to make five movies a year. One huge movie a year would be enough."
Wu Tun, general manager of Chang-Hong Channel Film and Video Company, which has invested the most financial support for Chu Yen-ping in the last several years, analyzes the reasons why Super Mischievous was a box office hit: It's probably that at the time there were no other blockbusters, and there hadn't been a new comedy for a long while. In addition, the film's contents were readily accepted by the public. All this added up to a huge success.
When asked why he likes to have Chu Yen-ping direct, Wu Tun says, "Chu's advantages are that his working attitude is very stable, and he has good control of the progress of the script and production. Besides that, he has one more advantage that film companies really appreciate--he doesn't waste a lot of money."
"Basically, I don't try to make artsy films. I don't put any intellectual contemplation in my films, and I don't try to express anything. The only exception is A Home Too Far, which discusses the sorrows of Chinese people. All my other films appeal to the wishes of the audience--that is, to have a laugh in the theater house."
Chu Yen-ping says he knows where his audiences come from: the middle and lower strata of the viewing public. "I don't have any college students watching my movies. You'd probably see a couple adults accompanying their kids to watch Super Mischievous, and the audience of Shaolin Popeye would be a bunch of junior high students with their school bags."
Ridicule all the way
Although Chu has the support of his audiences, his portfolio of films is generally the object of derision.
After he had filmed The Clown, with its unfashionable subject matter, his boss attended the film's screening. The boss walked out before it had even finished, cursing as he left. "How could a movie about a clown possibly sell!" The first day it hit the theaters, Chu was afraid no one would go see it, so he asked all his classmates to go help fill up the seats. To his surprise, the theater was packed.
Movie critics contend that his films borrow too heavily from other sources. The Japanese comic strip "Crayon Shinchan," for example, has become very popular in Taiwan. Chu's movie China Dragon coincidentally had child star Hao Shao-wen show his little weewee, paint it up as an elephant's trunk, and run wild all over the place, just as in the comic strip.
For no real reason, he had a juvenile actor run around the house without any pants on. "Flourishing a child's genitalia like that as a joke is exploiting both the child star and the child audience for money," one critic protested.
"He specializes in using the hottest stars. It's a pity that he has never made the most of their special qualities," says critic Wang Wei. In this regard he fails to live up to Hong Kong director Tsui Hark. In such works as Swordsman, with Lam Ching-shia, and Once Upon a Time in China, starring Rosamund Kwan, Tsui Hark has successfully molded his performers.
"Putting the content of Chu's movies aside, his box office records are of course worth affirmation," notes Wang Wei. "He satisfies the needs of a certain group of moviegoers. They're just simple shows, like the restaurant shows of Chuko Liang that were big in central and southern Taiwan. This is a phenomenon of local Taiwanese culture."
Critics also admit, "Critiques are very subjective, but the market is objective. What's so clever about Chu Yen-ping is that he keeps changing, and he knows how to turn his rudder to follow the changing winds of the times." He can film in a wide variety of genres. Soldier stories, kungfu shows, farces, teenage dramas, juvenile movies, or provocative adult films--as long as there is a demand in the market, he can make the film, and he is willing. In addition, he knows how to follow up one hit with another. If a child star attracts an audience, he can immediately put out more films of the same ilk, until viewers are fed up.
Who knows audience taste?
Perhaps this question points out the current bottleneck in the development of Taiwan's movies. When one director is shooting so-called artistic films, he may very well neglect the entertaining quality of movies. After all, that is the ultimate reason viewers pull out their money and buy a ticket.
If Western films, which are tightly produced, touchingly plotted, and filled with superstars, can attract most of the audiences, local films with similar traits can surely become blockbusters too. The problem is that current movies seem to go to extremes--either too commercial or too artistic. What's regrettable is that the former can sell, but the latter end up costing the investors their shirts.
In the eyes of Wu Tun, "The movies are a mass market. We catch the lower echelons of the filmgoing pyramid. Generally, directors don't think about the audiences. They're too subjective. They just talk about serious problems. Movies are supposed to help people relax, stimulate their senses and kill time."
Chu Yen-ping says he has never been against artistic films. The problem is in Taiwan's movie market, art and commerce fall badly out of balance. Nine out of ten directors make "incomprehensible films that bore you to death."
Nevertheless, Fujen Catholic University associate professor Chen Ju-hsiu believes, "Now that the picture companies are aiming at turning a profit, they should treat movies as a commodity, apply modern marketing concepts, conduct market surveys, do product planning, and make movie sales just as glitzy as [the recently successful] Oolung tea commercials." Chen Ju-hsiu criticizes domestic film distribution channels for having always been a "black box." What deserves the most censure is that up to now, they haven't been able to accurately calculate how many tickets any given movie sells, in Taipei or out.
Without planning, entering the local movie market is like gambling with the lottery--throwing a hundred out to see if one will hit the jackpot.
In Chen Ju-hsiu's opinion, movies are commodities, but they are also culture. And he thinks that people should stop debating the relative value of these two aspects. Between pure commerce and pure art there should be a third road. Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet is a successful example that pleases everybody. But such films require impeccable scripts and filming techniques and an excellent cast.
Today Taiwan's movie industry is riddled with problems, from an unhealthy distribution system, a flow of investment out of Taiwan, a drain of technical personnel, and a lack of stars and cheap labor. These problems are interconnected. How can we bring this sunset industry back?
We cannot rely entirely on Hou Hsiao-hsien, the preeminent figure in Taiwan's art film circles. But of course neither can we rely exclusively on Chu Yen-ping. Someone has whimsically suggested: What if Chu Yen-ping made a film with an angle toward the humanities, and Hou Hsiao-hsien made a comedy? Would Taiwan audiences start coming back to see Taiwan films?
Shaolin Popeye In this light drama, singing idol Jimmy Lin and the hot child star Hao Shao-wen encounter adventures in mainland China. （courtesy of Chang-Hong Channel Film and Video Company）
Chu Yen-ping never films at night. After he clocks out, he goes home and enjoys the pleasures ot domesticity. Chu's two darling boys have inherited his comic talent.
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)
