Born at the right time
Liao feels that he was “born at the right time,” reaching maturity just when the cutting-edge young directors of Taiwan’s New Wave Cinema were emerging.
It was 1982, and a new top dog, Ming Ji, had just become head of CMPC. He brought the novelist and screenwriter Hsiao Yeh and the director Wu Nien-jen into the company’s planning department, where they were instrumental in launching the New Wave with the production of In Our Time, a collaborative work by four young filmmakers.
Liao edited virtually every one of the films made by the New Wave directors, and spent well over 200 days a year in the editing room. “Eyes glazed, totally silent, hadn’t changed my clothes, a pitiable look on my face… that’s how everybody saw me back then.” Liao thinks back on himself in those days as being like a tree, growing slowly but surely, branch by branch.
So many great directors—Edward Yang, Chang Yi, Ko I-chen, Tao Te-chen, Wan Jen, Tseng Chuang-hsiang…. So many great films—Growing Up (1983), That Day, on the Beach (1983), The Sandwich Man (1983), The Boys from Fengkuei (1983), A City of Sadness (1989)…. And each and every director and film posed new challenges, new provocations for Liao, shining a light on areas where he could improve and learn, and even completely overturning his most fundamental narrative logic.
Being able to show an audience, through film, the face of life in Taiwan and the face of emotion, historical viewpoints and value perspectives, and even to strike a blow against “the system” by breaking down taboos—these were themes never touched upon by the so-called “three-room” movies (movies set mainly in “living rooms, cafés and restaurants,” and generally involving middle-class social themes) that Liao had edited previously.
“I have always been the kind of person who wants to cut through confusion and see things with complete clarity. I’ve also been curious about everything, and feel really absorbed whenever it comes to ‘problem-solving.’”
When this nature crossed paths with New Wave directors, it caused Liao’s thirst for knowledge to explode. Every time he had a break from editing he would go into “sponge mode,” reading huge numbers of books on psychology, philosophy, religion, classical Chinese poetry…. He eventually realized that he had given short shrift to computer technology, so he also bought and digested a pile of books on that subject as well (this was back in the era of the DOS operating system).
Balancing the rational and the emotional, Liao “listens” carefully to films, and edits out a finished product that is “the film as it was meant to be all along.”