10 -10 - 09 : The Blood Bond Saga (part five)

Training the Phoenix

It's one thing to write a Kung Fu fighting female bodyguard. It's another to commit this character to the screen in a manner that's fresh and original. There have been previous attempts to create martial monkettes, Charlotte Lewis in 'The Golden Child', Cynthia Rothrock in 'Prince of the Sun', but I don't think anyone's ever quite gotten it right.

The inspiration for the character Deva came when I was watching a movie called 'Red Corner'. In the film, Richard plays an American businessman on a trip to China, who finds himself accused of murder . His lawyer in the film is played by the actress Bai Ling (which is kind of a stretch if you think about it!)

There are couple of scenes in the film where they are walking together, he in a regular suit, and she in a kind of tailored black Mao jacket and pants combo. I remember thinking it would be much cooler if she was a fighter rather than an advocate. Where would such a person exit, though? What adventure would she go on?

Having conceived this character, I watched her make her way through various names and interpretations in the many drafts of the 'Blood Bond' script, and, as I mentioned in earlier blogs, through various potential casting choices.

Even before we finally cast Phoenix Chou as Deva, I had decided that the character would fight using movements based on Chen Tai Chi. I was inspired by a teacher I met called Ocean Hou. I've been lucky enought to train with him a little, our schedules allowing. I really feel that his interpretation of Tai Chi is the best I've seen, combining fluidity, power and internal energy.

As the sworn protector of a benevolent spiritual leader, Deva would never be a killer. Her skill level would be sufficiently high that she would be able to immobilze an opponent without crippling him or, if necessary, injure an opponent without killing him. We started from that premise and worked forwards.

When the actress we initially cast as Deva was training under Ocean in Hong Kong, he asked me what his role would be in the 'Blood Bond' production. I told him I wanted him to train our leading lady prior to and during the production, serve as a Tai Chi advisor to the action coordinator,generally assist the martial arts team as needed and play a role in the film.

He was delighted at this, but concerned that the film's action director might resent his input. Fortunately, he and our amazing martial arts aces Louis Fan and Ken Yip have collaborated rather than clashed, with great results.

After we made the difficult decision to change our Devas mid-stream, Phoenix had to hit the ground running. She trained with Ocean intensively in Hong Kong, and later, at the studio in Nanhai. Like several of cinemas previous martial arts heroines (Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi), Phoenix has a dance background which has helped her enormously in terms of her flexibility and focus.

Working with the team, and especially with stuntwoman Mai Ling, she took to choreography like, well, a phoenix to the flames.

Today I was watching the stunt crew run through a scene where Deva tries to protect her beloved master from a highly skilled assassin. She applies these fluid yet powerful movements to defeat her foe. It suddenly stuck me that not only have we never seen a woman fight like this in an American film, we haven't actually seen this style used by a female protagonist in a Hong Kong movie either. (I mentioned this to Ken Yip, and he concurred.)

Besides the martial arts sequences, we also have Deva driving a car for a chase sequence and firing off a few weapons, so Phoenix's days are just packed. Every time I see her around the studio, she looks more lovely and yet more lethal!

Our challenge now is to create a suitable antagonist for her in the person of Emma Pei, on whom more later.

Next: Gunning for trouble