12-1-09 LOOKING BACK FROM ‘RED CLIFF’

Thoughts on Woo and me… (part one)

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I just attended the prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Hong Kong premiere of part two of John Woo’s peerless period historical epic Red Cliff. I can’t actually remember the first time I met John, but I do recall very clearly the first time I saw his work.

I was in Taipei preparing for a film that never got made. It was called Black Ninja (yes, this was the 80s, folks…) and it was supposed to star Taimak, star of ‘The Last Dragon’ (yes, I said ‘The Last Dragon’, soon to be remade with Sam Jackson playing Sho’ Nuff, “Shogun of Harlem”…).

As we hammered our way through prep, producer Toby (son of Ken) Russell, who was way ahead of the curve in terms of Asian action cinema, would screen various recent features on our hotel suite’s TV.

One evening, he wanted to show this flick called A Better Tomorrow. I had actually seen a few Hong Kong cop and gangster films already, and much preferred the kung fu movies. Still, this was Toby’s gig, so I watched whatever he recommended, and I have to thank him for this high caliber exposure to the wild world of Woo. In this film, for the first time, gunplay was as exciting as any kung fu weaponry. The director had succeeded in redefining his master Chang Cheh’s tales of brotherhood for the modern age. HK cinema super fan Rick Baker coined a new name for the genre: ‘Heroic Bloodshed’…

After that initial exposure, I watched every John Woo film I could find. I was fortunate enough to be on the scene when John first visited London, and conducted a live interview with him on the stage of the Prince Charles theatre. (I’m wondering if I’d met him in Hong Kong prior to this event, but my memory fails me!) Like everyone who encountered John, then or later, I was amazed at the dichotomy between the bloody on-screen ballets enacted in his films and the gentle man who created them. I recall him saying that he’d always wanted to direct a musical, like his much-loved West Side Story, but the world is still waiting for that…

In Hong Kong, I was honoured to visit the set of what remains, sadly, the last bona fide John Woo Heroic Bloodshed actioner to date: Hard Boiled. I remember Chow Yun-fat wincing at the sound of gunplay being enacted behind him. “I hate it!” he observed, “I always wear earplugs, but not John. He loves the sound!” The film was being shot at a now defunct Hong Kong studio, nicknamed The Coca-Cola Factory. I met both Chow, who was originally cast as Zhou Yu in Red Cliff, and Tony Leung Chiu-wai, who replaced him in the role.

After Hard Boiled wrapped, I returned to Hong Kong, and was granted an audience with John at the offices of the Milestone company offices he and his long-time business partner Terence Chang had in Prince Edward. (Last time I passed, it was still there, or, at least, the sign was still painted on the window!) He showed me an early promo for Hard Boiled, cut to a very haunting instrumental piece. (Unfortunately, the rights to that music weren’t cleared, so it wasn’t used in the finished film.) Seeing how exciting I was, John signed the videotape of the promo and gave it to me. (He’d also bought me a laser disc, yes, this was the 90s, folks! of The Killer.) I interviewed him for whichever magazine I was writing for at the time, and later incorporated some of the information into my Hong Kong Action Cinema book.

Everyone will tell you that John Woo is the nicest guy in the business, and you’ll get no argument from me.

After Hard Boiled, John relocated to Hollywood, making his American debut directing another old friend of mine, Jean-Claude Van Damme, in the underrated Hard Target. I remember watching it with a wu shu babe called Cynthia Ming in a rundown theatre in New York City. As I was still largely based in the UK, I only got to see John when he made occasional visits to promote his American films.

Then, for most of the years I was in Hong Kong, John was still in the US. Though I appreciated the various qualities of his American productions, I always felt it was a shame that he didn’t fly back to Hong Kong to shoot films there between Hollywood blockbusters. When he did finally return to the East, however, it was in pursuit of his most grandiose vision ever, a cinematic epic based on the Chinese literary classic Three Kingdoms.

When Red Cliff was first announced, I was, ironically, involved in the early stages of development of another film based on the Three Kingdoms, Daniel Lee’s Resurrection of the Dragon. At his Visualizer Films company, we had that project and Dragon Squad (AKA Dragon Heat) in prep, and, for a time, it was uncertain which would go first. As it turned out, I left Vizualizer before production began on their Three Kingdoms project. (My major contribution to it was the casting of Maggie Q!)

When I John and producer Terence Chang made the move to Beijing for Red Cliff, I had the pleasure of visiting the production several times, and got a first-hand look at the talent, energy and stamina needed to bring this Chinese classic to the screen.