26-11-08: Daniel in the dragon’s den

Talking ‘Protégé’ and more with (and about) Daniel Wu (part two)

prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" / 

The casting of Daniel as a ‘protégé’ of Andy Lau is interesting, because, when Wu first came onto the scene, the press said he resembled prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Hong Kong’s own rebel without a pause. Neither he (nor I) can see any real resemblance, besides maybe that roman nose... Maybe it’s that they both look good in Hong Kong police uniforms: Daniel in his first film, Bishonen, Andy in Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild.

In real life, Daniel’s mentors have been Jackie Chan, under whose JC Group management he prospered, and, more recently, director Derek Yee. I hadn’t realized how often they’d worked together. Yee gave Daniel one of his best roles in One Night In Mongkok, then cast him in Protégé and the as yet unreleased Shinjuku Incident (which stars Jackie Chan). They apparently have plans for a further film, so maybe Wu is to Yee what Mifune was to Kurosawa, what DeNiro is to Scorsese (or at least what Peter Sellers was to Blake Edwards…)

Speaking of comparisons, I was once hanging out with Andrew Lin, and put it to him that, if Daniel’s band Alive could be compared to The Beatles (and I believe they can), who would be which of the Fab Four? After some debate, we determined Daniel was Paul, Terence Yin was John and Andrew himself was George (‘the quiet one’). We were both unanimous that Conroy Chan was Ringo…

I don’t remember spending much time on the set of Purple Storm, but I was on the hospital set when Josie Ho, who plays Daniel’s wife, was preparing to abseil from the roof. She was wearing blue overalls, and observed that she looked like Bruce Lee disguised as the ‘phone repairman in Fist of Fury (and how many hot chicks would make that connection?).

The first time I saw the complete film was in a small suite at MBS studios. The final cut was being screened for the local actress engaged to dub Joan Chen’s lines into Cantonese. We watched it with the lights off, which was fortunate for my famously manly image. There’s a scene near the end of the film where Daniel’s character is running down an underground tunnel (he told me it absolutely stank!) and, in his fevered state, sees his dead son running in front of him. I had a tear in my eye when I first saw that sequence, but that’s our secret…

After Purple Storm, Wu was cast opposite, or, in this case, diagonally upward of, Aaron Kwok in 2000AD. DP Arthur Wong had a hell of a time keeping them both in shot, as Daniel’s about four feet taller than Aaron. 2000AD was dismissed at the time, but I later released it on DVD in the UK and it did quite well. The first half, set in Hong Kong, is very effective, especially the car park shoot out, but then we made the fatal mistake of moving to Singapore, and the last good commercial film shot in S’pore… has yet to be made.

Media Asia head of production John Chong and I were lobbying to cast Donnie Yen as the assassin Bobby in 2000AD, but the gang at JC Group (bless them) vetoed this in favour of Ken Lo. Director Gordon Chan had to wait until Painted Skin to work with Donnie, and they did pretty well with that!

Though most of Protégé is set in Hong Kong a key sequence was lensed in Chiang Rai, Thailand. In the film, Lin (Andy) takes Nick (Daniel) to the Golden Triangle, where they meet his supplier, a Thai general played by the veteran actor Nirut Sirichanya. (I found these scenes reminiscent of similar ones in Year Of The Dragon and American Gangster.)  Nirut will next be seen opposite Tony Jaa in Ong Bak 2 and years ago played a key role in No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder’ (yes,  No Retreat, No Surrender 2!).

Nirut also appeared in an earlier drug trade themed Hong Kong film, China White, a Ronnie Yu project starring Russell Wong. This was an unusual production in that international and local versions were shot back-to-back. Andy Lau also appeared in China White, but only in the Hong Kong edit. (I think the Hong Kong version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon should be Three Degrees of Andy Lau…)

After we wrapped the Q-and-A for Protégé, I left Daniel’s office, as ever, with so many questions as yet unanswered. Did he get to keep that hat from Twins Effect 2? If Alive could be compared to the Rolling Stones (a stretch, I admit) wouldn’t Conroy be Brian Jones? Why did anyone concerned not notice that the three male leads of Blood Brothers were absolutely and totally identical?

Some of these questions will be answered on the Dragon Dynasty Protégé DVD, but by no means all…

Daniel stunned by my recitation, from memory, of the full script from Enter The Dragon (backwards).