29-7-08: NO SMALL PARTS (part one) : ‘Shanghai’ days for Andy On.

In my last couple of blogs, I wrote about the experience of working with the Asian superstars Chow Yun-fat and Gong Li on our epic TWC period film ‘Shanghai’.  For the next couple, I want to share some comments on the performers who illuminated a couple of key supporting roles. Stanislavski famously said that there are no small parts, just small actors, and this was certainly borne out when we cast Chinese-American actor (and Alivenotdead regular!) Andy On.

I was closely involved with casting the role of Yuan, a young Chinese rebel who serves as bodyguard to Gong Li’s character. As Yuan has little dialogue and relatively few scenes in the film, we needed to find someone who could convey the long history between Gong Li’s character and his own. We genuinely needed an actor who was larger than the role itself. There was some pressure to cast ‘up’, to persuade a major Asian name to accept a smaller part in a bigger film. I felt that we needed to catch a star on the rise, to give a (relatively) new face a chance to shine on the international stage.

Andy has actually been in the business a while, but, early on, he was unlucky to star in the least well received films of otherwise great directors. I first heard of him when my friend Scott Adkins, a formidably talented British martial arts actor, worked on the elaborate promo for Tsui Hark’s Black Mask 2, in which Andy was cast in the lead. (I remember being shocked that, unfamiliar with Hong Kong movie set protocol, Scott, who hails from Birmingham, addressed Yuen Kuei as ‘Corrrey’ and Tsui Hark as ‘Chhhewy’…). Black Mask 2 was shot in Bangkok. (Years later, we actually looked at a building used in that film as a possible exterior for ‘Shanghai’.) Black Mask 2 ended up being (like a number of Tsui’s less conventional efforts) 101 great ideas in search of a story, and the same could be said of Ringo Lam’s ‘Looking for Mr. Perfect’, in which Andy also starred.  Watching those films, and On’s other earlier appearances, it was clear to a number of people in the industry (including me) that this guy had something, we just didn’t know what to do with it!

It was director Daniel Lee who finally used Andy to good effect in his Star Runner, for which Andy won Best Newcomer at the Hong Kong Film Awards. I was first supposed to work with Andy on Lee’s follow-up, Dragon Squad (released on Dragon Dynasty as Dragon Heat). I was a producer on the film, and Andy was cast in the lead. Unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict, he could only shoot a cameo for the film, and his original role was played by Taiwanese pop idol Vanness Wu. Vanness is a lovely guy and did a decent job, but he didn’t have the ‘edge’ that Andy would have brought. You need that when you’re up against the guy that chased The Terminator and fought the Aliens! When Dragon Heat star Michael Biehn arrived in Hong Kong, he felt that, given his Hollywood experience, none of the kids cast in the film would challenge him, acting-wise. He happened to show up on the day of Andy’s cameo, and, suitably impressed, went ‘who’s that guy?’ A lot of people had the same response when they saw Dragon Heat. Like I said, it would have been a different film if it had been On VS Hicks!

Andy worked on a number of high-profile films released internationally. I was at Arclight Films when we sold New Police Story, in which he plays a member of Daniel Wu’s bad guy team. I released both Fatal Contact (in which he has a fighting cameo) and Invisible Target on our Dragon Dynasty DVD label. However, Andy started doing his best work over the last 18 months.

Our paths almost crossed when I went to visit Maggie Q on the Dunhuang locations of Three Kingdoms, in which they both starred. However, at that time, Andy was a slave to that demon Warcraft, an apparently addictive videogame that almost cost us a whole generation of Hong Kong performers. (He discusses it in our interview for the Invisible Target DVD.) He could not be lured from his hotel room unless he was shooting! Again, Daniel Lee brought the best out of Andy, and his performance in Three Kingdoms attracted a lot of attention (There’s actually a longer cut of the film, with more of his scenes, and I hope one day I can release Three Kingdoms on DVD with all the deleted footage.)

Johnnie To finally made good on his promise to find a worthy role for Andy when he cast him in Mad Detective opposite Lau Ching-wan. It’s always hard to play the sane partner character alongside a flashy performance like Lau’s, but On acquits himself very well. The film won a bunch of awards in Asia, and was nominated for a Golden Lion in Venice.

Which brings us to ‘Shanghai’, where Andy had to hold his own in scenes opposite Chow Yun-fat, Gong Li, Ken Watanabe, John Cusack and Rinko Kikuchi, world class actors all... Watching the assembly (a rough edit of scenes from the film), we were all impressed at the degree to which Andy’s face was an open book, reflecting his thoughts and feelings without needing pages of exposition. He’s also a sufficiently physical presence that audiences will believe Gong Li would put her life in his hands. Andy did a great job for us, and I’m sure it’s just the beginning of bigger things for him.

If there’s a lesson for all the young actors reading this, I guess it’s that, even if you don’t experience immediate success, you can still learn your craft and grow as an actor, film by film. If you have the stamina, work ethic and (of course!) a little luck, the day will come when even a small role can yield big rewards.