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ONCE UPON A TIME IN HONG KONG:
A TSUI HARK RETROSPECTIVE
May 25-28, 2001
at the Anthology Film Archives |
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TSUI
HARK BIOGRAPHY
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Born in Vietnam,
raised in Hong Kong and educated in Texas and New York, Tsui Hark returned
to Hong Kong as part of the New Wave: a group of up and coming directors
educated overseas and learning their chops on Hong Kong TV under the guidance
of producer, Selina Chow. His GOLDEN DAGGER ROMANCE series was a popular
martial arts program and when the budget ran out on the eve of filming
the climactic duel, Tsui calmly turned out the lights and filmed it in
the dark. Fans thought it was genius, but to Tsui it was just good sense.
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| Leaving TV, he directed
three features: THE BUTTERFLY MURDERS, a cerebral martial arts murder
mystery; WE'RE GOING TO EAT YOU, his anarcho-horror homage to Roger Corman;
and DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS: FIRST KIND, a movie about slacker terrorists
and a girl who likes to drive pins through the heads of mice. DANGEROUS
ENCOUNTERS was put through the censorship grinder, had its guts pulled
out and was released as a noir nightmare. All three movies earned critical
raves but only modest box office. Suddenly, the happy hit factory, Cinema
City, called and Tsui and his wife Nansun Shi joined up. ALL THE WRONG
CLUES...FOR THE RIGHT SOLUTIONS was his first family comedy for them,
and it was the hit Tsui needed. With his new-found clout he finagled Golden
Harvest into flying over American special effects maestros Robert Blalack
(STAR WARS), Peter Kuran (THE THING), and John Scheele (TRON), for ZU:
WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAINS, a stroboscopic paper mache epic, and
Hong Kong's first special effects extravaganza. |
Poster for ZU: WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAINS |
A few more comedy hits
greased the wheels for Tsui and Shi to found Film Workshop, a dissenter's
company inside the film industry where they were the bosses. SHANGHAI
BLUES was their first film and it was here that Tsui Hark's love for female
characters blossomed as co-star Sylvia Chang (herself now a director)
lobbied him hard that, frankly, women are much more interesting onscreen
than men.
Tsui took it to heart,
but put it on hold as he reinvented the career of a washed-up comedy director
named John Woo. Woo had 18 features under his belt, and had been practically
exiled to Taiwan by Shaw Brothers when he came to Tsui Hark asking for
a chance to direct his script, A BETTER TOMORROW. Tsui was, by his own
admission, a producer who is hands-on, feet-on, head-on, who practically
latches onto the backs of the directors who work for him and has input
on every shot they make (he since claims to have calmed down). His original
idea was that Woo's heroic trio in A BETTER TOMORROW of Chow Yun-fat,
Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung should be played by women (specifically, he
wanted Michelle Yeoh to play Chow Yun-fat's part). Woo ignored the idea.
The movie was a monster hit that launched the heroic bloodshed genre.
The two men worked together on A BETTER TOMORROW 1 & 2, and THE KILLER,
but finally had a falling out and went their own ways. |
| Tsui Hark had in
the meantime teamed up with Ching Siu-tung, his action director, to make
A CHINESE GHOST STORY (how much of the movie Tsui filmed and how much
Ching filmed is endlessly debated, but it's accepted that the dramatic
scenes may have been Tsui's work while Ching filmed the action and special
effects sequences). The flick launched a fad for the spooky period fantasy
flick, and then in 1990 Tsui took the biggest risk of his career. Wong
Fei-hung, the legendary Chinese folk hero, had been portrayed in 77 films
by the stern-faced patriarch Kwan Tak-hing, an upright guy who made little
distinction between the tower of moral power he played onscreen and the
exemplar of virtue he tried to be in his everyday life. Tsui Hark wanted
to revive the martial arts movie, dead since the early 80's, via the lucrative
Wong Fei-hung franchise, and he wanted to do it with a one-hit wonder,
Jet Li, then living in disgrace in San Francisco. Critics carped that
Jet Li was too young and too immoral to play such a hero as Wong Fei-hung,
but Tsui ignored them and started filming. The movie ran over-budget and
over-schedule, and Jet Li broke his leg on the first day of the 14 day
warehouse fight (he was doubled by Xiong Xin-xin). |
Poster for
ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA |
Another ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA poster |
Golden Harvest was
committed to an opening date, with massive pre-sales racked up across
Asia. On the day of the deadline, Tsui Hark felt the movie wasn't ready
and he took the print hostage. Golden Harvest backed down, and made apologies
to angry exhibitors. They got the print when Tsui was good and ready (since
then, Tsui has acquired a reputation for shooting and editing up until
the eleventh hour, sometimes still tampering with a print four hours before
its premiere). ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA was a big hit, its sequel was
even bigger. It relaunched the period martial arts drama, and it made
Jet Li an international superstar, tattooing its theme song "A Man Should
Be of Self Help" on soft, pink brains around the world. Golden Harvest
was, at the end of the day, very happy that it waited. |
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Tsui Hark rode the martial arts wave until he sensed it was petering out,
and then he nimbly jumped onto the romantic comedy train with THE LOVERS,
a delicate, endearing adaptation of the famed BUTTERFLY LOVERS, one of
China's most enduring stories (a la ROMEO AND JULIET), his food-fu brain-fry
THE CHINESE FEAST, and the high-fashion priest romance of TRISTAR. Next
came his foray into Van Damme Land with DOUBLE TEAM (imagine Tsui Hark,
Dennis Rodman and Mickey Rourke together in Italy, then shiver), and the
deconstructionist nightmare KNOCK OFF. Tsui returned to Hong Kong and
much like he knocked together Cinefex and the Hong Kong special effects
industry when he wanted to make ZU, he patched together an animation industry
to film A CHINESE GHOST STORY: THE ANIMATION. That same year he lured
Jet Li back to the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series for the wildly successful
sixth installment, directed by Sammo Hung (although Tsui reportedly shot
quite a bit of it). |
A CHINESE GHOST STORY: THE ANIMATION and ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA AND
AMERICA |
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Working in comics and on various side projects, Tsui Hark was away from
movies for three years, but 2000 has marked his comeback. TIME AND TIDE
has been released to critical acclaim, the epic sequel to ZU is being
filmed with Zhang Ziyi (and with Miramax reportedly sniffing around the
rights), he's producing MASTER Q directed by UNTOLD STORY's Herman Yau,
and he just completed BLACK MASK 2, a wild-sounding flick based on his
Jet Li vehicle, BLACK MASK, and filmed in Thailand. |
Tsui comes a full circle: the upcoming ZU 2
(to be released in the Summer of 2001 in Hong Kong) |
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