DOUBLE TEAM

GIANT ROBOT: How did Double Team, your first U.S. project come about? Did you actively pursue making a film here?
TSUI HARK: Projects are like flying horses in the sky -- you try to hop on one and fly across the ocean to come over here. You don't get one and they just fly through the air. You see them, but you don't get to ride them. So six years ago, I talked to some people from Los Angeles. They tried to organize a project for me to do here, but for some reason the material was not ready.

Then I accidentally bumped into Jean-Claude Van Damme and his producer Moshe Diamant in Hong Kong. And we were very eager to do a project together, but they already had one project in their head and I have one, too, so we can't get together right away. But they keep sending me scripts and Jean-Claude Van Damme came to Hong Kong and we talk a lot. Then last year, we eventually got on a project. He sent me a script and I said, "Okay, let's shoot it because I want to do it." So many people come over here and make movies that it gives me this itching feeling. I just want to do it one time and see how it feels.

GR: Van Damme also brought over John Woo and Ringo Lam for their first American movies. Has he been actively looking at directors in Hong Kong?
TSUI: I don't know. John Woo and Ringo Lam are my very good friends. I have been the producer on their films and they have directed for me. I guess for the genre of action films, they associate it with people in Hong Kong. Ringo Lam and John Woo are very well-known for their technique in shooting action films. That's why they were here shooting with Jean-Claude. I think in a way he's pretty advanced in getting people from Hong Kong. These directors do these films and I think it is kind of like Roger Corman was in the past -- everybody had to make a Roger Corman film to go into the industry.

GR: So how has your first U.S. experience been?
TSUI: The U.S.A. experience I had was pretty much in Europe. We have done everything in France and Italy. I'm working with European actors and crew so it's more like a European experience than an American experience. The crew I have is like forty percent from Hong Kong. The director of photography, Peter Pau, is from Hong Kong.

GR: You are currently getting ready to do the final mix for Double Team. Do you like that phase?
TSUI: I like the first stage of editing. The first time you see how it looks, I think that is the best stage of the post. You are God, you are creating something from zero, from scratch. You start putting it together, you start looking at the language, they're telling your story. The story is created by every one of us in a group and that's why I enjoy the first stage a lot.

As it goes on it's a problem. You start seeing the film a hundred times you start to say, "Okay, I don't like the guy in the background, the guy in the third row, lousy guy, I don't like him." You start with this actor having this small problem -- maybe he's fiddling with his fingers and it's not important at all, but obviously there are so many times you see it that you start focusing on something that you are very nervous about and you lose your judgment. And that is the worst part of the stage of production.

GR: How is the pace of filmmaking here compared to that in Hong Kong? I know in Hong Kong directors are often asked to make multiple films a year.
TSUI: The pace is totally different. In Hong Kong, everything is very concentrated. The person who takes care of the whole production is a different job and responsibility allocation compared to the people here. That's why we have very concentrated teams in Hong Kong, like four people that take care of everything. But here, everything relates to the director, meaning that the director has to get everything so he does not have enough time to prepare for another film while he's taking care of the project he's on.

Also, I think in Hong Kong, everything is on a low budget and that's why everything has to be flexible. For example, you may not have something or you may want to change something else and the people have to be very flexible.

But for production here, I don't say that it's not flexible, but it's more like everything has to be planned out in advance and if something is not said or mentioned or confirmed at this early period of time, then you don't have it. You don't get it. I don't know if it's a rule or a business attitude or what.

In Hong Kong, we basically have a very short time to prepare something. But when we shoot, we still have the chance to make changes. Here, if you prepare and you fumble a little bit or you miss the time to confirm something, then you don't have it at all.

GR: How was directing the action sequences compared to Hong Kong production? Was it more difficult because of the rules and regulations?
TSUI: Before the production I have a meeting, a safety meeting. The studio people come over and say, "This is just a film so we don't want to be doing something that's very dangerous just to get a shot." I understand all that. But it gets to the point that you realize that everything is dangerous. No matter how much you do to make it safe -- the body reflexes, the control of something -- in a second, something could cause a very dangerous situation for the stuntman. So the stuntman and other people have to be very alert to take care of that. That is part of a filmmaker's life. Here, we start to talk about an action sequence and sometimes I get a very strange reaction -- they say it's impossible to do.

Like I have a scene underwater with two people fighting. The bad guy was wrapping the good guy in a big plastic bag. The first thing, the prop master jumps through the roof and says that's impossible. It would take you a week to prepare and weeks to shoot. And then the action director would say it's very dangerous.

I saw Jackie Chan do the underwater stuff with the shark in First Strike. I don't know whether that could be possible here. But we're being informed all the time, even before we have done anything, "Oh, you guys from Hong Kong, you do all the dangerous stunts." I say, "Everything is dangerous. Shooting a scene with tigers is dangerous. But you are depending on the person who is controlling the tiger. Fistfighting, that's the worst. I encountered quite a difficult situation with people who are involved in action here. It's very complicated.

I realize that something we think is very easy in Hong Kong is not so easy here. They talk about a very complicated set-up, but in Hong Kong we just do it very simply. Like this -- it's done. So sometimes I say this is not a big dish, it's only a sandwich, a salad in terms of the degree of technical difficulty. It's very simple, but it's something very difficult to be done here. That's the situation.

NEW DIRECTION

GR: How would you describe yourself as a director?
TSUI: For a while I was very frustrated about choosing a job in the film industry. I start collecting films that I saw in my childhood and I find that actually so many things from past films do relate to people and, suddenly, I said, "Okay, my job here, if I am still making films is that I'm still making films reflecting the people in my time. In what way I don't care. It can be a period film, it can be science fiction, it can be anything, but it must reflect what we are thinking at this moment in our time."

Ten, twenty, or fifty years later, people look back at the film and say, "Look at the people." That's how they thought fifty years ago. Our job is doing that. We're going to reflect the general feeling of the public, that's the thing I have in mind.

Film is like a combination of every media, every technology we have put together. My job is to reflect, react, respond to the environment and to create imagery on the screen with the audio visual effect.

GR: How did you first get interested in filmmaking?
TSUI: I get out of high school and I'm not doing anything for two years, thinking about what I should choose for my future.

I went to the movies a lot, like three or four movies. It was crazy. I saw everything. Kurosawa's films, Japanese films, Chinese films, American films, French films.

So one of my friends said, "You know you like to go to movies, why don't you go to the movies and find a job." I said, "That's not a bad idea." But the only way to get into the industry was to go to film school. That's how I came over to Texas to study film.

GR: How did you end up choosing Texas?
TSUI: Because they accepted me first. I was so desperate to go somewhere and Southern Methodist University sent me a letter that they accepted me so I went.

GR: What about Hong Kong television?
TSUI: When I left Hong Kong it was very primitive. It was still in black and white, not even color. So I studied for several years and then went back to Hong Kong at the end of 1976.

I don't know why, but suddenly we have a whole bunch of people who went out to England, to France, to Italy to study and then went back to Hong Kong and went to work in television. I was one of those people who worked in television coming back from somewhere else with a university education and a degree.

GR: Your film Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain revolutionized the effects industry in Hong Kong films. How did that come about?
TSUI: My first film, Butterfly Murders should have been a special effects film, a visual effect film. But I did it so practically that everything there was not a visual effect, everything is real. Butterfly Murders is sort of like a science fiction movie about butterflies that kill people.

So my friend came over to the set and looked at what I am shooting -- 20,000 butterflies flying around, and the people are catching the butterflies after every take. So he says, "Why don't you use visual effects?" I never thought of it. We didn't have an industry like that in Hong Kong at that time.

The second thing that hit me was when I was talking to a director of photography, saying, "Why don't we do visual effects like that?" He said that's not for us, it's for Hollywood. I wanted to prove that the visual effects exist in the Hong Kong industry, as well as in Hollywood.

So we start the film Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. And it's difficult. It's like, Wow! I don't know where, how, and what kind of people I should recruit.

So I start recruiting a whole bunch of students from designing school, the industry of technology and the art department. I never knew that working with students, a whole bunch of young people, would be so difficult. They argue, they split up in different sections, they gang up in different groups. Some groups don't talk to each other and some people hate each other. It's very complicated. And we have to face the fact that all of them read Cinefex, read this magazine, read books, and they come up with different ways of making shots. So we went through nine months of figuring out what a blue screen is, what is miniature photography, and at the same time we got many people from Hollywood to come over and visit us and help us a lot. People like Peter Kuran, Chris Cassidy, and Robert Blalack. Those people came and we had a lot of fun, but a lot of frustration. And after that project we have like the birth of the visual effects industry in Hong Kong.

Now I am starting something different, but along a similar path. I am starting my first animation film in Hong Kong and it's equally difficult. Maybe after this one comes out, maybe we have an animation industry, too.

GR: Your work is very diverse. You do comedies, fantasies, action. Do you deliberately try to find different challenges? Or do you see a common thread running through your choices?
TSUI: Yes and no. Yes, because we are afraid to label ourselves as some kind of director or some kind of producer. That would be very limiting because surviving in Hong Kong is difficult. Small place, small market, a lot of competition. You have to compete with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars and at the same time, you have to survive in your own industry.

We've seen so many of our mentors in the industry from the sixties and the fifties, they are very good in a particular genre, but then when a new genre comes to the industry, they fade out for the reason that the genre is not trendy any more and the people are not going for that kind of film.

So for us, for me especially, I try to not label myself in some genre. That's one of the reasons. The other reason is that I am a crazy movie freak. I like to go to movies, different kinds of movies. So I have a split personality. Sometimes I'm a filmmaker and sometimes I'm an audience. I will make a film for another half of my personality to watch. I always say, "Oh, it's boring now, everything is fighting films now, so can we have something that is quieter and talk about something that is more important than just kicking ass." So I will try to make a film based on a historical event, discussing the human problem. That sort of thing.

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