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The Hero Of Heroic Bloodshed A John Woo Documentary
Transcript
00:00:01Once you start to understand sort of the world of John Woo, nobody comes close to
00:00:06making the movies that he makes, made and still makes.
00:00:09John Woo movies inspire me, like seeing something down and grounded and very gritty.
00:00:15You know, it feels like, it feels so real, it feels like a documentary, a stylistic documentary
00:00:20style where you feel like you can be there, you smell it, you taste it.
00:00:26He completely redefined not just Hong Kong action cinema, but action cinema everywhere
00:00:31around the world.
00:00:31You know, the Better Tomorrow films, The Killer, Hard Boiled, everything he did.
00:01:07John Woo kind of started as an assistant director to the martial arts director, Jiang Che, working
00:01:17on, I guess, films that were, in a lot of ways, similar to the themes that sort of developed
00:01:23in his later cinema, in his kind of later action cinema, with sort of the gangsters.
00:01:30And Jiang Che's kind of known for his kind of concern with sort of heroic martial arts masculinity,
00:01:36with kind of sacrifice and bloodshed in his heroes.
00:01:40And also sort of the themes of, I guess, kind of brotherhood, the sort of the bonding between heroes.
00:01:47And John Woo very much kind of saw himself as kind of being very much a sort of disciple of
00:01:52Jiang Che.
00:01:53Jiang Che was very much his mentor in a lot of ways.
00:01:56And if you look back at his early films through the 70s, you know, he was working in Kung Fu,
00:02:00he was working in martial arts cinema during the 1970s as well, like films like Last Hurrah for Chivalry, for
00:02:06example.
00:02:06And then even into the early 1980s, he was doing quite an interesting mix of films,
00:02:10which you could watch and you might not think this is a John Woo film.
00:02:14Something like To Hell with the Devil, for example.
00:02:16A very funny, early Hong Kong sort of spooky comedy type of film,
00:02:20which actually also, I think, foreshadows some of his Christian themes later.
00:02:23But it's not really until he gets to his heroic bloodshed films, his bullet ballet films from 1986.
00:02:33That's what we associate John Woo with doing.
00:02:36But at the same time, he has a much more varied, I think, and rich career than you actually associate
00:02:42him with.
00:02:55You know, after Bruce Lee died, you know, and the whole Hong Kong film business,
00:03:01they are all looking for some new material.
00:03:05You know, they want to have, they all wanted to make a big change.
00:03:11You know, since Bruce Lee got so much of great impact and so much success for the whole business,
00:03:21and so they want us to make a change.
00:03:26You know, before Bruce Lee, the Hong Kong movie wasn't that great.
00:03:33You know, everything had, you know, so old-fashioned and poor, you know,
00:03:42and, you know, it seems like only one single film, you know, in Hong Kong.
00:03:49But, you know, in 1980, you know, we can, all of a sudden, we can develop a huge change.
00:04:01So, fortunately, we have a very, very open, you know, financial, you know.
00:04:07They love movies, they love movies, and then they like to support any new idea.
00:04:15So, the whole Hong Kong film business, they all wanted to try something new, anything new, you know.
00:04:26So, all of a sudden, you know, there were all kinds of movies, you know, that the movie had been
00:04:33made, you know.
00:04:34Like the police story, you know, no matter the police story or gangster or love story or art film.
00:04:42And the audience really love to see a change.
00:04:47So, we are so lucky, you know, to, besides we have got a very good financial, you know, for their
00:05:00support.
00:05:01And by the meantime, we have no fear.
00:05:05We have no fear to do anything we wanted to do, anything we like, you know.
00:05:15So, like, I always dreaming to make a movie in a restaurant way, you know, not like a traditional Hong
00:05:24Kong film, you know.
00:05:25The traditional Hong Kong film is very simple, you know, right.
00:05:28They short without sound, and then they just short what they need, you know.
00:05:35So, what I like to use is the Western system, you know, and the technique to shoot the movies.
00:05:47And everything was so simple.
00:05:50So, if we have an idea, and then we just go to the financier, and then they only ask, what
00:05:59do you want to shoot?
00:06:00And I say, oh, I want to shoot the story about a cop and a killer.
00:06:06Okay, what's the cash?
00:06:08So, in fact, oh, and then how much?
00:06:13About $30 million.
00:06:16Okay, go ahead.
00:06:17Do it.
00:06:33One of the ways that you can understand his latest cinema is kind of taking those sort of themes of
00:06:38martial arts heroism,
00:06:39which are drawn from sort of a whole sort of long literature of sort of martial arts stories in Chinese
00:06:50culture,
00:06:51around the kind of the figure of the wuxia, the sort of the martial hero.
00:06:56It's sometimes translated as a sort of the knight-errant of Chinese cinema, if you like, with this kind of
00:07:02code of honour and brotherhood and righteousness.
00:07:05Often very sort of anarchic, rebellious, and violent characters in Chinese history, but also sort of known for their sort
00:07:12of their honesty,
00:07:13for fulfilling promises, for their brotherhood, for helping out other sorts of people in distress and taking things into their
00:07:22own hands in a sort of very positive way as well.
00:07:25So, one of the ways of sort of understanding the Jungwoo cinema is kind of taking these sort of historical
00:07:31themes that were kind of there within the martial arts cinema of the early 70s,
00:07:36where he was kind of starting out and then translating them into the contemporary world of Hong Kong and sort
00:07:44of doing a sort of a genre sort of jump between the sort of the martial arts cinema and kind
00:07:50of the gangster film, if you like.
00:07:52And then sort of being able to sort of merge in influences from Hollywood, things like The Godfather, from French
00:07:59cinema, Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samurai, I think is a very kind of key sort of touch point within that.
00:08:05And also, of course, kind of Japanese gangster films as well.
00:08:08And he's very influenced by kind of people like Sam Peckinpah and the slow motion in that.
00:08:12It's essentially the Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in terms of Westerns.
00:08:20And then maybe the getaway in terms of modern day crime.
00:08:24And technically, if you look at the way they both shoot action scenes, the use of multiple cameras and little
00:08:34moments of slow motion and lots of men striding towards camera with corpses falling around.
00:08:43That's very much a Peckinpah style.
00:08:46So in a sense, he's sort of taking these very specifically Hong Kong martial arts traditions and then sort of
00:08:52reimagining them and perhaps reimagining them at a sort of a time of kind of complicated crisis in Hong Kong
00:09:00as something that addresses the sort of the time and place and setting of his own life and of the
00:09:09contemporary world.
00:09:31I think one of the things that's very important in A Better Tomorrow is Chow Yun-Fat's kind of image
00:09:39in the film.
00:09:40So there's a very particular version of kind of masculinity that's involved with it.
00:09:45And Chow Yun-Fat, I mean, he's also someone who's he'd made it very big in television and was also
00:09:52kind of struggling to break into sort of successful cinematic roles.
00:09:56And I think John Wood sort of very much seen a kind of a what we call a kind of
00:10:03an analog for himself in Chow Yun-Fat as a kind of a bit of an underdog.
00:10:07For him, it is being able to layer that sensitivity and that emotion on top of that machismo, which is
00:10:15why Chow Yun-Fat is so amazing at having all of those layers and elements.
00:10:20You know, he's all of that all at once. He's he is this this Cary Grant of it all. Right.
00:10:26But he is also, you know, a Bronson, a Stallone, you name it, like he is tough and cool, but
00:10:33but he's he's certainly this this romantic gentleman as well.
00:10:39He's got it all. Chow Yun-Fat is one of the most iconic actors in the history of Asian cinema,
00:10:45I would say, and rising to stardom in the 1980s.
00:10:49He became a definite cultural icon and the important face of Hong Kong's golden age of action films.
00:10:55His performances in A Better Tomorrow turned him into a cultural phenomenon.
00:11:00So he was cool and charismatic and emotionally layered.
00:11:05The trench coat and sunglasses and pistols become instantly iconic and being remembered by the audience.
00:11:25When John Woo started making action cinema with A Better Tomorrow in 1986, he very much kind of sparked off
00:11:33a new sort of craze for a new kind of gangster film in Hong Kong.
00:11:36But a lot of the sort of the people that sort of came off to him tended to make very
00:11:41kind of gritty, realistic kind of gangster films.
00:11:45Whereas I think one of the things that sort of famously marks out John Woo's films as being special and
00:11:50being different is this kind of element of fantasy,
00:11:53something that's kind of ecstatic in the violence.
00:11:57It sort of enters into a sort of a sort of a sacred ritual, magical sort of aestheticized sort of
00:12:05space.
00:12:06So this is kind of moment of sort of violence, but also this kind of transcendence of kind of violence,
00:12:12which I guess in some senses he's getting from, you know, what sort of fascinated him about the cinema as
00:12:17a sort of a space as a child.
00:12:19And then also the sort of, I guess, very sort of, in a lot of ways, also kind of sacred
00:12:24violence within the films of his mentor, Jiang Che.
00:12:45So we had A Better Tomorrow and A Better Tomorrow 2, fantastic films. I love them.
00:12:49But I think with The Killer, he took everything he did in those films and he notched it up another
00:12:53couple of levels.
00:12:54He took Chow Yun-Fat in particular and he gave him this completely iconic classic role for him.
00:13:01Everything about it revolves around the screen persona which Chow Yun-Fat had been developing slowly but surely throughout the
00:13:071980s.
00:13:08He upped the bloody brotherhood in it. He made everything about the relationship between the classic,
00:13:14between like the cop and the killer and the killer has the heart and soul and everything.
00:13:17But what he gives us with The Killer, the action has increased.
00:13:20When we have A Better Tomorrow, we have the relationships.
00:13:22But they are more tied towards family as such, which is great. It works very well.
00:13:26As they feel a bit more like a soap opera and I don't mean that in a bad way.
00:13:30But with The Killer, we have this completely different take of cops and robbers, if you want to put it
00:13:35like this.
00:13:36Technically, who should be the bad guy, the assassin and the cop chasing him.
00:13:39And then we see everything that brings them together throughout the film and it's completely believable and actually quite moving
00:13:44relationship between them.
00:13:46As well as seeing Chow Yun-Fat's motivations for why he's doing everything to get the operation for the site
00:13:51to help the girl he's injured.
00:13:54And so there's so much going on in The Killer, it's an emotional film.
00:13:58It is actually a moving film as well as being incredibly thrilling and giving us…
00:14:02Every film that John Woo did, he notched up the action choreography in his Hong Kong films leading up to
00:14:07Hard Boiled.
00:14:07But The Killer, in a way, is a film where he most perfectly brought together like the melodrama and the
00:14:13action side in it as well.
00:14:14And it makes The Killer one of the greatest, not just action films, but one of the greatest Hong Kong
00:14:18films.
00:14:18I can't imagine you were really going to shoot me.
00:14:20I won't let anyone pick up any other chance.
00:14:22You won't have any chance.
00:14:24You won't have any chance.
00:14:25You won't be once again.
00:14:26You'll be twice again.
00:14:27Joe.
00:14:29Where's he?
00:14:30Where's he?
00:14:31Where's he?
00:14:32Where's he?
00:14:32Where's he?
00:14:34I remember this film was a few years ago.
00:14:38I remember that time when I was at a moment, I got a phone call.
00:14:44I saw a phone call.
00:14:45There was a phone call.
00:14:46There was a phone call called The Killer One of the Group.
00:14:47They would be a like to me
00:14:49Then I was very fascinated
00:14:52And I watched the movie
00:14:55I watched the one-game movie
00:14:57The movie was a movie
00:15:00That was very good
00:15:02And I was very excited for him
00:15:10To see the movie
00:15:18I don't remember the first time I was going to be able to do it.
00:15:20But I remember the first time I was going to be able to do it.
00:15:23It was like a river.
00:15:30But I really didn't remember it.
00:15:34How can I be able to do it?
00:15:36When I was working with him,
00:15:38I had to get a back load of the camera.
00:15:43And it happened very early in the early days.
00:15:48I was going to be able to do the camera.
00:15:50And it was pretty popular.
00:15:56I was able to do it.
00:16:02And I was going to be able to do it.
00:16:04And I was going to be able to do it.
00:16:07I can see that the director is very special and he has made a lot of requests that are very
00:16:11high.
00:16:12He has made a lot of requests that make the film very detailed.
00:16:17I can see a lot of things that are not the same as before.
00:16:34I think what is good about The Killer is that it's with very much, I think, defining Zhang Wu style
00:16:43in terms of this blend of aesthetics with emotional music,
00:16:49and also very impactful scenes and then very stylized violence.
00:16:56And also I think with a very interesting and from I think what we perhaps know and think now,
00:17:04very precise and right decisions of who to work with and also what actors to be playing in the film.
00:17:19Don't do it! Don't do it!
00:17:23We have to learn the partnership with周涇發.
00:17:27It became quite a愉快 because he was very careful on some other works.
00:17:35And everyone is very young again.
00:17:38I remember in one of the rooms, we were always playing with a lot of makeup.
00:17:41We will always be waiting for him to watch the movie.
00:17:53And he is a very special person in this movie.
00:18:01I was also a police officer.
00:18:04And I was a good actor.
00:18:11I was a good actor.
00:18:12He was a good actor.
00:18:14I remember the song,
00:18:18the song was he singing.
00:18:42In 1980s, Celia was definitely a big star in both cantal pop and mandal pop.
00:18:47I would say she actually released more cantal pop track, but she's from Taiwan, but she
00:18:53grew up in Canada, so she's Canadian as well.
00:18:55I think she has this quite transnational type of image, why she mostly developed her career
00:19:03in Hong Kong.
00:19:05She has this very powerful voice, which also blends with, I think, a very gentle and emotional
00:19:13touch.
00:19:15So I think that resonates with a lot of different audiences across the Chinese-speaking world.
00:19:21But at the same time, I think for her music, that she also successfully blends Western genre,
00:19:28such as R&B.
00:19:29So yeah, I think those hit songs in both cantal pop and mandal pop kind of feature into, I
00:19:36think, her status as a superstar.
00:19:54Music plays a very powerful role in shaping the film's emotional landscape and also the
00:20:02stylized violence in the film.
00:20:03The film is a masterclass in blending action and sentimentality.
00:20:09And its use of music is central to that balance.
00:20:13A standout motif in the film is the use of the solo piano music, mostly notable in the
00:20:19scene featuring Jenny, who's played by Celia, the blind singer whose fate is tragically tangled
00:20:25with the hitman, Arjun.
00:20:27And the recurring piano theme is, which is a little bit sad and romantic, became the film's
00:20:34core theme, which is, I think, something about redemption, something about sadness, but love
00:20:41as well.
00:20:42So I think which kind of reminds us humanity and behind all of the gun scenes and also gunfight.
00:20:50So there are also some of the scenes when Celia sings in the piano or jazz bar, so which, where
00:20:59that we see diegetic music being used in the film.
00:21:03So automatically, I think music is something in the killer that elevates, I think, the storytelling.
00:21:09is very good.
00:21:10Telling?
00:21:10Is very good.
00:21:12I was feeling like that the director described the story of the movie is a song and has knocked
00:21:21off the stage.
00:21:23A very sad movie with the scene, and the feeling from the story of his before, and the feel
00:21:27I remember that the film is the story from周潤法 and his as well.
00:21:32And that was felt as heat stamping and getting the feeling out of the film.
00:21:32I remember, that the experience was very hard and the feeling of the film was very good.
00:21:36With the idea of the movie.
00:21:37Back to the film as well, I was in the song, that I discovered in the film was the film.
00:21:40I remember that I hadn't tried to bring B-Zo out to film
00:21:46At that time, the time is not enough, and the time is not enough
00:21:51The director of the B-Yu-Sum told me to ask for me to film a clip
00:22:01I used camera card, and brought a camera camera camera
00:22:08and then there was a photographer who went to it.
00:22:12At the end of the day,
00:22:14I was filming a couple of pictures of a追逐.
00:22:18I was very happy because I didn't try to bring a couple of people out there.
00:22:29It was a very big certainty and a very big surprise.
00:22:37I think the most important thing is that the most important thing is to go to the mountain.
00:22:45The most important thing is that the most important thing is that the day is going to be in the
00:22:51dark.
00:22:52And then they say that they are going to do this.
00:22:55I remember that the day is only one hour and then it will be in the dark.
00:23:01We also have to set up the stairs to the ground.
00:23:08We also have to set up the stairs to the ground.
00:23:12Then we can set up the stairs to the ground.
00:23:15At the time of the professor, he chose a room
00:23:18that was about 10 meters tall.
00:23:25I remember that when I looked at it,
00:23:26I thought that it was not a good view.
00:23:30Then I picked up a higher position,
00:23:33which is a 20-meter square meter.
00:23:39I thought that it was a good view.
00:23:44I remember that the film was really good.
00:23:46He asked if it was not a good view.
00:23:48He asked if it was a good view.
00:23:50I said that it was okay.
00:23:51I did it.
00:23:54I thought that it was a good view.
00:23:58He said he was very good.
00:24:00He said he was very good to me.
00:24:01I remember that when the film was done,
00:24:06the wind was really dark.
00:24:11The wind was very hard to drive the wind.
00:24:15It was a good view.
00:24:20He talked about the wind.
00:24:22He was very good I remember that it was a bad view.
00:24:32Then the wind were running.
00:24:36He was filled with akkae,
00:24:39and he was a good view.
00:24:40He was like,
00:24:55I would really say that The Killer is the most exemplary John Woo film.
00:25:02It's a textbook.
00:25:03If you want to learn everything about John Woo, like the classical John Woo, this is the film.
00:25:09It really has all the signatures, all the signs, all the cool things and all the enjoyable elements of a
00:25:17John Woo film.
00:25:18And it's a really interesting thing.
00:25:21For example, like a lot of people could immediately come out with the idea that, for example, John Woo's obsession
00:25:28with religious symbolism, with the doves, the setting in a small chapel in the countryside.
00:25:35I mean, things that we would see even in his Hollywood days, like Face Off.
00:25:40His love of the idea of the doppelganger and sometimes just simply the double.
00:25:46So the idea is that on the one hand, we have the Chow Yun-fat person.
00:25:52He's a killer with the heart of gold.
00:25:54But it is also a kind of very medieval righteous figure who is supposed to observe his killing for money.
00:26:05But at the same time, he also knows where his boundaries are and he would only do the right thing.
00:26:12He's killing for a purpose.
00:26:15He wouldn't hurt women.
00:26:16He wouldn't hurt a little girl.
00:26:19So a lot of these things are really going on.
00:26:22But at the same time, I have to say, he meets a detective, right?
00:26:26And the detective is totally his double.
00:26:29There's this particular scene in which this detective goes into Chow Yun-fat's flat.
00:26:35And then it's a very old 1930s style flat.
00:26:40And then he's sitting exactly on the spot where Chow Yun-fat was sitting just a few minutes ago.
00:26:47And you have this beautiful montage and also superimposition between them sitting.
00:26:54And it's such a delightfully and beautifully choreographed piece of art.
00:26:59There is a couple of things that John Woo really loves and sometimes are not really being talked about a
00:27:07lot.
00:27:07First of all, his nostalgia and his love of the 1950s Cantonese cinema.
00:27:15Not only are many of these locations recalling or reminding the Hong Kong spectators in the 1980s,
00:27:25the very 1950s, 1960s setting, including Chow Yun-fat's flat and also a lot of these locations,
00:27:36the tenement buildings, a lot of these things.
00:27:38But also I think about the plot itself with a person like Zhugong being in the movie.
00:27:50And Zhugong is also such a really interesting character in his short of the days,
00:27:56also Cantonese cinema days, Mandarin cinema days, and then television, like Asia television,
00:28:03and also our TV days.
00:28:05And you can totally see that he has always been regarded as one of the most righteous actors in the
00:28:13industry.
00:28:14And then he plays a gangster again with a heart of gold, which is really, really interesting.
00:28:23It immediately brings you back to that kind of 1950s, 1960s.
00:28:28We are all workers and we are all under oppression and we are all here to work together.
00:28:35We take care of each other no matter what the rich people are going to say.
00:28:42And I think that really carries a lot of that kind of 1950s Hong Kong cinema
00:28:49to the kind of contemporary 1980s Hong Kong audience.
00:28:54And I think that's what we are all here to do.
00:29:23He still has a lot of fun.
00:29:25He also has a lot of fun.
00:29:28He also has a lot of fun.
00:29:33He has a lot of fun.
00:29:35He has a lot of fun.
00:29:39I think it's really beautiful.
00:29:55One thing we don't really see from John Woo for a lot of his films, and certainly not now, is
00:30:01politics.
00:30:02But if you look back, he did arguably one of the most political Hong Kong action films,
00:30:07a bullet in the head, which it's hard not to see being on some level.
00:30:11It's about Tiananmen Square. I don't think there's any other way to look at it.
00:30:13It's about violent change. It's about oppression. It's about friendship, everything, breaking down.
00:30:19We had a lot of Hong Kong films through the 80s into the early 90s.
00:30:23Which we're looking at like friendship, under oppression, whether it's China, whether it's a Japanese invasion, everything.
00:30:29And I think with a bullet in the head, what John Woo's doing, and it's an incredibly effective film that
00:30:35you've watched.
00:30:36It's a bullet in the head. It feels like you're being punched in the gut watching that film.
00:30:39You can feel that there is a political metaphor in the film. There's no other way to see that film.
00:30:44And it's not something which John Woo's ever really done since then, which is a shame,
00:30:48because I think the different layers, the different levels you can watch a bullet in the head on,
00:30:53make it one of the most hard-hitting films of his career, but really just of Hong Kong action genre
00:30:58of that time.
00:30:58Of course, it does address very strongly the idea of political turmoil and leaving Hong Kong and then the idea
00:31:11of addressing political violence.
00:31:14The idea is just like, how do you address political violence and feeling helpless and what you can do within
00:31:21that.
00:31:22Even when the film was released, I remember that I saw it, not quite kosher because I was under 18,
00:31:31I was actually, I saw it in the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and I remember that even in the
00:31:40Hong Kong International Film Festival in the catalogue,
00:31:42they would say that this is actually one of the first commercially released films that openly alluded to the 1967
00:31:52riots.
00:31:53If you think about the way it starts, it starts with the 1967 riots in Hong Kong,
00:31:57whether or not you're completely familiar with the historical context as an international viewer.
00:32:01But when you're watching them, you'll get a sense that he's framing, he's shooting it in a way which I
00:32:06think is directly linked to Tiananmen Square,
00:32:09the imagery, the way it's used and shown to us.
00:32:13I think that's what is actually at the core of the film, and as we can see that as it
00:32:17moves through the film,
00:32:18everything relates back still to this idea of Hong Kong and its identity as a colonised place,
00:32:25which has gone from one coloniser to the shadow and the threat of this looming authoritarian oppression,
00:32:30this rule which is coming into it.
00:32:32And you can see that in a lot of Hong Kong films, really from the start of the 80s throughout,
00:32:36when we had the signing of the sign of the Sino-British Declaration.
00:32:39Hong Kong was a colony whose fate was being decided not by Hong Kong, but by negotiations by other powers,
00:32:45and so it was being passed from the British, you know, as a colony with everything that went with that,
00:32:50to mainland China, this completely different force, which was not likely to be particularly kind
00:32:57or was going to give it something completely different.
00:32:59And I think we can see in Bullet in the Head, we can see it framed not just through Tiananmen,
00:33:03but still this real sense of anxiety and identity and this turmoil about what's coming next.
00:33:28One of the films sometimes people forget from John Woo is Once a Thief, which is actually a really good
00:33:33film.
00:33:33And it's where he kind of combines his action and his brotherhood with his love of like Hitchcock
00:33:40and some of those sort of like caper films and everything like that.
00:33:42And I think it's a fantastic film. It's really got better and better with age.
00:33:46And it's a very interesting one as well because it actually moved into being a TV series too,
00:33:50which is something else we don't always think about.
00:33:52And it's one of John Woo's films, I think, especially looking at these Hollywood films,
00:33:57like we look back, he was having some Hollywood influences, I think, earlier in his career
00:34:02towards the end of his time in Hong Kong.
00:34:15I've also filmed a few films, I've also filmed a couple of films,
00:34:20and I've also filmed a couple of films,
00:34:22and I've also filmed a couple of films.
00:34:24I've filmed a couple of films that I've filmed in the 4th movie.
00:34:28So that's something that I've filmed in the first year.
00:34:31And that's the very important film of the film that I've filmed in the 2nd.
00:34:37And so, the film that I've filmed in the 4th movie was already dated in 5,9以前,
00:34:45and that's the same thing as I said.
00:34:50And I thought that we could follow a couple of films and then the film.
00:34:53On the 3rd movie was already filmed.
00:34:55But on the 3rd movie I was filmed in the 4th movie as well.
00:34:55I remember a few days ago,
00:35:00there was a car in a car in the car,
00:35:05and the car was on the car,
00:35:06and the car was on the car.
00:35:08I was told to do a few things,
00:35:13and I was a more challenging one.
00:35:16The car was on the car,
00:35:21and the car was on the car.
00:35:23Another one is when I was flying on the car
00:35:25when I was driving on the car,
00:35:27and hit the car and hit the car.
00:35:30I think that I can do this and the image
00:35:34and the image in this movie can be very beautiful.
00:35:40But the director has a very big challenge for me.
00:35:46In the morning of the morning,
00:35:49I said that I didn't have enough time to do this.
00:35:53That's really difficult for me
00:35:55But I also have to work with many films
00:35:58I also know that his dream is going to be able to do this
00:36:03Then he will say that he will be able to do this
00:36:06I will be able to take a long time in the evening
00:36:12I will be able to do all the things I've prepared
00:36:16I've done a few hours of preparation
00:36:18I will be able to do it
00:36:23So this is a bit of a habit
00:36:28And I will be able to do it
00:36:29So I will be able to do it
00:36:33In this movie, many years later
00:36:39I think this is a bit of a classic action
00:36:42And I hope that he is going to be able to do it
00:36:43I will be able to do it
00:36:46I will be able to do it
00:37:12so I learned a lot. For me, watching movies, and it still is, you know, for me it's kind of
00:37:18a
00:37:19instruction book of how you do things, you know, how work, how do things work. So I'm watching
00:37:25those movies over and over again and then see how does somebody come into a room, how do the
00:37:30fighting happens, which angles do work, and studying them and trying to use that in my work.
00:37:52For the Hong Kong movie, usually the foreign market, it usually only released in the Chinatown theater
00:38:06with a pretty bad copy, you know. We have never had a world market, a real world market,
00:38:14we have never got this, you know, so we have, and we also have never noticed, you know, anybody will
00:38:25pay attention, you know, anybody in Hollywood will pay any attention for our movies.
00:38:47The reason it was unusual for a film like Hard Boiled to come round your actual theaters as
00:38:55opposed to your art house places is that there'd been a long time since there was, as it were,
00:39:02a big exploitation trend that was predicated on films that didn't come from America.
00:39:09Probably you have to go back to the kung fu movies of the early 70s. In the wake of Bruce
00:39:16Lee being really popular, there was a window when a whole bunch of Shaw Brothers and Golden Hardest
00:39:22films were comically badly dubbed and released to American grindhouses and drive-ins, or indeed in Britain,
00:39:31I saw tons of those films, they quite often came out as supporting features. You'd go and see
00:39:38Frankenstein and the monster from hell, a hammer film, and it would have a girl with the thunderbolt
00:39:42kick would be the support picture. And that was only like two or three years the craze lasted.
00:39:49Obviously Bruce Lee died and kung fu was cancelled and everybody started making slasher movies or whatever,
00:39:55you know, took over from that. Before that, there had been Spaghetti Westerns. And of course,
00:40:02Spaghetti Westerns are Italian, Spanish films, but they kind of look American. You know, they had Clint
00:40:07Eastwood in. Or if they didn't have Clint Eastwood in, they had some Italian guy who was given a really
00:40:12Anglo name to erase the foreignness. And that was probably true across Europe as well. Yeah,
00:40:21it's like these films wanted to be American. There was a sense that deep down the kind of heroic
00:40:29bloodshed gangster movies that John Woo specialised in, they didn't want to be American, but they
00:40:35wanted to refer to American cinema. Obviously, you know, I think if you look back on it, the origins of
00:40:44almost all these films are James Cagney gangster movies from the early 1930s, things like The Public
00:40:51Enemy, particularly The Roaring Twenties. They have all the elements that are in John Woo movies. You
00:40:58know, they're about vicious gangsters, but they're also about sentimental men. They're also about
00:41:04relationships between men. Yeah, how to exist outside the law and retain a certain kind of
00:41:11integrity, all this kind of stuff. That's the Warner Brothers gangster cycle of the 1930s.
00:41:17Then in Woo's case in particular, it's the fact that those films were taken up by French film
00:41:25critics who made their own versions. Sometimes if you look at the official record, it will say that
00:41:33John Woo was influenced by the French Nouvelle Vague, and that tends to mean Godard and Truffaut.
00:41:39And they made, you know, crime movies. But what they really means is Jean-Pierre Melville.
00:41:45I know that Le Samurai, with Alain Delon as a hitman, is a particular favorite of John Woo,
00:41:52and you can see that he goes back to that over and over again. Melville made other really terrific
00:41:59French gangster movies with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon, and other directors did that as well.
00:42:06There's, for some reason, French gangster films didn't click the way Italian westerns did.
00:42:12But there were a bunch of them. They were well reviewed. They were certainly well distributed
00:42:17outside France. And obviously they made a lot of an impression on John Woo, because there are so many
00:42:24elements of a French version of an American archetype that then become part of a Chinese version.
00:42:35And incorporating various other kind of mythic structures, plus all sorts of material which is
00:42:40personal to the filmmaker. And that then becomes something new. That's probably why there was a
00:42:49craze outside China for these films. These were films that were discovered. We didn't tend to see
00:42:56them as they came out. It was only from Hard Boiled, which I suppose is the last of John Woo's
00:43:02first phase of, or actually it's his second phase of Chinese filmmaking. There was a whole bunch of stuff
00:43:08in the 1970s, which is still a subject for further research. But the fact that The Killer made such an
00:43:15impression on people that they went and sought out the better tomorrow films. They went and sought
00:43:19out a bullet to the head. And then when Hard Boiled came out, everyone was primed for it and kind
00:43:26of knew
00:43:26what to expect. And that was something that plainly resonated. I mean, it got it got him work outside
00:43:33China for a start. It was something that made not just film fans, but film executives sit up and say,
00:43:42not only is this a man we could work with, but this is a style that we could adapt.
00:44:00Although John Woo had a very, very long and successful career in Hollywood and still continues
00:44:04to this day, he had quite an interesting start there. I mean, Hard Target's a fantastic film, but
00:44:09we have Sam Raimi famously brought on set to keep an eye on how things were going.
00:44:14And it's quite interesting when you think of it. I mean, John Woo had just before like given
00:44:18his Hard Boiled, arguably the greatest action film of all time internationally from anywhere. He's
00:44:23doing this film in Hollywood and we've got Sam Raimi on set. Just did they not trust him? What do
00:44:28you
00:44:28think he was going to do? And that's very interesting. And I think it took him a little time,
00:44:34not so much to get up to speed in terms of his filmmaking, but maybe just to convince Hollywood,
00:44:39like, yes, this guy is the greatest action director in the world. He's a safe pair of fans.
00:44:43You know, studios, they wanted John. They were scared for John to be John. And the irony is,
00:44:50you have to let John be John if you want that woo factor. I mean, it's not going to come
00:44:55any other
00:44:55way, but they kept wanting to, um, have sort of that, they wanted what made John so famous and
00:45:03exciting and his movies so special, but they were also nervous. It just, it was too, it was hard for
00:45:08them to embrace sort of that, that, um, exciting chaos that John can put on screen. But it's not just
00:45:15chaos. It's not just violence for violence sake. It's not celebrating violence at all. And I think that
00:45:21that some executives, they just, it was harder for them. Either they understood it, but they weren't
00:45:26sure how to, how to do it in American cinema. Maybe they were nervous how that would present,
00:45:30or maybe they didn't know themselves. That I can't really speak to, but I would say that for sure,
00:45:36there are so many, so many times they would try to sort of handcuff John, uh, and not let him
00:45:42do what
00:45:42he wanted to do to make it what it could be. Uh, I think that, you know, that, that moment
00:45:48of Hong Kong
00:45:48cinema where John created this gun-fu, right? He created something that had never come before.
00:45:54That kind of energy and excitement, you have to let that be unbridled. I mean, it can't just be
00:45:59something that you, um, that you manipulate or that you, what's a better word for that? It's not
00:46:07something that you can, that you can harness and say, okay, I, I'm going to just make sure every
00:46:13little element is, is perfect before I let you go. You have to just, you just have to let that
00:46:17magic
00:46:17happen, however it happens. And I think they were nervous, so it didn't, so you know, yeah,
00:46:22they tried to, it, it was hard to make, hard to let John be John, I think from, from watching
00:46:28with the Hollywood perspective. In the Netherlands, John, who was not really somebody that was well
00:46:34known by, uh, by the audience. But for me, it was like a God, you know, it was the Hong
00:46:40Kong cinema,
00:46:41the killer and, uh, all these early movies of him. I saw them all at that time though, they were
00:46:47not
00:46:47theatrical movies, you know, so I got them on a video and, uh, rented them on a video and brought
00:46:53them home and watched them. So, uh, for me, Hard Targets was one of those fucking cool movies.
00:46:58The only thing it was, it was like John who goes to America, you know, John who makes an American
00:47:04movie, what was very unique. But for me, all the movies that I saw till that time were Hong Kong
00:47:10movies is Hong Kong Slate. So, uh, so yeah, no, I, I loved Hard Targets one. It was really cool
00:47:16because it was like John who going to Hollywood, you know.
00:47:41His next Hollywood film, The Broken Arrow, um, it's kind of a mix. I think there are some aspects
00:47:46of Broken Arrow which I think work very well and we can start to see John Woo's own sort of
00:47:51a classic
00:47:52Hollywood style like the bullet ballet style starts to come through. But it is a film kind of smothered
00:47:57by, uh, John Travolta's ego. I don't think there's any other way to see it. This is, it's a star
00:48:01vehicle
00:48:02film. This was not a John Woo film in that. He was brought in absolutely to bring his style to
00:48:07the
00:48:07film, but this was a John Travolta film. He was brought in to make a John Travolta vehicle and
00:48:12he still does a very good job. He still manages to get his style across. He gets some of his
00:48:17themes
00:48:17across, some of his visual cues and motifs are absolutely in the film. And it's a fun film,
00:48:22but I don't, if it's Hollywood ones, it does feel a slightly less like a John Woo film. But on
00:48:27the other
00:48:27hand, it was another successful adaptation of him to the Hollywood system, having this giant blockbuster
00:48:32and proving he was a very safe pair of hands and he didn't need to worry about him. It was
00:48:36a great
00:48:36stepping stone for him to do more of what he wanted, I think, and to work in more of his
00:48:41style to have a bit more autonomy in the production of his coming films. The follow-up, Broken Arrow,
00:48:46with John Travolta and Christian Slater, is kind of similar. It's not anonymous, yeah, but it's your
00:48:55basic action film. It has the, again, it's got the opposition of two movie stars who kind of are
00:49:04romantic leads in themselves and you set them up against each other. I remember I saw Broken Arrow
00:49:10at the press show before reading anything about it and being kind of surprised that Christian
00:49:18Slater was the good guy and John Travolta was the bad guy. It could have been the other way around,
00:49:22yeah, and they could have flipped roles. And of course, that leads you to face off, which is exactly that.
00:49:36John Woo entered my life in a very unexpected way. My writing partner, Mike, and I had written
00:49:44face off and sold it and very, or optioned it to Warner Brothers in very early 1991. The first draft
00:49:51was very futuristic, mostly to justify the technology of face swapping. So we kind of backed
00:49:58into it in a weird way. It wasn't like it just popped into our minds. At that point, it became,
00:50:04well, can we pull this crazy idea off? But when we were at Paramount, I don't know if it was
00:50:10for
00:50:10budgetary reasons. It may have been, but I don't think so. I mean, I think the studio and the producer,
00:50:18production company, they wanted us to strip away a lot of the futuristic aspects.
00:50:24And it became very clear that they were not interested, that it was just going to sit in
00:50:30development hell and never, never get made. And it was very discouraging. Then sometime after that,
00:50:3792, 93, I'm sitting in the New Beverly Cinema, which then as now is a revival house. And I don't
00:50:44even remember what I went to see, but there was a trailer ahead of time. And it was this insane
00:50:49shoot-em-up trailer. And I remember watching it going, is that animated? Like the way people were
00:50:54flying around. I'm like, is that animation? And so when the movie came to be shown, my partner and I
00:51:03went and we watched it and it was the killer, the Chao Yang Fat, John Woo famous movie. And after
00:51:12it was
00:51:13over, we looked at each other and said, Face Off is a John Woo movie, even though we had never
00:51:17heard
00:51:18of John Woo. And of course, subsequent to that, I just devoured everything I could, I could see. This
00:51:25is long before I ever met him or even thought I ever would meet him. Face Off, which had been
00:51:43sitting
00:51:43in Warner Brothers, just on a shelf somewhere, the option expired. And when the option expired,
00:51:50suddenly we, the day the option expired, all the young executives who had been at Warner
00:51:54Brothers, like the people with no power, had loved the scripts. And they, they had all moved
00:52:00on to better companies and better jobs. And they had been tracking when the option expired. And so
00:52:06we were able to kind of set it up with David Permit, who's still the producer, thanks to Kevin Messick,
00:52:11who was his development exec. Kevin Messick's gone on to have an incredible career as a producer as well.
00:52:18And it, you know, they in turn took it over to Paramount and Sherry Lansing bought it,
00:52:23read it and, and bought it. And then it be, so then it became a search for a director.
00:52:29And we had two guys ahead of us. Rob Cohen was the first director and he left to make Dragon
00:52:35Heart.
00:52:35And then they had Marco Brambilla, who had been a TV commercial, very successful commercial director.
00:52:42And he had just made Demolition Man with Stallone, which is actually the movie that killed Face Off at
00:52:48Warner Brothers. Cause they were like, we have a futuristic action movie. We don't need another one.
00:52:52I was at William Morris at the time and my agent, my agency represented John Woo. And so they had
00:53:04read
00:53:04the script. Finally, they got it. Well, they got it, of course, when we sold it to Warner Brothers.
00:53:11And then when we resold it to Paramount, they really got it. And this, the revised script had gone to
00:53:18John Woo. And apparently he really liked it and came on board. And, um, of course, John was, uh,
00:53:26John Travolta was working with John Woo on Broken Arrow.
00:53:29I think for John, it was the same kind of chemistry as he had with Chaoyun Phat.
00:53:34You know, John Travolta kind of had that same, you know, does have that same regal quality that
00:53:41Chaoyun Phat embodies. And I think he, he felt that very strongly with John.
00:54:00We don't know how Nick got the script, but Nick Cage got the script and was desperate to be in
00:54:05it,
00:54:05and had, uh, lobbied Paramount to be in it. But he had made a movie for Paramount, which had not
00:54:11done
00:54:11well. And so they were not enthusiastic about Nick. And they said that Nick could be in it if Johnny
00:54:18Depp
00:54:18said yes, which we were like, no Johnny Depp. Yes, Nick. You know, um, even from the beginning,
00:54:25we thought Nick Cage was a great idea and we just couldn't convince anybody. Uh, but when Travolta came
00:54:32on as the lead, they were more conducive to Nick as what they saw as the second,
00:54:37you know, kind of the second lead and hilariously. So Nick didn't get paid nearly as much as John
00:54:43Travolta, but hilariously during, uh, prep, uh, he won his Oscar and Nick won his Oscar for leaving
00:54:51Las Vegas. And suddenly they were like, he, his agent called and it's like, yeah, I don't know if
00:54:55Nick's going to do face off after all. And so they had to kind of, I think, uh, up the,
00:55:00you know,
00:55:01start cutting the checks, uh, to make sure Nick remained, remained happy. Um, but Nick loved John
00:55:07Wu too. You know, John is an actor's director completely and, um, loves to collaborate with
00:55:14his actors, loves to make his actors look good, even when they're playing the bad guy. And, um,
00:55:21you know, they all knew that. And so a lot of people really desperately wanted to work with John Wu.
00:55:37We were on set essentially every day of a six month shoot. Often writers are not even invited,
00:55:44but John isn't, John isn't that way. He, I don't know if I'm ever going to hear this from a
00:55:51director
00:55:52again, but I certainly heard it from John when he, you know, told us we were expected to be on
00:55:58set
00:55:58every day. And we were like, Oh, thank you so much. He goes, don't thank me. You're the,
00:56:02you're a department head. You are head of the writing department, just like they expect,
00:56:10you know, the product, you know, hair, makeup, uh, uh, costumes, all those people have to be there.
00:56:16And so, you know, John expected us if the actors or, or we had to shift gears for some reason
00:56:25and move
00:56:26locations due to weather or technological glitches. We were there to, to handle it with him.
00:56:32One sequence that, that really gave my writing partner and I nervous breakdown because they're
00:56:37in the original script, that was always a funeral, but it was supposed to be outside,
00:56:42like at an Arlington national cemetery type thing. And Nicholas Cage as the good guy was going to use
00:56:49the same sniper rifle that Sasha gave him that had killed his kid. It was all supposed to like pay
00:56:55off to try to trank, uh, John Travolta. Um, and they came to us like two weeks before, like a
00:57:02week
00:57:02before they're supposed to start to shoot this. And it was at the end of the movie and production.
00:57:06And they said, we can't do it outside. It has to be, you know, we have to rewrite it. We
00:57:10have to make
00:57:10it smaller and all this stuff. So Mike and I freaked out and we went to John and we were
00:57:16like,
00:57:16well, what are we going to do? And blah, blah, blah. He went, John will just was like,
00:57:21he literally just looked at us and kind of smiled and went, don't worry about it.
00:57:25And we showed up at set and they had built this, built this chapel. He had the whole thing blocked
00:57:30out to shoot inside, indoors much more intimately, which was much better anyway. But when we got there,
00:57:36there were crates of pigeons, there were crates of doves. And, uh, he started, we said, Hey, John,
00:57:42I saw where are these doves doing here? And he said, I have to put in my trademark.
00:57:48And he did. And so, yeah, that's a great, it's a great moment. Everyone,
00:57:52everyone who's a John Woo fan claps when they see the slow motion doves.
00:58:08For John, he never stops trying to think, how can I make this more exciting? How can I make this
00:58:15bigger? What can I do that I haven't done before? Or what did I have previously storyboarded, but the
00:58:21last studio wouldn't let me do, let me see if I can do it this time. And so he would
00:58:25pull out something
00:58:25that, you know, he noodled on for a long time before, but he never stops. He never stops trying
00:58:30to make it better, trying to make it more interesting. Um, I think for him, you know, creating
00:58:37these montages that these action spectacles, that's just sort of half the equation for him,
00:58:44because he loves to pull in this, like, how do I make the sound score elevated? And what can I
00:58:51do
00:58:52to focus on maybe this interesting religious symbol that will, that will mean something about redemption,
00:58:58you know, and while the cacophony of bullets are going off and things are being, you know, bullets are
00:59:03sprayed all around the room, but we're focused on this, like, religious symbol. And he's, he creates
00:59:08this tapestry. And for him, that's what he's thinking in the back of his mouth. And he does
00:59:13it while he's shooting, he's editing while he's shooting, but he's constantly thinking of like,
00:59:17how can I create, how can I elevate? It's never just, let me just shoot it, shoot, shoot, shoot,
00:59:24for action's sake. You know, it's not just, you know, like, like violence for violence's sake,
00:59:29because it's not at all. The guy's just a savant. He's just a movie making savant. And the only thing
00:59:35he, he seemed to care about was being on set and just, you just see him running that movie back
00:59:44and
00:59:44forth in, in his head constantly. That's just kind of what he did. And he was in a total sort
00:59:50of zone,
00:59:51like a fugue state, where he just, you know, he had his 18 camera setups and all this stuff. And
00:59:58he knew exactly the movie he wanted to make. It was very comfortable for him
01:00:02to make that, tell that story. And it fits in perfectly. I think with his honks, you know,
01:00:08his giant fat Hong Kong films, it's just really, it sits in there nicely. And
01:00:13it was such an honor and honestly, and a privilege, which is to work with him.
01:00:25Face Off was the one where you sort of felt John Woo was really being allowed to do the crazy
01:00:30stuff
01:00:30that was part. It was also a project that came to him and was tailored to his sensibilities. And
01:00:37it allowed a kind of crazy, it is a film that again, you just have to go with it.
01:00:43You just, just have to accept its premise. And then it's astonishing. And after that,
01:00:51he got Mission Impossible 2. Big franchise film. It was almost, there was a slight,
01:00:58an interesting shift going on is previously, if you were a breakout action movie director,
01:01:03what you wanted to get was a Die Hard sequel. That's what Renny Harlin had done. But no,
01:01:12suddenly it was a Mission Impossible was the franchise to hop on board. And actually,
01:01:18Woo's Mission Impossible film isn't particularly liked by fans of the series. It's thought to be
01:01:24sort of a misstep. It actually does something similar to Face Off is that it introduces its villain,
01:01:31Doug Ray Scott, wearing Tom Cruise's face and then gets into the opposition between these two guys
01:01:39who are sort of the same person and they're both masters of disguise. So they end up sort of imitating
01:01:44each other. So it's kind of got John Woo themes in it, but it's also got a lot of Mission
01:01:49Impossible
01:01:49stuff in it. But it's got the weird motorcycle stunts and the little slow-mo moments and the back
01:01:54flips. And it's got absurd stuff like Taddy Newton infecting herself with the dangerous pandemic
01:02:02disease and being ready to commit suicide to end it all. And it's got fluttering doves too and
01:02:11slow-mo dust and filters and stuff. So it's kind of a caricature of what a John Woo Mission Impossible
01:02:20film might be. But of course it was a huge success. So it was only then it was Windtalkers and
01:02:27Paycheck
01:02:28were the films that ended Woo's Hollywood streak. He's kind of talked somewhat about being kind of
01:02:35frustrated by his experience in America because what I think Hollywood wanted was lots of cool action.
01:02:42So I think the thing that was kind of harder for him to do was kind of maintain some of
01:02:47the sort
01:02:47of the thematics that were at the core of his films. But we still have these kind of incredible
01:02:52sort of action pieces which sort of become larger and larger and more sort of excessive in scale
01:03:00in a way you know because he has these sort of Hollywood budgets and you know he's kind of able
01:03:06to sort of draw on all these kinds of effects. So we sort of have you know sort of speedboat
01:03:10chases
01:03:11which sort of become which make the sort of speedboat sequence in the killer just kind of look
01:03:17really small. Or we have the sort of the the motorbike chase at the end with Tom Cruise in
01:03:23Mission Impossible you know which is kind of absolutely sort of fantastical.
01:03:37I think as a result of John Woo's success in Hollywood and you know he was a known commodity
01:03:41and audiences over here know I think that's why his Red Cliff films actually were quite widely
01:03:45released in the West as well. His sort of return to China and Hong Kong filmmaking after his time in
01:03:51Hollywood. I think wanting to return to a place in a space where people wouldn't be telling him what to
01:03:57do would not be restricting him from his vision and so and he's one of the few filmmakers that can
01:04:03just kind of keep going back and forth really. So the and that particular story which is you know
01:04:09based on one of the you know four canon of Chinese literature that story was something that's near and
01:04:14dear to his heart so he wanted to make that this big epic that story would not be easily told
01:04:19in
01:04:20Hollywood that uh I want to say today maybe today it could be in 2007 and 2006 when they were
01:04:27making the movie at that time in Hollywood I don't think that would have been well received it would
01:04:31have especially as a Chinese language project. Today you know that would be more like a Shogun.
01:04:36I absolutely think you could do it but at that time you couldn't and you really wanted to make
01:04:39that story and it was it was a big epic movie um and he it was it was just it's
01:04:46one of those artistic
01:04:47things right he had to get it out it was in him and he had to get it out. It
01:04:50was very well received and
01:04:51it did do well um it was it was a really exciting film and I know for an international version
01:04:56they
01:04:56kind of combined parts one and two and and show you know put that out for a western audience.
01:05:03Again if we had done that today I think the movie would even be bigger for sure.
01:05:18If you're looking at periods of John Woo's career the period we are in as we are recording this
01:05:26seems to be a um a second international period after the early 2000s I think after
01:05:34the wind talkers and paycheck had not done as well as hoped um he returned to China and made red
01:05:42cliffs and the crossing and and big successful Chinese films which didn't quite have the international
01:05:50aspect um effect they they they were seen but they weren't maybe embraced the way that the uh the 1990s
01:06:01films were um so Wu has gone international again he made uh Silent Night which is very canny of course
01:06:10it's a it's an international film but it has no dialogue so there are no subtitles uh so it in
01:06:16theory can play anywhere um and that's a hard bit and hard-boiled revenge story and then he he uh
01:06:23did
01:06:23something odd the remaking his own masterpiece as it were. The remake of The Killer has been uh in
01:06:30development for quite a number of years um I mean we in fact we started it over a decade ago
01:06:37well over
01:06:38a decade ago and at the time John wasn't interested to direct it because he's already made that movie
01:06:43so why should he make it again he was just going to produce it and we had approached a Korean
01:06:46director
01:06:46and a Korean star we had gone that direction we had worked with some different sales companies we
01:06:51were approaching other actors uh we had done a lot of different iterations of how we wanted that project to
01:06:56come about and then our writer Josh Campbell and um his writing partner Matt Stoick had come to me
01:07:02and said you know I know we're not really finding footing the way we want to and this was before
01:07:07we'd
01:07:08seen anything like it I think there was only one example of this but having a female lead I know
01:07:14that
01:07:14sounds crazy today to say that but you know 15 years ago it really wasn't being done and uh we
01:07:20saw like
01:07:20one example and we're like yeah gee let's turn the Chow Yun Fat character um into a woman and I
01:07:28pitched
01:07:28that to John and I'm like I know this is and he got so excited he's like okay now that
01:07:33is a reason for
01:07:34me to remake this movie so we started on that process a while ago a while back and it took
01:07:40some time to
01:07:41find our footing took some time to get to the universal we'd cast the movie and then there was um
01:07:47our
01:07:48actress needed to do a different project for asked her permission to do another project first and then
01:07:52the timing just ended up all just sort of not working out and then during all of that is when
01:07:57Silent Night kind of showed up so we weren't we were sort of still kind of going back and forth
01:08:01um
01:08:03so Silent Night was this great opportunity for John to kind of get back into his Hollywood filmmaking
01:08:11um focus on what makes what means the most to him
01:08:16which is not going to be dialogue and uh focus on sort of that that tapestry of choreography and
01:08:24sound and symbolism and meaning that he likes to put into his scenes uh that's where he got to play
01:08:31and then we got to kind of after that pivot back to the killer so you know uh the killer
01:08:38originally
01:08:39uh is an homage to the samurai and the character jeff uh in the original movie is is based on
01:08:47the
01:08:47samurai character uh you know main character jeff so there is already this relationship so it's it's
01:08:53really a love letter to the samurai because that's what the original killer was so we kind of brought it
01:08:58all full circle by being setting it in paris uh making that sort of a character in the film had
01:09:04deep meaning to
01:09:22so much of 1990s action cinema takes its cues from john woo in the way that 1980s action cinema
01:09:34had taken its cues from stallone and die hard and schwarzenegger and there's a certain element of
01:09:43that in john woo as well but that style it you know you could argue that in the 90s was
01:09:50flagging you
01:09:51know we had a couple of sort of later sequels to rambo and rocky that hadn't done well and then
01:09:56schwarzenegger made last action hero which more or less was and that ended that particular cycle of
01:10:04hollywood action and then john woo came in and and was instrumental in the next cycle even to the
01:10:12extent of picking up on who would be the next action stars and we haven't even got into talking
01:10:16about what quentin tarantino took from yeah chinese films in in the 1980s in his own work but that's sort
01:10:25of almost yeah beyond parody it's it's it's it's now a accepted wisdom um but quentin tarantino wasn't
01:10:33the only american or uh or british or international filmmaker to uh yeah get lots of bootleg videos
01:10:41of the better tomorrow films and to learn lessons from him i was working with universal at the time
01:10:47doing that race two and then that race three and we also did some original dead in tombstone
01:10:52what was like a really cool western that we did and at at that time they were talking in universal
01:10:58they were talking about doing a hard target sequel and i was fighting for it to get the job because
01:11:03for me john who was always uh john who was always a idol i like the style of how he
01:11:09shot action how he
01:11:10moved the camera how everything was always in wide shots and i didn't like how kind of hollywood was
01:11:17kind of when they do action everything is close-ups and tight and cut cut cut cut so i didn't
01:11:23like
01:11:23that so i think already in my early american movies like that race you already see me doing big white
01:11:30shots of fights seeing actors in full swing doing longer takes so i was already doing the hong kong
01:11:38style action so when i heard internally at universal they were doing a hard target sequel i was like i
01:11:44need
01:11:44to do this i want to do this and uh so that's and they were like okay let's you do
01:11:50it i think what is
01:11:52unique about john is that he did his own thing i think he also kind of had to reinvent it
01:11:58himself
01:11:58you know and um and that's what i did as well you know it's kind of you look as a
01:12:03filmmaker and try
01:12:04things out and for me doing those all those sequels and prequels i had like a freedom with budget and
01:12:11stories and a franchise to kind of try things out and and that's what you see in john's early work
01:12:18you
01:12:18know he was trying out a cinema that he likes you know that and also the reason why it's so
01:12:25unique
01:12:25i think he's an incredible artist and you know they just don't make nobody else makes john with
01:12:32the way john who makes john woo so um yeah he's very special fortunately i only heard a lot of
01:12:40good
01:12:40things about my movie you know from the audience you know i uh uh uh i guess the the people
01:12:49who love
01:12:50my movie uh who love to watch my movies they they wouldn't mind uh you had they uh they were
01:13:00too much
01:13:01of blood you know or something or violent you know they have never mentioned it you know and then
01:13:07uh they uh they uh they know that i i i i did it for meanings i've never tried to
01:13:15use using any
01:13:17violent issue to please audience you know i i did it on purpose there there was some meaning there you
01:13:41so
01:13:49so
01:13:50so
01:13:50so
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