John Woo interview, from 1992 Sundance Film Festival

In the early 1990s, a good friend of mine, Scott Bowles, turned me on to Hong Kong movies. Very quickly, I craved all I could get from director John Woo and one of his favorite stars, Chow Yun-Fat – at that time, neither were known to any American fans outside a handful of people. To see their bootlegged films – that was the only way to see them at that time, since nothing had yet been officially released on tape for the U.S. market – was always flat-out thrilling.

Then I got lucky, and Woo’s “Hard-Boiled” played a midnight slot at Sundance in 1992. I had seen it, bootlegged, of course, but it was great fun to watch in Park City’s little Egyptian Theater. Best of all, Woo was on hand to introduce it. The joint rocked.

I snagged an interview with Woo the next day. We spoke upstairs at “Z” Place, a nightclub that, during the festival, served as the hospitality suite for filmmakers and journalists. It should also be noted that Woo was probably the only guy in Park City wearing a sport jacket and tie -- he seemed to take all of it very seriously, and wasn’t dressing down to impress the off-Hollywood crowd. The actual newspaper piece I wrote is still stuffed somewhere in a box, but the verbatim transcript of the Q&A was on my hard drive. Woo had recently moved to the United States – he and his wife had had an anchor baby here years before – and he had not been shy about saying he was coming due to the impending communist Chinese takeover of Hong Kong in 1997. He had been an outspoken critic of the totalitarian government, and he was a Christian, and he suspected both of those things would make it difficult for him to work after the British relinquished control in ’97. His English was OK, but still a little rough; I’ve preserved it to give you a flavor of the interviewed as it happened.


D.P.: YOU WERE TALKING LAST NIGHT ABOUT BEING A PEACE-LOVING MAN, AND IT SEEMED TO GET QUITE A CHUCKLE OUT OF THE PEOPLE WHO’VE SEEN YOUR FILMS.

J.W.: “Since I think of everybody as a friend, because I really appreciate everybody that likes me and my movies, I just wanted to let everybody know a little bit more about me. Actually, I’m really a peace(ful) person, and you know, I hate evil and I hate all of the dictators in the world and I hate war and I usually hate people killing people. So in my movies I always use the stronger force of justice to fight them back, to hit them hard.”

[JUST THEN, JOE LEYDON, FILM CRITIC FOR THE HOUSTON POST, WALKS BY WITH ACTOR JOHN TURTURRO. WOO STANDS UP, THANKS JOE FOR THE RECENT PROFILE HE WROTE IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES CALENDER SECTION AND THEY EMBRACE. LEYDON INTRODUCES TURTURRO TO WOO. THEN IT’S BACK TO THE INTERVIEW.]

“When I was young -- I grew up in the ’60s -- and I was so much influenced, because in that period, the Hong Kong young man was so very much influenced by the American culture, especially the movies and the music. We were so crazy about Elvis Presley, James Dean, John Kennedy. When John Kennedy got killed, I cried.”

SORT OF THE END OF IDEALISM.

“Yeah. And we were also influenced by the hippie generation. At that time we were also talking about love, peace and flower(-power) and hate war and antiwar. We also go in the street to protest the war with demonstrations. Even now, I keep it in my mind. And I’m a Christian -- the Lutheran Church -- so I admire Jesus very much, you know, and I always do as he say, love my neighbor and love your enemy. I always dreaming and hoping that the world can be more better, and the people no need for suffering or war or anything and getting along together very well and peace and love and a dream for the world.”

SO, NOW, SINCE YOUR FILMS ARE SO STYLISTICALLY VIOLENT, HOW DO THE TWO PHILOSOPHIES SORT OF RELATE TO EACH OTHER? ON THE SURFACE, THEY SEEM TO BE OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER. HOW DOES A MAN WHO COMES FROM THIS SORT OF PHILOSOPHY WIND UP MAKING FILMS THAT ARE SO ROUGH AND TOUGH AND EXHILIRATING?

“In my childhood, I have seen too much violence. My family was very poor, and I grew up in a slum, a bad neighborhood, and I have seen people get killed and people betray each other. And, also, we have met the biggest liars in Hong Kong, in 1967 -- the Communist Party was making a huge riot, a lot of people got killed in the street, a policeman was killed in the street -- and also I saw a lot of news about the Vietnam War, and Cambodia, where the Communist Party chopped off millions of peoples’ hands and other things. I was so mad and so sad.

“So it became to make me feel this kind of thing has got to be stopped. But how to stop, nobody got an answer. So I think I was dreaming to have a hero, and a hero can stop this kind of thing. Somehow, like Jesus, he sacrifice himself to save other people.”

[THEN HE CALLS OVER TERENCE CHANG, THE PRODUCER OF “HARD-BOILED” AND “HARD TARGET,” HIS FIRST AMERICAN FILM, TO TRANSLATE HIS MORE COMPLEX THOUGHTS ON THE MATTER.]

T.C.: “John says he was very much influenced by the classic Chinese novels of chivalry and of knighthood and those kind of stories. And also, since he was young, he has been helped by a lot of friends, so friendship plays a very important part in his films ...”

JW: “And church.”

TC: “... and church.”

JW: “So since I’ve been helped by a lot of people, I was thinking how to repay society. So my films always emphasize the help and being helped (he plays the sage bartender in ‘Hard-Boiled’).”

IT SEEMS LIKE YOU'VE GOTTEN A LOT OF NOTORIETY FOR THE “BETTER TOMORROW” FILMS AND “A BULLET IN THE HEAD” AND “THE KILLER” AND NOW “HARD-BOILED.” BUT ONE OF THE FILMS I ENJOY THE MOST -- I DON’T THINK IT’S MY FAVORITE THAT I’VE SEEN OF YOURS, BUT ONE OF THE ONES I ENJOY THE MOST IS “ONCE A THIEF,” AND THAT’S KIND OF A DEPARTURE FOR YOU. DO YOU SEE IT THAT WAY? [WOO SMILES BROADLY AND BEGINS LAUGHING BEFORE I FINISH THE QUESTION.]

JW: “He produced that” [pointing at TC].

YOU PRODUCED THAT?

TC: “Yeah.”

JOHN DIRECTED IT, THOUGH, RIGHT?

TC: “Yeah, but John doesn’t like to talk about that one.”

[THEN TC STARTS TO CHUCKLE.]

JW: “No, actually, I enjoy the film too. I only enjoy the first part, the first half, which was shot in Paris. I very much enjoyed that, ah ...”

TC: “Well, he made the film ‘Bullet in the Head,’ which I think is his best film. But the film, unfortunately, was not successful commercially. It’s a very expensive film and it lost money.”

NOW, WE’RE TALKING “A BULLET IN THE HEAD”?

TC: “Yeah. (Then) the studio wanted us to make a film for the Chinese New Year slot, and they wanted a comedy. John had this very good story which was not a comedy, but he had to change it to a comedy.”

SO THAT'S WHERE THE COMIC ASPECT COMES FROM?

JW: “Yeah” [smiling].

THEY IMPOSED THAT ...

TC: “And also, he’s not too happy about the production because we had from the first day of shooting to release was only two months.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

JW: “Yeah, yeah, yeah” [excitedly].

TC: “Even shooting in Paris.”

JW: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

NO KIDDING?

JW: “No kidding.”

SO IS THAT THE SHORTEST YOU’VE EVER WORKED?

JW: [nods] “Yes.”

OH, MY WORD.

TC: “He’s a perfectionist, you know. Sometimes he knows it’s not too perfect.”

WELL, THE MAIN REASON I ENJOYED IT WAS THERE WAS THAT ELEMENT OF WHIMSY TO IT, A LITTLE CAPER ASPECT TO IT. I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID IT FROM START TO FINISH IN TWO AND A HALF MONTHS. THAT MUST HAVE BEEN PURE HELL.

TC: “That film was a big hit.”

REALLY?

JW: “Yeah.”

TC: “A very big hit, in Asia.”

THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS. IT’S THE WAY THE FILM BUSINESS WORKS. SINCE YOU BROUGHT IT UP, LET’S TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT “A BULLET IN THE HEAD.” WERE THERE INFLUENCES, WERE YOU INFLUENCED BY ANY OTHER VIETNAM FILMS YOU’D SEEN PRIOR TO GOING INTO THAT? I’M THINKING SPECIFICALLY OF THE PRISON CAMP SCENE: IT SEEMED TO SORT OF BRING TO MIND “THE DEER HUNTER” -- I MEAN, IT WAS TOTALLY DIFFERENT, BUT THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT OF WHEN I SAW IT.

TC [translating]: “John said the story was conceived as a prequel to ‘A Better Tomorrow,’ but when he finished the script the Beijing massacre took place -- the Tiananmen Square massacre took place -- and so he changed the second half of the film to take place in Vietnam, and he wanted to use Vietnam as a metaphor for Hong Kong. He wanted to reflect how a totalitarian government can destroy a society ...”

[Woo breaks in with more Chinese.]

TC: “... can destroy the value of human nature, anything that’s virtuous.”

JW: “I was so upset, felt so ashamed and so mad -- I was so pained -- I put all that kind of feeling into the Vietnam [POW camp] scene. So that’s why.”

THERE IS THAT SCENE IN “A BULLET IN THE HEAD” WHERE THERE IS A CROWD MASSACRE, A SORT OF CROWD MASSACRE IN ADDITION TO THE PRISON CAMP SCENE.
ALSO, SOMEONE HAD SAID YOU MANAGED TO GET CHOW YUN-FAT A CAMEO IN “HARD TARGET”?

JW: “No, that’s false.”

ARE WE EVER GOING TO SEE -- YOU TOLD JOE (LEYDON), I READ THE PIECE IN THE L.A. TIMES, YOU WOULD PROBABLY BE MAKING FILMS HERE, AND MAYBE RETURN TO HONG KONG SOMETIME, BUT YOU’LL BE MAKING FILMS HERE -- IS THERE ANY HOPE OR PLAN TO BRING CHOW YUN-FAT OVER AND HAVE HIM START MAKING FILMS HERE? IS HE GOING TO BE LOOKING TO EMIGRATE BY 1997, AS WELL? OR DO YOU KNOW? WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE FILMS WITH HIM HERE, TOO?

JW: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We are planning to make a film with him. It’s gonna be my next year’s project, with him to star.”

TC: “He’s tempted to do one film here, but he’s not available this year, so it’ll be next year. Quentin Tarantino is writing the script, with him to direct.”

WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING NEXT, THIS YEAR?

JW: “I’m still looking for good material.”

NOTHING DEFINITE THIS YEAR?

JW: “Nothing definite.”

I ALSO WANTED TO ASK YOU ABOUT, WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON YOUR POPULARITY OVER HERE? I MEAN, THERE WAS A PRETTY GOOD INDICATION OF IT LAST NIGHT AT THE SCREENING, PEOPLE WERE JUST GOING CRAZY THAT YOU HAD SHOWN UP. AND ALSO DURING THE FILM, I’VE NEVER REALLY SEEN A SUNDANCE AUDIENCE REACT LIKE THAT DURING A FILM. HOW DO YOU FEEL? WHAT DOES THAT DO FOR YOU? MAYBE THE CROWDS IN HONG KONG DO THAT ALL THE TIME, I DON’T KNOW.

JW: “No. In Hong Kong they are not used to the ...”

TC: “We have midnight shows in Hong Kong as a premiere for a film, and the crowd is usually very rowdy. If they see something they like, they would cheer ...”

JW: “Applaud.”

TC: “... stomp feet and talk back to the screen. But if they see something they don’t like, they would just take out knives and maybe cut the seats.”

REALLY? OH, GOOD. I’LL BET THAT MAKES THE THEATER OWNERS HAPPY.

JW: “Yeah, I was so excited about last night. And I really appreciate people who they all enjoyed the movie. I really feel friendship and it gave me more encouragement to make more good movies. I was so happy. When I’m making a movie, when I’m working, I’m also thinking of them, and thinking how they’ll react. So it causes me to make it more good.”

I WONDERED IF I COULD ALSO ASK A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS ABOUT “HARD TARGET,” BECAUSE IT’LL BE COMING OUT THIS SUMMER? IN JOE’S ARTICLE IT INDICATED MAYBE THERE WAS A LITTLE PRESSURE FROM THE STUDIO TO KIND OF TONE IT DOWN ...

JW: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

... A LITTLE, TO LESSEN THE BODY COUNT. DID THEY SAY NOT AS MANY BODIES AS YOU’D LIKE?

JW: “Yeah, yeah.”

IS THAT EASY TO RECONCILE? DO YOU HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THE SAME RESTRICTIONS IN HONG KONG, OR NOT?

JW: “No, no.”

YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN ABLE TO PRETTY MUCH DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

JW: “Because we produce our own films -- me and Terence -- I, usually when I work, I’m just like a painter: I paint what I feel and I shoot what I like to do and I shoot what I feel. For example, sometimes when I’m shooting a certain scene of fighting or drama, something for which I’ve got strong feeling -- like he’s got to kill five people or 10 people, just do it because it’s necessary.

“But here the studio has the concern about the rating and the general audience’s feeling. They feel the general audience doesn’t like too much violence in films, so they asked me to tone it down, don’t kill so many, because they get the NC-17. So, I shot very carefully -- not like in Hong Kong, carefree.”

WAS IT A GOOD EXPERIENCE, THOUGH? I KNOW YOU’RE NOT DONE WITH IT YET, YOU’RE IN THE EDITING AND POST-PRODUCTION PROCESS. DID THE EXPERIENCE LIVE UP OR DOWN TO YOUR EXPECTATIONS? WAS IT PRETTY MUCH WHAT YOU FIGURED SHOOTING IN AMERICA WOULD BE LIKE?

JW: “Yeah. ... In some ways I have a little disappointment with the system, the Hollywood system.”

A LITTLE MORE BUREAUCRACY?

JW: “But in the other way I feel much more happier than in Hong Kong, because I have a great crew and all the crew and actors are so professional and so dedicated to their work and the movie. Most of the crew, they are all educated and they all love a good movie. So when they find out -- of course they know about me -- but when they find out I am a very serious filmmaker, they gave me more respect. And so we respected each other and working like a big family. It makes me feel very comfortable and very happy. And so usually my work, my camerawork, is very difficult. And no matter how difficult they always delivered.”

NOW, I’M ASSUMING THE BUDGET WAS PROBABLY HIGHER THAN YOU’RE USED TO WORKING WITH, RIGHT?

JW: “Yeah, higher.”

WAS THAT NICE? WAS IT NICE TO HAVE THE LUXURY OF A LITTLE MORE MONEY, OR DOES IT TRANSLATE THAT WAY?

TC: “It seems a lot higher, you know, but then the above-the-line was much higher, too. And, also, we don’t have that many shooting days. For instance, ‘Hard-Boiled,’ which only cost $4.5 million, John could have 123 shooting days first unit. But in ‘Hard Target’ it's $19.6 million and we only could afford to have 79 shooting days.”

WOW. THAT’S QUITE A DIFFERENCE. SO ALL THAT EXTRA MONEY GOES TO PAY A CREW THAT COSTS A LOT MORE THAN A CREW IN HONG KONG?

JW: “Yeah.”

I ASSUME YOU’VE BEEN WORKING WITH A LOT OF THE SAME PEOPLE FOR MANY YEARS?

JW: “I wish them a lot, because they, the Hong Kong crew I used to work with, was also very dedicated and they also gave a great contribution to all my work. As you can see from my movies, they really did a great job for me. So I miss them very much.”

ARE WE GOING TO SEE A DOMESTIC THEATRICAL RELEASE FOR “HARD-BOILED”?

TC: “Yes.”

WHO’S GOING TO DO THAT?

TC: “Rim Film. It’s a new film company set up by Tom Gray of Golden Harvest. This will be the first release.” [The company was set up to bring Hong Kong films to this country.]

I KNOW THAT THE VIDEOS ARE AVAILABLE IN ASIAN VIDEO STORES, AND I KNOW THAT “THE KILLER” WAS THE FIRST ONE THAT WAS RELEASED PRETTY MUCH MAINSTREAM ON VIDEO [IN THIS COUNTRY]. ARE THERE PLANS TO RELEASE OTHER FILMS OF YOURS ONTO VIDEO?

TC: “ ‘Hard-Boiled’ will be the second one.”

ARE YOU GOING TO GO BACK AND DO ANY OF THE OTHERS?

TC: “If ‘Hard-Boiled’ is successful, sure – ‘A Better Tomorrow,’ ‘A Bullet in the Head,’ I don't see why not. I heard ‘The Killer’ did very well.”

IT’S QUITE A SENSATION, I THINK. IT DID PRETTY WELL THEATRICALLY IN SALT LAKE, I THINK -- IT PLAYED QUITE A WHILE. “RAISE THE RED LANTERN” MIGHT HAVE PLAYED AN EQUIVALENT AMOUNT OF TIME. I THINK THEY’RE PRETTY POPULAR.