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Hollywood heroes?

By Juping Chang
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Mar 12, 2000, Page 17

Aohsiao Hung-cheng (傲笑紅塵) and Chien Ju-pin (劍如冰), two new glove puppets that appeal to an older generation of enthusiasts. PHOTO: COURTESY DA PILI

Huang Wen-tse (黃文擇) isn't fully satisfied by his success, even though, at the age of 44, he is a household name across Taiwan, an honor usually reserved for politicians and pop stars, not film directors.

With the glove puppet film Legend of the Sacred Stone (聖石傳說), he has stunned everybody but himself with its popularity. The first feature film to use Taiwanese glove puppets, Legend of the Sacred Stone topped the box office in Taiwan last month, beating promising Hollywood productions that usually go over well here, such as Toy Story 2.

"I had been confident all the way that this was going to be a hit," Huang said. "I dare not say this for a regular type of film, but this is a movie of Taiwanese glove puppetry. No one is more professional than me and my family."

But sitting atop Taiwan's commercial film industry isn't enough for the puppet master. He wants to make it big -- Hollywood big.

Bolstered by his tremendous success in Taiwan, Huang is bringing the film across the Pacific in hopes of introducing the unique Taiwanese art form to a broader audience. At least three American film distributors, such as Columbia, have expressed interest in releasing the movie.

Yeh Hsiao-chai (葉小釵) PHOTO: COURTESY DA PILI

"We are making some adjustments to the lines and making voiceovers so the characters would be speaking English," Huang said. "People ask me if I worry about whether Americans will accept the film. ... It's a mystery, so far, whether overseas audiences will receive the movie well, but I won't miss out on this good opportunity to promote (glove puppetry)."

Chin Yang-tsi (青陽子) PHOTO: COURTESY DA PILI

If anyone has a chance at making Taiwan's puppets make millions in Tinseltown, it's Huang and his family. From the little town of Huwei in central Taiwan, the Huangs have been working with puppets for four generations. Huang's grandfather, Huang Hai-tai (黃海岱), introduced the puppets to television 30 years ago, starting a sensational craze that, at its apex, garnered the show a 97 percent viewing rate.

Su Huan-chen (素還真) PHOTO: COURTESY DA PILI

Today, Huang's grandfather, now 104 years old, is still an active puppeteer as well as a witness to his grandson's engineering of another wave of glove puppet frenzy. The fans, about 65 percent of them aged between 20 and 35, seem to be a nostalgic generation, looking to return for a while to the time when they were kids who sat glued to the TV as their kung fu fighting heroes meted out punishment and praised moral virtue.

Making changes

Huang Wen-tse (黃文擇) with one of his new heros, Aoshiao Hung-cheng (傲笑紅塵). PHOTO: COURTESY DA PILI

For Huang, making the film was the challenge of a lifetime. As a first-time movie director, he took two years to complete the project, spending nearly NT$300 million. Conceptually, the traditional folk art has been enhanced and directed toward a path that exhibits values different from yesteryear.

The once popular TV hero of glove puppetry, Shih Yen-wen (史豔文), was one of the reasons that the peculiar art form stepped into the spotlight. In many ways, he was the Superman of Taiwan. He looked nice and acted decent. He stood by justice. And he fought well.

But these days Shih's heavy-handed moralistic ways might not have gone over as well, so Huang created Su Huan-chen as a new character to carry on the charisma of Shih Yen-wen, but in a somewhat different way.

"We adjusted the character to fit in with modern society," Huang said. "The puppetry scripts of tradition overtly teach values, such as being loyal to your country and society or being obedient to your parents, but, this time around, we don't want to preach."

The protagonist, Su Huan-chen (素還真), doesn't dish out moral lessons in the film. He has wisdom and good kung fu fighting skills like the Shih Yen-wen of old, yet he is a lot more flexible and accommodating in dealing with adversity.

"He lets people accept him gradually. But he fights as well if people try to walk all over him," Huang said. "In the past, the nice people didn't fight back but now it is not realistic to picture such a weak personality to serve as a model for this competitive society."

Huang's revamping of the glove puppet genre and its subsequent success still haven't resulted in profits at the box office, however. The film has pulled in just over NT$100 million so far, or about 33 percent of its cost. The trip planned for overseas this summer will probably help it break even, but if it doesn't, Huang insists he won't be deterred.

"I did not set out to make profits. If I make money, that's good. If not, it's just a small pity. I want to promote this unique folk art of Taiwanese glove puppetry," he said.

Even if movie-goers don't put Huang in the black, then a secondary market Huang has been able to exploit just might. Chinatrust Commercial Bank is hoping to cash in on the 800,000 estimated glove puppet fans around the country with credit cards featuring Su Huan-chen and other puppet heroes in the Sacred Stone film. Japanese car maker Toyota has also signed on, switching a multi-million dollar advertising campaign from Toy Story 2 to Sacred Stone after market research showed it was a better bet.

These and other associations are part of Huang's strategy to find alternative sources of money for supporting films, a practice well applied in Hollywood but not in Taiwan.

"We elicited prominent businesses to come and ask for cooperation projects and investment possibilities," Huang said. "This has never happened in the history of the Taiwan film industry."

"A lot of people say we have many business groups in Taiwan and why don't they take out money to help with the deplorable movie industry. My thinking is that you have to show what you have before other people believe in you and then investment will roll in," he said.

Adding appeal

Huang seems at ease with the task of trying to translate success at home into success abroad. With recent innovations in glove puppetry, like Pi-li (霹靂), he has the added advantage of high-tech special effects to lure in foreign audiences.

Pi-li, or thunderbolt, is the trendy type of glove puppetry that is enhanced by sound and lighting effects. Huang believes Pi-li is one of the reasons that his film is able to compete with Hollywood productions and to attract Western audiences that want excitement and visual effects. It will also appeal more to the younger generation in the US that they are targeting.

"The stage setting of today's so-called pi-li glove puppetry is quite different from the traditional one," Huang said. "The American audience will like the special effects we throw in there."

It is a gamble based on sound advice from his grandfather: innovation will keep glove puppetry alive. What Huang is waiting to see is if innovation will also give it new life in another country. Whatever the result, Huang is already moving ahead with another puppet project -- a film in which he will modernize the appearance of the puppets and set them in a futuristic world.
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