Hollywood heroes?

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.