After accompanying Ang Lee (李安) to film festivals and on promotional campaigns in the US for many years, producer Hsu Li-kong (徐立功) could not have been happier about the trip he made recently for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍).
The film won two major awards at the Golden Globe Awards in February and Hsu and Lee were swarmed by movie fans even at a small Chinese restaurant in New York. "That was the first time American fans requested an autograph from me. People even grabbed paper napkins from the restaurant, asking us to sign on it" he said.
And tonight (Los Angeles time), Hsu and his Zoom Hunt International (縱橫國際影視公司) will be crossing their fingers in hopes of winning Taiwan's first Best Foreign-language Film Award at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards in Beverly Hills.
The last time Hsu could look forward to the same possibility for fame was for Eat Drink Man Woman (飲食男女) in 1995, also a film by Lee, and his chances of winning then were slimmer than they are this year.
Hsu has been the producer of all of Lee's Chinese-language films since Lee's first feature Pushing Hands (推手, 1990). Needless to say, the trust and fellowship between the two have grown ever since.
"There are many things in life that come out of feelings of affinity. Me and Ang Lee usually don't spend long discussing scripts. I know what kinds of stories he's getting at. And he also takes my advice. He even tells me we can keep our international phone calls short while discussing projects because we have such strong mutual understanding and trust," said Hsu.
Hsu, 60, is often called Boss Hsu (徐老闆), a nickname that fits his old-hand status in Taiwan's film production.
He met Lee while working as a production manager at the Central Motion Picture Corporation (中央電影公司, CMPC), Taiwan's premiere film company which is an asset enterprise of the KMT.
At that time Hsu had promoted a policy at the company to promote new and young filmmakers, Hsu said. Lee was one of the first beneficiaries of this policy.
"At that time I'd never seen his New York University student works and I knew very little about his filmmaking style. I just found him a decent man with a dream to make films, and had waited for seven years for a chance," recalled Hsu, saying the 39-year-old Lee felt immediately like an old friend to him.
Hsu persuaded the investors of CMPC and recommended some Taiwanese actors to Lee for the making of the director's first feature film Pushing Hands. And then he let Lee shoot the film in the US. Lee merely asked of Hsu that the money always be remitted promptly. "Afterward, I went to New York to see the first-cut, and was immediately intrigued. Lee made the story full of wit and humor," he said.
Hsu later went to Lee's home in up-state New York. It was a modest home and he noticed the absence of a dinning table. Lee said: "I used the table for the film. [Actor] Lang Hsiung (郎雄) broke the table with his kung-fu in the film," Hsu recalled Lee saying.
"He really is a frugal man. And I regret I didn't find more funds for that film," said Hsu.
But, as a film producer, Hsu's fellowship with Lee was not merely built on compassion for the director's fundraising plight. It is based more on their respective zeal for the artistic expression of drama.
"Lee is best at delving into humanism and human emotions and expressing these in the form of drama," Hsu said. And surely, Hsu's own passion for drama helped identify the talent in Lee.
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