Philip Lee (李小偉) vividly remembers the day the film Hero started. He was at a dinner with Bill Kong (江志強), producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Zhang Yi-mou (張藝謀) who presented the idea to him, saying he'd been holding the script for Hero for quite some time and always wanted to shoot the film. Philip Lee went back home and read it. Immediately, he realized this wasn't going to be a minor project. Having already been involved in the production of the blockbuster Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Lee served as its associate producer), he knew it was going to be an even bigger project.
Hero is a story set in ancient China in 200BC, with a grand war scene involving more than 10,000 soldiers. There are martial arts masters and fighters, each of whom wants to assassinate the tyrant king of Qing. There are four major characters; two of them are lovers and the other two are supposed to be martyrs. Lee made the major cast decisions quickly: Jet Li (李連杰), Tony Leung (梁朝偉), Maggie Cheung (張曼玉) and Zhang Ziyi (章子怡). And the budget was set at around US$30 million at an early stage, twice that of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
After its spectacular opening in Hong Kong and China, the producers of Hero can rest assured that the time they spent on the set in cold and remote areas of Chinese one year ago was well spent. The film premiered in Beijing last weekend and in Hong Kong on Dec 14. Hundreds of actors dressed as Qing dynasty soldiers lined up to lead the guests into the premiere hall, which had been decorated to look like a Qing palace. Weekend tickets sold out well in advance of the film's official release on Friday, a rare but encouraging sight in the Chinese market, where piracy is rampant. And on Friday, at the 2002 Golden Globe Awards, traditionally seen as the forecaster of Oscars, Hero was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category, increasing the odds that the film will represent China at the Oscars.
All these signs suggest that Hero will enjoy the same success as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, if not more.
"With such a big project, you have to get all the elements right for it truly to be a case of East-meets-West," said Lee, who served as line producer for Hero, as he spoke of his wide experience in making East-meets-West films.
PHOTO: WEI CHIA-CHI, TAIPEI TIMES
Before being the associate producer for Crouching Tiger, Lee used to work as production manager on the Asian portions of Hollywood films and TV movies, such as Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, M. Butterfly, Shadow of China and Around the World in Eighty Days. Lee is still heavily involved in many Hollywood studio projects, managing the Chinese portions, including casting the Chinese actor Kenneth Tsang in the latest James Bond movie, Die Another Day and Robert Redford's Spy Game. Currently, he is working on Tomb Raider 2, for which he recruited Chinese actor Simon Yam.
Working on these studio projects, where the Asian actors are mostly presented as bad guys, may not be ideal for Lee. But these experiences have certainly gained him a role as a key determiner of Chinese content in Western movies. He decides which Asian actor to cast, which action choreographer to hire, and at which location to shoot.
Additionally, the experience helped Lee develop a new, pre-sale financing scheme for when he began working on his own projects.
The producers of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon took their project directly to the film studios. It was pre-sold, for example, to Columbia Tri-star for North American market. This pre-sale contract allowed the producers to obtain a completion bond, which they used to apply for loans totalling US$15 million to go towards film production. The pre-sale marketing was tougher for Hero, with a budget twice the size of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Miramax was the largest buyer of the film, taking the distribution rights in North America, Latin America, the UK and Australia, while Warner Brothers took the European rights and various other companies bought the rights for the Asian market.
This financing process -- obtaining a completion bond and applying for a loan -- is common in Hollywood but rare for Asian films, simply because Asian films rarely exceed a budget of US$10 million.
"I always wanted to produce a Chinese project with international appeal," Philip Lee said. "But not by following the Hollywood model."
In addition to surpassing the budget of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by a factor of two, Hero also doubled the size of its cast. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, who shot to international stardom in the film In The Mood For Love, seldom appear in martial arts action dramas. But in Hero they fly and wave their swords like regular martial arts heros.
As a martial-arts movie Hero is also a first for Zhang Yi-mou, who is known internationally for his strong dramas about humanity and Chinese society. Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle, whose cameras captured the poetry in all of Wong Kar-wai's moody love stories, was also recruited for this epic martial-arts drama. It seems that following the golden formula of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Chinese filmmakers are picking up their swords and daggers and showing off their kung fu a bit in order to get into big international projects.
"No, you don't always need to fight," said Lee. "I still believe that touching people's hearts is the basic rule of film production. You have to know how to touch the hearts of the Westerners," he said.
"I'm less interested in stories trying to sell the exotic folk culture of Asia. Instead, I'm more interested in stories about ... human relations that are universal but have some particular importance in Asian culture. For example, the father-son relationship in Chinese film The Shower (1999), the world of female emotions and thought in the novel Rough (1987), a story about Chinese prostitutes during World War II.
"I especially like the story of Hero. It talks about loyalty, sacrifice, friendship and love in ancient China amid all the turmoil of war," Lee said.
"It takes time to produce a good project. For me, I can wait five or ten years for a good team to get together, to work on my ideal script," Lee said, in reference to his favorite novel Spring Snow, by Japanese author Yukio Mishima. For this project, he has spoken with Terrence Malick, director of The Thin Red Line, and cinematographers from Titanic and The Matrix. Initiated five years ago, the project was halted by a disagreement over whether English or Japanese should be the language used in the the film. "I would spend another five years on this project," Lee said.
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