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Hollywood producer knows Hong Kong

AP, HONG KONG
Saturday, Mar 12, 2005, Page 16

Hong Kong's ailing film industry has been complacent about its past success and must reinvent itself to regain former glories, Andre Morgan, the producer of Oscar-winning boxing drama Million Dollar Baby believes.

In an interview, the veteran producer -- who cut his teeth in the Hong Kong movie industry during its 1970s heyday of Bruce Lee and kung fu -- said filmmakers also needed to devise ways to counter challenges from emerging Asian film-making nations and take advantage of the massive Chinese audience on its doorstep.

"In the US, companies like Miramax used to be big buyers of Hong Kong films but they are not buying many Hong Kong products anymore. The truth is the number of films made has decreased," said the Hollywood-based producer, in Hong Kong to promote his multiple-Oscar winner.

"There is a complacency and also competition that didn't exist before," he said, referring to the growing popularity of Korean movies, which along with films from Taiwan, China, Thailand and Japan have been vying for the attention of Asian audiences.

Morgan blames reduced investment for steadily eroding Hong Kong's dominant market share in Southeast Asia.

Once the world's third largest movie-making center after Bollywood and Hollywood, the Hong Kong film industry has seen the number of productions dwindle from more than 300 a year in the 1980s to just 64 in 2004, according to the city's Motion Picture Industry Association, while its workforce has shrunk by 80 percent.

Yet Morgan believes the business is going through a cycle typical to all industries and expects it to be on the way to recovery soon when Hong Kong's economy picks up.

"We go through that cycle in America as well," he said.

Fluent in both Cantonese and Mandarin, Morgan is no stranger to the Chinese movie scene and has been credited with helping bring kung fu and the legendary Bruce Lee to Western audiences.

Born in Morocco, Morgan's mother was English and his father an American naval officer. He studied Chinese at the University of Kansas but dropped out early to move to Hong Kong and polish his linguistic skills.

With the help of his teacher, Morgan landed a job as an office boy in the then British colony at the nascent Golden Harvest studio, which made Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon movies.

Between 1972 and 1978, he produced 15 to 20 Chinese pictures and says he was the first moviemaker to take a Chinese film crew to Australia, the Netherlands, the US and Nepal.

During a career that culminated in seeing the Clint Eastwood-directed Million Dollar Baby win most of the major awards at this year's Oscars, he also went into partnership with Godfather producer Albert Ruddy.

He has now returned to Hong Kong to team up with leading Hong Kong director Peter Chan (陳可辛), the producer of Hong Kong horror flicks The Eye and The Eye 2, for a number of major projects.

Morgan and Chan will make the first Chinese musical in more than 40 years, Perhaps Love (如果愛), set in the glamorous but sleazy Shanghai of the 1930s, and modern-day China.

Morgan said China represented the best opportunities for Hong Kong's beleaguered movie industry as filmmakers are offered incentives to shoot there, and a free-trade pact allows for national distribution of local productions.

"The logic is that if you want to make films for the big market, it's no longer Hong Kong," he said.

Morgan dismissed suggestions that the free-trade pact with China hindered moviemakers by placing too many restraints on content.

"I don't buy that censorship theory. They don't want to take risks, no one wants to be the first mover," he said.

"Hong Kong needs to re-define its market, understand who their markets are," he said.

Morgan and Chan have also bought the film rights to Waiting, winner of America's 1999 National Book Award by acclaimed novelist Ha Jin (哈金). It tells the story of a Chinese prisoner during the Korean War.

"It's time for Hong Kong to reinvent itself," says Morgan. "There are still some serious filmmakers around. There is still a vibrancy here."
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