Profile

Last updated 12:13 Tue 02 Jan 2007

I was born in Shanghai and I came to Hong Kong when I was five. So one of the reasons I wanted to make films about the 60s is, by the time I get to Hong Kong it's 1963 and it is a new experience for me because the two cities are very different. My brothers and sisters stayed in Shanghai. Because my mother has a very big family in Shanghai, so I have, like, almost 40 cousins, so we stayed together all the time. So by the time I get to Hong Kong I become the only child and the only one, surrounded by adults, you know. I keep writing letters. My parents asked me to write letters to my brothers and sisters, and I read all the time. So afterwards, when I work in the TV stations, I start writing scripts.
Because my mother liked movies a lot. So we're living in that area, which has a lot of cinemas with different, like, western films, Hollywood films, European films, local films, so we spent almost every day in the cinemas because she don't have any friends or relatives in Hong Kong.

At this time it's seamless, because it's almost like you just work, not in a station, but in a coffee shop and you have all these meetings in the coffee shop. I think one day I can make a book about coffee shops in Hong Kong. I spent almost most of my time in coffee shops, in different coffee shops. So it became a habit. So later on, when I became a director, I worked, like on CHUNGKING EXPRESS, we're shooting in Tsim Sha Tsui, one area in Hong Kong, we shoot in the night time, and this restaurant, which I liked very much, in the basement of Holiday Inn Hotel, so I stayed there. Every morning I'd the script of that day and then we'd start shooting at night. We have all this production meeting there.
I'm not very aware of styles. We never talk about styles before we start shooting, or even during shooting, because I think the film will bring you there.

Each production has certain circumstances that will bring you to a certain way of making it. It is not intentional, it is not an artistic decision, the way we make films, it is the way we address to our problems. Like, Chris Doyle used to be a very slow DP. When I work with him on my second film DAYS OF BEING WILD he just started his career in Hong Kong. He's extremely slow and he's very serious. So when we're shooting CHUNGKING EXPRESS I said, "Chris, take away all these tripods, put the camera on your shoulders and work like a CNN." For him it's very hard, but somehow it liberated him, you know.

I realised this is something that I was really good at, instead of trying to be a Hou Hsiao-Hsien film, or a serious I think all of us has a certain perception of ourself, but at the end you realise you are not that person, you have to be yourself. In fact, like the way we shoot, with a 12 frame per seconds, or jump cut, everything, it's because we're shooting without any permits. So some people just get in, which we don't expect it so you have to cut it out, and we put the film together like this and it becomes the star.

Sometimes people think, "Well, why don't you work with a script?" I said, "The script is only a part of this process. It's only the foundations. It is only a blueprint." If a script is good enough, then you should be a writer, make it into a novel. Cinema has certain qualities, and it's the image. Sometimes this image has its own breathing or tempo. It has to linger, and will linger because you want to have more. It is very instinctive. It is very instinctive when you're shooting the shots in front of this video, the monitor, you know exactly, because sometimes it takes you more than 10 takes or 15 takes.

Some people will ask, "Are there any big differences? Can you tell the difference?" I say, "You try." You can show me two weeks later and I can still tell you which take is the take that I want because it's the very minor details. But, in fact, it's a big difference. Because a shot also is like love, it's about timing; a certain moment in the right place, in the right light, in the right movement, this shot will become memorable.

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