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Bey Logan Anyone who’s interested enough in Asian action cinema, and Hong Kong action cinema in particular, to have bought a Hong Kong Legends DVD will likely be familiar with Bey Logan’s peerless commentaries. Since first visiting a film set as a teenager, he’s gone on to work with everyone from Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung to Donnie Yen, either as a producer, writer or actor, and is essentially the only Westerner working directly in the industry. We were lucky enough to get chance to chat to him at his Hong Kong office about his experiences, his favourite classic movies, as well as the screen action we can look forward to in the future.
(An edited version of this interviewed first appeared in our 5th Audiosurgeon podcast: The M. Night Shyamalan issue)
PIXELSURGEON: Well thanks very much first of all for taking the time out to talk to us. You’ve been actively involved in the Hong Kong movie industry for a number of years, as a writer, producer and occasionally an actor. You're also now employed as Asian Vice President for the Weinstein Company, so it must feel like you've come a long way since first visiting Hong Kong when you were 19?
Absolutely. I got back from that first trip and confronted my parents. My father was an accountant and my mum was a nurse and they were living in this city called Peterborough, and to come back and say 'do you know what, I want to go and make Kung Fu movies in Hong Kong one day’, they were really knocked for six. I didn't have any idea how it would happen, but that is what I always wanted to do. All the other stages from then, like doing the Martial Arts magazine in England and doing Impact, the action/film magazine, now I look back, it was always towards coming out to Asia and working in the industry here. And then even when I eventually moved here and was just living this bohemian lifestyle, I was writing my book 'Hong Kong Action Cinema' and training, and really had no idea that I could actually become an industry professional, rather than just a fan who gets the occasional chance to help out on specific films.
You have explained numerous times how you were inspired by Bruce Lee, so we won't go over that again, but presumably when you arrived in Hong Kong it was just as the careers of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao were really hitting their stride. Prodigal Son was 1982, and Project A was 1983 for instance. Didn’t you get to visit the set of Project A part II? And I guess a few others?
Actually, I used to come in and out of Hong Kong and the film that I visited the sets of, the very first one would have been the Prodigal Son and I think Miracle Fighters, Postman Strikes Back and Dragon Lord, those were all shooting at the same time. Those were the days hey! Those were only the ones that I was on the set of, you'll have to check what was shooting up at Shaw Brothers or what Season was doing, but that was just what Golden Harvest was doing on the few days that I was on the set of the studio when I was 19. Then when I came back over the years I would just go on to whatever set Jackie was shooting on, or whoever else I could get invited onto the set of, just to kind of hang out, look and learn, and to meet people. And what's interesting is as the years past, I would say everybody I met from when I was 19 onwards on these trips I have since worked with as a professional. This is very gratifying because it is great to be a fan of the films, and great to be a devotee, but it is also, for me anyway, it's been really rewarding to actually work with people as a peer and to get a real insiders look at how these people make movies and how the industry as a whole operates.
Jet Li had supposedly announced his retirement from action cinema, but I have just seen that there is a film coming out next year called Rogue, where he plays an FBI agent and it's got Jason Statham in it. It’s hard to imagine that there’s going to be no action!
I'm not that close to Jet, but I know he's a very shrewd businessman; he's a very shrewd marketer of his own image, and I think what he meant when he said it was his last 'martial arts' movie was the last 'pig-tailed period Kung Fu movie he's going to do. And I think that there are a lot of 'get out of jail quick' clauses in that he could do a drama like Peter Chan's movie Zee Ma, which is like this semi-remake of the old Shaw brothers' film Blood Brothers, where that's a period drama with some action, but not a Kung Fu movie per se. Then with Rogue and whatever else he is doing, the Monkey King production he’s doing with Jackie Chan, he'll say 'well that's an epic fantasy not a Kung Fu movie, it’s some other kind of genre of film. So he's kind of moved on from doing that and that's the position he's taken. Having said that, knowing Jet Li, in a few years time if he gets offered an amazing script that is within the genre of the period Kung Fu movie, he may well do it. But it is a very clever marketing ploy, kind of like when Clint Eastwood made 'Unforgiven' and he said this may not be the last western I do, but if it was the last western I did then it would be the perfect one, and I think that is probably true of Fearless as well in the case of Jet Li.
We really enjoyed Fearless, what did you think of it?
I thought it was magnificent. I really felt that normally when you actually have a big budget drama at that level of production, the martial arts to an extent gets sacrificed. You know, the tendency has been more towards the kind of wire/special effects/fantasy style of fighting. When you get movies like House of Flying Daggers, Hero or even Crouching Tiger, they tend to have one really good fight. I’m on record as somebody who can tolerate a certain amount of wires and special effects, but I like grounded real Kung Fu. You have something like Hero with the fight between Donnie Yen and Jet Li, which just about everyone thinks is the best fight, and if you look at Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the fight in the courtyard between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi is the best fight, and in both cases they are the grounded fights. That is in my own personal taste.
If I look at Fearless the whole movie is pretty much that style, it is grounded realistic action, of course I know that there is some trickery involved in making the film, but it comes across that there is a very visceral, real energy to it. Plus the story I thought was very linear, a very direct story, and I thought Jet was a real revelation – his acting has really progressed. He really was the film, I mean his character is the movie. It was obviously a much longer film that they cut down to make a feature length that you see it at now so all the side characters are really paired down and it’s really Jet’s story and he carries it magnificently well. So, I thought it was fantastic. Some people have said to me ‘well you know, I didn’t think the action was as good as…’, ‘as what though?’. It’s like, ‘do you want to go back to the 80s?’ Well I wish it was the 80s again, I was young in the 80s (laughs)! But it’s not, and compared to what’s being made now, I just think the work that Yuen Woo Ping did on Fearless was way superior to anything else that has been shot at that time. So I was a big fan, and I hope it finds an audience in the west.
Another point worth mentioning there is that in Fearless he plays Fok Yeun Gap who was of course a real historical figure, and Fok Yeun Gap is the sifu, the master, who dies at the beginning of Bruce Lee’s ‘Fist of Fury’, and then Jet Li remade that years later as Fist of Legend!
That whole sub genre of Fist of Fury, and all the ‘Chinese connection’ movies is really interesting, I mean this whole kind of subtext to that because you have Bruce Lee play the character of Chen Zhen in Fist of Fury as you said, he was avenging the death of Fok Yeun Gap: Then you get New Fist of Fury where Jackie Chan plays a young kid who is avenging the death of Chen Zhen in that sequel, and then you have Legend of a Fighter, which was a telling of the Fok Yeun Gap story, which was directed by Yeun Wo Ping. Then later you have Fist of Legend, where Jet Li remakes Fist of Fury, and then you get Fearless when Jet Li basically remakes Legend of a Fighter!
These things gain weight, gain resonance as they continue, kind of like in the west when you do a Superman movie, when you do a Batman movie, you're not just making a Superman or Batman movie, but you're making a film in the light of thirty or forty years of popular culture. And I think the same when you do Fearless you're referencing back the thirty, forty years since Fist of Fury, and you have all of the films that have been done in that time, so it's gained weight as an element of popular mythology.
It’s also like, say, Robin Hood in Britain, although these characters did actually exist of course.
Exactly. I think every society has some archetypal folk hero to which popular culture constantly refers, and America has far more than its fair share, in England we have Robin Hood, and then if you cross the globe every nation has its own. In Mexico it will be Zorro, and persistently these characters are re-invented. What is interesting is that every time they are re-invented they reflect the time in which that new version is being made. So it is a barometer of how society and people are changing.
Some of our listeners might have heard your commentary on the premiere Asian release of Ong-bak, but perhaps we can talk a bit about Warrior King, which has just come out here.
I should put in a plug here for the Weinstein Company; we're releasing that in America as 'The Protector'...coming soon to a theatre near you! But yeah, Tony Jaa is a real phenomenon. My awareness of him goes way back, I think I must have been one of the first people to see him in action. When I was preparing to shoot a film; the notorious 'Medallion', which was going to shoot partly in Thailand; we where shown this showreel and it was a lot of the same stunts you saw in Ong-bak, but shot on video with the stunt team, and I was just blown away. I was amazed and my first reaction was ‘we need to put this guy in the Medallion’. Firstly it wasn't that kind of film, and secondly his Thai company said he would only do it if he had a long final reel fight with Jackie, and obviously that wasn't going to happen.
Then when I was with Emperor, I was saying to them 'look we should do a movie with this guy'. I put together a proposal for a movie about three stunt men, and it would have been Fan Ti Wong from Hong Kong, Tony Jaa from Thailand and Brad Allen, who was the white guy who fought so well in Gorgeous. I thought that the three of them together in a movie would be really kind of fun; it's about three stunt men who do a robbery. But by the time we actually got round to thinking about it seriously, bang, he was on the scene with Ong-bak. There are so many things that I'm stupid about, but the one thing I’m smart with, is that whenever anyone showed me the next thing in terms of martial arts action movies, I knew it when I saw it. I knew it when I saw Jackie Chan, I knew it when I was Jean Claude van Dame, and I definitely knew it when I saw Tony Jaa.
I think the moment where you realise that this guy is really going to be the next big thing in Ong-bak is the alley chase, which isn't even a fight scene, but it's just incredible!
If you look at the imagination, the humour, the way it is executed; and it's not just great stunts, but it is fun and great film making. I mean it harks back to the glory days of Hong Kong in the 80s when you'd have a movie with drama, martial arts, comedy and funny characters all within the same film. In a way it has kind of pushed film makers across Asia to re-examine how they can raise their game and do action films, because it proves that you can have a film coming from Thailand which prior to that really was barely on the map in terms of film making, and certainly in terms of action film making.
I lived in Thailand briefly in the 80s, I was training in Thai-boxing, and you'd have film night at the local bars. They'd put up a great white sheet and would show old Shaw Brothers movies, and they were so faded and cracked, you could hardly watch them, but they loved the old Shaw Brothers films, and occasionally they would put up a Thai movie, but at the time the Thai movies were laughably bad, and now look at them.
In Warrior King, without spoiling it for anyone who has not seen it, there are a couple of sequences that are really amazing. There's the spiral staircase sequence for instance, which is done in one take, and it is worth seeing the movie almost just for that.
Anyone who understands the practicalities of film-making, I found from being in the industry and making movies, my appreciation of the demands of film making rose, I mean I was less quick to criticize, because I knew the energy and the commitment necessary in any film, whether it's good, bad or indifferent. If you know about film making and you look at that sequence; the amount of elements that have to come together for that to be shot, it's just phenomenal. And my hat's off to Prachya Pinkaew and Tony, and to the action director Panna Rittikrai, because they did such a sensational job with that.
Another movie that is coming out here soon, finally (!), is Jackie Chan's new Police Story. I was lucky enough to see it this week at a press screening, but it comes out in early October here. It marks an interesting step for him into darker territory…
Yeah, I really think it is the best of his recent Hong Kong movies. I was actually involved with that at an early stage, I was working for Emperor when it was in development and then I left and joined a company called Arclight and we were actually selling that film internationally. So I was involved with the various stages of seeing the script develop, and the only thing that I think is a shame, is that they have not stayed true to the original script. The original script was much more about kind of a father and son relationship between Jackie and Nicholas Tse and the final re-shot, re-cut version that Jackie had put more focus on the idea that he is not father of Nicholas, but that they were more like brothers.
And the whole romance between Jackie and Charlie Yeung, I didn't buy: I didn't think it was particularly well told, but I thought that in the original script the developing relationship between Jackie and Nick was really interesting. Nick was quite disappointed that a lot of their stuff was cut, but then it still delivered and showed that even at whatever age he is now, Jackie Chan has an amazing physicality, and a great sense of theatrical action style. It just felt that there were some other elements in the movie that could have been raised slightly, but overall it’s definitely the best of the recent Jackie Chan pictures. To me, it was a good movie, that had they shot the original script could have been a great movie.
It seemed as if they had perhaps taken a leaf out of the Infernal Affairs Trilogy to some extent with the tone of it, and it's a problem not just with Hong Kong movies, but all movies never seem to get videogames right. Part of the plot revolves around these kids creating these videogames, and the police are trying to find out what their next move is going to be by playing this videogame. I felt like a slightly awkward plot device, but saying that, there is a lot to enjoy and it was great to see some bus stunts again like the first Police Story!
Yeah, it was great they referenced that, it was so much fun. I was there when they were shooting some of that, and it was really amazing. Where you see the bus going wild, it’s a complete mock up of a mall and it was actually shot in the same place that they shot the interiors for Naked Weapon. There is an old government supply house just down the road from where I am now, and they just mocked up the mall, and put in all these coffee shops and things that get trashed by the bus. But you could never tell with the way they cut it together - they did a really good job.
And just when you think you've seen Jackie Chan in every situation ever, then he has a fight in a Lego store, which was nice!
It was a lot of fun. I didn't buy into the whole ending on the roof, and I think the whole thing with the flowers was where it departed from the focus of the original film, which was very much about the relationship between Jackie and Nick. There are longer cuts of these films that Jackie has done with Benny (Chan), like Who am I, New Police Story and it's a shame that my company is not involved with releasing either of these, otherwise we'd take every step to go back and to get the longer versions and bring them out so people could see them.
Daniel Wu does a pretty good job as the baddie, but then almost because he is so young, you can't then have a big showdown at the end, so it's gone for a dramatic note. And you can't help but think that in a Jackie Chan movie you really want to see a big finale action sequence.
Jackie feels that he wants to move forward as an actor and as a filmmaker, and he kind of doesn't understand why people still say 'oh, I loved it when you used to have big fight in the final scene, when it was you versus Benny Urquidez'. He'd be like 'I did that already', and it's like 'no actually, there's a younger generation of fans in America and in the West who are seeing those films for the first time, and they come and see your movies and they want to see that again. It’s like the Woody Allen character in Stardust Memories, ‘now I loved your earlier films, the funny ones’: ‘Jackie I loved your earlier films, the one where you had a big fight at the end'. I think he can do all kinds of movies. Every time I see any one of the three of them, I say 'why don't you do a Jackie, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao movie again?’ But play to the fact that they are older. I think they could have so much fun with it, and do a three-hander for the Chinese New Year film: I think people would love it. We'd back it, the Weinstein Company would back it…it would be great to do that!
Well they're making a new Indiana Jones movie so you know, why not?
Yeah, the thing is you cannot ignore the passage of time. You can't say, 'okay these characters are going to run around like they were twenty-five'. Though Drunken Master 2 was amazing, because I think Jackie was in his forties, very convincingly playing someone who was significantly younger than that. But you go in and you put these guys together and you go 'they are the older guys coming out of retirement', and it's like the Lethal Weapon 'I'm too older for this shit' thing, and you know, you make it about that and it becomes fun. I don't know why that has never been put together; it's a real shame!
A lot of our reader/listeners are into their action movies and so on, but for those that are perhaps new to the genre, what would be a good starting point for people?
I'll probably get in trouble for not being esoteric enough, but my favourites are probably the favourites of everybody else who is a fan. I'll just break it down person by person. For Jackie Chan, I still think that Drunken Master 1 and Drunken Master 2…if I had to watch a Jackie Chan picture tonight it would probably be one of those two, 'cos I still find them hugely enjoyable. Sammo Hung, it could be any number of films, you know I'm a huge fan of Sammo: Pedicab Driver is one of my favourites, and it'd be great if we could find a way to get that commercially released sometime in the next few years. But failing that, my favourite is Prodigal Son (also starring Yuen Biao of course).
For Donnie Yen, Iron Monkey is head and shoulders above the other period films, and still holds up very well as both a drama and a martial arts action picture today. And for Jet Li, I love the trilogy of Once Upon a Time in China. These are all good introductory films for people to look at. You just start off looking at the movies of Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Sammo, and then over time you become aware of the other people in the industry and what they have to offer.
What does your current role at the Weinstein Company entail?
Well it is really great, it is such a fascinating position because we are acquiring for distribution in the west, which means I get to be aware of and involved with the development and production of all the films and TV series, whatever is around in Asia, allowing me to stay on the cutting edge of what films are being produced in the region. It’s fascinating because I love the films in and of themselves, and I’m excited to read the script, and to see early footage, go to premieres and all of that. The wonderful thing is, were I not being paid, I would probably be doing exactly that anyway because that is my passion.
So that is one half of the job. The other half, which is equally exciting, is that we are developing co-production films, that we are going to produce with Chinese and with Asian film companies, and again that is something that I am very much involved with. If you look at my background within the industry, as you said at the top of this, you know that I've done any number of different jobs, but it really boils down to being involved in distribution, and being involved with production, so the great thing is that I get to fulfil both sides of my inclination. Bob and Harvey Weinstein have a genuine passion for Asian cinema as well. So it's not just about dollars and cents from the business side of it; there is a genuine love for these films as well. This makes it very rewarding. I feel like all the experiences that I have had in Hong Kong prepared me for what I am doing now.
The fans of the Hong Kong Legends DVDs will probably be disappointed to learn that you have moved on, because people wanting to listen to your in depth commentaries will miss those.
What happened was, I said to TWC when I joined them: 'look, I have an existing commitment to Hong Kong Legends, to continue to do commentaries and maybe I'll phase them out over time; we'll gradually get other people and we'll have a transition'. For reasons best known to themselves, Contender dispensed with the services of Brian White, who was the prime mover of the label, and the guy whom I had a very close personal loyalty to, and I felt that that was then an appropriate moment to stop collaborating with Hong Kong Legends and Contender. And then of course I hired Brian to come and work with us as Dragon Dynasty, so that was an appropriate cut-off point, otherwise I would have continued for a bit longer, but it was my personal loyalty to Brian that prevented me.
I feel bad for the fans of it, and it is a shame that there were not greater steps made to bring in anybody else to do commentaries, or to continue with the bonus features, but maybe the company feels that those aren't the attributes that sell the DVDs. Obviously, we've used Hong Kong Legends at their height as a framework for what we're doing on a much bigger field in America with Dragon Dynasty, which is to take the best films we can find in terms of sound and picture quality, plus the very best bonus features that we can generate in Asia or collect from around the world, along with the commentaries, and maintain that level. We're lucky because we have pretty much the same team who did the work that was appreciated at Hong Kong Legends, but now we're doing it at Dragon Dynasty. I don't wish any ill of the guys at the Contender label and I hope that younger, fresher people will come into the field to all these different companies, and will continue to promote Asian action cinema. I hope that we have healthy competition, because that's great for the industry, and I relish being part of that.
Movies like Crouching Tiger, Hero, House of Flying Daggers…they were important I think in introducing a wider audience to Asian cinema. What do you think will be the next movie to make it big? What have you seen that we should be looking out for in the next year or two?
Well I guess I have to beat the company drum. We're working with Tony Jaa on Ong-bak 2, which is going to be awesome of course; we're actively working on that at the moment. We've also, and it's been announced in the trade, bought the rights to the other books of The Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon series, so we'll be developing prequels and a sequel perhaps, so that's on a corporate level from us. And otherwise, I think the next trend, I don't necessarily want to say film by film, but the next trend is going to be towards Asian action pictures being influenced in a positive way by international film making/western film making, in terms of story structure and general production values.
I think that the goal should be not to make Hong Kong movies look like Hollywood films, but to make Asian films that have the best attributes available from east and west - that's what we're pushing towards. So I think what you're going to see across the board is that film makers increasingly looking from America and saying 'what can I get from Asia?': Well you can get action directors, you've got these luminous leading players, the production value of shooting in China or elsewhere in Asia, which is vastly cheaper than shooting anywhere in the west. And in Asia, we're looking towards the west and saying, 'well what do we have there?': Well we have story structure; then if you're going to have English dialogue get a proper script writer from America..if you're going to have western characters in your film then get real actors, and if you're going to have special effects, you need people who are at Hollywood level. So that to me is the wave of the future - world-class cinema produced in Asia that incorporates the best of both worlds. That is definitely what we're putting our efforts towards at the moment.
Okay, well that has been brilliant, and thanks very much for your time.
You're very welcome, thanks very much!
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