In the mid-1990s, Hong Kong films gradually declined, but films imported from abroad were very popular, surpassing Hong Kong films for several consecutive years.
Faced with such a dilemma, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat and others have gone to Hollywood to develop.
Unlike them, Stephen Chow chose to stay because if he left the Chinese film market, his unique nonsense comedy style would inevitably lose a lot. Therefore, he set his sights on the mainland market.
In 2001, Zhou Xingchi filmed "Shaolin Football" and invited Zhao Wei, a popular mainland actress at the time, to star in order to open up her own market in the mainland.
However, due to various reasons, "Shaolin Soccer" was ultimately not released in the mainland.
After the release of "Shaolin Soccer", which was highly anticipated by Xingye, it broke the box office record of Hong Kong films with a score of 60.73 million Hong Kong dollars, and became the first film in the history of Hong Kong cinema to earn 60 million box office.
At the same time, Zhou Xingchi also won his dream of the first Academy Awards Film Emperor, and won four awards such as Best Film and Best Director at the Academy Awards ceremony that year.
What makes Xingye even more excited is that the film still grossed $43 million worldwide even though it was not released in the mainland.
Seeing that "Shaolin Soccer" is so popular, Columbia Film Company, which is far away on the other side of the ocean, decided to invest hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars to support Xingye to write and direct a new film, which is exactly what we want to talk about today.
With an investment of 200 million Hong Kong dollars in hand, there is only one question in front of Xingye, that is, what kind of subject matter is good to shoot?
At this time, he thought of his idol Bruce Lee.
Xingye once said that becoming a kung fu master is my first wish, and being an actor can only be ranked second, because Bruce Lee is also like this.
So the idea of a young man with a tragic fate, from a street hooligan to the world's first master, came to mind.
With the investment and script idea, Star Ye can start casting and identifying the team behind the scenes.
In July 2003, the "Kung Fu" movie, which mixed elements of dreams and tributes, was officially launched in the summer light and shadow of Shanghai Longchang Apartment.
In order to make this movie well, the first person he thought of was Hong Kong film's big brother martial arts instructor Hong Jinbao, but what was surprising was that it was this cooperation that made the relationship between the two almost broken.
We can see in the movie that the style of "Kung Fu" before and after the fight is very different, in the Pig Cage Walled City Battle, the Seventy-two Road Tan Legs, the Hongjia Clematis, the Goro Bagua Stick, the action hard bridge hard horse, fist to flesh, these are from Hong Jinbao's handwriting.
After that, the Divine Eagle Hero Battle was incomplete, and the style of the Divine Palm Battle Fire Cloud Evil God was biased towards fantasy and exaggeration, but these were Yuan Baye's handwriting. Why is that?
The reason is that the film's original martial arts director Hong Jinbao was replaced by Yuan Heping.
At first, Stephen Chow approached Hong Jinbao to serve as the film's martial artist, and the two worked together very politely and happily, but such a scene came to an abrupt end when the film was just one-third of the way through.
The reason is that when the martial arts action designed by Hong Jinbao was filmed, Zhou Xingchi completely denied it with only one sentence that was not what I wanted.
Such a move made Hong Jinbao, who was usually used to being praised, unbearable, and the final result was that Hong Jinbao left a sentence of "you can't just be a human being, when others are dogs" and then pat your ass and leave.
In desperation, Mr. Zhou had to find Yuan Baye to replace him. Yuan Baye's action scenes have always been whimsical, just in line with Xingye's ideas.
Later, Yuan Heping mentioned this past in an interview, he thought that Zhou Xingchi was not so difficult to get along with, perhaps because everyone's ideas are different, seeing that the actors are not ideal, he has his own ideas as a director, it is normal to ask for a remake, I think this requirement is not excessive, but It is true that Zhou Xingchi is strict with actors.
Of course, there are other rumors in the anecdote, and I personally think it is because the two want the film to present different effects.
Although Zhou Xingchi and Hong Jinbao were unhappy and scattered, even to the point of old and dead, Chow Xingchi added the name of martial arts instructor Hong Jinbao at the end of the movie, and gave him the 8 million yuan he deserved.
After talking about the "rupture" between Xingye and Hong Jinbao, let's talk about the candidates for chartering public and chartering wives.
Chartered GongYuanhua has been playing in Hong Kong films for decades, and once worked as a stand-in for Bruce Lee in "Dragon Fight Tiger Fight".
As we said earlier, Star Ye's idol is Bruce Lee, but Bruce Lee is gone forever, and he wants to pay tribute to his idol, so he specially invited Yuanhua to play the chartered public.
Yuanhua's performance also lived up to expectations, and he won the Best Supporting Actor Award at the 24th Academy Awards with his chartered public.
Yuan Qiu, who plays the charter wife, is a rare female martial artist in the circle, and she has been married and filmed for many years before starring in this movie, and it is completely an accident that she can participate in the role of the charter wife.
The original candidate for the charter wife was Yuan Qiu's sister Yuan Ju, who originally only accompanied her sister to audition.
In the process of waiting, because of boredom, he lit a cigarette, which was this random action, just for Star Ye to see.
Xingye immediately decided that this was the image of the charter wife in his mind.
Due to the many years of filming in Yuan Qiu, he did not want to participate in the film at first, but he finally agreed to it under the repeated invitations of Zhou Xingchi.
In this movie, she portrayed the image of the chartered wife with curly hair and chewing cigarettes, wearing silk pajamas, and making people smile, and this role also won her the honor of best supporting actress in the Golden Horse.
It is worth mentioning that there is such a clip in the film, Xingye and Lin Zicong went to the pig cage city wall to blackmail, and as a result, they were slapped in the face by Yuan Qiu with slippers, and Xingye wanted Yuan Qiu to really fight, and Yuan Qiu has not dared to use force.
When this scene was filmed three times, Xingye said please simply hit me hard, I don't want NG, don't get beaten, Yuan Qiu will use the strength of hun's body and hit it down.
Because he was too hard, Xingye couldn't stand the pain and had to run while dodging, and then read his lines all the way.
Originally, there was no need to run when filming this scene, and seeing Xingye running all the way, Yuan Qiu had to chase and continue to fight, and this mistake was also retained by Xingye in the movie and became a classic clip.
What is incomprehensible is that such a fat and sloppy character with a voice like Hong Zhong, Xingye gave her a very contrasting name Xiaolongnü.
The reason why there is such an arrangement is from Xingye's Jin Yong martial arts dream.
Before Xingye became famous, he ran a dragon suit for many years, and played Song Bingyi who was killed by Mei Chaofeng's slap in the "Eighty-Three Edition of Shooting Eagle".
It is this bleak and gray memory that makes Xingye have more affection and respect for Jin Yong and his martial arts jianghu, and when he has the ability to master the camera and script, he wants to put his understanding of Jin Yong's martial arts into reality.
As a result, Yang Guo, who was handsome and infatuated with righteousness, became a lewd, sloppy, lustful and weak chartered man, while the world-looking little dragon girl became a hot, fat, smoking and hot head charter wife, and Ouyang Feng, who was good at toad gong, became a mentally ill fire cloud evil god.
In order to obtain Mr. Jin Yong's consent, Xingye took the initiative to visit Mr. Jin Yong and took the initiative to ask for payment of copyright fees.
After Jin Yong listened to his ideas, he believed that the storyline of this movie did not adapt the novel "Condor Heroes", and there were many movies that had used the names of his characters before, but no one ever took the initiative to ask for copyright fees, so Mr. Jin Yong did not intend to collect the copyright fees of Xingye.
However, Xingye attached great importance to this and was more sincere, determined to pay 60,000 yuan in copyright royalties to the new and old, and the old man had to accept it and donated this money to the tsunami-stricken area.
Later, in an interview, mr. Lao said: I appreciate Zhou Xingchi's emphasis on copyright awareness. After experiencing this, the two became private friends, and on Jin Yong's ninetieth birthday, Xingye also wrote a handwritten letter as a congratulatory gift.
Remember that there is such a saying, remember, there will be an echo, with a breath to light a lamp, there is a lamp.
Ip Man got old, and then with Bruce Lee, kung fu continued. Mr. Jin Yong made friends with Zhou Xingchi, so the martial arts had a heritage.
I just don't know that when the most capable Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Hong Jinbao can't move, the most real star master, Fa Ge can't move the movie with white hair, who can still carry the banner of Chinese kung fu and martial arts movies?
In this issue, we will first say this, and then in the article we will continue to say that Feng Xiaogang made a cameo in "Kung Fu", the behind-the-scenes story of his own drama, interested friends click to pay attention, watch more film and television behind-the-scenes stories, we will continue to talk in the next issue.