Pag.175
TO BE NUMBER ONE
One thing that came out of my experience on Fist of Fury was a realization that I
was sick of kissing people’s asses.
I’m sorry to say it so harshly, but it was true. As a
stuntman, even as a high-class stuntman, I was at the mercy of everyone: the
director, the producer, and especially the stunt coordinators.
When it came to action sequences, the stunt
coordinators were completely in control. Even the directors bowed down to them,
although as more and more stunt coordinators have turned into directors, this
is less true today
.
That’s why we stuntmen had a special nickname for
stunt coordinators: she tao, or “the
head of the snake.” On a dangerous and complicated action shoot, the
coordinators might supervise over two hundred people. This gave the she tao a lot of power on the set—because he choreographed and
directed action sequences—and off,
because he was responsible for choosing and hiring all of the people under him.
Unfortunately, this meant that stunt coordinators were
surrounded by people who flattered them, bought them drinks, and treated them
like big men. Successful ass-kissers got lots of regular work—if you can call that
working: favored suck-ups were given soft, easy stunts that any baby could do.
The rest of us did the high jumps and hard falls.
No matter how good you were, though, you still faced a
lot of competition. And if you weren’t willing to grovel in front of the coordinators,
there was only one other way to insure you’d be called out.
You see, we were paid a set rate for each day of work,
about US$15. The producer usually gave the she
tao a budget for the film, broken down by stunts, with each stunt taking a
day to shoot. But after we’d finished a scene, instead of wrapping production
and paying us, the coordinator would usually bark out orders to set up for a
second scene—knowing that, if he finished two stunts in a day, he could put one
day’s fees for all of the stuntmen in his own pocket.
It meant we were doing double the amount of work for
the same pay. There were no rules or unions protecting us, so we had no one to
complain to about this treatment. But even if there had been, we wouldn’t have
argued.
Pag.176
It was like a tradition. They took away your money one
day, but they’d call you back the next.
It kept you on the list.
All of us were angry about this injustice. We were
sweating, hurting, and risking our lives for half of what we were due. Of
course, there was nothing that I or any of the other stuntmen could do about
it, any more than I could find it in myself to hit my elder brothers when they
tyrannized me and my fellow younger brothers. This was just the way the system
worked. Instead, I decided that I’d find a way to become a she tao myself—the youngest one in the history of Hong Kong cinema.
And when I put my mind to it, I feel like I can do just about anything.
I was in a somewhat embarrassing position when I
finally faced my opportunity—leaning over and rubbing my back like an old man.
I’d just taken a hard, painful fall on a film Samo was coordinating for Golden Harvest,
and he was yelling at me to do the stunt again, saying I’d shown my face to the
cameras.
“Stop wasting time, Big Nose; the sun’s going down,”
he shouted.
It didn’t matter how many years we were out of the
school. Samo still treated me like a little brother, and I think he always
will. I considered telling him to screw off, but decided it wasn’t worth the
effort or the trouble. Straightening up with a wince, I shook the dust off my
body and checked my neck to make sure it was still doing its job, keeping my
head attached to my shoulders.
That’s when I noticed the stranger standing off on the
sidelines of the set. I knew most of the people who hung around the Golden
Harvest studio, as well as the freelance stuntmen who went from set to set
looking for work, and I couldn’t place his face among them. What would a stranger
be doing hanging around the set so late in the day?
Thinking about it was another thing that wasn’t worth
the trouble or effort. I shrugged and headed back toward Samo, who was huffing
at me with his arms crossed and his face crunched up like he was about to explode.
One more
time up the wall.
One more
time down to the ground.
“Okay, good enough, it’s a wrap,” shouted Samo,
heaving himself up out of his chair and motioning to his flunkies.
It hadn’t hurt as much the second time around, but I
was so exhausted that I just lay on the ground for a while, my eyes closed.
Eventually someone would tell me to get up, I figured. Until then, I’d just
rest for a little while.
“Excuse me?” said a voice.
Go away, I
thought to myself. Let me die in peace.
But I opened my eyes anyway.
Pag.177
It was the stranger, looking skittishly around at the
laborers who were breaking down the set.
“What do you want?” I said, boosting myself up to my
elbows.
“I really shouldn’t be there,” he said.
“Who are you?”
The stranger squatted down next to me. “I’m Bao
Hok-lai,” he said. “Director.”
I shook his hand. “I’ve never heard of you.”
“Nobody has,” he said, with a wry grin. “I’m with a
small production company called Da Di; we’re about to start a picture, and we’re
looking for a stunt coordinator.”
“Oh,” I said. I got up and began brushing the dust
from my pants. “Well, he’s over that way.”
Bao got up, looking puzzled. “Not that guy,” he said. “I
was thinking of you.”
I looked at him, my eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Heard around that you’re pretty good,” he said by way
of explanation. “We’d like to give you a shot at stunt coordinating, if you’re
interested in a contract.”
A
contract! For a freelance stunt guy
like me, getting a contract—as a stunt coordinator, yet—was the big time. I
probably should have spent more time thinking about it, but at the time I wasn’t
about to question my luck. “Where do I sign?” I blurted. And Samo could just go to hell.
Bao was a bit surprised that I was so quick to say
yes, I guess, so he told me just to show up at their office the next morning to
work out the details. “Welcome aboard,” he said, as he ducked off the set.
“Well, it’ll be nice working for you,” I called after
him, “considering you went out of your way to pick me over guys with more
experience.”
He turned and shrugged sheepishly. “To tell you the
truth, we couldn’t afford them anyway,” he said, and then left.
Like I said, I probably should have thought about it
longer.
The offices of Da Di (which translates as “Big Earth”)
weren’t particularly big, but they were… dirty. My hopes were still high,
though—even if the biggest studios controlled the top stars, there were still
some good films being made by small independent companies. Bao introduced me to
the head of production, who complimented my work, even though he hadn’t
personally seen any of the films I’d done. Then we took our turns signing the
contract, and shook hands.
“The first picture we want you to work on is She Wang Yao [“Four Kings, One Queen,”
but it was called The Heroine in
English],” said Bao.
“The budget—”
“The budget is not a problem,” said the production
head. “Money isn’t what makes good movies; talent is. And we know you have the
talent.”
Pag.178
“We can’t afford—” said Bao.
“We can’t afford not to do our best!” the production
head interrupted. “We have a lot of faith in you, lad! The old saying is, ‘Youth
will rule the world,’ correct? The shoot
starts tomorrow! Good luck!”
And then he folded the contract, got his coat, and
walked out of the office.
I looked at Bao, and Bao looked back at me.
“Can I at least hire some assistants, or do I have to
do everything myself?” I said glumly.
Bao winced, and then nodded. “Hire whomever you need,”
he said. “We’ll work it out somehow.”
My expression brightened, and I shook his hand again
before leaving.
Tomorrow was the beginning of my new career. I would
be in charge, a real she tao, and I
knew exactly whom I wanted at my side.
“I don’t know about this,” Yuen Kwai said to me,
watching as the cameraman argued with the producer about the state of his equipment.
Yuen Biao, leaning against a nearby wall, shrugged and
nodded in our direction. “Hey, it’s better than fighting for jobs with that
herd of stuntmen over at Golden Harvest,” he said. “Seems like every day there
are more people wanting work. Money is money, I guess.”
I gave a halfhearted smile at my brothers. “Let’s not
talk about money right now,” I said. “Think of this as the beginning of an
adventure.”
Yuen Kwai spat at the ground. “If I want an adventure,
I’ll go to Africa,” he said. “I thought you said this was a high-class
operation.”
I punched him in the shoulder. “High-class is about people,
not about budgets. You think you’re high-class enough to be an assistant stunt
coordinator? You prove it, brother.”
He rolled his eyes and sighed.
We watched as the cameraman kicked the shoddy wooden
skeleton of the set and almost knocked the flimsy facade to the ground.
“High-class all the way,” he said. “I always wanted to
live the glamorous life.”
“You want me to punch you again?” I said, gritting my
teeth.
To be perfectly honest, the movie was terrible. I’m
not trying to insult Bao by saying so; most of the movies we made back then
were bad, and some of them were very bad. But all that mattered to me was the
action, and for that, Yuen Biao and Yuen Kwai and I did our best.
And I loved it.
I found myself enjoying the chance to make decisions
and give orders,
Pag.179
I even got a chance to act in the film, playing the
second male lead—not that I’m proud of my performance. I guess I had a lot to
learn about acting. Still, I’d always thought that being free meant no one
telling me what to do; now I realized that it meant having the ability to
control, to create, to make things happen.
Unfortunately, one thing I couldn’t do was force
people to watch the film, which made just HK$70,000 at the box office—a
disaster.
Bao was crushed. Da Di’s head of production tried to
put a more positive spin on the situation.
“Don’t worry, boy. It’s not the end
of the world. Or of Big Earth!” he chuckled. “We’ll get’ em on the next one.”
The next one was a movie called Police Woman, and it was better than The Heroine. Not much better, but we’d all learned a few lessons,
and I think we put them to good use. We waited for the box office results with
anticipation, hoping that it would at least break even, maybe make enough money
to pay our back salaries, which were beginning to pile up.
It didn’t. Police Woman was another flop.
The movie wasn’t good, but that wasn’t the only reason
why it failed so badly.
Something awful had occurred in the meantime.
Bruce Lee, the man who had transformed the Hong Kong
film industry, who’d brought martial arts films to the world, had died. And somehow,
the industry had died with him. People weren’t watching action films anymore;
they were turning to melodramas, to romances, to comedies—anything that didn’t
have the ghost of Bruce hovering over them. Desperate producers were trying to
resurrect him in absurd and insulting ways, releasing cheap knockoff films
starring fake stand-ins—actors calling themselves Bruce Lai, Bruce Leung, Bruce
Lam. No one was fooled. And very few people wanted to watch.
The day the bookkeeper announced the numbers, the head
of production looked pale, and Bao looked like he was ready to cry. I didn’t know
what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. It looked like something terrible was
about to happen.
Sometimes I hate being right. At the end of that
miserable day, the production head and some of the other principals of Da Di
called me in to a meeting they were having. Bao had already left, without
saying anything to anyone.
“Hello, come in, Yuen Lung,” said the production head
(I was still using Biggest Brother’s name at the time). “I have something to
tell you, and I know it will make you upset. I’m devastated, myself.”
He looked uncomfortably at the other principals, who
made a point of looking elsewhere around the room.
“What is it?” I said, having a funny feeling I knew
what was coming. I’d
Pag.180
been through this before, on that stupid movie Little Tiger of Canton, and I suspected
the tiger was about to bite me in the ass again.
“We’ve decided to shut down the company,” he said. “We
don’t have any more money, and we can’t even pay back wages. I’m sorry.”
He put his head into his hands. “I’m sorry.”
I stared at the men, who all suddenly looked very old
and tired. I nodded, turned on my heel, and left the building.
“What’s up, Big Brother?” It was Yuen Biao, catching
up to me as I walked out onto the street.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing’s going on anymore. It’s
over. They can’t pay us, they’re not making any more movies, and we’re out on
the street.”
Yuen Biao looked shocked, and his shoulders bent down.
He hadn’t been in the business as long as I had; at the age of just nineteen, I
was a veteran. I had a little money in the bank. I could afford not to be paid for a while. But Yuen Biao was
struggling, and I could see that this loss was hitting him hard.
I patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry!” I said. “It’s
not all terrible. You just call Samo tomorrow; I’m sure he can get you work.
And besides—they gave us some going-away money.
Tonight, let’s not feel sad over
the end of this job. Let’s celebrate the beginning of our new lives, whatever
they may bring!”
He brightened, and was soon laughing again. Together,
we went back to my apartment. I retrieved my stash of savings—about HK$800
total—while Yuen Biao went to call Yuen Kwai about the bad (and good) news.
After he joined us, we headed for the seamier side of
Tsim Sha Tsui, spending our “bonus” on a wild night drinking and gambling. By
the time the two of them left for their apartments, I had just ten Hong Kong dollars
remaining, and an incredible headache.
I slept all of the next day and woke up in the evening,
just in time to spend my last ten dollars on dinner at a nearby restaurant.
I’d finally hit bottom. I had no job, no money, no
girlfriend, nothing but the clothes on my back and the furniture I’d made with
my own hands.
There was just one thing I could do.
“Dad?” I said, to the voice on the other side of the
transcontinental connection. “I’m coming home.”
Lido
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