From remote sets in China’s backcountry to projects in Mongolia, from Japan to the enigmatic halls of Hollywood, producer Philip S.W. Lee has seen and done it all.

A soft-spoken Hong Kong native with a 25-year record of production experience in and around Asia, he has quietly pioneered a rigorous work ethic that seeks to improve standards of filmmaking in the region.

Philip has been carrying his weight for filmmakers from around the world, including such notables as Ang Lee, Chen Kaige, David Cronenberg, Rob Cohen and Zhang Yimou.

These days he stretches his time among many global projects, as an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media, completing his PhD and being with his family.

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[Joi Chan]: How did you first get started in film and why did you choose Japan as a place to study?

[Philip Lee]: I always liked watching movies since I was young. My parents used to bring us to watch morning shows and matinees. I wasn’t formally working in film until around 1978 when I saw an ad for a production company that was hiring an administrative assistant. I quickly realized that I liked the work and thought to myself that it would be a pretty great career.

At the time the company had a project called SHOGUN, a big TV co-production with Paramount. They needed to send someone to Japan to take care of equipment rentals. I was 22 then and hadn’t even been on a plane yet! I spent eight years in Japan. The first four years I merely helped out at the company. But then I decided I wanted to study film seriously so I become a student while working part-time.

My Japanese was all right by then so I applied for a course in film directing at the College of Art at Nippon University. It was hard to get in but I got accepted. Tuition was expensive but a lot of people were working at restaurants or whatever; I worked at night. Everything was poetic to me. (Please refer to my previous explanation). But after graduation I was anxious to return to Hong Kong.

[Joi Chan]: What personal reflections can you offer regarding the current state of the feature film industry in Hong Kong and China?

[Philip Lee]: My first contact with the movie industry in Hong Kong was while I was still studying in Japan. I remember one time I was invited to a production set in Hong Kong and I saw some paper on the floor. It was actually the script for the production which was written only the day before.

I was wondering why would they do things this way? Previously I had participated in a few western productions and there was always a fully prepared script to work with. The way Hong Kong works and the way western companies work is very different. I told myself then that I would prefer to work on foreign productions.

At the time, I didn’t want to participate in Hong Kong or mainland productions. Of course I’m doing it now but I guess in retrospect, there’s always some good and bad in the making of every movie no matter where it is. I always learn a lot from the extremes.

For example in one production I was involved in, there was a strange case involving the financing. We had investors from France and Japan who obviously thought that their investment was for a movie. But when the editing was finished it was more than four hours long. We had to cut a lot and the final product turned out mediocre. Then later we were told that it had been edited into an eight episode television series that was sold at a TV festival in Shanghai.

After all our effort and after the investors had put so much into the project, how could it be sold like that just for some quick cash? Sure, they were able to get their money back by doing it that way, but it wouldn’t do them any good in the long run, for future productions. From my experience, whether it’s Hong Kong or on the mainland, it’s typically shortsighted. I thought to myself then, how could this happen?

In another case, a friend of mine recently invested in a production. He said he really liked the script. The mainland Chinese partner said the total investment needed would be about HK$3.5 million. My friend decided to partially invest in it, which meant he would have a third of the copyright. But he said he wouldn’t be very dedicated to the production since the overall budget was so small. But later the producers said it was actually over-budgeted! My friend thought it wasn’t an issue as he had already signed the contract. The other side said we had to renegotiate.

When my friend spoke to the producers and the director, he asked why they thought it was over budget. They said, didn’t we already know from the outset that it would be over budget? They had expected to talk about that after the production had begun. My friend said he couldn’t help the feeling of being cheated. To be very blunt, this rarely happens when being involved in western productions. I think it’s because of the way we do things here that drives investors away. People are just too greedy.

But, on the other hand, people like Bill Kong, the producer of CROUCHING, HERO and HOUSE of FLYING DAGGERS, always tells me the most important thing when making a movie is that you should not let your investors lose money. You should help them make money. To me this is the correct attitude. But some unscrupulous people will say a production is going to cost such and such a figure but actually they’ll keep a lot of it in their pockets.

And then there’s the situation where somebody will come to me and say they have a good idea for a project. But they don’t have a script! I think to myself if you don’t even believe that your ideas will work and invest time in writing a script, then how can you convince investors? An idea by itself is not good enough.

On occasion I’ll hire a writer to write a script for me to see if an idea works or not but well before I’d talk to an investor. The situation is very bad in the China and Hong Kong movie industry, especially in Hong Kong.

Very often the filmmakers themselves create the situation. Sure piracy plays a role and the government could help make the infrastructure better, but I think basically it’s because of the unfortunate mentality of the filmmakers that creates this situation in the first place.

That’s why I believe in education. I always think we don’t have enough quality people making movies now. We have to nurture the next generation to be more passionate about the business of film to make things more transparent.

Recently I talked to a film student I know who graduated a year or so ago. He’s been forced to do other things and found it so hard. He wants to be making movies so he asked me if there is a future in the movie industry here. I said, sure, but it’s entirely up to you. If a profession has a good future, then it would be easier for you to do well. But if an industry isn’t that doing well, then isn’t it an opportunity in disguise?

Of course one will probably have to suffer in the beginning and the pay will be very low. But in the movie industry, very often the return is not proportional. Some people might have put a lot of effort in a production but not get much out of it. Others gain much more but do very little.

I saw a lot while I was studying in the states. After graduation, some of my classmates had to do different jobs or write scripts and do small projects at the same time to prepare themselves. Then later they made a successful movie and someone approached them and packaged them. It’s entirely up to your efforts.

Nothing is guaranteed but it’s about how you focus yourself. How you see your career and your vision for the market. How well you can do it. It’s very simple. For example in CROUCHING, hundreds of million of dollars were made all over the world. The returns were multiple at the box office alone. In what other business can you make a profit like that?

Of course you have to take risks. You might have invested hundreds of millions of dollars and end up losing everything. There are lots of examples of that. The movie industry is risky. I think it depends on how you want to walk it. The road you take depends on so many things. It depends on your luck, your confidence and your knowledge. It all counts.

Success requires a certain spirit of risk. If you don’t have the mentality to risk, or if you don’t have the mentality to strive for excellence, then it’ll be difficult to survive. There’ll be such pain. You’ll find it hard to do any project. In this sense, doing a small project is not very different from doing a big project.

[Joi Chan]: How do the local authorities support their respective film industries, or not?

[Philip Lee]: Truthfully, governments don’t do enough. An exception might be Korea. In the past few years I’ve done a lot of seminars there. The government provides certain platforms, meaning knowledge and infrastructure to Korean filmmakers. For example, they’ll enforce a policy where theatres have to play a certain number of Korean movies. And they’ll hold a lot of seminars and very good film festivals. The government sponsors many things to make the movie industry more prosperous.

Whereas in Hong Kong, the government has its difficulties. I’ve talked to a lot of government officials and in their point of view, the movie industry is only one of many sectors. Why should it get preferential treatment and not other industries? They think they should treat each one equally. But I believe there’s no other industry that can make Hong Kong so well known to the rest of the world. Sure, the movie industry is one of many but I don’t agree with the government in this case.

But from another point of view, it would be rather impractical if an industry had to rely so much on government support. I think governments can improve infrastructure and help with education or distribution. But, finally, it should be the job of the filmmakers themselves, whether they have the ability and creativity to make projects that are acceptable to audiences.

Regarding audiences, I did a survey recently. People in their twenties rarely like Hong Kong movies unless they’re very special. It’s mostly because they have so many expenses these days such as mobile phones, online games, etc. And since they don’t want to spend so much on movies, they appear to choose foreign movies more.

[Joi Chan]: If you could give a constructive criticism of the Hong Kong film industry as a whole, what would you say?

[Philip Lee]: I hope those who can afford to make movies in Hong Kong will be more daring in cultivating young people and new topics. Surely from a business point of view it’s not that easy. There were two local movies released earlier this year and they were both very commercial, but in fact they still didn’t work out.

To local filmmakers, being commercial means a great cast and grand scenes. But that formula just isn’t working. Instead of wasting money on just trying to be commercial, they should come up with better and different topics to attract audiences. Do better creatively. Maybe use new talent.

Part of the issue is limited resources, so we need to figure out how to make use of the resources we already have. The market is highly competitive obviously, but actually there is a question of leadership. I think in the near term, it isn’t going to be possible for Hong Kong to get back to the prosperity of twenty years ago.

But as an educator, my hope is that while teaching my students, I feed them well and let them digest useful knowledge. It might take three, five or even ten years for them to make it. You just have to keep giving them the tools and hope for the best.

[Joi Chan]: Has the popularity and success of kung fu movies like CROUCHING somehow ‘typecast’ the Hong Kong-China film industry by not allowing for modern dramas or other genres to succeed?

[Philip Lee]: Let’s put it this way. When we were making CROUCHING, we had this mindset to be innovative. Ang Lee had his own vision of the martial arts world. He wanted to expose that world to our eyes. He achieved that.

In HERO, Zhang Yimou wanted to espouse a ‘poetic and historical’ world to us. I think both he and Lee have the passion, ability and confidence to fulfill their visions -- and their movies work. Actually, I don’t think they made these movies because they thought they would be successful.

Do filmmakers think the market can still accept such a genre after CROUCHING and HERO? I think so. The market -- not necessarily the genre -- determines whether a movie is good or no good and of course whether people accept it or not.

After CROUCHING came out, some foreign producer friends of mine came to Hong Kong and told me everybody was providing them with similar material. The main thing is, they have to understand what works. Frankly, I don’t see a lot of filmmakers in Hong Kong who lead the trend. Possibly they don’t have the opportunity to, whereas in the west, there are more chances available.

I feel I’m in a fortunate position because I just went to Moscow for discussion about a production I’m working on called MONGOL, which is a very powerful love story about Genghis Khan. We plan to use Mongolian language to shoot the movie. The point is we hope we’ll be able to reach audiences everywhere because we believe we have a good story and that technically we can execute it well. We’ll also have an excellent marketing campaign later.

Recently a friend asked if I wanted to make this movie MONGOL like CROUCHING. I said ‘No’. With all our abilities, I think it would be hard for anybody to reach that level, but at least we’ll try to get close to it. Every time I make a new movie, it’s a new challenge to me. A new page, a new film.

To me a good story is the most important thing. Like when I was first reading the script for CROUCHING, I knew that it would get the best foreign movie award at the Oscars. Actually whether we got an award or not didn’t matter too much to us because during the production we were all so heavily immersed in the project.

Whether it’s the directors or other colleagues, we all put a lot of effort into it. The actors had a very strong baby, and the baby was the script. We made the baby bigger and stronger. Very often looking at Hong Kong movies, I can’t really see a lot of good scripts. There is so much to be done for the Hong Kong movie industry.

Regarding whether CROUCHING has affected the movie industry here, I think maybe it has in both good and bad ways. Any time we develop some good films they always bring inspiration. But sometimes the problem is when we have created something good, there is this assumption that we have to copy it and follow its structure for another one. It’s not necessarily true.

[Joi Chan]: So, in general, the atmosphere in Hong Kong is relatively unhealthy? So cliquey and short sighted, aiming only at instant cash…?

[Philip Lee]: Yes. But sometimes I understand why it’s this way. The truth is people have to make a living. They’ll just keep making fairly ordinary movies until they can’t make a living anymore and then it dies.

It’s been said that China’s CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement) with Hong Kong could help the film industry here. To some extent it will, but in other ways it will cause it to die faster. For a while everybody was thinking we were going to see the China market opening up, so we needed to make more movies – and we did -- but the quality was so bad that they couldn’t be released. Even audiences in China wouldn’t want to see them.

The filmmakers thought that as long as they had Hong Kong actors, audiences in the mainland would want see the movies. This is not the reality. There are actually only a handful of Hong Kong movies that have done well in the mainland.

I want to work with some of the new directors from mainland China. But recent experience has taught me to take extra precaution. Our mentality is so different. Some of them don’t think that after getting the trust and money from the investors that they have to do a good job. They might be thinking let’s get into bed together first, and then at a certain stage later on you have to pay.

At this point of my career I want to focus on creating film that is alternative and international.

For further information:

www.mongol.ctb.ru

www.cityu.edu.hk/scm/faculty/PhilipLee

News.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/

PA Epps
Joi Chan
04/22/05