John Woo: from Zero to Hero

The Venice Film Festival honored veteran director John Woo at a star-studded celebration on the night of September 3， 2010， awarding him with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Accompanied by the festival director Marco Muller， John Woo accepted the award from American director Quentin Tarantino， president of the jury for the main competition at the festival this year， and Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.

Woo almost choked on his tears on the stage during his acceptance speech. With this award， Woo now ranks side by side with many acclaimed international masters such as Japanese film directors Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki. John Woo is the first Chinese director awarded this honor.

John Woo was born in 1946 in Guangzhou， the capital city of southern China’s Guangdong Province. He later migrated to Hong Kong. He spent his childhood years in poverty and fear， seeing street gangsters， drug dealers， and gamblers. What he later created in his gang movies reflect his hope of childhood years: heroes defeat villains and make the world safe and secure.

To help the family， Woo worked as a night delivery boy for a restaurant. These days were hard， he later recalled， but he still managed to find some happy moments. He often slept outdoors in order to make the room less crowded for his parents and younger siblings. He felt sleeping this way and gazing at stars was most romantic. But rheumatism has been torturing him since then.

In his early teens， he found a new hobby. He drew pictures on small glasses. Then using a flashlight， he projected the pictures onto the wall at home. As he moved his glasses， the figures on the wall moved too. These glass paintings were his first movies. Also at that time he became obsessed with movies. His mother introduced him to the world of movies and Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor in Waterloo Bridge became the brightest stars in the young boy’s dream.

A boy from a poor family， Woo at that time did not have money to go to movie as often as possible. He invented a way to sneak into the movie house by holding the edge of the cloth of a man and pretending to be his kid. Sometimes it worked and occasionally it didn’t work. Once he carrying his little brother on the back was caught by an usher. The two boys were brutally kicked out. In those years， the best movies for him were musicals: for they presented beautiful songs and beautiful costumes， which gave him hope for a better life. The musicals later became his inspiration for rhythm and beauty， the hallmarks of his action movies.

Hong Kong was undergoing tremendous changes in the 1960s when John Woo graduated from middle school and got employed as a log keeper in Cathay Studio. Of the 200 HK dollars a month he earned， he gave 100 to his family and spent the rest on food and his cinematic studies. In order to get the most out of the tiny monthly budget， he had to cut down the expense on food. More often than not， he bought the cheapest bread for lunch. Shortly after he entered Cathay Company， he met director Chang Cheh， who took John Woo under his wing. Chang’s movies were widely acclaimed for an amazing blend of scholarly ethos， kongfu and romanticism. The young apprentice found in Chang’s cinematic creations a familiarity with his experience in boyhood years. While working under the famous director， John Woo learned a lot about filmmaking and being himself in this world.

Meanwhile， John Woo had to choose a career for his future: would he be an actor or would he need to find a job outside the filmmaking industry? When an opportunity came up to appear as a rebellious young man in a new movie， Wu offered to take it. But when Chang Cheh found Woo was acting， he stopped the filming. Asked whether he faulted Woo’s acting， Chang replied John Woo should better be a director.

The master’s advice gave John Woo great courage and push he badly needed. So he made up his mind to become a film director. He started directing at 26. He made his first movie in 1973 with the kongfu advisor being Jack Chen. Both were little known at that time and the movie was largely ignored. In 1983， he left Golden Harvest Film Productions Ltd and joined Cinema City Company Limited， but his career seemed to go nowhere. He was exiled to Taiwan for nearly three years. With the help of Tsui Hark， however， he came back to Hong Kong and directed “A Better Tomorrow” in 1986.

John Woo put failure and revenge as he understood into the movie. His techniques are so perfect that even today many scenes look flawless. The bloody gun battle in a nightclub is so classical that it is still talked about by fans and professionals. People were amazed how John Woo could have made a hit man movie so beautiful.

It was a small-budget film but it became the biggest show in Hong Kong that year and later became a blockbuster in various Asian countries. The movie was more than the very turning point of his life and career. It told the world what his individual cinematic aesthetics was and opened a brand new chapter in the history of Hong Kong’s filmmaking.

In 1993 John Woo went to Hollywood and his “Face Off” in 1997 marked another peak in his career. The Hollywood blockbuster， which grossed more than $100 million， emphasizes the value of humanism and family highly appreciated by both western and eastern audiences. It also portrays the tenacity and tenderness of women， which pulled in women movie-goers.

On the day when John Woo received his Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Venice， “Reign of Assassins” he produced made its world debut at the festival. The media rated it nine in a point system of 1 to 10. Some reviewers thought it was the best Kongfu film since “Hidden Dragons and Crouching Tigers\"， a Golden-Globe-winner directed by Ang Lee in 2000.

John Woo does not think there is nothing left for Kongfu films to explore. Some kongfu films focus on revenge and romance whereas some depict something so philosophical that they are beyond ordinary people’s comprehension. He believes that a lot of everyday things can be big stuff for kongfu films and that kongfu films do not need necessarily showcase strange combat skills and impossible weapons and impossible movements and should never boast the narrow-minded national sentiment by defeating a foreign badass or two. He does not think these superficial things reflect the spirit of the kongfu world. His ideal kongfu world resembles the world in which the Tang poet Li Bai (701-762) dwells and reflects his worldview. His kongfu films are his respects to Akira Kurosawa， King Hu and Chang Cheh， directors whom John Woo regards as his models.

While commenting on the lifetime achievement award， Woo says it is encouragement from his friends in the hope that he will go on to make good films. Woo regards the award as a beginning for his future films. The 62-year-old director thinks it is too early for him to celebrate his lifetime achievement.

Renowned for his aesthetics that makes violence beautiful in his movies， the good-tempered director is an affable man who smiles a lot. In everyday life， he is just a family man who cooks special dishes to treat his wife and children. But on the screen， he is simply extraordinary. □