We won, I think.
When BVI said last month they were releasing Lust, Caution without Tony Leung’s bits I declared war on them. I was as indignant as I had been in my teens, when I would write in to the broadsheet to complain about avaricious distributors who had cut movies to sell more tickets. No I was more indignant than I had ever been. Didn’t BVI realise a movie like Lust, Caution was more than a movie? A movie that is Eileen Chang, Lee Ang and Tony throwing caution to the wind, a movie that has been the talk of Greater China, a movie that is making front-page news in Shin Min, is not just a movie. It is an event. It is as important this year as Beijing 2008 will be next year. Did BVI think nobody in Singapore would notice the missing bits? Could they be that out of touch? But they were and I couldn’t write in to complain, being inconveniently in the employ of the broadsheet. So I held a council of war with S, who is smarter than me, then sold an idea for a story to KC and DT: Let’s go after BVI, let’s go after every movie-cutting distributor, let’s go to town on every movie that has been sneakily snipped by a distributor. The plan was to get everyone mad so they would get even with the distributors, boycott BVI, boycott Lust, Caution (NC16). “This is your NKF,” I said to DT. But the clock was ticking; he was taking an eternity with the story; I couldn’t leave things to chance. Shin Min had announced to all and sundry on its front page that not a lot was left of Lust, Caution (I heart Shin Min). SF had stated in her review that Lust, Caution (NC16) was a lesser movie (I heart SF - and I checked with the editor, who checked with KF, that the review would make front-page blurbs). I then mass-mailed my boycott appeal, which made the news in a Chinese freesheet and a Chinese broadsheet the day DT’s story was published.
When the movie opened at No.1 it looked like we had lost. Then it fell to No.4, then No.7. Its gross of about $500,000, on 20 prints, is nothing to write home about. Re-releasing a movie is costly. Would BVI be putting money into the R21 re-release if they had been making money in the NC16 release? I think not.
Am I over the moon? No. But it is nice to have a thing that went wrong go right.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Friday, October 05, 2007
No mood
The editor has intuited that Tony is Chinese cinema’s best leading man sometime between seeing some stills of Lust, Caution and investigating the truth about his sad childhood on Wikipedia. So in the thrill of her discovery – and because nobody else had the time – I ended up having to write a “why Tony’s the bestest” story for Sunday in 24 hours flat.
And I didn’t write the bestest story, I know, but I had a nasty feeling when she said to send it to the rewriter, a former Fleet Streeter who is intelligent but has a tendency to overwrite. Soon enough the story came back with comments like, “Why are we writing this story?” So I told her the ed wanted a “why Tony’s the bestest” story, 60cm, and this was my attempt to rave meaningfully. Like I said, she is intelligent. She gave me an “ah, that kind of story” look and said I should rewrite the intro to better contextualise Tony and the story would be okay. So I thought maybe I was wrong about her.
But I wasn’t. In a matter of mere minutes she came to the ed and me with an idea: Why don’t we sex things up with sexy stills of Lust, Caution, sexy allusions to the sex scenes, sexy Lust, Caution puns? Okay. So I wrote about Tony’s testes, nudity, emotional nakedness, which no one in Singapore would see in the NC16 cut. But the ed said, “Let’s not rub it in.” She had a go at the story. The rewriter had a go at it. By the time it came back the intro was a long Lust, Caution pun I didn’t get. Who would start a story about Tony’s greatness with wordplay so meaningless? Oh foreign talent would. Also the ed had made Ms M call Mr and Ms Expert then beefed up the intro with two quotes on Tony’s greatness. I felt sick.
“Er isn’t it like quoting experts on how powerful the MM is?” I said.
“Not everybody knows Tony’s great what,” the ed said. Right. She hadn’t known before she saw those stills of Lust, Caution so how could Singapore know? Infernal what?
Anyways there was no time for me to unwrite the rewrite. It was out of my hands. All that could be done was to have my byline deleted. Tony deserves a better story that I could write within 24 hours, I know.
And I didn’t write the bestest story, I know, but I had a nasty feeling when she said to send it to the rewriter, a former Fleet Streeter who is intelligent but has a tendency to overwrite. Soon enough the story came back with comments like, “Why are we writing this story?” So I told her the ed wanted a “why Tony’s the bestest” story, 60cm, and this was my attempt to rave meaningfully. Like I said, she is intelligent. She gave me an “ah, that kind of story” look and said I should rewrite the intro to better contextualise Tony and the story would be okay. So I thought maybe I was wrong about her.
But I wasn’t. In a matter of mere minutes she came to the ed and me with an idea: Why don’t we sex things up with sexy stills of Lust, Caution, sexy allusions to the sex scenes, sexy Lust, Caution puns? Okay. So I wrote about Tony’s testes, nudity, emotional nakedness, which no one in Singapore would see in the NC16 cut. But the ed said, “Let’s not rub it in.” She had a go at the story. The rewriter had a go at it. By the time it came back the intro was a long Lust, Caution pun I didn’t get. Who would start a story about Tony’s greatness with wordplay so meaningless? Oh foreign talent would. Also the ed had made Ms M call Mr and Ms Expert then beefed up the intro with two quotes on Tony’s greatness. I felt sick.
“Er isn’t it like quoting experts on how powerful the MM is?” I said.
“Not everybody knows Tony’s great what,” the ed said. Right. She hadn’t known before she saw those stills of Lust, Caution so how could Singapore know? Infernal what?
Anyways there was no time for me to unwrite the rewrite. It was out of my hands. All that could be done was to have my byline deleted. Tony deserves a better story that I could write within 24 hours, I know.
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