John Woo

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  • Name: John Woo / Wu Yusen
  • Chinese: 吴宇森
  • Birthdate: September 23, 1946
  • Birthplace: Guangzhou, China
  • Height: 1.64 m
  • Blood Type:

Bio

Woo was born amidst the chaos of the Chinese Civil War in 1946. The Christian Woo family, faced with persecution during Mao Zedong's early anti-bourgeois purges after the communist revolution in China, fled to Hong Kong when he was five.Impoverished, the Woo family lived in the slums at Shek Kip Mei. His father was a teacher, though rendered unable to work by tuberculosis, and his mother was a manual laborer on construction sites. The family was rendered homeless by the big Shek Kip Mei fire of 1953. Charitable donations from disaster relief efforts enabled the family to relocate, however, violent crime had by then become commonplace in Hong Kong housing projects.

At age three he was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Following surgery on his spine, he was unable to walk correctly until eight years old, and as a result his right leg is shorter than his left leg. Woo went to Concordia Lutheran School and received a Christian education (his Christian background shows influences in his films). As a young boy, Woo had wanted to be a Christian minister. He later found a passion for movies influenced by the French New Wave especially Jean-Pierre Melville. Woo has said he was shy and had difficulty speaking, but found making movies a way to explore his feelings and thinking and would "use movies as a language".

The local cinema would prove a haven of retreat. Woo found respite in musical films, such as The Wizard of Oz and American Westerns. He has stated the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made a particular impression on him in his youth: the device of two comrades, each of whom fire pistols from each hand, is a recurrent spectacle later found in his own work.

Woo married Annie Woo Ngau Chun-lung in 1976 and has three children. He has lived in the United States since 1993. Hong Kong career

In 1969, aged 23, Woo was hired as a script supervisor at Cathay Studios. In 1971, he became an assistant director at Shaw Studios, where he was mentored by the noted director Cheh Chang. His directorial debut in 1974 was the feature film The Young Dragons (鐵漢柔情, Tiě hàn róu qíng). In the Kung fu action genre, it was choreographed by Jackie Chan and featured dynamic camera-work and elaborate action scenes. The film was picked up by Golden Harvest Studio where he went on to direct more martial arts films. He later had success as a comedy director with Money Crazy (發錢寒, Fā qián hàn) (1977), starring Hong Kong comedian [[Ricky Hui.

By the mid-1980s, Mr. Woo experienced professional burnout. Several of his films were commercial disappointments. In response, he took residence in Taiwan.It was during this period of self-imposed exile that director/producer Hark Tsui provided the funding for Woo to film a longtime pet project called A Better Tomorrow (1986).

The story of two brothers—one a law enforcement officer, the other a criminal—the film became a financial blockbuster. A Better Tomorrow gained prominence as a defining achievement in Hong Kong action cinema for its combination of emotional drama, slow-motion gunplay, gritty atmospherics, and trenchcoat-and-sunglasses fashion appeal. Its signature narrative device of two-handed, two-gunned fire fight within confined quarters—often referred to as "gun fu"—would later inspire American filmmakers such as Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowski brothers.

Woo would make several more Heroic Bloodshed films in the late 1980s and early 1990s, also with leading man Yun-Fat Chow. These violent gangster thrillers typically focus on men bound by honor and loyalty, at odds with contemporary values of impermanence and expediency. The protagonists of these films, therefore, may be said to present a common lineage with the Chinese literary tradition of loyalty among generals depicted in classics such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".

Mr. Woo gained international recognition with the release of The Killer (1989). Widely praised by critics and audiences for its action sequences, acting and cinematography, The Killer became the most successful Hong Kong film in American release since Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973) and garnered Mr. Woo an American cult following. Bullet in the Head followed a year later, which Mr. Woo has stated he still considers his most personal work. Bullet in the Head did not meet financial expectations.

Among the director's American admirers are Martin Scorsese and Sam Raimi (who has compared Woo's mastery of action to Hitchcock's mastery of suspense). Mr. Woo accepted a contract to work in America at a time when the 1997 handover of Hong Kong was imminent.

His last Hong Kong film before emigrating to the United States was Hard Boiled (1992), the antithesis of his earlier glorification of gangsters. Memorable among its preponderance of action scenes is an approximate 30 minute sequence of gun-play set within a hospital. The director pointedly depicts the vulnerability of patients caught in the crossfire. One particular long take follows two characters for an elapsed time of 2 minutes and 42 seconds as they move between hospital floors. On the Criterion DVD and laserdisc, this chapter is referenced as "2 minutes, 42 seconds." The film climax extols the virtues of its leading man, a law enforcement agent, Yun-Fat Chow, who is seen to comfort an infant with a lullaby while engaged in fire fight with his criminal pursuers. He heroically takes leave of this carnage when he leaps to safety from a window, babe gallantly in arms.

John Woo: Interviews is the first authoritative English-language chronicle of Woo’s career. The volume includes a new 36-page interview with Woo by editor Robert K. Elder, which documents the years 1968 to 1990, from Woo’s early career in working on comedies and kung fu films (in which he gave Jackie Chan one of his first major film roles), to his gunpowder morality plays in Hong Kong. American career

An émigré in 1993, the director experienced difficulty in cultural adjustment while contracted with Universal Studios to direct Jean-Claude Van Damme in Hard Target. As characteristics of other foreign national film directors confronted the Hollywood environment, Mr. Woo was unaccustomed to pervasive management concerns, such as limitations on violence and completion schedules. When initial cuts failed to yield an "R" rated film, the studio assumed control of the project and edited footage to produce a cut "suitable for American audiences". A "rough cut" of the film, supposedly the original unrated version, is still circulated among his admirers.

A three year hiatus saw Mr. Woo next direct John Travolta and Christian Slater in Broken Arrow. A frenetic chase-themed film, the director once again found himself hampered by studio management and editorial concerns. Despite a larger budget than his previous Hard Target, the final feature lacked the trademark Woo style. Public reception saw modest financial success.

Reluctant to pursue projects which would necessarily entail front-office controls, the director cautiously rejected the script for Face/Off several times until it was rewritten to suit him. (The futuristic setting was changed to a contemporary one.) Paramount Pictures also offered the director significantly more freedom to exercise his speciality: emotional characterisation and elaborate action. A complex story of adversaries—each of whom surgically alters their identity—law enforcement agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage play a cat-and-mouse game, trapped in each other's outward appearance.

Face/Off opened in 1997 to critical acclaim and strong attendance. Grosses in the United States exceeded $100 million. As a result, John Woo is generally regarded as the first Asian director to find a mainstream commercial base. In 2003, Mr. Woo directed a television pilot entitled The Robinsons: Lost in Space for The WB Television Network, based on the 1960s television series Lost in Space. The pilot was not purchased, although bootleg copies have been made available by fans.

John Woo has made three additional films in Hollywood: Mission: Impossible II, Windtalkers and Paycheck. Mission: Impossible II was the highest-grossing film of 2000, but received mixed reviews. Windtalkers and Paycheck fared poorly at the box office and were summarily dismissed by critics.

Recently, John Woo directed and produced a videogame called Stranglehold for games consoles and PC. It is a sequel to his 1992 film, Hard Boiled. He also produced the 2007 anime movie, Appleseed: Ex Machina, the sequel to Shinji Aramaki's 2004 film Appleseed. Return to Hong Kong

In 2008, Woo returned to Asian cinema with the completion of the epic war film Red Cliff , based on an historical battle from Records of Three Kingdoms. Produced on a grand scale, it is his first film in China since he emigrated from Hong Kong to the United States in 1993. Part 1 of the film was released throughout Asia in July, 2008, to generally favourable reviews and strong attendance. Part 2 was released in China in January, 2009.

Notes

  1. Guest speaker for the "Master Class" section at the 2011 (14th) Shanghai International Film Festival - June 11-19, 2011.

2.John Woo collaboration with Midway Game to make Stranglehold is the sequel to Woo's 1992 Hong Kong action film, Hard-Boiled , and stars Yun-Fat Chow in a reprisal of his role as hard-boiled cop Inspector "Tequila" Yuen. Stranglehold is the first project on which Woo and Chow have collaborated since Hard-Boiled . 3. John Woo was presented with a Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2010.

Director

Writer

Television Work

  • Once a Thief (TV series)
  • The Robinsons: Lost in Space

Comments

  • Comment #1
    woopole Says:
    Jan 12 2009 7:43 pm

    John Woo is the first Asian director ever to make a mainstream Hollywood film.His new film Red Cliff is awesome and worth watching in cinema and collecting DVD.

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