“I use musical theory to shoot an action sequence”: an exclusive online interview with John Woo

In August 1986, Hong Kong was running out of Ray Bans. Director John Woo and producer Tsui Hark had just unveiled their brooding action epic A Better Tomorrow, a tale of treachery and brotherhood among cops and crooks that would quickly become the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong cinema history, and rapturous fans were impatient to emulate the signature style of its leading man, Chow Yun-Fat. 

An uninspired sequel was dutifully churned out, before the duo set the benchmark for neo-romantic action aesthetics with The Killer (1989). Commingling global influences – Akira Kurosawa, Chang Cheh and Patrick Lung from the East; Jean-Pierre Melville, Martin Scorsese and Sam Peckinpah from the West – into a singularly exhilarating brew of friendship, honour and sacrifice, Woo’s violent (but morally rigorous) bullet ballets established the template for a Hong Kong subgenre dubbed ‘heroic bloodshed’.

Three years later, Woo upped the ante again with Hard Boiled (1992). Allocated an unprecedented 35 shooting days for its climactic set piece alone, Woo raised the bar for onscreen destruction as Chow Yun-Fat blasts his way out of a hospital – shotgun in one hand, newborn infant in the other. It was little wonder that Hollywood quickly came knocking. Moving to Los Angeles with his longtime producing partner Terence Chang in the early 1990s, Woo teamed up with the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme, John Travolta, Nicholas Cage and Tom Cruise to deliver some of the finest action films of the decade.

Until recently, Woo’s Hong Kong masterworks had lain neglected, entangled in complex rights disputes, and rarely projected on the big screen. This all changed last year, when Shout! Studios were miraculously able to license the Golden Princess library, paving the way for restorations of many of Hong Kong cinema’s holy grails. With Woo’s greatest hits gracing the screens of BFI Southbank this summer, we jumped on a video call with the legendary filmmaker to discuss his love for musicals, the perfect frame rates at which to shoot various stars, and Tom Cruise’s dogmatic concerns about his hair.

Matthew Thrift: Next month is the 40th anniversary of A Better Tomorrow. The impact this film had on your career, on the Hong Kong film industry, and on the international appetite for Hong Kong cinema can’t be overstated. You were already an industry veteran – the previous year you directed your 14th feature. What were you thinking and feeling about the direction of your career in the years leading up to this?

John Woo: Before A Better Tomorrow, I made a bunch of comedies. Some of them were pretty good, some of them were pretty bad, but I didn’t want to make these kinds of films. At the time, the most popular types of movies were kung-fu films and comedies, and nothing else. I had been dreaming of making a movie like Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï [1967] or Le Cercle rouge [1970], but the studio wouldn’t let me do it. I couldn’t get any support from anyone, and I was so depressed.

Making these comedies, I had so much anger. I just wanted to make a movie that truly represented my own feelings. Ten years later, I met my very good friend Tsui Hark, and he was such a genius. I liked him a lot, I liked his work, and he supported me to make A Better Tomorrow. Before that, I was basically box-office poison. My movies didn’t work, nobody liked me, and nobody wanted to support me any more. They were telling me I should retire. So I was really sad. But my friend Tsui Hark was very angry about this, so he publicly said that he supported me directing A Better Tomorrow. He gave me the script, and encouraged me to put myself into the movie. He understood that I was a quiet person who wouldn’t fight back, but he also knew that I had a lot of things that I wanted to say.

So I changed the whole script and put myself into the characters. I was finally able to make a movie like Le Samouraï, and it was the first time I realised that I could be the author of a film. 

Am I right in thinking that you had been responsible for getting Tsui Hark his big break in the industry?

Yeah, we were always helping each other out. Even before he became successful, I thought he was a true genius. I recommended him to the studio, to everyone, but the studio didn’t listen to me. I tried to help him find a movie for two years. But then a bunch of young people formed a new independent film company, and I recommended Tsui to them. They got along very well, and it wasn’t long before he became the number one director in Hong Kong. So when he became successful, I was down, which is when he returned the favour by helping me make A Better Tomorrow.

Before you made your first feature, you spent three years working as an assistant to Chang Cheh. What did you learn under his tutelage, and what influence do you think Chang’s work had on your own?

I greatly admired Chang Cheh. He was a pioneer of the martial-arts film, and he really knew how to make a star. Back then, a lot of action stars didn’t know how to act. They didn’t know how to do anything. But Chang Cheh gave them so much attention, deciding what clothes would be best for them, how to make them look great, how to make them look like a real hero. He really cared about his actors, about their performance and their image. I learned that if I was going to become a director, I would have to learn how to love my actors. If you love them, you will make them look great.

So when I was making A Better Tomorrow, I put all of my attention on Chow Yun-Fat, Leslie Cheung and Ti Lung’s performances. These guys aren’t really fighters, they’re just great actors. I think that the actors are more important than anything else, and I would always try to find a way to make them look like real heroes.

Chang Cheh would choreograph an action scene like he was making a dance number. He was so concerned with the beauty of the action; he didn’t care about the accuracy of a punch or a kick. And his slow motion was like poetry. I was also influenced by Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese’s use of slow motion, but it was Chang Cheh who truly found the beauty in the way bodies moved.

Your style is defined by the way you manipulate time. It’s often compared, as you mentioned, to the slow-motion signature of Sam Peckinpah, but the effect is actually very different. Tell me a bit about the development of this stylistic motif.

I was hugely influenced by musicals. I’ve loved them since I was a child. My first musical was The Wizard of Oz [1939], but I was also crazy about Singin’ in the Rain [1952], West Side Story [1961], and the French musicals like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg [1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort [1967]. I saw West Side Story 31 times in the cinema. 

So when I’m shooting an action scene, I think that I’m making a dance sequence. I never learned any kung fu or karate, I just love dancing. So I use musical theory to shoot an action sequence. I’m always listening to music when I’m shooting a fight – sometimes classical, sometimes rock’n’roll, sometimes jazz.

When I’m using slow motion, I’ve already edited the scene in my mind. Any tool that I can use to make my actors look great, I’m going to use it.

Does the way you use it depend on the star? Do different actors look better at different speeds?

Absolutely. Especially Chow Yun-Fat. His movement is so elegant, he’s just like Cary Grant. Danny Lee and Tony Leung have the same kind of qualities. They’re not fighters, just great actors.

What is John Travolta’s perfect speed?

96 frames per second! Or 130. With actors like John Travolta or Tom Cruise, sometimes their performance is really good, but they’re just acting so fast. So I often slow them down to shoot their emotional reaction. It lets their eyes do the work; makes things a little bit softer. I usually don’t let the actor know about it, I just hold on their expression a little bit longer than normal. That’s my trick. It adds emotion and makes it more beautiful.

Talk me through the choreography of a set piece. Your action sequences have such a singular flow. Is the compression and expansion of time worked out in advance, or are you usually trying to shoot with multiple cameras so that you can find the tempo of a scene in the edit?

When I was working in Hong Kong, I never used storyboards. I never used computers or anything. I trusted my own instincts. Before I got to set, I would have no clue what I was going to shoot. When my producer asked me, “What is the scene about? How many days do you need to shoot it?” I would reply, “I don’t know.” When I arrive on the set, I see what’s there, and suddenly the scene starts coming together in my mind. Then I can say, “We’re going to flip this table here, slide down the bannister there. I need a 50mm lens here, a 150 there, and I need four days to shoot it.”

Before the shoot day, I listen to music. Or I’ll listen to music on the set when I’m shooting or rehearsing. That gives me a lot of inspiration. That’s how I work. No one dared come up to me to say, “Time is nearly up.” The studio would just let me shoot it. Even Tsui Hark would just let me get on with it.

Tsui has a reputation for being a very hands-on producer, and you have a reputation for being a very strict, strong-willed director. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Tell me about your working relationship back then.

We were close friends, and we liked each other, but sometimes we would get into pretty big fights. But when we got on to set we both turned into completely different people. He’d give suggestions, and I’d say, “Good idea!” We worked together so well that we would forget what we had been arguing about.

But then he became so popular. He wanted to help so many people, especially young filmmakers who hadn’t had their chance to make a movie. His famous saying at the time was, “I will never let a talented director not have a movie to make.” He couldn’t help himself.

You split definitively with Tsui Hark when it came to the third A Better Tomorrow film, which he directed while you went off to make Bullet in the Head [1990]. That film has been reappraised over the years, but it wasn’t a hit in Hong Kong at the time. Why do you think that is?

A Better Tomorrow was such a huge success that the studio immediately wanted a sequel. I wasn’t really interested in that. I thought if we were going to make it, then we should make a prequel instead. So Bullet in the Head was originally written as the prequel to A Better Tomorrow. I thought the audience would be interested to see how these characters got their start.

When I agreed to do the sequel, I wanted to use new, young actors, without Chow Yun-Fat. But the studio didn’t agree to this. They didn’t think they could sell the movie without Chow Yun-Fat. So I came up with the idea of him having a twin brother, and kept the prequel idea for myself.

For Bullet in the Head, the first half of the film was based on my autobiography. I had a neighbour who was a gambler, and was always getting beaten up by his parents. The police were after him all the time, so I was always protecting him and hiding him. But the second half of the movie, the Vietnam section, was fiction. 

The movie was so personal, and I put so much of my own story into it, but it came out just after Tiananmen Square happened, and people didn’t want to see anything so heavy.

The original cut was a lot longer. What did you have to lose for the shorter version?

The first cut was three hours, but the studio didn’t want to release any film that was longer than two. They wanted to squeeze as many shows as possible into a day. So I was forced to cut out a lot of scenes. Later, I tried to restore it to its original version, but the lab had thrown away all of the additional scenes, including the negative. Too many movies were being made in Hong Kong, and the labs couldn’t store the extra materials. After a year, everything would be thrown away as if it were garbage.

We lost a lot of the mother and son story, and lots from the Vietnam part about the killer, the Simon Yam character. I tried everything to get it back. I even offered them money. I was so upset.

How did your experience working in America differ from your time working in Hong Kong?

In Hong Kong, I had total creative freedom. I could do whatever I wanted, and the financiers and directors trusted each other. They loved our talent and we loved their support. We all understood the South-east Asian film market, so we knew how much money we could make back. I was so lucky to be a part of the revolution in Hong Kong cinema. There was a real opportunity to try new things, to show audiences things that they hadn’t seen before.

America has a very good system, their unions are very well controlled, but I had to make a lot of changes creatively. I was always told my films had to be suitable for young audiences. Blood was ok, fights were ok, but 30 gunshots had to be cut down to seven. I often had to compromise.

I also had to get used to the fact that the movie stars controlled everything. They had final script approval, editing approval, casting approval. This would never have happened in Hong Kong. But working in Hollywood really gave me an opportunity to learn. In Hong Kong, everything was so limited. We could only make action movies. But there, I had the opportunity to try things I had never done before.

Your first American film was Hard Target [1993], which you made with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme would become a champion of Hong Kong filmmakers in the West. Before he worked with you, he’d worked with Corey Yuen, and he went on to make multiple films with Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam. Can you talk a little about his reputation in Hong Kong and your experience working with him?

My first Hollywood film was supposed to be for Oliver Stone. He had a fantastic script for me about a kung-fu master, but unfortunately the project didn’t work out. Then I was approached by the writer and the studio behind the Van Damme movie, and they liked me a lot. To me, the story felt like a modern western, and I was really excited.

Van Damme flew to Hong Kong to meet me, and asked me to do the movie very sincerely. I thought he was quite an interesting guy. He was a very good ballet dancer, so his action always looked beautiful. When I started working with him, the first thing he said to me was, “John, I’m a romantic guy, and I love a beautiful woman.” I said, “Oh yeah. Sure, sure.” He had a different working style to Hong Kong actors. In America, the director is expected to choreograph all the action with the actors. When I was in Hong Kong, I would ask the stunt coordinator to work with the actors. But Van Damme would get my direction straight away. He was a good guy, sometimes a funny guy, and he was a proper star.

Broken Arrow [1996] and the magnificent Face/Off [1997] followed, before you made your biggest Hollywood picture with Mission: Impossible II [2000]. Tom Cruise was of course a huge star at the time, but he was at a point in his career when he still appeared to be willing to submit to a director’s vision. M:I II feels like a John Woo movie more than a ‘Tom Cruise’ movie. Tell me about your early meetings with Cruise for that film. What was he looking for, and how was your experience working with him?

I was making a commercial when I got a call from my agent saying that Tom Cruise wanted to meet me. At the time, he was in London, shooting Eyes Wide Shut [1999] for Stanley Kubrick. I was thrilled! So I flew over to London to meet him at his house. He was there with his wife and kids, and it was a real family atmosphere.

He told me how much he loved Face/Off, and how he wanted to use a different director for each Mission: Impossible movie, so that every episode would have a different style. He said he wanted “the John Woo style”. But audiences and critics didn’t seem to feel good about it; they thought I was far too different from Tom Cruise, and a lot of directors had gotten into trouble with him. They were wondering how long it would take for us to start arguing.

But I wanted to work with him, and he was willing to try so hard. He really wanted to establish his own style. For the action, he wanted to try everything. In the beginning, he had a little problem with the violence, especially when it came to shooting. I wanted him to shoot with two guns and slide on the ground while firing. He was like, “That’s impossible. I can’t do that.” But then other people in his team said, if you can’t do that, you’re not really in a John Woo movie. So I encouraged him, he did it in one shot, and he looked great. Then he loved it.

For one fight scene, he said he wanted to fight like Bruce Lee. So I let him do some kicking. I choreographed all the action for him. He always refused to have a stunt double. He said he didn’t want to cheat the audience. “Even the smallest difference in body movement,” he said, “means the audience would know it wasn’t me.” He did 99% of everything.

When we shot the mountain-climbing sequence for the opening, he really scared me. I insisted he use a stunt double because the cliff was so high. But he kept begging me, almost with tears in his eyes. He was like a little child. I gave in, and the stunt coordinator made sure it was safe, but he is only using one safety cable there. I could hardly bear to watch the monitor. I just kept praying. He was the producer, and he didn’t let the studio know about the scene. Otherwise they’d have stopped him. But it was the action, all those risky stunts, that allowed him to find his character.

I had a good time working with Tom Cruise. But he really needed everything to be perfect. He had so much concern about his hair. If one single hair dropped down, he’d have to put it back in place. If his hair was blown out of place by the wind, he’d say, “John, let’s do it again.”

A season of John Woo’s films, Bullets and Brotherhood: The Films of John Woo, is playing at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX in July.