THE ONE and Only James Wong Part One

By: SCOTT COLLURA
Date: Friday, November 02, 2001

Writer-director James Wong and his THE ONE star Jet Li might be roughly the same age, but Wong has no illusions about the differences between himself and the Hong Kong superstar.

"I think he was already a Wu Shu master, or a prodigy I guess, [at age 11]," laughs Wong. "And I was just dreaming [at that age], and he was already doing it. He was part of the Wu Shu team of China [that] came to America to demonstrate in front of Nixon on the White House lawn."

As impressive as the young Li must have been performing for Tricky Dick at such a young age, the adult Li continues to impress audiences worldwide with his action-packed films and martial arts expertise. His latest picture actually has Li starring in a dual role as a police officer who is confronted with an evil version of himself from a parallel universe. The sinister Li doppelganger is intent on murdering his good guy self, for he has learned that if he kills each of his parallel selves he will amass the power of a god. What follows is an abundance of sci-fi semantics, martial and digital arts, and Jet Li mano a mano against himself.

But as Wong reveals, he

and his writing-producing partner Glen Morgan originally had an altogether different action star in mind when preparing THE ONE.

"We were at a Dodger game and [our agent] said, 'You should do a movie with The Rock,'" recalls Wong. "And we said, 'What!?' But he sent us over a tape that [The Rock] did for Saturday NIGHT LIVE, and he was really charming and funny. So we thought, 'Well, he's on TV every week wrestling. What would be interesting for people to see that they can't see on television?' And the one thing we thought was [him] fighting himself would be something that they can't see. That's sort of how it evolved, [and] it's interesting sci-fi anywaybeing from parallel universesand suddenly the story sort of took shape."

But as so often happens in Hollywood, as the project that would become THE ONE advanced and grew, a variety of factors and business maneuverings saw to it that the original concept of the film changed over time into an entirely different creation.

"The Rock kind of fell out [eventually]," says the director. "We don't know what [happened]either he didn't like the script or our suspicion is that we were supposed to start shooting last November and [fellow wrestling star] Stone Cold Steve Austin wasn't healing fast enough. [They] felt like they couldn't let their star go for three months before Wrestlemania, so that kind of worked out better for their schedule. Although, maybe he just didn't take to it after reading the script, but I believe that he liked the story."

With their original star off the project, Wong and Morgan had to find a suitable replacement who could fill the rather large shoes of The Rock. It didn't take long for the filmmakers to settle on Li, who in recent years has been carving out an American film career for himself with movies such as ROMEO MUST DIE and KISS OF THE DRAGON. But as Wong explains, once Li joined the production the script for THE ONE had to be re-worked thoroughly.

"With the Rock, one of his

fortes is his verbal ability, his witty repartees and quick talking," explains Wong, comparing the American wrestling star to the Chinese martial artist. "With Jet you really have to minimize the dialogue, so a completely different script in terms of dialogue [was needed]. In terms of the way The Rock can do humor, Jet's not that guy. In terms of action, when we were green-lit with The Rock I really wanted to stay away from martial arts, because I always thought it was too much like the Matrixsci-fi martial arts. But with Jet, that's his roundhouse, that's his bread and butter, so we embraced it. So all those decisions changed almost 180 degrees when Jet came onboard."

Wong himself grew up in Hong Kong before immigrating to America at the age of 10. Of course, many of the movies he watched as a kid were of the classic martial arts variety, though he acknowledges that he only had a passing knowledge of Li's work before teaming with him on THE ONE.

"I wasn't super familiar [with his films]," admits the director. "When I was a child those kung fu movies were the ones I'd seen. They weren't Jet's movies, but [they had] those kinds of styles and that kind of action. So I was familiar with those kinds of movies, but particularly with Jet it became an education for me after he came on. I really boned up on [his films]. We had basically the Jet Li library [on video]."

Studying a variety of Hong Kong action films, including but not limited to Li vehicles, proved to be a mixed bag for Wong. While the filmmaker found a lot to appreciate in the unique genre, he also encountered some less than thrilling aspects to the films as well.

"There's lots of different

movies [and] pieces that are really incredible," he says. "[But] it's hard sometimes to watch some of those older Hong Kong movies because the production values are so limited. You see wires hanging [and] you go, 'What!?' But still, there's some stuff that in a way is kind of showing you the backstage aspects of it. You can see how incredible it was for them to do some of the other stuff."

There is one modern martial arts film, however, that Wong is not particularly thrilled with. While he agrees that CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON is a great movie, he has found that some industry pundits have taken to comparing the Ang Lee award winner to any new movie that so much as has a karate chop in it.

"[THE ONE] is so different in terms of everything, in terms of tone and feel, [though the success of CROUCHING TIGER] does at least show there's an audience out there for this kind of action," Wong says. "I think everyone just relates everything martial arts to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, so it's a little bit annoying as well. The blurb we have on our ad is 'Best Action Since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon!' And you go, 'Ohhh, all right.'"

Check back next week for part two of CINESCAPE's James Wong interview.