Woo-ing America

By: MICHAEL TUNISON
Date: Friday, June 14, 2002

Talking about filmmaking opportunities in Hollywood, John Woo sounds like the proverbial kid in the candy store. Eyes lighting up with enthusiasm, the mainland Chinese-born, Hong Kong-raised director runs through the genres he'd love to tackle now that action blockbusters such as FACE/OFF and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 have established him as a force to be reckoned with at U.S. box offices. Having already done an all-out American war film in the new WINDTALKERS, he wants to take a crack at English-language comedies, a musical, a western you name it.



Actually, the western warrants a separate side discussion of its own, as the lifelong film buff Woo ticks through some of his all-time favorite horse-and-gun epics, his young WINDTALKERS star Adam Beach sitting beside him.

"There's a lot," Woo says. "John Ford's THE SEARCHERS. Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH."

"THE THREE AMIGOS," Beach adds facetiously, causing a table of reporters to burst out in laughter. When the merriment dies down, Woo continues his train of thought.

"Another favorite was Howard Hawks' RIO BRAVO," he says. "I always want to remake that film. Another one is ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST."


Such models have been on Woo's mind recently, as the influential director of such Hong Kong shoot-'em-up classics as A BETTER TOMORROW, THE KILLER and HARD-BOILED contemplates two different Old West-set projects. The first is MEN OF DESTINY, an action drama about Chinese laborers building the western American railroads during the mid-1800s. Woo hopes to start shooting it in September, with his longtime Hong Kong leading man Chow Yun-Fat and his more recent FACE/OFF and WINDTALKERS star Nicolas Cage in key roles.

Another possibility is a more traditional western Woo describes as "a love story [set during] the war between Texas and the Mexicans. One of the Texans is in love with the Mexican girl, and the two families, they're struggling and fighting at the end, like ROMEO AND JULIET. It's a very romantic love story, which I've never done before."

What attracts Woo to the idea of making a western in the style of the classics he admired so much growing up in Hong Kong?



"The guns," he admits.

Woo pays tribute to a very different Hollywood genre the "war is hell" combat flick - in WINDTALKERS, which concerns the heroic efforts of Navajo soldiers who took advantage of the rarity and linguistic uniqueness of their Native American language to send unbreakably coded messages to one another on the battlefields of the Pacific during World War II. In the film, a U.S. Marine sergeant (Cage) is assigned to protect Beach's young Marine "code talker" or, in the event of imminent capture, to kill the Navajo soldier to prevent the precious code from falling into enemy hands.

Like most of the rest of the world, Woo had never heard of the little-heralded Navajo code talkers until screenwriters John Rice and Joe Batteer brought the concept to him two and a half years ago.

"When the writers pitched this idea to me, I was completely shocked," Woo says. "I was deeply, deeply moved by the whole idea. Also, I so much admire the code talkers. They were very loyal, and they gave their hearts for the country and they gave such a contribution to the country. And I thought their story should be told."

The conflict and slowly developing affection between Cage and Beach's characters in WINDTALKERS ties into the friendship theme which has played such an important part in Woo's work dating back to his Hong Kong action days.

"My kind of movie is always all about friendship," he says. "And I knew this movie could be very international because of the theme of friendship, and also could be very personal. Because I wanted this movie to show my point of view about the war and the people. I knew it was quite a challenge, but I always like challenges."



As for the idea that he might bring a different perspective to a World War II film as someone who grew up in Asia, Woo doesn't look at it that way. "Actually, I'm not really an outsider. Even though I grow up in Hong Kong, we had so many stories of America." In any case, he's an American citizen now, having taken the citizenship plunge almost five years ago (just prior to shooting MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2).

"I feel I have a duty to tell this story, as an American," Woo says. "I feel there are so many great people in this country. A lot of people have [made such] contributions, done so much for the country. I think the people should know about their stories."

Woo himself has nothing but nice things to say about working in the U.S., especially considering the bigger budgets and wider scope of films he and his partners are able to get made here.

"We have a lot more control," he says. "Of course, that's after I made several successful movies - then I have a lot more creative freedom. And I like the people here. I think it's fantastic."

Far from being a narrow geographic limitation, Woo sees being based in Hollywood as the key to making films in all sorts of far-flung locations something that wasn't much of a possibility in the comparatively low-budget Hong Kong filmmaking world.

"My [plan] was I would always like to make movies in different countries," Woo says. "I want to learn from different kinds of people, I want to learn from different kinds of cultures. Only Hollywood movies do that, since they get so much money. You can shoot a movie in Australia or Russia or Germany or in Japan. That will allow me to meet so many different kinds of people. I make so many friends."



Woo does have ideas for movies set in China particularly a biopic on Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen he's developing but he doesn't see himself returning to Hong Kong in the foreseeable future.

"I don't want to work in Hong Kong again," he says. "If I want to make a Chinese movie, I will make a movie in [mainland] China. The Hong Kong market is so small, and now I heard Korean movies have taken over Hong Kong. So if I go back, because of the market I'd be going back and making a movie like A BETTER TOMORROW, and comedy. But here I get to try so many different things. Making a movie like WINDTALKERS is hard to do in Hong Kong."

And how about this idea of the king of shoot-out choreography tackling a singing, dancing musical? Woo says that's another of his dreams.

"I'm working on it," he says. "I just missed one. I was offered to do CHICAGO about five years ago, but I was a little too late. They talked to my agent, [saying] they wanted to use Madonna and Goldie Hawn, but they were too late, because I'd already signed to do MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE [2]."

A different musical-related idea sounds a little closer to what fans might expect from the guy who turned two-handed gunfighting into ballet.

"I have been thinking of making an action musical," Woo says. "No kidding. It's a gangster film, but [the main character] was a dancer. And it's a true story. I'm thinking about the dancing and the action..."

Somehow that doesn't surprise us.

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