In the spring of 2002, with more than 50 movies to his credit, Stephen Chow was at the peak of his career. Time Asia had just hailed him as the most beloved entertainer in Asia. “Shaolin Soccer”, his latest film as the star, writer, director, and producer, was a phenomenal success, breaking box office records and winning top awards all across Asia.

Stephen Chow decided his next step would be to find a way to fulfill the dream he had cherished since he was a small boy - become a martial arts expert, a kung fu hero, at least on screen.

“Of course, it’s too late for me to become a real kung fu master,” jokes Chow, now in his early 40s, “but at least I can be a Kung Fu expert in a movie – a martial arts hero, just like Bruce Lee.” In contrast to the outgoing, larger-than-life characters he often plays on screen, the off-screen Stephen Chow is a quiet, low key person who can even appear shy to those who meet him for the first time. But his eyes always sparkle whenever Bruce Lee’s name is mentioned.

For Chow, “Kung Fu Hustle” is a pivotal film in his career. It’s both a labor of love and the fulfillment of the dreams of a boy growing up in modest circumstances in Hong Kong during the 1970’s. Chow found escape and joy going to the movies and seeing the martial arts classics of that era. In those darkened theaters, the young Stephen Chow identified with the heroes and yearned to match their amazing feats.

When Barbara Robinson, Managing Director of Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, the Hong Kong-based production unit of Sony Pictures Entertainment, approached Chow about collaborating on a project, he realized he would finally be able to achieve his dream.

Chow’s inspiration for “Kung Fu Hustle” came from memories of his boyhood moviegoing days in Hong Kong. Born to a poor family with three children, there wasn’t much extra money for entertainment. But when Chow’s mother took him to see his first movie, it was the start of a lifelong passion for him.

“I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday,” Chow says. It was a Bruce Lee film. “We were in a very run-down theater, but I didn’t mind it at all. I was simply overwhelmed by the movie experience. Watching this film in the darkness, I felt as if my heart was going to burst, and I had tears in my eyes. Bruce Lee was so incredible, not only because of his martial arts expertise, but also because of his furious spirit. He just filled the screen. He became everything to me. I decided then that I wanted to be him - I wanted to be Bruce Lee.”

“Being a martial arts expert was really my first choice; being an actor was the second – after all, that’s exactly what Bruce Lee was,” Chow says with a laugh.

Nine-year-old Stephen Chow set off on his journey of becoming Bruce Lee. He started practicing martial arts and found himself a teacher, but his family couldn’t afford to pay for his lessons so Chow went on practicing on his own. He tried to teach himself the methods from all the different schools of martial arts.

Chow has some colorful memories of those days – he remembers emulating the famous scene in “The Chinese Connection” in which Bruce Lee destroys a sign outside a park reading “No Dogs or Chinamen Allowed.” One day at school, to the delight of the other students, Chow kicked down a sign posted on a door. Without formal training, Chow’s progress as a kung fu expert was stunted – but that turned out to be a blessing for the millions who have come to love his comedic acting; Chow says the response he got as a young boy to his kung fu stunts made him want to be a performer.

The idea of the little boy who wants to be a powerful hero is at the heart of “Kung Fu Hustle”. Chow added other touches to the film that are also reminiscent of the films that he saw growing up, and the world he grew up in.

In selecting his cast and crew, Chow included many legendary figures of Hong Kong cinema. First and foremost is action choreographer Yuen Wo Ping, whose work on “The Matrix” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” has made him one of the most respected action wizards in the world today. Yuen’s career reaches back to the first classic period of Hong Kong martial arts films in the 1960’s and 1970’s, as does that of Sammo Hung who also participated in the film with some additional action choreography. “When I realized that Columbia’s backing gave me the ability to assemble the best creative team imaginable, I knew immediately that I wanted to work with legends like Yuen Wo Ping and Sammo Hung,” says Chow.

Chow was also influenced by that same period for some of the music he selected for the film. The song sung by Fong, the mute ice-cream girl (Huang Sheng Yi) is a mandarin classic from the 1970’s called "Zhi Yao Wei Ni Huo Yi Tian", written by legendary songwriter/singer Liu Jie Chang. The song tells of a girl's unforgettable memory of someone she once loved and finds herself wanting to live for him again, even for just one day.

In casting too, Chow made some fascinating choices, selecting several actors from the classic period of Hong Kong cinema. Yuen Wah, who plays the “Landlord” has appeared in hundreds of Hong Kong films over the past 30 years – and for a time was even one of Bruce Lee’s stunt men. In fact, Yuen Wah gives the film a direct connection back to Chow’s Bruce Lee dreams – it’s Yuen who faces Lee (and loses) in the park sign scene in “The Chinese Connection”.

Playing the “Landlord’s” wife “Landlady” is Yuen Qiu, a star of the 1970’s, who had retired from filmmaking more than 20 years ago. (In addition to her many Hong Kong roles, she appeared as a Bond girl in “The Man With the Golden Gun”). Chow tracked her down and begged her to come out of retirement to join his film. “I didn’t want to do it at first. My life was very comfortable and I had just had my first grandson,” she says. But Chow wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. In preparing for the film, Yuen Qiu found that her biggest challenge wasn’t recovering her martial arts skills (learned in the same Peking Opera school where Sammo Hung, Yuen Wah, and Jackie Chan trained), but gaining 30 pounds in two months to give her usually slim figure the bulk appropriate to her character. She followed a diet Chow recommended which is used by Japanese sumo wrestlers to bulk up.

1970’s star Leung Siu Lung plays “the Beast”, the most fearsome fighter in “Kung Fu Hustle.” While he has not been seen onscreen since the 1980’s, Leung was known as one of the “three dragons” in the 1970’s along with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan (so named because the Chinese nicknames of the trio all include the word “dragon”). When Chow was growing up, Leung was one of his cinematic heroes. “He has one movement that nobody else can do as beautifully – kicking his leg up to the sky with amazing power,” says Chow. “In contrast to a lot of stars who can only act kung fu and assume a number of postures, Leung is a genuine kung fu master - he has had the real training. If you look at his hands, the palms and joints are covered by thick calluses that seem as hard as iron.”

Fung Hak On, playing the character “Harpist #2”, is another hero of Chow’s. With his martial arts ability and experience, Fung has been seen in an impressive array of films over the past several decades. “I watched every single movie he was in when I was a kid.” Chow says.

Not everyone in the cast is a familiar face from Stephen Chow’s youth. Chow also made some original choices with regards to new talent. He cast the fresh-faced newcomer Huang Sheng Yi who plays “Fong”, Sing’s love interest in the film, in her first major motion picture role. Huang, who just recently graduated from the Beijing Film Academy, raves about on her co-star/director, “Stephen is incredible to work with.

Since he is an actor himself, when he directed us he would actually show us how to play the different emotions – it made his direction is invaluable to me as a newcomer.” The central locale of the film: the lively teeming neighborhood called the “Pig Sty” is another way in which Chow pays tribute to his past. The design of the crowded apartment complex is similar to the labyrinthine Hong Kong complexes Chow grew up in. “That style of building was very common in southern China in the 1940’s, which is when the film is set,” says production designer Oliver Wong. “When Hong Kong’s population exploded in the 1950’s, the builders copied the building style from southern China. So what you see in the film is the type of neighborhood that most people in Hong Kong grew up in from the 1950’s until the 1970’s – crowded, crazy and fun.”

The setting and atmosphere of the Pig Sty is directly drawn from Chow’s childhood memories. “The place I lived when I was a boy was just like that,” he says. “It was a crowded place where everyone lived jammed in close to everyone else. We thought we knew everyone and everything in the neighborhood, but in fact, there was much that was unknown and hidden underneath the ordinary neighborhood life. For instance, one day out of the blue, I discovered that a neighbor of mine was in fact a martial arts master. He had been there for ages and I always called him ‘old uncle’. Even in my wildest dreams, I wouldn’t have imagined him to be a great master, but he was.” The four-story “Pig Sty” was built specially for the production at a studio back lot in the town of Chedun, about 15 miles south of Shanghai. Production designer Wong researched the period in great detail, studying hundreds of books and old photographs to recreate the feeling of the bustling neighborhood. For example, the six large billboard advertisements at one entrance to the apartment complex were copied directly from old photographs. The ground floor of the “Pig Sty” is occupied by all sorts of stores with fascinating names. They include a “100 Herb Cool Tea Shop” and a “10 Thousand Wealth” wine shop next door. The “Snake King Explosion” specializes in snake related merchandise, including several cages of live snakes that were on the set throughout production – snakes are still a typical delicacy in China. There’s also a rice shop, porridge restaurant, grocery store, barber shop and tailor shop, doctors and palm readers, as well as a police station and fire department.

In contrast, the other key locale is the glitzy casino that also serves as the headquarters of the evil Axe Gang. “I tried to emphasize the distinction between the casino and the “Pig Sty”, which is very Chinese. In the casino there’s a strong western influence throughout: in the furniture, the décor, and the paintings on the walls.”

After two months of set construction, production began at the end of June, 2003 right in the midst of the intense tropical summer heat of coastal China. Although much of the film was shot in and around the “Pig Sty” itself, other locations in Shanghai were also used, in addition to the studio which housed the casino. The ballroom scene was shot in an old athletic club on Shanghai’s famous shopping strip, Nanjing Road, built in the colonial days.

Filming continued smoothly for four months – an unusually long production schedule by the standards of the breathlessly speedy Hong Kong film industry. The long schedule was necessitated by the lengthy and complicated action scenes. Chow claims that “Kung Fu Hustle” is the most physically demanding film he’s ever made. “I did lots of martial arts fighting in this movie, more than any other movie I have ever done. This is the movie I pushed myself the hardest on.”

There’s a key moment in the film which Chow had in mind from the beginning. To pay respect to Bruce Lee, Chow wanted to take his shirt off in one scene and assume one of Bruce Lee’s famous postures, showing off his rippled back muscles. For weeks, besides regular martial arts training, Chow worked hard to build up the muscles on his back. In the end, he says, he finally admitted to himself one day:

“my back muscles still haven’t come to a point where I am totally happy with them, but I’m taking my shirt off anyway. That day was so cold! Making films is always like this: on the coldest day, you are asked to take your clothes off; and on the hottest day, you are required to put on layers and layers of clothing!” Asked if baring his back was a ploy to attract a bigger audience, Chow laughs out loud. “No, oh, no! I never thought about that. I don’t think my upper body is nearly as attractive as Bruce Lee’s!”

Chow says he was very inspired by the worldwide success in recent years of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, and more recently by films such as great mainland director Zhang Yimou’s “Hero”, also a martial arts epic. He feels these films took martial arts to a whole new level of artistic inspiration and that Hong Kong-influenced films like “The Matrix” have shown how the ancient beauty of martial arts can be combined with Hollywood computer special effects to create a new and refreshing style.

Executive producer Bill Borden describes “Kung Fu Hustle” as a catalogue of kung fu movie fighting styles. “At the beginning of the movie it’s more 1970’s; the Bruce Lee style, then it moves to the 1980’s; a more acrobatic Jackie Chan style. Then in the final scene, there’s more of a ‘Matrix’ style where special effects come in. The movie recognizes where the martial arts film came from, where they are currently at, and where they are going in terms of filmmaking.”

Despite the fact that much of the film is marked by Stephen Chow’s love of martial arts films, it is also a typical Stephen Chow film in the sense that at the center of the story is a likable, scruffy underdog who has to fight powerful forces. That tried-and-true element is emphasized in other areas of the production as well. Says costume designer Shirley Chan, “At the beginning of the story, Sing is too poor to buy any clothing himself, so all his stuff is either borrowed or stolen. He’s a mess! Then he joins the gang, so he starts wearing suits. Later he returns to his higher self and has a totally different look, very Chinese, elegant.”

Producer Jeff Lau – whose experience ranges from directing and writing the type of outlandish comedies and action films that Hong Kong is known for, to producing the thoughtful art house sensations of director Wong Kar-Wai (“Fallen Angels”) – says that Chow has always been “a director playing an actor.” “When he acts, he has the mindset of a director,” says Lau, who directed Chow in the hit “A Chinese Odyssey”. “For each scene, he had his own ideas and we would discuss them, then I would combine them with my ideas. It was very exciting. As an actor, he is not simply playing an isolated scene, he’s also thinking about the scenes that come directly before and after.”

Executive producer Borden thinks it’s Chow’s acting ability that can give “Kung Fu Hustle” universal appeal. “Stephen’s gift is the way he can translate his emotions without speaking,” Borden says. “‘Shaolin Soccer’ is a great example. I have three kids who love this movie which is in Cantonese with English subtitles. They each watched this film 15 times and sometimes with the English subtitles off and it doesn’t matter.”

Despite his success as an actor, Stephen Chow still harbors a faint dream of one day achieving the true prowess of a kung fu master. Even amidst his busy schedule, he tries to practice his martial arts moves for at least an hour every day. “I realize that I can’t become a great martial arts artist,” he admits with a smile “but at least I can make a martial arts film in which I am a kung fu expert. It’s been my dream as a filmmaker since I started making my own movies.”

“I am deeply influenced by all martial art films,” he continues, “ and ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ is, of course, a result of that. However, this film is really first and foremost an original story because when the whole picture started taking shape in my head, I wasn’t thinking about any one of these films specifically. I guess they have just become an integral part of me. What ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ is really about is the spirit of martial arts, which is deeply ingrained in me.”

Kung-Fu Hustle opens in limited release in the US in March, 2005.

Lovely. Just wondering, what was the source of this article?

I saw this movie last week and fell in love with it, its different in tone than other Chow films but its impossible to wipe the grin off of your face when watching the action unfold and get bigger and bigger. Thanks for the article, sheds a ton of light on the movie.