One of my favorites though, is the first time I ever got an autograph
from Jackie Chan. He signed this beautiful Operation Condo book for me. Great
to meet you, Miek, and I was like, oh, yes,
even the simple name, he's not gonna always get right, but but yeah,
names here get bizarre and like like, I'm Big Mike because when I
first came to Hong Kong, there was about fifteen mics doing movies, so
you rapidly became big Mike's Small Mike, Australian, Mike German, Mike Crazy
Mike blah blah blah blah blah. One guy turned up and was like,
my name is Michael ted Johan and we're like, your name is tj All
the MIC's have been taken. Yeah, yeah, keno Laura announced it and
someone posted, oh, I mean unless you get your you and Mike to
do the commentary, and we were like, yeah, keen o'la, we'll
be up for it. And then like two weeks later, won the guys
in Keen Alan was like, yeah, hi Mike, would you be up
and doing hard to uget And that was the start, and we've done a
couple of more moments. We've just myself and Honor have contributed to the missing
an action box set for them. We did them. And when I tracked
down Wan John Lee for Hong Kong Legends and I flew out. And this
was when when the mysterious Wan Lee lives on an island in South Korean Sea,
nobody, he doesn't want you to find him. And I land at
the airport and there's a big sign that says Master Wang John Lee's Taekwondo and
Hapkido Academy. I'm like, I don't think he's keeping low profile. We
shut like a seven hour interview with him, holy shit, like covering everything
like and it was something because he began the interview very regal and as soon
as I mentioned, okay, so let me get this right. You were
born in Japan, right, Oh, I want to talk to you about
when you killed the guy in Vietnam. He was like, oh yeah,
yeah. Sometimes people it's gonna make me sound like an old idiot, but
I am an old idiot, but you know how I am in the good
old days. In the olden days, you fell in love with a genre
or a film and you tracked it down, and you know you'd you'd watch
all these movies. Okay, I think I think I recognized that guy or
that name, blah blah blah blah, and that's how you fell in love
with the genre. Yeah, there's a certain amount of people who I saw,
say a Hong Kong movie or a horror movie by a direc and went,
oh, that was great. Google ten best Hong Kong movies ever made
them, saw them all in a weekend, and then they're like, oh,
the rest of them don't compare to this, And you're like, right,
yeah, because you saw all the best ones in a week I remember
where I'd go to Chinatown and it'd be like, Andy Lao is in this
movie. It could be a comedy, it could be an action movie,
it could be a combination. I think, let's go see it. Yeah.
Are we starting the interview yet or we're just kind of hanging out.
Yeah, let's get an actual intro and then all right, go yeah,
hello there and welcome back to the Disconnected. I am here with Arna Venema
and Big Mike Leader, two of the most entertaining commentators and Blu Ray contributors
in the world of My opinion. Guys, thank you so much for making
time for this. This has been something we've been working on for quite some
time with Mike. Thank you much for that that great intro. The check
is in the male there you go. Yeah, I know, yeah,
thank you for pronouncing my name correctly. Everybody please take notes. Very good.
You're gonna say Anna like banana, okay, and it will. You
gotta say it with the accent though, otherwise it's wrong yea. For those
that don't know, Arna and Mike are on the ground in Hong Kong,
both living and working there, and they are like the boots on the ground
for the operations for some of these boutique Blu Ray companies. Uh what what
all do you guys say that you do, even because obviously you're doing like
twenty nine different part time jobs at once, it seems like, yeah,
Mike, you go first, okay. I'm a costing director for film and
TV producer, an occasional act to myself when when the budgets too low and
I can't find someone to take it throw. I also do consultancy work for
a few companies. And then I Hong Kong thirty odd years ago as a
fan of Hong Kong movies, and I used to edit Impact magazine talking about
Hong Kong and action movies internationally. So done a lot of writing for magazines
and books. And then I was lying in the gatine. Young mister Venoma
said get out of the gun and you're blocking it. Let's do some audio
commentaries. Yeah. Well, two of the matter is we met on a
set. Actually we met on a set of a film that never was completed.
Yes, and that's kind of well. I had a strip club in
a comic bookshop. Yeah, and I think I was strip club. I
think my character along with Joe Frello, was stealing stuff from the strip club.
And then Betweet Tasting met. So basically my background is I run media
production companies in Hong Kong. I've also one of my companies has also been
a merchandising company, so we did we worked with companies that like, for
example, merchandise for fifty M and M all that stuff. We worked with
H and V got the clothing into the stores and things like that. I've
done designer toys as well. I'm on record labels. I've got albums out
and my production company CFK, We've done a lot of like promo videos,
interviews and everything else for like tons of companies. So we shot stuff for
South China Morning Posts aka gold Thread. We've worked with Nixman occasionally. I've
just done tons of that. So yeah, media production like in form in
terms of music, in terms of commercials, in terms of interviews you name
it. So and I've had yeah, I've had a pleasure of interviewing a
lot of really cool people everybody from like the producers a street Fighter too,
to Choey Hark along with Mike to like you know, you name it.
So, yeah, we kind of do a bit of everything and this concert
stuff going on, so and I think you'll hear a lot more in twenty
twenty three. I'm always doing like basically what I do in the media side,
but I've always got little projects going on on the side, whether or
not. And there's a lot of new stuff coming out in twenty twenty three
that haven't done before. I'm really excited about that. Yeah. But in
terms of like you make a lot of your own music too, right,
Yeah, I mean I'm on a few different record labels, and I started
making music because I was working doing videos for that were playing in toys,
r us and stuff like that, and I was seeing with musicians and they
kind of were like, tell me, oh, it costs this as much
of that and takes me that long. No, it doesn't, because I'm
making music myself. I started making music for those videos, and then record
label started hearing, going, oh making the music for that igo, uh,
because I couldn't say it was me in the beginning of it was so
and so, and like eventually had to say, yeah, it was me.
And then basically like I ended up putting out a lot of music with
different record labels and stuff, and my musical has been like licensed by like
audio us to play in stores and here and in China and things like that
as well. So yeah, no, the music side's fun, like electronic
music mostly, and I play live a lot as well. I just played
live in Thailand for the first time, like two three weeks ago, I
think, so just go back. So that was really fun. Yeah,
just so so yeah. So after three years of lockdown, I went to
Thailight and I landed ching my I never been there before. The night that
I landed, I played live with a bunch of guys Si Modular and Vauxmack
and I really could dude. Then I went off at the Thailand. Was
there for two weeks. Oh, I finally off at Thailand and I'm relaxing.
I've been out over three and a half years. I got back and
just hanging out with Mike Chad, who's been in Hong Kong movies and and
basically we're like, oh, we went out like the night before Halloween.
We were like, oh, let's go skateboarding. So it's skateboarding at like
three in the morning in an area called Chekos, the beachside town, and
I felt I broke my arm, so like right here, right here,
he so, yeah, as you do. So, yeah, that's how
I ended up my vacation days I would have broke He's the wild and crazy
one. I've retired from all that. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. Do
you guys know how many audio commentaries you've done together so far? We have
a rough estimate. I try and keep track of it, but to be
honest, it's a little hard. Sometimes. We're around the eighty plus mark
right now, so I'm getting close to one hundred. So I have an
Excel sheet with all this stuff on there. Cool. I'm the one who
keeps track of all this stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, I meant
what I said at the beginning, you guys are obviously one of the most
compelling, energetic, exciting people to listen to on some of these commentaries and
what Obviously I can just gush all day long, but what do you think
you bring these go? What do you what do you as a team being
uniquely to some of these commentaries. Just to try to entice some people to
listen more, how to say, like it's I think it's keep yeah,
I think I think I think we're huge nerds, and I think trying to
find a nice way to say that. I think back in the day where
it was not cool to be a nerd, now it's cool. And basically
do any commentaries, No, I think it were kind of I think we
like to keep things kind of loose and fun. I mean, we know
a lot about these movies and stuff, but I think our main concept with
it is just keep the energy there and have fun watching it. And I
think it's same thing with any media production that you do, like being music
or film, whatever, if you have fun doing it, like obviously not
too much fun, but if you have to keep it someone serious. But
if you have fun doing and keep the energy there, people think feel that
they'll connect with the audiences at home, and people said, it's like hanging
out with your friends, and in some ways like that. I mean,
we do our research and we're serious that we give good information and accurate information
and stuff like that, but we just like hang out and watching movies and
hopefully people at home have that as well. We could just read out facts
the whole time, but that's the problem that sometimes you've got that where you
know someone's reading out whelm after whelm of stuff and you're going, that's great,
but it's so obvious. You're literally just going ah, and then you
know Ryan was born on this day and at seven fifty five am, and
you're like, really, you know, And I think it's having that sometimes,
having the enthusiasm, Like there's some movies where young mister Vendla will have
to slap me to stop my enthusiasm advice because you're like, because there's some
movies that I've been like, O, hey, we should do another commentary
because there's still so much we haven't discussed. Right, there's some movies where
we're able to bring, like you know, from working with people who've worked
on them, from talking to people on those movies sometimes to having been on
them ourselves or whatever. It's you know, it's a love for the genre
and without trying to be like listen to me, boy, I'm gonna lecture
you. You know this, it's that's not the commentary I want to hear,
you know, right, I want to hear the thing. You know,
sometimes on commentary you'll hear stuff and you know, I never thought of
that. I've never come in from that angle. It. It's the same
sometimes when we're doing interviews, you know. Yeah, like prime example,
when we interviewed Troy Hark, Yes, Troy Hark's team were like, you
might get twenty minutes, but you might get ten minutes. And we're like,
oh great, this are going to be fun, and we've got two
and a half hours because he went, these guys know my stuff and are
asking some fun questions. As opposed to mister CHOI watched the bizarre political backstory
to the significance of the character wearing a green shirt in the sequence too of
Once Upon a Time in China, we were we were talking to him about
comic books and stuff like that. Obviously, Choy is a very visual guy.
He likes comic books. He likes fun and he likes all that stuff.
And he started telling us of all his like really fun, crazy things
he used to do. Like he told us a really great story that at
one point they bought these new cameras. They got four at the studios work
out. They are four of these cameras, and he goes, no one
damaged these cameras. By the end of the week, he destroyed them all
because he's having so much fun, Like because they're smaller, they can do
more wacky, like sneaky things with them all that, and at the end
of it's like I destroyed the ball. But it was really good fun to
destroy them though, So he was. He's a really fun, energetic guy.
And I don't think you have a career as long as he does without
being so enthusiastic and so visual and so fun and having that much energy.
So I think Troy geled with us in terms of that. I'd love to
do an audio commentary with him one time. Oh yeah, I mean,
that'd be a lot of fun. Like I did a commentary with a director
Ronnie You from Feelis and Bribal White Hair. We did the commentary for the
Legacy of Rage. The Brandon Lee movie and I love that movie, and
I thought I knew everything about that movie, and Runni's like my uncle.
I love running, and Running proceeded to just educate me and was telling me
all this stuff that I was going, well, what you're like about why
certain scenes were done certain ways, and like, well, the reason this
action scene is like that is because Brandon ref you do what they only wanted,
and we changed all this, like your Brandon at the time hadn't wanted
to do a lot of fighting, so it became more of a heroic bloodshed,
you know, gangster movie. And it's just it's if we can get
people from the movies. The problem is sometimes it's hard to do a commentary
with someone unless they're comfortable with it. And like like say we've got Godfrey
knows his movies backwards, like Godfrey will will go no, no, no,
I didn't direct that movie. I directed this movie, and no I
didn't do that Like Robo Vampire. Godfrey did not direct Robo Vampire. Everyone
claims that, and Godfrey was like, no, I didn't direct that movie.
But he's you know, he doesn't take credit for stuff he didn't do.
He's very aware of what he did. He's very aware of why he
did it. Why did you do that? Because it made money? So
we did another one. Yeah, and you know, and he has he
has a very good memory of his stuff. Sometimes it is scary that you
interview here will go they have no memory of this movie. They have no
memory situation. Yeah, and it's just I think, yo, Like,
we come in and we're very much fans of the genre and all kinds of
genres, like, yeah, we love the martial arts movies, we love
the action movies. We're like horror, science fiction. Yeah. Yeah.
Like one of the commentaries I really enjoyed was we did the audio commentary for
Split Second, Yes, starring Look lutter Hower. I've gone over this with
you so many times. I was like, Okay, the later cast is
a Dutchman and an Englishman. You need to have a Dutchman in an Englishman.
That's how we pitched it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well. The weird thing about audio yeah yeah, the weird thing about audio
commentaries is I gotta say that sometimes we come up with stuff in audio comedies
like oh, they're gonna love this, wait till they wait till they hear
this fact about this audio commentary more the swing pool thing I'm referring to mainly
in like, there's a movie called Hero, which is an audio commentary.
At one point, I've found a fact about swinging pools in there and when
swing pools are built and everything else, and then well I will say exactly
what it was. And then when and he was like, oh wait till
they hear this fact. It's amazing no one's ever talked about it. We're
like, that is the greatest thing about swinging point. I'm actually surprised that
after I pointed out on the Police Story three super Cup that it's not me
show you we're doing the jump, it's actually brucelloer and be sure. I
was on a wire for this thing. I was for there to be this
big either Mike has destroyed the myth, Mike has destroyed the legend, or
like, oh why did he do it? We are seems to seems to
have disappeared. Nobody realizes. Yeah. What's also weird is we did want
audio comedy for a movie called The Old Master, which was the most difficult
audio commentary we ever did, and we're after that one that was the only
one after We're like, oh, man, I hope people like this,
and that became one of the most popular audio comedaries that everybody ever asked us
about. Why. I think part of it because at one point we start
talking about the fact that this movie was obviously made to laun Yeah, yeah,
all right, let's stop at one point, like they're just driving out
a carry go okay, This lady dump is called filler because and then then
and then this disco dancing as well, and then it's such a bizarre movie.
And it's a movie starring Jackie Chen's teacher and he was probably seventy five
to eighty when he made it. Yeah, and he's teamed up with Bill
Louis, an American Filipino karate legend who at one point does robot kung fu
because it was it was the late seventies. Yeah, people love that.
People really and we were afterwards going, that's gonna be hard. Well,
I think the whole friendship hanging out with aspect is what really makes the commentary
special for you guys. And it's true because if you're going to be learning
something, you hanging out on a couch with a couple of people is the
best way to get that feeling. Basically, exactly like they're they're even in
Hong Kong. There's a Samo Hong movie called Pentyhose Hero. It's politically in
correct movie, which I somehow don't think we'll get a blu ray re least
by anyone any point. It'd be funny to do a com for though,
I'll tell you that it has a big warning of it. But like,
I arrived in Hong Kong just as I were shooting that movie. And there's
the scene where Samo gets hit by a car and you see his body folding
ways of body shouldn't shouldn't fold yea and Samo spent about a week in hospital
at the time and was doing a lot of interviews about, ah, you
know, I'm suffering from my art and you know, this is what filmmaking
is all about. About ten years ago, I was at Samo's house and
it's on TV and we're and just in the background and Samo's brother, whose
name is y Fe Fat number Two's cantonese okay, e Fe goes mate,
that's me. I'm like, what he goes get hit by the car.
I'm like, holy shit, I'm like, how long did you go to
the hospital for him then well I didn't go Yeah, he was like,
I was fine. I looked at Samo and Samone was like promotion for the
movie. Yeah, Samo really is very good at being Samoe. I know
that. It's just he's like he's he's such an entertainer and he's such a
creative dude. I mean, it's like, but he's got the balls the
size of coconuts because he just does stuff like that. He goes, this
is gonna be amazing, like he's been uprising as well. Very much like
if you can get Samo on it on a good day, you're great.
If you get Samo on a bad day, run away. We saw a
Hong Kong film, right He's like, hey, let's go stop to Samo
and Samone was like big brother mode. He's walking through there like he's gonna
beat the whole of film right up. And I was like, we'll talk
to him another day. You're really angry, man, I don't know who
he's gonna go see but that guy. But but you know, that is
the thing, so exactly. Sometimes that's where you learn stuff, and same
from Grant. There's stuff I remember in conversation going holy shit, that made
much more sense than someone trying to lecture it to me, you know,
and the same thing. I'm honestly yeah, yeah, I think I know
the same thing. These are the movies that made us end up moving here.
Yeah, like yeah, you know, I was a manager in the
department store in England. I used to sell lights and fittings and I was
bored shitless. Yeah, and then I was like, you know what,
Uh, I've seen some white guys in Hong Kong movies. I could go
there. Maybe I'll stay a week or two. I could probably be there
for a while. Maybe I can get to be in a movie. And
thirty two years later, I'm still here. And you know, Anna was
like, maybe my family built a tunnel across the Hong Kong Harbor. Now
we were going We were going to Hong Kong every down again, because I
was spending most of my summers in Thailand because my fat a lot of my
relatives my mom's side, are born in They were there. They're Caucasian,
but they were born in Thailand. They'll speak Thai and they read it and
had Thai passports at the time and stuff like that. So we spent every
summer in Thailand. So I just through osmosis of like what was on the
television, even though some of it was in TI, sometimes it was in
English. I was watching like Hong Kong movies. I don't know what the
first Hong Kong movies that I watched because I was so young, But I
think the movie that made me want to move to really want to move to
Hong Kong was actually Beast Cops when I saw that, because that really like
that was like, that's then Anna's obsession with Michael Wong. Yeah, don't
meet all your heroes. Let me just put it that way. That's all
I'm saying about that. But it's uh Jesus, but like now, but
yeah, no, But Beast Cops really was like a film's like okay,
yeah this because I felt that was really about like it showed Hong Kong off
in a very unique way, and I liked it a lot. It just
looks so freaking cool. And that's when, like, you know, and
that's again I talked a bit about earlier. There's like the subbelly of Hong
Kong cinema. You've got all the big stuff on top, like the Jackie
Chans and the Samuhungs and everything else, and then you've got this like underlying
Like that's what it gets really good when you get under that. I mean,
the stuff stuffs good. But if you're only deep, Beast Cops is
a good transition into like the underlying stuff, because that's really about living in
Hong Kong in that period. I mean, the stories are kind of fantastical,
but a lot of the environments you can really soak them up in that
and all those locations still exist today. So it's a I love that movie,
man. I hope we get to do an audio commentary for that.
That's that's all my list of movies I really want to do an audio commentary
for. So yeah, along with Panteo Zero. So yeah. Past Impact
a big one for us, man. Someone out there, give us double
impact. Give us double impact now. A couple of years ago, it
was a very bizarre. It was a very bizarre weekend. I was hanging
out with John Claude van Dam and we were having an argument and I was
accusing him of being oh God, and being an idiot, and he was
like, Okay, make when am I not an idiot? And I was
like, when you teach martial arts when you're teaching karate. You you behave
yourself. He was like, okay, Mike, call ten of your friends.
I will teach them karate tomorrow. Yeah. So it's about ten o'clock
at night on a Saturday, and I messaging and go, hey, tomorrow
and you and Joe to shoot this. I need like about seven or eight
people to come and learn martial arts from so on a close up a bunch
of people. I call up a couple of people. Next day we will
meet and I'm like, okay, guys, you wait here. I'm gonna
go at the ground floor of Jong Claws running. I'm gonna go get shown
Claude. I got it there. It takes an hour to get shown Claude
to come down because people downstairs and he's like, He's like, why are
these people here? What do they want? I'm like, you you told
me to call the No I did it, And I'm like, yes,
you did, Mike. I don't have a karate gee aha, but I
do. So basically downstairs, he's messaging me and I got all these people
staying like and they're like, is this a prank? Are you playing a
prank? And this gun? No? No, no, Like dude,
I swear to God if John has come down, I got a lot of
questions to answer. So just grab people on a Sunday, drag them out
in the middle of like this area and going like, oh, you want
to hang out John Clow and Damn and shoot a karate like instructional video.
They're like that sounds like a prank. This is playing pranks and like I'm
yeah, after and now I bring you up down And he's very amiable and
very friendly. And we walked to the gym in his building and it's one
floor up. Yeah, so Anna and Joe and everyone have all the equipment.
So John C's like, I take the lift because I'm Van. Dam
It's like this it's just glass elevator. We're just all watching going up standing
there in the equipment. We're like, how did you remember watching him going
up? Go Jesus Christ Joe Club taking a glass elevator up and we got
so then we're setting up and I've said and Sean Claude on the way down
to be like, Mike, are these guys good people? Are they all?
And I'm like yeah, yeah, I said, oh one of them's
the guy called Joey's wearing glasses and went, if you kind of want to
funk with him a bit, you can. So we're setting up and John
Claus being like, Hello, nice to meet you, blah blah blah blah
blah. Okay, I'm getting ready to shoot. Are we ready to shoot?
And Anna's like yep, I'm good, and Joe is like yeah,
yeah, I'm just trying to fix this, and he's fixing the horse this
camera. Fix it. You bring something that is broken to film van Dad
And I was like what And then John close starts for and kicks at him
like his head like that closed his head, and Joe starts sweating and later
and he's like, you know how weird it is? I mean by hearing
three kicks next to my head, I can't get the war shoes to fit
on this camera, like you doing that kind of thing. And then then
we had we had a very good, like one hour training session with Jong
Floor where he's great fun. And then it's good. We sit down to
have a coffee and a chat and he proceeds to like and Honor explains that
you know, Anna tells him the story of how you know, like you
don't know how I first came aware of you, mister continued, Yeah,
well, basically what happened was I was in Belgium at the time and we're
we're ethnically Dutch, and at one point we're walking by the Supermarke call Delhaz
and I go. My dad goes, oh, you see that guy on
the walk. They sell these videotapes. This is back like when they stole
sold videotapes. And there's all these movies and there's like Stallone and Schwarzenegger and
then there's Vandam and he goes, see see this man van Dam. He
pulls out the videotapes. He's one of us because Bena lux you know Netherlans
Belgian Luxburg. He's one of us. You should watch this. And that's
and that movie was double impact, and Double Impact made me ware of editing
and everything else. And I was like, okay, I'll watch. And
that's also one of the movies that first when we go, oh, Hong
Kong's cool, and we end up visiting Hong Kong War after that, right,
and I watched this movie and go, oh my god, this's really
cool. I told Jean Claude about this. I go, oh, Jean
Claude like, you know, my dad showed me the video. He said
we were one of you, like you were one of us, and Joan
clothes like, yes, I ain't one of us. Yes. He's like
sitting there like absorbing this and loving it. And then I watched the movie
Jean Claude and I really want to get into filmmaking. And like years later,
I'm in Hong Kong. I kind of saw Hong Kong through there and
I'm in front of you and it's full circle and it just shot with you,
and he goes, yes, this it is magical. We almost be
aware of how how things come around and stuff like that. He gives his
whole speech. One week later, however, he's asking me, Mike,
where is your friend the little guy, the one who owns the supermarket in
Belgium. That's totally not the story. Remember he owned the video show I
used to go there. It's like okay, yeah, and later on he's
like oh he means okay, right. That that was how I met I
met him once very before, very briefly, outside of club, and I
was like, oh wow, but I don't think he remembers me from that.
But that's how I properly met his own Claude and yeah, that was
that was trust me. I have I have sat down with him to try
and record audio commentaries. It's been a John Cloud. Please let's do it.
Like originally for for Double Impact, I got him interested in the idea
of let me shoot interviews with you as Jean Claude, VANDAM and as Chad
and Alex and I was like, oh, I like that idea. I
was like, let's do that. And it's but it's just the same thing.
It's getting him on his schedule and getting him when he's when he's when
he's in the mood, because like he if you can get him up,
he's he's got so much to talk about, and just if you can get
him on the right days, you can get magic out of him. It's
just sometimes it's that thing where he'll he'll be like, Mike, let's do
an interview. I'm like, it's straight o'clock in the morning, dude,
Like, but yeah, he's an interesting guy though, because like you can
sit down with him and ask him, Yo, what was it like like
being around in the eighties and the nineties when like, you know, all
the big action heroes were Because to me, it's almost like a high school
class, and you go, I said that to him, it was like
a high school class, like you guys, he goes, Yeah, kind
of was like that because it's weird, like dynamic with each other. And
I think that now they're a lot better with each other and so like that
obviously, but I mean, yeah, I think that's the same as Jackie
and Jet. Like back in the nineties, Jackie and Jently would constantly snipe
at each other. Of course, we're jetly taking it further with high risk,
you know, and then claiming I didn't know that movie was making fun
of Jackie Chan honestly, yeah, no, smart guy with the interesting dynamics.
I got to ask, how do you guys feel about the martial arts
and kung fu fandom nowadays compared to say, fifteen years ago, because some
people would say, like the early two thousands might be like the golden era
of fandom. It depends because when I first started getting into Hong Kong movies,
I had to deal with some of the fans who are like, oh,
you can't watch that movie. You're not ready for it yet. You're
not like like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you need to work your
way up and sucks. Yeah, and it says we said the you know,
like I common understand, like, yeah, there was that time where
we I remember going to see A Better Tomorrow and the poster looked like it
was a bunch of school teachers. So my friends were like, oh,
we'll come later for the second show. When my friends arrived, I was
like, you do not know what you've just missed. This is like this
incredible action movie. But I would never be like, oh no, sorry,
Ryan, before you watch A Better Tomorrow, here's your homework. I
think you need to watch Headhunters with Giant Fat, this show, you need
to watch Teelong and Avenging Eagle and possibly you know such and such. But
I think that's the problem that it's like there is a section where some people
don't seem to understand that some of these movies didn't travel. Some of these
movies only played in certain markets. And the good and bad thing of social
media is like some people who appeared in those movies have reinvented themselves very heavily
on social media and had much bigger careers than they really did. You know
it, And it's like it's it's it's funny because sometimes you'll get those like
like prime example, we had finished up on the movie Abduction with Scott Adkins,
and I was bringing Scott back to Hong Kong so he could fly out,
so like you do when you've just finished a movie. We're on the
slow boat back to Hong Kong and Scott's like, okay, Mike, what
movies have you got in your computer? What can we watch? And I'm
like, well, I've got the young cut version of King of the Kickboxes.
And he's like, okay, I want to watch that. So we
start watching it on the ferry and Scott starts live streaming, like this is
what it's all about, Like, you know, I just finished making a
movie with Mike. Now with live streaming, you know, watching King of
the Kickboxes. Lauren Avandon called me at that point and I handed the phone
to Scott and Scott came. An eight year old boy. Scott was like,
I met you when I was a kid, and like it was an
event in London and I asked you if one day, if I trained hard,
could I be a movie star like you? And you know, he
goes and Lauren, you looked at me and smiled and went, sure you
can, kid, and that meant so much to me. Lauren's like,
who are you? I get the phone back from Scott and Lauren's like,
is he taking the piss? I'm like no, I'm like I was like,
Scott is one of us, you know. And that's the thing,
Like there's certainly like like Scott, Scott knows his movies backwards. He knows
everyone else's movies backwards. Scott is very much He's not an action star slumming
it. Like there's some people were like, well, I'll do these action
movies and then I'll get to just do my dramatic roles, and action is
beneath me. Scott loves the action. Scott knows it's hard. Scott puts
in the training, he knows all the thing he has to put up with,
but he's doing it because he loves it. Because this is the stuff.
And that's why you can see when you watch like Accent Man two,
for instance, he's putting it, he's you know, he's throwing it all
down, you know. And I think that's what some of sometimes people forget.
And the same way I think sometimes fans sometimes I get the nobody sets
out to make a bad movie. Yeah, making a movie. Sometimes you
can do so much and then something happens, either in post production or money
vanishes, or someone passes away or anything. You know, Like you look
at the Crow for instance, if the crowd, if the Crow had been
done by Cannon, you know, they'd have just been like, oh,
it's okay, just shoot his legs and just you know, like you know,
it would have been the worst way to finish that movie, whereas you
know, Miramax were able to go, Okay, let's spend some time and
money and do it in a way to honors brand and complete the movie.
You know, I think sometimes people forget the budgets have changed. And that
also flips on piracy. When you get all the people are like, well,
I'm going to download it and then maybe i'll buy it when it's cheaper.
You know, I'm like, guys, you can't do that. Yeah,
it's right. And you know, there's still this thing where people think
they're sticking it to the man, and you're like, no, you're not
sticking it to the man, the hard boot working boutique label. You're sticking
it to you Like, you know, that is the problem, Like to
now get like a thirty day shooting schedule for like a for something like a
sky Akins movie or something that's you've had to pull in some heavy shit to
get to that schedule, you know. And it's like, whereas it late
in Hong Kong, you can do a movie in fifteen days and you know
you like, and you can turn it around and you can do ridiculous hours.
You can't always do that in the West, and sometimes you're very limited
by it. Like the longest I ever spent on set is tied for two
movies, Once upon a Time in China, Part two. I think I
was on set for sixty something hours because we were doing the reshoots, and
we finished the reshoots on the Monday, and the movie premiered the following Saturday.
And then another movie called Invincible, starring Billy Blanks and Jerry Trimble.
It's a French foreign legion movie shot in Hong Kong. Completely mad movie the
director. The movie stopped production for six months because the director beat up the
main actor, as you do. And then when they finally all came back
together, they brought in they brought everyone back for the ending, and they
brought back Billy Blanks, Jerry Trimble and Stephanos micklass and we had seventy two
hours. Oh jeez. And because it was like, I guess, as
these guys wrap their gun and people don't get how hard you're working, you
know, and it's you. People forget on something like you on a big
Hollywood movie, they'll forget. Yes, Yah, Fast and Furious had three
and a half months of prep and this much time for shooting and it still
looks like a video game. Yeah, these guys went out and did it
for real. And I think sometimes, you know, people forget that times
have changed, budgets have changed, safety issues have change. Is going to
say that changed like that? You know. There's a Hong Kong movie called
Fatal Termination where at one point a friend of ours, Mike Abbott, is
the wild eyed foreigner kidnapping the window little girl and he's holding a little girl.
Okay, it's a fake arm on a brace on a on, a
holding arm out the window of a speeding car that's driving through real traffic and
it's not a control road and she's swing through. The stunt coordinator of that
is a guy called Ridley Choy Troy Boa, incredible stuntm and coordinator, and
he was always like make that was safe. That was perfectly safe. And
then when he had I was like, so would it be safe if we
did it with your son? No that I was like, oh, but
a week ago it was safe because it's not my son. And you go,
you know, action movies, you take some serious knocks, like like
I was laughing about Ona, you know, breaking his arm skateboarding. I
was doing a movie in Vietnam and I completely dislocated my shoulder and then had
to spend half of the movie with a sling designed into my jacket. So
for half of the movie, I'm like, ah, hey, how you
doing. I've constantly got a glass of wine or gum or a bunch of
flatwers because I'm like I can't. I'll tell you something. I'll tell you
something interesting. We just shot a location video for I can't say what it
was, before a movie that's gonna be on one of the Blue Rays.
And I shot the first half of that before along with Mike, before we
went to Thailand, and I had to finish off my half because I got
food poisoning. I figure about here, I just shot that the other day.
I have a broken arm in that in that in that thing. So
when you see me in the thing, I'm like holding my hands like in
front of my thing that let my left arm in that is broken. Well
I want I wonder people will notice. Like, so that's a little bit
trivia you can have. So when that comes out, I'll let you guys
know which one it is. Yeah. But so sometimes like we've had as
we like we've left base, sometimes Hong Kong location can vanish overnight, like
well, yeah, yeah, we had that when we shot the Police Story
location video, like the last day that that building was gonna knocked down,
which is the building that yeah, from that, like Jackie Chan like walks
out there with Michelle Yo and something that we walk up to there and they
go, I go, oh my god, this is the building they were
in because we find the location and then they go, oh, we're about
to knock the whole thing down. And as we're up to tear it on
the sign, can you just sign up there for like ten more minutes while
we stand in front of the go this is the old building and they're like
why for this movie? They go, oh really we showed them have seen
They go, holy hell, yeah that's where that's from. So we shot
that and then literally after we turned off the camera, they knocked that entire
front of that building. So that's the last footage we ever got of it.
Yeah, so you know, you brought up a piracy mic. I'm
curious that. I don't know if I'm just generalizing a little too much,
but it seems like the whole Asian market gets hit by piracy much more in
a detrimental way than other markets. Do you know why, Well, I
know why. I think the problem is so on a legal ground, copyright
laws are a lot less hard to enforce down here. That's just a fact.
The copyright in Hong Kong are a lot looser than say the United States
in America. Same thing goes from Thailand. Japan's a bit better, but
and definitely in China they are more or less non existent. So that's the
first reason. The second reason was through the invention of things like VCD.
Back in the day, it became very easy to pirate things. This is
before the digital age, because a lot of stuff is done electronically. Now,
it was cheap and fast to pirate things, and film was seen is
more disposable things that got hit up a lot. That being said, though,
I think nowadays piracy is just as much prevalent all over the world because
of the wonders of the Internet, you know, double edged sword type argument.
I love the Internet, by the way, I'm all for it.
But it's just I think that's that's yeah. I mean, we've actually uh
seen stuff we've worked on pirated in Hong Kong, but that's we've done funny
things like walked up to it and they've offered us stuff we worked on and
go but that's our name on there and showing us our ID cards and things
like that. So we have done that. But yeah, we're in one
place and they had a movie I produced, and I'm on the back cover
there's a picture of me, and he was like, ah, okay,
two for one, and you know, and because he was like oh shit,
oh, you know, it's it's kind of a thing where you goh.
The I think the problem is part of it, Cuban sounds is.
I think with the Internet, because at the beginning everything was free, Everyone's
like, if at the very beginning you've been told to download something will cost
fifty cents, you'd gone, oh okay. But because the beginning everything was
free, everyone's like, wow, it was free before and I don't think
people realize that it's something you're trying to People know the reason now that all
these bands are touring again is because that's the only way they can make money,
and it's the merchandise and things because now you know the streaming and the
spot to find everything. You're getting ten cents for every million confirm that you
get very little from Spotify. I understand. That's a quick side note.
How that hell was napster cool? Like illegal? Back in the day,
artists make nobody. You can't give the stuff away for free, but Spotify
comes. I got a check for like ten cents the other day. I'm
like, and everything, this is legal, this is fine. I'm like,
who who got away with this? Is it napster in disguise? Because
this is absurd, It's it's the revenge of Napster. Yeah it is.
But I think the problem is people don't like a. I don't know if
you had him in America, but like in England, they did all these
bizarre commercials trying to condone the piracy somehow. Yeah, piracy is somehow connected
to international terrorism, as if you know, Bin Laden was sitting there selling
you know, like going send down the shipment of pirate stuff wash, you
know, and you're like, I don't think that's going to work. I
always look at the campaign that they did for those, because now we have
three D printers and we're actually downloading parts for things and stuff like that.
Yeah, And the thing is like, like I I I remember the good
old days where if even if you wanted to pirate something, it took some
effort. I'm gonna get one VHS and another VHS and I'm gonna you know,
borrow the cables and try and do this and not upset with parents and
blah blah blah. Whereas now the problem is oh touch of a button,
you know, or you get the idiots where sometimes what is crazy when you
know, when we're doing post production or something, is sometimes people send us
files and we're like, you've sent us a fifty gigabyte master of this project,
and like yeah, we'll like, could you just send us like a
seven hundred megabyte version to work from so that we don't worry about it,
because like sometimes what I've had to company where they've sent me something for reference
and two or three moms saying I'm like, oh my god, it's still
on the server. Yeah, it's it's it's still there for and it's oh
it's it's not a private download. Anyone could tellload. Yeah, I think
the piracy I mean when I first, I mean in Malaysia, for instance,
you used to come out of the cinema and there would be guys selling
Pirate vhs of the movies outside cinema. Yeah that's true. Yeah, yeah,
I want you know that. That's that's totally true. But I think
something else underlying it is the reason not to buy Pirate is because we're such
huge proponents of physical media. Is or they have physically something that's really nice
and cool, especially in the movie that you love, especially with the booklets,
like some labels are doing that. We work with those. Those things
are beautiful. I mean, they're they see them as piece of aren't nor
the seed as way of supporting the cinema. One's part of I mean.
And also like the funny thing is like, yeah, I use Netflix,
and I use Amazon, and I use Disney Class and I use all of
these, but I still love my physical media. So yeah, pardon me
as well when people go, oh my god, they've taken this off my
off my out of my collection or or they've changed the print. I go,
that's kind of one of the reasons why we buy physical media, people
that people not knowing how much work goes into it. This, yeah,
one of those things. I somehow don't think that Sony is going to send
someone to my house and go I missed the Leader. We believe you have
an uncut version of this movie. We think we should give it to us
now because I'd like, you ain't taking my laser discs. It would be
the Siege of Waco again. It's like, yeah, I somehow don't because
if that's what happened, people would be an uproar. Can you imagine suddenly
people turned up like, I'm sorry, but you have the Shout Factory Blu
ray and we we think that's the wrong print that came out. You need
to hand it over. Physical media walk physical Physical media gives you control,
right digital media can I mean? I think with the PlayStation was a PlayStation
four where they deleted the Silent Hill PT demo that everybody was playing Kojima Fell
Out with Konami, like that was a big example of that. Like and
now those PlayStations with that's still in the hard drive self are tons of money.
Because it's physical media, you can still access it and everything else.
So yeah, I knows he got it wrong. Bo No apologize for the
iTunes thing. I remember seeing that because can you imagine that if suddenly you
turned on and you're like, oh, there's a complete Longe Gen collection in
my heart drive immediately Yeah, that's a lot of a lot of stuff in
your hard drive. Man, that's a couple of terrible Like, oh,
I now need to buy a new hard drive. Yeah. Uh. What
do you guys, what do you feel about the kung fu in martial arts
cinema industry today? Because it's changed so much, Like do you do you
think that the old school style is officially dead? Because it certainly feels like
it. So it's so my belief is it's a kind of a are we
talking about Hong Kong, We're talking about kung fu cinema globally. I mean
you can talk on both. I mean obviously they have different realms. Okay,
So in the first Hong Kong, unfortunately, Hong Kong cinema is going
through what can be described as a decline, right, I mean, we
used to make about what four hundred movies a year, here at one point
at the that that's mental by the way. Uh. And then also like
right now, I think we do closer to what how would you say many
movies are made this year, Mike, or last year? Let's say last
year, let's saylast in Hong Kong, I'd say about thirty to fifty,
because yeah, that's that's a pretty steep decline. I think it's close to
thirty myself, but it's but in terms of kung fu kung fu stuff,
well, you got to understand that when Jackie and Samo were coming up,
the things that were doing that Jackie and Samo qualifies child abuse. I mean,
Sam was about to make a movie about it. That's I know,
not how far along that is. That it's basically like painted faces but more
realistic. And the the thing about that is is that the way they used
to train people and everything else coming from the Chinese opera backgrounds, and that's
not possible anymore. A lot of people also don't have time to take kung
fu or whatever else it is, or learn all the gymnastics and acrobatics with
that. So yeah, Hong Kong is going to go into decline in terms
of people. Mold people that can perform these stunts. Beyond that, except
for maybe hit Hut, there's no real like schools teaching martial art action in
Hong Kong anymore. And a lot of people just don't have the time.
They'd rather go off and do karaoke, or go to the movies ironically,
or play video games and stuff like that. So there's a lot of distractions
toward that happening. And also I think you know, obviously COVID did a
massive number and all that as well, but is it in decline. I
think the only way it's really going to come back is if digital streaming services
somehow invest money into into Hong Kong to make that happen again, which I
don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon, I don't know what.
I don't know what Mike thinks about that. I hope that would happen.
But in terms of ripple effect. With in terms of ripple effect, I
think Hong Kong is quite significant because if you look at the Tony Jaws,
if you look at the guys, all the guys basically worked on the raid,
Mike mills him a lot better ninety U. I suspect they were all
influenced by Hong Kong cinema, So I think the ripple effect that came out
of it, like Hong Kong was a stone in the bond in terms of
what out came out of that. That's quite interesting, and I think I've
high helped her countries like Thailand and Indonesia eventually to kind of pick up all
of the mantle. Yeah, that's kind of That's kind of where I stand.
A modern kung fu cinema from Hong Kong. We're not going to see
another era like Showals anymore. I think Hong Kong's edit heading towards a more
different The crime genre has been very successful in Hong Kong the last few years
we've seen that, but recently we saw Luis Ku put out a cool mech
based cyberpunk Hong Kong take on like, you know, all that kind of
thing because he loves Iron Man. So yeah, I know, Mike,
what do you think is iron Man? Yes, he is, trust me.
I've been to his office and he's dressed design Man at time. Yes.
No, I think part of it is for the longest time, Hong
Kong was like a perfect market. Yes, yeah, like okay, when
I first arrived at Hong Kong, you could pre like you could presell movies
so easily, depending on cast and everything. So like if you watch one
Ghaway's Ashes of Time. For the longest time, I was always like,
there's one shot in it, and it looks like Joey Wan Wong Joey in
from Chinese Ghost Story. But I'm like, but she's not in the movie.
A couple of years ago, I was working on europe Raiders that was
produced by one Ghaway, and we're having dinner and we're chatting and he's like,
oh, yeah, she's in that one shot. He's like oh,
because at the time, her market for career was so strong. If she
was in your movie, even for one shot, could it was a contractual
obligation you could sell for a million dollars to career. So like the Philippine
buyers would come in and go, can you give me the first reel of
your movie, the third reel, and the last reel, and they would
time the action up. There's enough action will buy it. So for the
longest time, Hong Kong was like this perfect market. And in the mid
nineties I began to see even Hong Kong directors were starting to take it for
granted. I remember meeting one director and he was like, oh, my,
my next movie is going to be a huge success. I went why,
and he goes, oh, because I have these two actors. Went
oh, what's it about. He goes oh, I don't know, but
I've got these two actors and it's and I was like ah. And the
markets changed, like suddenly, Thailand woke up and began. Korea film career
woke up big time. The Korean government supports the film industry like a every
cinema in Korea, every screen needs to show Korean movies for at least one
third of the year. Yeah. So like part of the problem was Hong
Kong lost its place and the China market came. And the problem is the
China market is such a good market. Everyone changed their focus to China because
I can make the money in China. And the problem is sometimes the movies
you make for China don't translate for the rest of the world. So you
got into that. And with the kung fu genre, it's a trend like
next year there's gonna be Donnie and Sakra, which is like a Donny reinventing
the sore playbos genre. There's Calm Wold City, which is a comic book
adaptation that Kenji did the action for which is completely wild. It's kind of
like imagine District thirteen meets Dragon Tiger Gate. It's like a it's completely mad.
You've got Nicholas Jair. He's just done this full on action movie called
A Customs front Line, which is like a police very much a police story
style, a lot of reference to old Hong Kong style, a lot of
stunts and everything. It's starting to come back. I think it just goes
in a trend. Part of the problem as well was suddenly you had everyone
doing kung fu like I just rewatched Charlie's Angels, and you sit there and
go that was when you knew why why work had done it done it's dirty.
When suddenly Drew barrymore Lucy for no reason, I'm just flying over walls
and everything, and you go, well, it's a good example of Keanu
Reeves kind of has that curse where, for example, he made the Matrix
and everybody imitated that, and then it makes John Wick and now everybody's doing
like their John Wick. Like the dude dude in the business. He's the
man's a trendsetter. Man. I got to give him the credit. Like
the movie, He's just awesome. He's just my first introduction to him.
I ended up wrestling with him in the casting because we were discussing styles of
kung fu and were on the floor demonstrate, well this is us here.
Know, Kiana is awesome and Matthew Perry, I used to like you until
you slagged off Keanu Reeves. Yeah, proceeded to slag off everyone and claim
you slept with everyone, and I guess he wants to sell some books.
Yeah, but you know exactly. It's like, so you really were Chandler
for the whole time. But like I think, I think that's because he
went, I can't remember several years of my life, so they went,
oh, we'll just get a rider to come in and for you. Yeah,
But like I think, I think the action general come out. But
also part of problem was before Hong Kong was the special effect. We didn't
have the special effects, we didn't have the green screens. We didn't think
so it was okay, Anna, you're really to jump out of a window,
yeah, and land on a passing bus. Bounce off of it,
get hit by a passing car, and then land in the backseat of a
Corvette as it drives past, and yeah, yeah, exactly. So I
think the market changed and said, like you know, for a while when
Johnny told was like, Okay, I'm going to take the gangster genre and
I'm still going to reinvent and play with that. So I think it goes
through phases. It's like in the in the nineties when suddenly the category free
genre went crazy and suddenly we had like about a three or four year period
of just insanity. Where what an awesome period that one. I mean.
I did a movie that began life as a Hong Kong take on zato Each
called Blind Power, with Lamching ying as a blind swordsman. Halfway through the
filming, I arrived on set and Lamching is driving a car and I'm like,
but he's, oh, we've dropped, like but we've shot stuff where
he's like touching people's faces and oh, it doesn't matter. Finished the movie.
So we finished the movie. A sad story of Saigon. The movie
comes out, opens in Taiwan, makes no money. Huh, what's popular
at the moment. Category three movies Okay, let's add some Category three scenes
at the most inopportune moments. So imagine Ryan, Anna and me. We're
sitting in the house. Suddenly someone runs in. The police are outside,
We're surrounded. Hannah, You're going to go and have sex with this girl,
and there's there's a scene interpact with shots of people putting bullets in shotguns,
and I remember being like, oh God, oh, and I'm on
the poster. My Mum's going to be proud of me. And that movie
was called rape and public se okay, but you go, the market went
bizarre. I mean, so, I have a feeling in China the kung
fu genre will come back because there's some incredible talent and a lot of the
Chinese streaming services like I G E Intencent are pumping out a lot of kung
fu movies and never revisiting things like Vincent. Jow just did a Fearless TV
series which if not for COVID, I would have returned as the as the
referee Randal, but this time I would have got to fight there you go.
So I think there's gonna change, but I think the action genre is
coming back, And like the last year, I said like we've had this
incredible science fiction movie by Lewis Ku did really well. Yeah, and at
the same time, we've had this really small, like romantic comedy of errors
that's also done really well in Hong Kong because Hong Kong audiences have begun to
rediscover Hong Kong film, Like for the longest time, Hong Kong film are
kind of fallen out of favor even in Hong Kong, like people, I
want to go see the American movies. I want to go and watch Vindy's
I want to go and see The Avengers. So I think it took a
kicking, but it's coming back. But sadly it will never be that time
when it was four hundred movies a year in Hong Kong well and again,
and the talent based like that, that's a bit of an issue, so
I wish. I mean, there's also Hong Kong doesn't do government subsidies for
a creative things like film, so that I mean, they just announced the
new government suby, which is fantastic because if your director, producer or scriptwriter
has previously won the Hong Kong film well came, they will consider your apple.
I was like, oh, that's really helping young filmmakers. Yeah,
like that's the thing. Like whereas I just got back from Thailand and they're
like, there's like so many incentives people do creative stuff for whatever. In
Japan, they have a billion dollars. Like I think it's literally called like
the cool culture Funders. Yeah, I mean that's called Japan. And that's
why you've got a lot of these like YouTubers in Japan, like the trash
taste guys in Japan. Yeah, it's kind of Hong Kong. The problem
has always been like like I did a Bollywood movie called Krish Part two,
and they originally wanted to film it in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong
government was like, if you film it in Hong Kong, that'd be nice.
Yeah. Where Singapore went Indian tourism and we got to fly helicopters down
Orchard Road. Imagine flying helicopters through Times Square and everything and to all this
cool stuff. You know. So Malaysia offers a rebate, Thailand off as
a rebate, Indonesia has a rebate. For now, everybody's going to Malta
because yeah, I think Fiji has some crazy rebate as well, right now,
as someone's telling me we should ask you about paying about some of those
rebates, yeah you can tell yeah exactly, but you go. So the
problem is people get that it's show business, the film industry. So sometimes
you do go it's cheaper for me to build this in Malaysia than to actually
go to New York and film it. You're like a like Hungry At There's
a studio in China called hung the End. It's the huge film studio where
they shot Hero and Crouching Tiger. We shot The Mummy three there And basically
if you went to them and said hey, I want to make a movie
and I want to set it in New York and I want to build Time
Square, him and his team will look at it and then they'll have a
chat like if we have Time Square, can we rent that to other people?
Can you? Okay? You know what, We'll pay half and we'll
keep the set after you leave and we'll rent it out for other movies.
So like Hungdian has a full size Forbidden City from Beijing. If you film
on the mountain side, there are power supplies built into the rocks, like
you know, like you go there and it's awesome because the whole state is
basically a film studio. Wow, and you're suddenly going, well, I
can control it. And he built like old Shanghai. He now built Shanghai
Harbor in the middle of nowhere with the bund and everything, because he was
like, well, this way we can control it. We can do it.
And it is frustrating where film has done so much for Hong Kong,
so many people came to Hong Kong because of Yeah, and there hasn't been
that support from the from the government I think in terms of either promoting and
preserving Hong Kong film or helping Hong Kong film have trends that we were talking
about. Kat free is a main trend on home video right now. What
are some of the bigger titles that you think might you know, obviously things
you know you can't say, but what are some that you think might take
us all by storm if they get released soon. Well, doctor Lamb,
I know it's come out in the States. I would love for that to
come out and see a mainland Europe release. I would love to see the
Underground Banker that that is a if someone releases that, contact myself and Mike
immediately because that film is so crazy if you were to release that like today
in America. It's basically how to imagine you're making a movie. Imagine you're
making say Falling Down, and then you decide, but I think Michael Douglas
should team up with Freddie Kruger at one point team up with to team up
with Ted Bundy. And you actually write Ted Bundy into the movie and the
guys shops saying, Hi, I'm Ted Bunny, I'm your next door neighbor,
and we're gonna take on the bad guys together. And Ted Bundy becomes
like a really good person and like a protagonist and everything else in the movie.
They actually took a real Hong Kong serial killer who was Doctor Lamb,
based on a real person. They wrote him into another film with Anthony Wong
which came out the same years think as The Told Story and basically as he
was kind of reprising his character in that but not really saying it. And
then like Doctor Lamb comes and they team up to take on the Triads and
it's just and it's it's such a crazy movie. I would love to see
Underground back there. I'd love to see a movie called Runaway Blues. Yes,
Yes, yeah, And it's basically it's about a mainland Chinese and a
time when he'e triad who come to Hong Kong for foul of the Hong Kong
Triads because of language difficulties, and then they kind of bond over the fact
that they can speak Mandarin. And there's a scene. It's an incredibly brutal
movie. There's a scene in it where Andy Lao's character and another character,
Calvin Wog, are in a car and they're crushed by a speeding truck.
And I remember asking Calvin Wong, go bless him. How did they do
that scene? He was like, we were in a car and we were
crushed by a speeding truck. That's how they did the scene. He was
like, it was not fun, but it's a really cool gangster movie and
it kind of like devolves the whole glamorous life of a gangster. There's a
movie called Secret Signs that do you think? Secret Signce begins with a twenty
minute documentary about how cool it is to be ye like interviewing real triads,
going, yeah, I was in Holland and this guy cut my finger off,
but I can't get off doing that interview. It's so fucking crazy that
that movie that there's God, there's so many because the probably is how about
how about how about escape from Brothel? Imagine that coming out that is the
most like escape from Brothel would be would be I think, So there's no
way that would ever come out like I escape from Brothel. That's the problem.
There's something that I mean, like i'd love to there's a there's a
movie called Can't Stop My Crazy Love for You with Simon Yam, Michael Wang,
and Young Hang and it's kind of like Simon Yams are Peeping Tom who
then becomes an insane serial killer, but he's kind of the hero. There's
weird like and then yeah, there's like there's so many, there's like a
it's that's the problem. There's so much category three goodness out because which level
of category three goodness do you want? The sexy? Do you want the
gory? Do you want We haven't really touched the sexy much yet. Yeah,
there's well there's I mean, what about that with the Flag through the
air and flying Chinese torture Chamber story of which the best would be if we
could get Bosco One who directed it. Yes. Basically, Bosco used to
be one of Wang Jing's assistant directors and he was trying to get out of
this contract. So Wang Jing said, Hey, I want to make this
movie Chinese Torture Chamber story, which basically is about a woman on trial because
her husband died. And the reason he died is his dick is so big
that when he died, when he shall we say climaxes, he dies of
blood loss. Yeah, yeah, which is which was which we see in
silhouette set to a Chinese ur Wu playing unchained melody. And at one point
and that you know, the infamous Julie Reaver is flying through the air having
sex with a guy, Elvis Troy while they're flying for their having sex,
and I introduced Anna to the stunt coordinator and he was like, that girl
was crazy because yeah, Elvis has like a jockstrap on and basically that's it
with the wires on it. She had nothing. She's just meant to be
holding onto him and she's hanging off of him and yeah, mad that I'd
love to see Mike, which was which was the poster that they banned like
that. They were hell no when that came Okay, it's such a it's
such a very yeah. Well, first they did Naked Killer. Then they
did a semi sequel called Raped by an Angel. Yes. The original title
and poster for were Legal Rape. Yeah. Yeah, And the poster was
Simon Yam dressed as a judge with Chinami Yeo seducing him while the main actress
sat there naked crying holding the book of law. Yeah, with the title
legal Rape, and the English and Chinese censors at the time went, hang
on a minute, guy, Yeah. Yeah. Even we would be like,
guys, guys, come on, man, it's like you gotta and
it's a very bizarre. It's it's kind of like it's almost like there was
a very There was a very cool American TV series called Midnight Caller in the
late eighties which had an episode where they address the AIDS issue, and they
do it in such a bad nineteen eighties I Basically, a man with AIDS
is sleeping with all these women and giving them AIDS and the end of the
movie is he's in a disco and a bio hazard team turn up. Yeah,
and it's yeah, and basically raped by a nine to two kind of
touching that thing of like someone is getting away with this and committing the crinkers.
The problem as well with some of those movies is so like Hong Kong
did not handle AIDS very well. At the beginning. There are audio commentary
like there's a friend of mine, a Wing Chun teacher, Steven Chan,
and on one of his books, he's standing there in the introduction wearing a
shirt that says AIDS busters and is the ghost by logo but with a bottom
on it. And so a lot of Hong Kong humor about AIDS was very
There's a Frank of Chan movie where someone has a bad ration refers to it
as AIDS, kung fu and stuff, and you're like, okay, guys,
I'm not politically correct, but come on, yeah, yeah, there's
a lot of stuff. And the category three either like from the sexy,
I mean like you've got your sex and end's you've got. There's a really
cool movie called My Wife's Lover starring Maria Mark, which is actually a kind
of intelligent and well handled tale of lesbianism, but with lots of like Playboy
Star Channel nudity. The funny thing is there's a movie called twenty something with
Teddy Chen and that's that that was marketed as a cat free sexy movie where
it's actually a very very good drama about young people in Hong Kong dealing with
their sexuality. But they but the way they sold it to get an audience
was to play up the sexual aspect and then people went, yeah, but
actually it was a really good movie. At one point, Hong Kong filmmakers
try to slap the cat three like reading on there just to sell the movie.
Yeah, I mean in the video stores. They realized that Category three
movies rented more. So imagine going to Blockbuster and they've put n seventeen stickers
on everything. Yeah, and you're going you see exactly, and they'd hint
that, oh, maybe this is the full version, Maybe this is the
thing because because Hong Kong we have no nudity on television, we're on television
either very really so when I first arrived, one of the TV channels here
was celebrating its twenty fifth anniversary TVB and they said, oh, we're going
to show all these movies and one of them was in Manuel and I was
like, how the hell are they gonna get while he was showing a manual,
and then I went wait a minute, they're showing a Manuel at two
o'clock in the morning slot that's sixty minutes long. Oh gosh, cut the
hell. So I went, Okay, I'm gonna stay up and watch this.
And Emmanuel got on the plane to Thailand and the plane landed and I
went, no, need to watch any more of that movie. Yeah,
what's really what's really interesting is remember when Itchi the Killer came out here and
they cut like thirty minutes all of that movie Itchi the Killers one. I
love Takashi Mike is one of my favorite directors. We would love to do
more audio cons for Japanese films, by the way, if anybody's listening,
But basically, Itchi the Killer is a crazy violent Japanese film. People's face
is getting cut off and you know, crazy stuff. Yeah, I love
it. I love Itchi the Killer. And there's a Hong Kong version that
was out for a while. I actually got it. I don't know where
it is, but I just bought it because it's so ridiculous. They cut
about thirty minutes out of that movie. It's so and I watched it,
going, oh, yeah, here we go. Because I've seen the uncouver
and I just was laughing. I was like, the cuts are still brazen
as well, because because censorship is a very gray area, like it's it's
really like, as we said, you can swear in English in a Hong
Kong movie, No, you can say fucking all that stuff, no problem,
but you can't swear in Cantonese. If you swear in Cantonese, you
immediately get an NC seventeen rating and they'll try and bleep it out as much
as possible. In many cuts of Doctor Lamb, It's it's bleeped out so
often in a Hong Kong movie, you'll have people swearing in English, but
when they swear in Chinese, they're saying you freaking mother brother, because it's
like billy. So when we did the video game Sleeping Dogs, I'm recording
all the audio tracks in Hong Kong, and the owner of the studio kept
corn a mate, is there a problem because every time she'd turn on the
feed from the studio, she would hear like Sammohung or Eric Chang wearing at
their most extreme. Because we're like, yeah, yeah, we want the
swearing, and if you've got more more graphic versions of what you want to
say, and Chinese swearing is an art form. Like it's like crazy go
die in the streets. It's like and also it's like I do this not
only to you, but seven generations back. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
So like we had all this real fall on swearing going, and the
people at the studio like, is everything okay. I was like, yep,
yep, it's all good. It's for the game. And then when
the game came out in Hong Kong, parents lost their mind because their kids
playing a video game and they walk in and yeah, there's their seven year
old kid listening to a game where someone's going, mother fucker, I'm gonna
kill you. Right, So censorship in Hong Kong is always weird, like
and like there's like with nudity, it's it's very weird. And also there's
this bizarre thing of Hong Kong of like it's okay for a I had to
jump between category two and category three movies. Yeah, that's so strange,
Simon, Like girls get labeled like like is still referred to as a former
porn star and you're like she did Playboy and Penthouse style nudity guys. Yea,
yeah, But like nudity is such an issue here that like it's it's
very it's very bizarre, it's very prudish. That being said. Though,
that being said, the younger generation, like the twenty somethings year olds,
are like they're they're changing their attitude towards a lot Like Saliva Bridge is a
very popular underground fashion label here and they literally their whole label is based on
embracing vices like poor Japanese pornography and cambling and everything else. So the younger
generation, I cause I kind of come up, I'm like forty one years
old. I come across a lot of younger generation through either music shows or
interviews that I do, and I always ask them like, how you consume
your media? What's interesting to you guys? You know all this stuff.
And I think because of their access to the Internet and more global like pains
and stuff like that, they're becoming a little less conservative when it comes to
those things. Yeah, and Againstlaverbridge really popular brand around here, and they
literally their cornerstones are embracing like gambling, Japanese pornography and everything else. And
they made a T shirt that was really popular. I don't know how much
we can can we swear a lot on this as much as you want?
Yeah, this is what they made a T shirt, that's the brand.
There was a lot of saying fuck boy advance. It took the game Boy
advancing. They preyed on sweaters and like tons of women were wearing it and
tons of guys and everything else. For a while, it was like a
big like it was a thing here as well. Well, yeah, the
funny thing, The funny thing here is what is some stuff people start wearing
and then they don't realize what it means, Like, oh oh yeah.
Recently, one actress had started wearing a porn Hub T shirt until someone googled
it and then she was suddenly a pariah. And I'm like, oh my
god, I just I just boy because it looked funny, it looked nice.
Yeah. So the funny thing is like, we'll often get the thing
where they'll make fun of people, joke about Westerners having random Chinese characters or
something on their shirt or on tattoos. But you'll see it's not coming to
be on the bus and there's some eighty five year old Chinese woman wearing a
shirt saying porn star or something, and you're going does she have any idea
what that means? Yeah, that's what I love it. When you see
the older ladies like wearing stuff like that, you're like, whoa, that's
not what you think of. But it looks cool. The graphics are good.
No, no, but that means really different. Well, yeah,
it's very you gotta be bit careful stuff. So yeah, let's get to
the fun part. I'm curious obviously, you guys are known for martial arts
commentaries. Mostly you're breaking out. You got keen of lorber stuff coming out
with Missing Yeah, what do you really want to do? What is on
the on the wish list that you're in Japanese films? I wonder Japanese v
cinema. That's what I really want to do, Mike, what do you
want to do? I would like to do Edwardian costume. Yeah, it's
exactly no, no, no, the same thing. There's so much like
more Cannon stuff, Like I'd love to do more Cannon because Canon. Canon
is the reason I'm like this. I blame Cannon for everything. Yeah,
but like I'd love to do more stuff like Canon. I'd love to do
things like blood Sport or American Ninja too, American Ninja movies. Yeah,
like we love the Hong Kong movies. We love the martial arts movies,
but we don't just watch them. We watch so it's like, I mean,
I went to high school in Italy and I consume tons of Italian Gallo
films when I was there, and like and like yeah, and like you
know Zombie and Zombie do It and all that stuff. You know, I
watched all that. I want to do Night City because I just rewatched that
the other day. City is a crazy film. Like I think Nama City
inspired Robert Rodriguez's Planet Ter If I'm not mistaken, I think so. But
like, but no, I think I said, like, I'd love doing
more Hard. I'd love to do there's a good a lot of good films,
man. Yeah, some of the accuses of the movies. I'd love
to do some of the macaroni combat stuff because I think the same fun like
you know, it's yeah, and also just there's some stuff like we're we're
doing a really cool nineties action movie this week. Yeah, like that.
It's just one of the ones where it's just like it's it's exactly a product
of the nineties. Yeah, it's it's so nineties. Yeah, yeah,
it's good. It's the good parts, the fun parts of the nineties though.
Yeah, but no, there's there's so much. I mean, that's
one like women we were audio prostitutes, just anything. I would do anything
but that. But basically, like I think it, but yeah, the
Japanese stuff, you know what what I would love. We've discussed this among
ourselves and even a little bit audio comic keys. We would love for some
label to go to Taiwan and find some really cool Taiwan films I'm not even
been subtitled or anything else and released those because that is a gold mine.
Man. Like we've kind of touched on some stuff through the kung fu because
there's some weird like you know, crossover between Hong Kong and Taiwan had its
own kind of subgenres. It had like Taiwan black cinema, which is like
the super violent gangsters. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Miss forty
five get remade in Taiwan as well. Yeah, it's like and there's that,
Like I'd love to revisit anything by Chewy and Ping and c because fourth
amazing, you have to, Okay, Basically, Chewymping is a director who
Okay, I'm gonna make this movie, and this movie will be some kind
of wonderful meet some America. Can Ninja meets Scarface? Yeah? Yo.
And he did one movie called Hunting List and it's basically it's States of Grace
set in Taiwan, including all the Irish stuff's Patrick State Parades in Taiwan.
And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
see it in the movie. You know what I would love to do.
I'd love to do some of the IFD stuff, like Ninja Terminator, for
example, getting Godfrey back. But we also know some people, like we've
been working on a documentary for years called Me on Grindhouse, which is about
like the Grindhouse andem of Hong Kong, and basically, like we know a
lot of people involved. It'd be funny get a room full of like people
work on the Godfrey stuff and just like chat and comment about all that because
they're like they like, you know, he got films from like a failed
film from like say Taiwan or Korea. Love Story just spliced ninjas into there
and like we shot extra footage and everything else. So to get like some
of that coming in and like doing audio comedies with those would be so much
fun. And then the labels could even release it with just the stuff that
you could have an option where it just plays the stuff that God shot,
or just or plays the entire film or whatever. Catman and that's crazy Australian
superhero whose basic powers he can swear uge the channel on TVs. Yeah,
America's Batman. Hong Kong is cat Man. Yeah, they were guys Like
that's I think there's so much. I mean, it's just you know,
like I'm just looking like Sonny Cheaber films, like all that Sonny Cheaper stuff,
like to read it some of that. I'd love to read it.
More of the Chuck stuff because like you can never go wrong with Chuck,
like Invasion US USA for instance. I mean, like that movie is just
so awesome. I'd love to to revisit some of the some of like Albert
Pie and stuff. Do some more of Albert's you know, yeah you just
go, you know. And what's been nice say with Keen Luber, etcetera,
is we're getting to do stuff like it was great to revisit Hard Target
and then to do Bradder and to do the other Chucks and everything, and
there's there's other stuff that they've got on their books. I'm like, I
want to do this, you know, there's just that we're really that's the
problem. I think there's so much we'd love to to revisit. You know,
can we talk we did we did a European film recently. I don't
know if we can say what it is? Which one we did? Can
we say it or now? Which I can't say that because we're in a
podcast. You got a private yet there there was, there was there was
oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, Oh you mean the puppy movie. Yes,
yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean we got I want
to do more European things as well, because that's what is a very very
cool European movie. Yeah, it was the way Well can we say what
it is? Well? What movie was it? I can't say what it
is? That was hilarious, but but I'd like to do more European stuff.
I don't know if we can say what movie that was? I don't
know. This promote warm peace, Yeah that's what it was. Yeah,
it was a warm audio audio comedy Mike Leader. Yeah, that's the fun.
There's so much, like, like, I just got to revisit Sword
Kill, Ghost Warrior with Brandon for for Keeno Orbit. I mean there you
I mean, you know, time traveling samurais. You can't go wrong with
that. It's ludicrous. Stuff is fun. I'd love to read. I'd
have to do Breaking Canon. I love to break down to the movie Breaking.
You know, it's like, oh Breaking, You're like, oh,
John claud In, that isn't he John claud Everyone, Okay, that's the
Marshall Vie. Okay. You've got the student of a traditional style who meets
two unorthodox masters of their own style. She trains with them, develops her
own style, and at the same time meets Michelle Case aka Tongbo Jean Claude.
And then they go to a redneck bar where they meet the Chuckler,
a stunt team. Yeah, talk about that. You know the weirdest thing
that Mike ever said to me? He goes, he goes, he goes,
yeah, like I talked about video games. He goes, yeah.
You know when they cheat a dance dance Revolution. I go, no,
I don't know the way they cheated dance Dance Revolution. Why do you know
this? And I got the image of my head of Mike Leer going dance
dance dance in the pads for dance dance resolution at the ar gadeholds because that
would be a very strange and I don't know, I just it just doesn't
seem it seem like you play like, you know, street fighter or something
like that. It wouldn't like the prison I did. I did used to
take the guys from the jackie Chan video game to play the jackie Chan video
game. Yeah, which was very weird because yeah, video no, I
mean that there's there's so much. I mean, there's like TV series I'd
love to revisit. They're Aldio a common trades for There's there's you know,
there's some movies. There's a movie, okay, there's a movie called By
the Sword with Eric Robertson from Abraham I'd love to read. It's an awesome
sword fencing movie. There's a movie called What There's It's a movie with Peter
Coyote called Exposure. Yeah, and it's an art It begins as an artistic
movie about a photographer in South America and then ten minutes into the movie he
gets horrifically stabbed. So he tracks down Checki Carrio to teach him knife fighting,
and for fifteen minutes, it becomes a knife fighting instructional Like if anyone
in that movie was associated with action movies, it would be banned because for
fifteen minutes he's telling you no, no, no, underhand slash hold under
your hand so if they grab your wrist, you can still slice. Blah
blah blah bah. And it's a really cool shot in South America down in
dirty kind of like artistic vigilante movie. It's there's there's some cool Indian films
as well out there. I mean there's some mad Indian films. There's a
really crazy so many more Indian films. There's hardly anything getting released to that.
And there's a really crazy one called Mahakal, which is the Indian remakeer
of Nightmare and Elms is really fun. There's another film that scatees my mind
right now, but it looks like an eighties Hong Kong movie. It's so
cool. The name is Scapes my Mind. But it's about this guy.
He starts off in the village and later on he grows up to me a
big gangster that comes this crazy gangster film and it's shot beautifully. A lot
of Indian films are shot really well. Because they're shot in thirty five millimeter.
You know, they lik gorgeous and they have the man power to make
them look gorgeous. But yeah, also from the eighties and the nineties from
India, there's what movies would you like us to do the audio cor Yeah?
Yeah, what movies would you like us to do the audio commentries for?
I mean, honestly, like you, we will come to your house
and do them in person. I want to hold you to that. I
would love just to see more from the late nineties stuff that's other genres because
you guys, again, the whole friends hanging out aspect is what makes your
commentary so interesting. So the nineties are so under I don't want to really
say underrated, but they're kind of underappreciated for what they actually gave to a
lot of cinema. And if you look at especially the latter half of the
nineties, they're not represented on a lot of these labels. So to get
new stuff out there would be so nice to hear you guys on some of
that stuff. No, And I think that's the thing that it's this.
There are some movies that you just really do go. I think some of
them an audio commentary or special edition is the only way to see them because
it gives people the incentive to export, because absolutely sometimes you know you're going,
no, no, well there's interviews and stuff on him. Maybe I'll
take I'll take that child awesome Hong Kong from the nineties. I would love
doing audio commentary thing and I made videos about it and I've done everything.
Would be bio Zombie. I love Biozombie. The first Hong Kong celebrity ever
really met with Sam Lee. It was in a club called Magazine Here,
which is gone, and I start talking about movies and he was like,
oh, this is nice, Like, yeah, I love beasts cos I
love you and biozomb me and he just like went, oh yeah, bio
Zombie obviously the zombie stuff and everything else the club. I was like,
this is great. We'd end up talking about music and everything else. But
bio Zombie, that's a big one that I want to do, Like an
audio calls I wanted to in that case, I want to do Biocops.
Biocomps is a terrible freaking movie. Like Biocomps is long, Jing going,
aha, bio Zombies good. I won't make Biocops is and they shot Biocomps
in seven days because it's biocops is yeah, biocops like a bios theo zombie
things have become big and he tanked it with that, so Bioso. It's
like, I don't know if you've heard about the film, it's like Dawn
of the Dead, but in Hong Kong mall. Yeah, so it's and
they're selling pirate VCDs yeah, and video games in the movie. Yeah,
it's and and actually that mall is really close to where I where I live,
so it's I would love to I'd love to see if I could.
I'd love to see the Troublesome Night films, but I don't think those are
ever gonna come out because one to six, especially Hermanyaw directed them, who
did like all the films, But I don't know if there's an audience for
that in the West. I'm not sure because that's Simon Lloy and all that
stuff. And that's the problem that there's that it's sometimes trying to release a
movie to introduce people to like Ricky or say sevenths is a great introduction to
a lot of people for a Category three movie, because you come on,
guys, there's there's recognizable stuff in it. I'm gonna take you on a
wild ride some some of those movies, if you release them without a precursor,
people are just gonna go I don't get Yeah, I said The Troublesome
Night. You've got to be so used to Hong Kong yable because like like
one of the main things in Hong Kong, like we've discussed for it,
is like when you first come to Hong Kong, you'll see people burning money
for the dead. You're like, okay. Then you'll see people burning cardboard
replicas of Blu ray players so that I will have a Blu ray Player in
And then you'll see Anna burning a cardboard Amy Yip so that accompany me.
She makes money off those two and it's true. And then like you have
there's a place in Hong Kong where a group of old ladies sit and I
can go there and I can write Venomo's name on a piece of paper and
the women will start beating it with their shoe to bring bad luck that I've
ever done that Anna fall off a skateboard, though, like can I tell
I literally would skateboarding and on a normal and a parking lot somewhere and like
everything was fine, and this random piece of trash got in between the trucks
and the wheels of skateboard and I fell forward off the skateboard and my shoulder
hit the concrete like a jackhammer man. It was crazy. Oh talk.
The guy of skateboarding with was Mike Chan, not the Michael Chan the you
know from the Triad films, But Michael Chan has been a bunch of other
Hong Kong films. And he did a film called Seafood Versus Vampire That would
be a fun one in audio commentry for it because it's absolutely mad that movie.
So yeah, and he plays a vampire in that, and my Chance
is just a very interesting character. Yeah, yeah, there's so many.
Yeah, I'm keen to give you your days back. I don't want to
take all of your time from you. The big question, what has been
announced that you want to get people excited for? Is there a list of
stuff that you know that you got coming up? Oh yes, madam,
it's really cool, yes, madam. And Royal Warriors Warriors yeah, yeah,
which were great to re visit and said there's gonna be some cool special
features on there from us. I said, so for for Keno Lauber.
We have we were able to contribute to the Braddock release. I don'd love
to have done all three three, but they've got the directors involved for the
first two. I mean yeah. Then A sword Kill is coming out,
which is me and Brandon Bentley. Then there's uh, I said, we're
doing a very cool movie this week. All I can say is it involves
a mullet. Yeah, you know, and I think they're gonna they're gonna
announce it this week. And there's a there's a bunch of other stuff that
we've we've got that's still coming out from other companies. Something I think is
we we don't always know the release dates. Yeah, a new one.
I'm Swordsman as well from TV Newarm Swordsman in Germany from from the Crazy Vengeance
label, which work out how to have a website that people can use.
Merco basically you have to you have to journey into the House of Traps and
overcome various obstacles to order movies. But but, but, but respect to
Merco. He gave us our first audio commentary. Yeah, that was awesome.
But he's just sometimes you're like Merco, you do know, people need
to buy the movies, like if you made your interface a little bit more
user friendly, it would help things. Germany, he's got a lot of
those. They just they they don't advertise a lot of them. Well,
well, I think sometimes because a lot of the German titles are shall we
say right areas Americas are all legit. I think the reason is that when
they sign the contract, there's parallel import issues, right, So if you
make it, if you're released in Germany, you're not supposed to release it
in the United States of America. And that's probably why they were And that's
also something that sometimes I don't think people get because you often get people going,
how come this release doesn't hav English subtypes because I've licensed it for France,
it's not for you. If I license within the subtiles, I've got
to pay for all the other territories that can use it. And it's like
when people started complaining like, oh, well, Eureka has already released this
movie, why is eighty eight releasing it in America? Or why is Vinegar
Syndrome releasing this? And you go, they're different territories, guys. Yeah,
it's not a conspiracy. It's not a global conspiracy. It's just it's
how busy it's a movie business, right for this movie and it can you
know, Okay, look at the when they did the Watchmen movie. You
know, twentieth Century Fox had spent all that money making the movie, and
then someone at Warner Brothers went, you do know we still own the US
distribution rights. You sometimes sit there and you find someone snuck in and bought
all these movies and have never released them, like a like Warner's Warners in
nineteen ninety six acquired a shed load of Hong Kong movies, but some of
the most random choices of movie. And because they've got like can movies,
they've got Petty Cab Driver, they've got they've got some really callings, but
they've done kind of nothing with them. And like I know, Jeff Briggs
at Warner Brothers trying to to get them to release more. But the same
thing people also forget. If you don't support the releases, companies go oh,
there's no market for these films and won't release them. Yes, And
I think sometimes that is the issue that it's easy to sit there and go
blah blah. But I remember the days where you'd be like, Okay,
well, I've bought this version and it's all in Chinese. Oh, now
I'm going to have to buy this version because it's got English subtitles. Oh,
this one's got that like. And there are some films I have like
far too many copies off from far too many different places, just because I
mean, I'm an idiot and I'm like, I like the cover, I
like the thing, And bizarrely, I have about ten copies of Sore,
for which I'm still absolutely not sure how I keep getting. I don't know
why you have, but I think I think overall, I think we should
conclude that we should be very aware how how lucky we are to live in
age with Blu ray discs full like full fro. I mean, we don't
have like shit cut off the side. I always if you'd said to me
when I left England. Yeah, yeah that one day. Keanu Reeves,
the guy from Bill and Ted, is going to be known for doing a
kung fu movie. Sam O Hung is going to have a number one rated
TV show in America. Ye know that all these Hong Kong movies are going
to be available not only beautifully letterboxed, but with original audio subtitles. Special
things cuts, multiple cuts. You know, I'd never believe you, you
know, because those were the days when you're like I remember when you go
to Chinatown and the shops would refuse to sell you stuff because like, oh
no, no no. And I'd also give a shout out to like Darren
Wheeling and Kumfort Bob for the crazy of cover artwork. Yeah. Yeah,
it just helps breathe new life. I mean, I love the cover artists
on the original films. Some of them not that good, but some of
are really great. But it helps breathe new life in that and in the
labels. They don't have to pay for that, Okay, they do that
because they care, That's why. And it's the same thing like we've we've
touched on before and go about with marketing. Like the funny thing is,
like sometimes people complain about retitles or anything. Okay, if you took the
Shore Brothers movie Dirty ho still one of the greatest titles and greatest tagline you
haven't lived until you've fought dirty oh and then you're dead. But if you
went, I'm going to re release that, but I'm going to put it
back to its original Chinese wuhage title, which is the eighth Prince fans will
be up in arms because you weren't using the original title, and you sometimes
go, guys, oh yeah, a big one I want to do an
audio commentary for is Master the Flying Guillotine. That's if I if, I
if I have to do no other kung fu movie ever again, And you
go, what's the last kung fu movie ever? Do? Master the Flying
Guillotine's my favorite kung fu film? Men Taiwan, So like I love that
movie. Yeah, really good grig movie. But no, I mean said
it's And also it's it's great to revisit these movies. Yeah, it's great
to be able to revisit them with because even if we're not doing commentaries,
we're talking about movies movies. Yeah, and you know, and it's great
to get feedback from people. It's great to hear when people like them.
It's great to hear sometimes that you know, people have heard about movie from
something we've mentioned and then gonna, yeah on that movie, that's really good
message me and go, oh, you guys mentioned this movie and then I
went off and looked for that or you know, and that's the way it
should be. Like, it's really funny. So on Instagram. Literally on
my Instagram yesterday I posted the uh, what was I gonna say? Close
account the Dead and the Deadly the audio comedy for that, and someone under
that, Oh, that's one of your other audio comms. I'm gonna look
tracked on Troublesome Night twenty four hours ago story and like all these other films
that we mentioned, and he goes, yeah, people actually do listen and
write stuff down and they chase after it. So maybe one day they will
be in market for these things. Eve enough that will do that. And
I would like say, I would like like to think the guys at the
movie asle who my god, they not only listen to our commentaries, Yeah,
they like, holy shit, because I was listening, I was written
a review, talked about half of this. Yeah, we gotta say we've
done kind of like some of the people interview, We've so many these audio
calms and these people some people ask us the right stuff that we said,
we go did we say that? Like, because we sometimes do two or
three audio comms in like, you know, a week or something like that.
So sometimes we're just like, what's the most audio comms we've done in
one week? Is it four or no, or I think we did.
I think we did four one week. Yeah, yeah, I think we
four in one week. That's the most we ever did. So as much
as we like each other's company, sometimes we're like, no, that's enough.
Yeah, well, if you're watching, like their company and go listen
to some of their audio commentaries and interviews because they're magical. And again that
shooting the ship, sitting down on the couch, hanging out with these guys,
best way to learn the context. And uh, it's hard to use
the word educational because it turns some people off, but genuinely, it's just
to learn. There's so much cinema out there to learn, you guys.
And the same thing. I listen to audio commentaries I've learned, so it's
like it's it's like it's it's another form of learning. It's another form of
game, more information about these movies. Yeah, it's film appreciation, is
what it is. And it's hang out and hang out and just like showing
your love for cinema, you know, and if it gets who knows,
the ultimate thing for us I think would be well for me, I'm maybe
Michael will say the same thing is one day someone watched these things and they
themselves ended up making movies, and they go, oh, I got into
these kind of movies because these guys were talking about that for me would be
like the ultimate No exactly, and that's the thing. And it's you know,
like I sometimes same thing as I content why people are reluctant to admit
that, Oh I was introduced to this movie like this, I was intoed
that. Like, I didn't grow up as a fan of Kung Flu movies.
I hated Kung Fu movies. And then I bunked off school with my
friends and we watched a double bill of Snake and Eagle Shadow and Drunken Master,
and that made me a fan. I was likely, shit, I'm
gonna watch these movies. Yeah, the same way, I was never a
fan of Bruce Lee because the uk edits and Bruce Lee I saw were really
bad ADVI edited. It was only when I was in Hong Kong we were
talking about it and Samo Hung heard me say that I didn't like Bruce Lee
movies, and the next day I was given the privilege of sitting in Samo's
office with him showing me Bruce Lee movies and telling me why Bruce Lee had
changed the world and changed cinema and I was like, this is genius,
this is fantastic, and you go, is that there's so much you can
learn and there's so much you can share, and yeah, it's it's just
great. It's it's it's a privilege to be able to do them. It's
great fun doing them and just keep the culture alive. Man by doing it.
That's a privilege, like keeps the interest in buying allows it to keep
going too. Yeah, yeah, exactly so. And these companies are paying
to do things and restore them and everything else. And the funding in right
now in Hong Kong are the interests in Hong Kong is not there for that.
So companies in America and the UK and Germany where else, France,
you know, they're the way I mean in com to try and get a
company to put on a on a film is almost impossible. That like if
we've shut okay, we'll maybe slipping on there. Yeah, yeah, you
talked about what we're gonna do interviews, We're gonn do what you're coming to
you right, They're like why, yeah, why why would you a weird
thing? It's a weird Yes, being appreciative of what we have is one
of the best ways that we get in this So thank you guys for all
your time, thank you for your work. I hope you'll come back.
Thank you. We'll talk about. Have a good one. Bye bye,
tell me you know