The HK movie industry has found in Bey Logan one of its best spokesperson! Bey Logan describes himself as a man of communication, an evangelist of HK action films. There is indeed no better definition of the lad.

Homepage - Introduction - Interview - Filmography - Part 2

Introduction

Enthusiastic, open-minded and keen to share his experiences with us, it was a real pleasure to meet and chat with him in Hong Kong. Bey Logan's peculiar status, a mixed of film industry professional and of HK movie aficionado, makes him an authority on the current HK cinema industry questions.

Born in England, Bey Logan has been fascinated by Hong Kong movies since childhood. He wrote his love for movies in British magazines 'Combat' and 'Impact' and in his book 'Hong Kong Action Cinema' (see our books of reference section). Logan is very famous too for his comprehensive and extremely interesting audio commentary tracks in the Hong Kong Legends DVDs. Martial arts trained, he reached HK for movie experiences in the mid nineties and has established himself there ever since. Bey first started in the HK cinema before the camera in various action flicks, mainly as a fighter (Circus kid, Ballistic Kiss, Legend Of The Wolf and Shanghai Affairs) and then went behind the camera in order to write and produce.

He worked at various film production companies such as Media Asia Group and Emperor Multimedia Group (EMG). He has recently founded his own production company, 'Shankara Productions'. Bey Logan still appears from time to times in films such as Dante Lam's Twin Effect and Wong Kar Wai's 2046.

Interview

HK Cinemagic : Can you tell us about your first experience in scriptwriting for the movie Tiger Storm, and your relation with Mark Houghton?
Bey Logan : I was living in England at the time, writing for a magazine called Impact. At that time, a gentleman Mark Houghton, he was my friend, my kung fu instructor and my partner in a small company called BeyMark. He had a good friend in Hong Kong, Eddie Maher, they were gonna do a film together and needed somebody to write the script and help produce the movie. We got Gary Daniels to star in the film. So I went to Milan to do film sales and start the film rolling. I came to Hong Kong to write the script, and it was a very difficult production, I don’t want to go into it blow by blow but I don’t necessarily think that Mark, who is a really good kung fu guy, and Eddy, who is a good businessman, were cut out to be film producers! And I think that’s proved by the fact that after Tiger Storm they haven’t produced any films since then! It was frustrating. I was suggesting this and that and they always said "No, we’ll do it our own way." And then they ran out of money, one third of the way through. I said that we should cut a trailer and go to the film markets and raise more money on Gary’s name, and finish the film.

And what happened is that an American came in, a very smart guy called Robert Vince, and he bought out the production. He cut a trailer, went to the film markets, sold the film, and, I think, he raised US$ 2.3million which was what you could get on Gary’s name a few years ago, on this kind of film. (Vince) made so much money he didn’t need to use any of (the Hong Kong) footage so he cut everything out from Hong Kong and he used my basic script to shoot the film in Canada. And I do think it’s one of Gary’s best film. Cary Tagawa was the bad guy and Julia Nickson-Soul the love interest.

So we can no longer say it’s a HK movie?
No. The title was even changed in White Tiger. At the end of the day, the only people who worked on the original and got their name on it were Gary as the star and me as the writer. It was funny what happened. I had my argument with Mark and Eddy, and I went off to China, in a huff!, to make (the film) Circus Kids with Donnie (Yen). And then after that, I was doing other business, but I was still trying to get involved in the (film) industry. I went to the American film market and when I was walking around I saw this poster for this movie which was still called Tiger Storm. I went in to see the guy (selling it) and I said, "You know, I wrote this movie and I never got paid" and he said "All right! Here’s your cheque!" So I was very glad I went! And I think I’m one of the only ones who got paid, with Gary, of course, but he, too, was an innocent party, so he deserved to get paid!

Unfortunately, that movie was the end of a great friendship. We had been like a band of brothers, with me, Winston Ellis, Mark, Eddie and a few other people. After that, we all took separate ways, for me it was down hill all the way, and all of them went on to greater glory, damn it!

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It seems like Mark Houghton had a bad reputation in the industry. I may be wrong as it’s difficult to gather information on this subject, but it’s what seems to appear from the few things I’ve found on the subject.
I’ve seen the good and the bad of him. The good: An incredible martial artist! I’ve never seen someone train with the intensity he trained with!

He was Liu Chia Liang's student, wasn't he?
Later. He had another instructor, I can’t remember his first instructor’s name. I think it was Ho Kam Wai. Sorry if that’s not right! Anyway, he had an instructor in Malaysia. Mark could really apply the Hung Gar. He really was the first to open my eyes to traditional kung fu, so I’m very grateful to him for that. And he was a good friend, a good and loyal friend. I think he was a very different person when he was teaching kung fu in England and when he was doing films in Hong Kong. I realise now he had an addictive personality. Whatever he did, he did it 100 %! And nothing would get in his way. So when he did kung fu, he did it 100 %, if he was womanizing he’d do it 100 %, if he was drinking he’d do it 100%... He didn’t have a half speed, wich made him very exciting to know, but it also meant that if you fell out with him you’d fall out 100 % as well! But I think it was how his character was. And I think those two things have both helped him and obstructed him, because he got the way he got (as a martial artist), by being 100% with everything.

Now, with my understanding of Kung Fu, I would say Hung Gar is not just hard, but soft as well. I think he was just too much of the hard. He didn’t have the softness. "Hard as iron, soft the silk". He had the hard as iron, but sometimes its better to just be soft the silk. I think I’m too much soft the silk and need to be more hard like iron! I’m learning the balance. So that was Mark, but I believe he’s still healthy. I see him in the street and say hello but he had a very bad period a few years ago.

I have heard about a diving accident...
Well, he tried to commit suicide... I was in Thailand making ‘The Medallion’, then called ‘Highbinders’, when that happened, and (the director) Gordon Chan told me at breakfast. I was very upset. I immediately tried to get a message through to Mark and I just said "Forget about any past trouble, and, if I can help when I come back to Hong Kong, please let me. Please don’t think of anything stupid again. Life is beautiful, let’s meet and maybe I can help, help for old friendship’s sake". I never heard any more. I know his character is very proud, so maybe he didn’t get the message or he got the message and... you know. From my side, I wish no harm to him whatsoever. But he’s just living his own life and I think he’s happy, which is good.

Let’s go back to the origin : how did you discover HK cinema and how did you get involved in it ?
When I first saw an HK film, I felt not a sense of "well, this is something new", but I found it strangely familiar, as if it was something just right for me.

Your first movie was a Bruce Lee movie...
I think so. You know what? My recollection is just being fascinated with the ‘Kung Fu’ TV series, Chinese martial arts, Asian culture, philosophy... Totally fascinated! And finding Bruce Lee was just like "Here is a guy who is encapsulating all the stuff I was interested in already", rather than finding Bruce Lee and then becoming interested in martial arts and Chinese culture. I was already into it from birth. It’s interesting, cause my Mom, see, I didn’t grew up with my birth mother, my birth mother, Cherie, lives in Australia and she was learning Karate from my step father, Tino Ceberano, who is the instructor of Richard Norton. So Richard is like my uncle or elder brother. I was living in England, growing up with my adopted parents, fascinated by martial arts and Asian culture and my (real) mom, who I had no contact with until years later, was living in an Asian culture and doing martial arts. So it was weird, as if, in some way, she was communicating with me: "Hey you’ll be into this stuff !". And I totally was. It’s strange thinking we were on these two parallel tracks in life.

So I was really into it when I discovered Bruce. And then Bruce Lee came and went and all my friends who had been into Bruce Lee or the Kung Fu TV series became more interested in other things, like skateboarding or BMX, things that were popular. And I stayed interested in martial arts and particularly in the potential of martial arts movies. And I saw loads after Bruce Lee, like Wang Yu, Carter Wong and Angela Mao. And then I was lucky enough to move in London and I went to watch these films at the HK Culture Centre on Gerard Street. I think they were re-runs and they were showing films like Drunken Master, Magnificent Butcher, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow... "Just what the hell is this? HK movies are really good again!". Cause those ones in the seventies, they had their moments, but they were pretty hokey. These were good films. They were unavailable on video for a long time, so you couldn’t show them to anybody. Then I started to get them on pirate tapes, they were all in Chinese with subtitles, but you showed the action scenes to people, and they were like "that’s pretty damn cool!"

And then there was a jump because it was kung fu movies and then you had Winners and Sinners, Project A and all these other films. And you said it’s not kung fu, they’ve got stunts and comedy and girls and everyone was like "yeah, yeah, yeah...". For what it's worth I was one of the very first beating the drum. Luckily, I had a magazine called Combat at that time so I was putting stuff in there to say "Hey, these films are really great!". I thought they were great, and I had this idea, since the very first time I became aware of HK cinema, to work for the industry. So it was like incremental steps: Writing about it in a magazine, writing a book about it, being an actor in the films, being a writer/producer... And still the journey continues.

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Did you find it difficult to adapt yourself to working conditions here in HK?
I think the hardest thing is the cultural difference. I think it’s a very good experience for a white man in the 21^st century to experience racism, especially for a writer. Cause most white people, they pay lip service to how terrible discrimination is, but they really have no idea. But I’ve definitely, in my time, been discriminated against and I really learned that you cannot... You know, Mark (Houghton) was very uptight about that, very confrontational, "Don’t you call me gweilo!". And you can’t change people like that. You change people by having a good heart and by doing good work. I call it ‘tolerance through talent’. If you are talented, they’ll be tolerant of you. I’ll give you an example. When I first came to work at Media Asia, we’d have lunch hour, and when they said "We’re all gonna have lunch", I’d say "I’ll come !", and they’d say "Oh...But we’re having Chinese food..." and I’d say "Oh, but I like Chinese food !" and they’d say "But we’re gonna speak Chinese" and I’d say "But I’m learning Cantonese !" and then they’d say "Oh, well, maybe next time…". So I’d go and have a sandwich by myself, and sulk!

And it was because I was a Westerner. If a black person was working in a company in England and the co workers said "Oh you can’t have lunch with us, because we’re going to have ‘white people’ food" or "because we’re going to be speaking in a white people accent", it would be considered outrageous, the idea that you would not include somebody on the basis of race! Even in the DVD or, rather, back then, video stores… They may have some Chinese films without subtitles and the woman at the door check out would be like "You know this is a Hong Kong movie, this is not subtitled, you’re sure you want it? You don’t want one of the American movies over there?" Imagine in America, a Chinese guy heading to a video store and someone saying "I’m sorry, sir, but you’re buying a Tom Cruise movie, I know you’re Chinese, so I think you should buy a Jackie Chan movie". It would be a scandal! But in Hong Kong, I feel that these kind of things happen a lot. Maybe we’re "fair game". The local Chinese have been discriminated against by the British for so long!

Do you think that if you were able to speak Cantonese fluently at that time, it would have made things easier ?
I do speak Cantonese now. Not completely but enough, around 80%. I don’t believe anyone who isn’t a native speaker who says they understand 100%! Language has nothing to do with it. It’s just that you are a Westerner and you always will be. But you’ll be tolerated and accepted, and you learn a lot about yourself through having these difficulties. And that’s the way. By being nice and warm to people. Some of the white guys over here, some people you’re writing about, have really thin skin. They became a little gang of westerners "Don’t mess with us we are the Westerners !" You know, with big muscles and everything. "Don’t call me gweilo or I’ll beat you up!" or whatever. You can make people scared of you, but that’s not how you change people. That’s why none of those guys ever really had careers, in the sense of a progression, rather than being at the whim of circumstance. None of the westerners you’re writing about ever really had positions in the industry, because they never developed the necessary relationships.

Roy Horan (formerly a producer at Seasonal Films) did, he’s a very good guy. I think it’s very interesting, so many people, including Roy and myself, come from the martial arts but I think you’re not a real martial artist unless you have as well, as the physical, a spiritual life. Which is something Mark never had, Winston Ellis never had, most of them never had... Roy has it; I hope I have it, too. Roy is in a very particular branch of yoga, not just the physical practice of yoga but the philosophical practice. And I’m a Buddhist. And I think people like us survive better in HK. It’s because you have a technology on how to deal with it. It’s like resolving something. "Oh why am I angry? Why am I angry?" Just get rid of it, you don’t have to be driven by it. That helps me a lot.

Do you feel any differences with Chinese people raised in the west?
Oh yeah ! We don’t have enough of them! When I came in the business, and to a certain extent even today, most of the people working in HK film industry are not even well educated by Hong Kong standards. They are stuntmen or people who rose up from doing other jobs. The industry wasn’t this sort of place where well-educated people went to work. Those people were good at kung fu or action or had a good talent for filmmaking. There are people there like John Woo, who is very sophisticated and very educated, self educated, but most are not: Jackie, Sammo, whoever. Over time, they became far more tolerant in understanding Western culture but you can understand when they first met western people they were like "what’s this shit?" They just never had this experience. It’s much like when Chinese people go into the west and put the shoe on the other foot. It’s probably much stronger in western society, the potential of racism toward foreigners, more than here, here it’s less. But it’s still there. And I’m glad I don’t get it so much anymore. But I really appreciate having had this experience. You grow through burning. It’s a very good experience.

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It is known that there are big differences between what you write and the final result on screen...
Yeah, tell me about that ! I’m not happy with any of those things I’ve done for different reasons and I’m still trying and trying...

Were there many differences in Ballistic Kiss ?
Oh... Huge! I’ll let you see the Ballistic Kiss script, huge! I mean film is a collaborative medium, I just don’t think any of the films I’ve done had more than about 40% of what I wanted in. And people on the Internet get very critical and I completely agree with them. You know, there are two responses. One is to give up and stop, or you just keep trying harder. Enough people have read my scripts and thought, "this guy has ability", in Media Asia, at EMG, in America and elsewhere. I still think there is potential here in Hong Kong so it’s just fine. I think the original script for Highbinders (The Medallion working Title) is good, The Medallion is still a good movie but not what I originally thought it would be. On Ballistic Kiss, Donnie shot the film he wanted to make. And there are movies like Gen Y Cops where it was really tough to do, but in the end is kind of a fun movie.

On Gen Y Cops you wrote the English dialogues, didn't you?
No, that was Gen X Cops. On Gen Y Cops I co wrote the script. The story was by the director and one of the scriptwriters, Felix Chong. He’s a very talented scriptwriter; he just won the award for Infernal Affairs. They already came up with a story, and then an American company came in to co -produce the film and asked that it be, at least, half in English. So I came in and started, basically, writing scenes for people like Maggie Q, Edison (Chen)... In the end, some of the stuff was mine, some stuff was not and I got the co writing credit on the American print. We had a big fight about it in HK. My argument was that the script is what people say and do in the scene and that film is like 70% in English, and of that 70%, all except for one scene, the one everybody cites, is written by me. The scene I didn’t write is the one on the docks, a really terrible scene where Edison and Richard (Suen) were kind of improvising and I had just started on the picture and I came in to try to help on the scene but it was so bad that you couldn’t do anything with it. And it was a tough shooting, in one night, to do all the guns and everything with the Jumbo (restaurant, a floating restaurant) in the background.

There’s one good scene that I wrote, and pretty much directed, which is the one in the hospital, the one that starts with the Steadicam shot. Its almost from a different movie, and I thought Paul (Rudd) and Maggie (Q) were very good in it. Paul was interviewed by The Face magazine in London, and they asked him what was his favourite line of dialogue from any of his movies, and he quoted "Roxanne Barr Arnold will be President of the United States before you two punks see the light of the day," which is from that scene.

You think it’s something which can be changed? Because the local film industry has always worked like that…
I hope so. I’m fighting for it. There’s two levels of filmmaking. You can still do films for the local market. It’s the easy way cause the local market it very tolerant. You can get films as good as Infernal Affairs or get films as poor as... You know, I don’t want to say, but like some local cheap movies, like some of the Wong Jing’s films. And they still make money cause it’s in Cantonese, there are local stars, people find it funny... It’s cheap and funny. They enjoy it, great! There should be that kind of filmmaking. It’s almost like the Roger Corman filmmaking or the Franchise kind of film, but you also need to do bigger films cause the overseas market is important. And I think that today the big films they have been doing (in Hong Kong), it’s like trying to build a Ferrari in a stock car garage. HK movies are like stock cars; an international movie is a Ferrari. A Hollywood action film is a Ferrari and is built in a different garage and what we’ve been trying to do is to build a Ferrari using the method of building a stock car. And you can’t do that! So you look at films in the last couple of years including The Medallion, The Touch, Extreme Challenge, Black Mask 2... All these films that are obviously shot in English, created to compete with American movies, but can’t really be compared to American standards.

Do you think the industry is ready to make such a deep change ?
I see it happening. People accepting that you have to have script development. You take an idea for film, develop it, develop it, develop it before production. One of our very very smart special effect guys on The Medallion, had a T-Shirt : "Fix it in pre". Don’t wait to fix it in post. Fix it in ‘pre’ means fixing while you’re filming, get ready before you start to shoot. You get the script ready, you get the cast ready, everything prepared, and you know what to do. You got a schedule, you stick to the schedule and you shoot the movie. That’s what they did on Infernal Affairs. That’s why Infernal Affairs works so well, to me that’s a big part of it. The story is so well told. Even when they brought an extraneous stuff: There is this Taiwanese singer, Elva Hsiao (Ya), and obviously they were going to shoot her scene in the Mandarin dialect, but they did it in an intelligent way so that little scene doesn’t mean anything, but they put it in there and it’s done in a smart way and is kept in the structure of the script. I really admire them for doing that film and I think it’s a good sign. When something succeeds people copy it.

How do you see Infernal Affairs, as a local or as an international production?
It’s an oddity. It’s a HK film produced using quite Western methods and it works very well. Infernal Affairs was produced in a more disciplined, Hollywood style and then (the remake rights were) sold to Brad Pitt in the biggest sale ever of a (Hong Kong) film. That tells people something! Now there is a sense that the industry is recovering and I’m glad to be part of it. I think I was right to do my best, to keep on, to bring whatever my talents are, to try to make the films better. I think there are two responses to people criticising you: Get all mad at them or keep trying to do better. My response to every criticism is to try and do better.

You know there are a lot of people on the Internet who are criticising me, and kind of creating stuff. I imagine many of them living in their parent’s basement, living a pretty horrible life, no girlfriend, maybe... I think some of them are just plain jealous! "Bey’s living in HK, Bey’s friends with Jackie and Donnie, hanging out with Maggie Q, dating actresses and models…". A great life! On Medallion I was paid to live in Thailand for weeks on end... They all want to live my life. "You come and live my life and I will live yours." They’ll all be over here in a moment! I think sometimes the journey is better than the destination. I think the films I have done are not that good, but that the journey of my life has been fantastic, and I always did the best I could.

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It seems like you entered the industry at the right ime. I’m not sure people would have been ready to change in the 80s and the industry would have been so opened to westerners.
There were a couple of guys behind the cameras during the 80s : Andre Morgan at Golden Harvest and Roy (Horan at Seasonal). I actually don’t think I came at the right moment. I think it was a lot more fun living in HK in the 80s. The weird thing is, now, as I get into my middle years, I have actually started acting again, which I didn’t think was going to happen. I played about 8 vampires in Twins Effect, which I also produced. I was always there so Donnie would say "Hey, Bey, put on a costume because we need another vampire!", and I’d be "Again?". And I did a day on the new Wong Jing film Colour Of The Truth playing a chess champion, and I’m in Internal Affairs 2 as a police commander, and I shot a scene for Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, and Dante (Lam) asked me about coming in to play a part in Hit Team 2. So it’s like my late life resurgence as a character actor. That’s Hong Kong for you!

Do you hope to become a director one day?
I’d like to direct at least one film, if only because I’ve done just about every other job in this business! I have directed documentary material, and pieces of films. I just need to find the right project.

It would make you the first western director in HK.
That’s right! I’d never thought of that. That’s another good reason to do it! I wish more (western) people came over here to work, but, unfortunately, to date, most of the people who have wanted to do it are genuinely not qualified. They’re just fans, they don’t have the professional sense of how films are made or working professionally, the discipline involved. Or else they’re professional, but they look over here and see it’s difficult, the money, and the lack of respect… They don’t feel confortable and prefer to work in Hollywood, England or Australia. It’s unusual to work here. I know, because I had to make the transition from being a kind of fan to being a professional. And Media Asia was a good learning camp. Boot camp, sometimes!

Do you plan to keep working in action cinema or would you like to try other genres like comedy or drama?
I’d love to do other films, but no one’s ever offered me other films than action, thinking that’s the only thing people like me are interested in. I’ve written a comedy called What You Wish For with Maggie Q and had planned to produce and direct that. We’ve been developing it for a while now, and everything got delayed a bit with business stuff, and later problems with the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)... She just came back from Thailand where she was filming Around the World in 80 Days with Jackie and we’ll be talking about it again. No action, just romance and funny stuff. It’s about a super model being stalked by one of her fans, the fan is played by Sam Lee. It will be half in Chinese, half in English, a lot of fun.

Does Maggie speak Cantonese?
She does, but not like a native. She speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese.

Usually the local audience don’t like when the main lead doesn’t know how to speak the language, like with Michael Wong.
I know. Michael Wong managed to get away with it for a long time cause all the films were dubbed. Then when they suddenly sync sound, it was like the end of the silent years of Hollywood. Before that, you could become a leading player even if you had (Bey Logan impersonates Michael Wong’s voice) an annoying voice. So he got in a lot of B and C movies. But in Maggie’s case she’s smart, she’s turned down a lot of stuff and she still has a very good fan basis, so I think what’ll happen (with the film) is that it’ll be like a next step for her. We’ll have her speak in a little Chinese and a lot of English and Sam will speak a lot of Chinese and a little English, which should be funny in and of itself. Ask me again about it in a year!

Wish you good luck for this project !
Thank you!

Part 2 >>>

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Fierce gweilo fighter, Bey Logan posing for a comedy picture.
Picture kindly provided by Bey Logan, (c) Wayne Starr

 

 

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