In recent years, the Chinese film industry has grown in leaps and bounds, with domestic movies drawing millions of local cinemagoers. But is it just another Chinese paradox that a record high box office should come from an unprecedentedly bad film? Are Chinese audiences so generous that they are willing to pay for whatever is offered?
Things were different in the 1990s, the golden age of the fifth generation of Chinese filmmakers, which included big names like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. Internationally acclaimed films like Chen's Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Zhang's To Live (1994) are still regarded as unsurpassable miracles, "the best Chinese films ever made," according to many cinephiles. But few people realize that behind the memorable masterpieces was the same scriptwriter, Lu Wei, until the book The Secret of Screenwriting came out last month.
The book is structured around a series of conversations between Lu and Wang Tianbing, a close friend and scholar. After the book was released with great fanfare in Beijing, Lu and Wang last week attended a comparatively low key event to publicize the book in Shanghai.
A young book thief
Born in the 1950s in Shanxi Province, Lu suffered from a hunger for knowledge during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). "I only finished two years of junior high school," Lu said.
But Lu kept his curiosity for everything and found his own solution, which was to steal from libraries, a crime he was once jailed for. His pilfering was so prolific that a military truck had to be used to transport his stolen books. Lu was so proud of his haul that he later boasted to friends that only he was qualified to be "a real book thief."
Among the books he read were Russian novels by Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and English philosophy by Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. "The Problems of Philosophy by Russell gave me a different worldview. It freed me from the so-called 'absolute truth,' which had trapped a whole generation," Lu said.
"The entire Cultural Revolution was just like a giant Ward No. 6 described by Chekhov, where people with normal feelings and minds were persecuted," he added.
Lu first worked as an art designer at Xi'an Film Factory. His first movie, Desperation (1989), was the result of a bet he made with a director that he could write a better script than the original. Chen Kaige loved Lu's dialogue and asked him to write a film about Peking Opera. The rest is history.
Secrets and unrealized ambitions
Lu believes the biggest problem plaguing Chinese cinema today is that directors under-appreciate the importance of genre and so don't know what kind of film they want to make. Too many elements are jumbled up in one movie, resulting in an incoherent mess. In Lu's opinion, the directors of the fifth generation have been blinded by their success in the 90s, and now produce ambitious but over-the-top, commercially driven movies like Zhang's Hero (2002) and Chen's The Promise (2005).
Lu recalls that he was asked by John Woo to write the script for Red Cliff (2008), a Chinese war epic based on historical events. "I asked him what was the theme of the film and his answer was peace. I was shocked! The story has everything except peace," Lu said. Woo ended up filming his own screenplay, but Lu's version is reproduced in the book, serving as an example for readers to make a comparison with Woo's final film.
However, sticking to a genre and respecting the basic rules of storytelling is easier said than done. To write a script, which typically runs from 25,000 to 50,000 words, requires considerable effort, since a good story is always more than a story. A writer must do extensive research to understand a story's historical and cultural background, and must dig deep into the soul of the characters. Wang noted that "Lu Wei wrote five pages to analyze Chen Dieyi," the main character in Farewell My Concubine.
"I write slowly. I'd be happy if I can finish one script in one year. But ordinary scriptwriters would starve to death if they worked this way," Lu said, sadly.
It must have made Lu sad that only half of the scripts he has written - 22 so far - were finally made into films, though he can take comfort in knowing that most were well received.
Memory and dreams about Shanghai
The Secret of Screenwriting has spawned heated discussions in Beijing's cultural circle. People read with a certain schadenfreude criticisms made by the top screenwriter in China aimed at the country's most famous directors who make commercial hits yet keep disappointing audiences.
"We need to hold another release event, this time in Shanghai, the city where modern Chinese films were born," Wang said.
"I love Crow and Sparrow (1949) so much! It was as good as the Italian neorealist masterpieces at the time. It is a pity that we cannot produce films that good nowadays. Nor is there another film that can capture the spirit of Shanghai so well," Lu said. His dream to depict Shanghai legends such as Du Yuesheng (the Shanghai tycoon) and Zhao Dan ("the Emperor of Actors") is also yet to be realized.