Director Renny Harlin on Why He Left Hollywood for China
BY YOMYOMF STAFF 09/05/2016
(DIRECTV / GETTY IMAGE)
SKIPTRACE, the new Chinese movie starring the oddball pairing of martial arts legend Jackie Chan and *******’ Johnny Knoxville, opens in limited release and on VOD this week. The film’s director, Renny Harlin, was one of Hollywood’s most successful action directors in the late 1980s and 1990s when he gave the world films like DIE HARD 2, CLIFFHANGER, DEEP BLUE SEA and, yes, even THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE.
But now, Harlin has been living and working in Beijing for the past few years where he says he has greater “creative freedom” and talked to Uproxx about his new film and what it’s like making films in China. Here are some highlight from his interview:
THE ORIGINS OF SKIPTRACE
This movie started 15 years ago. Jackie’s idea. Jackie had this dream of making a movie that he called his love letter to China. He wanted to show the Chinese audience and the international audience that China is not exactly what you expect and not the traditional stuff that people think China is. Certainly that it’s versatile and different. That’s how it started and then when I came on board as an outsider from America I said, “Okay with all these places and locations how we can tell the story.” It was never dictated by the producers or the financiers but it was really Jackie and me. Jackie educating me about China and me as an outsider saying what I thought that would be cool for an international audience to see.
ON JACKIE CHAN STILL DOING HIS OWN STUNTS AT AGE 62
It’s a balancing act because he will do anything and he comes up with the craziest ideas. I have to make sure that, because when Jackie was doing his Hong Kong movies a couple of decades ago or 30 years ago, they could do anything. And if you break your leg or arm or something, then you just take a couple of months off, then you come back and keep shooting. It was the Wild, Wild East. Now when we are making a Hollywood-meets-China kind of a movie, you have a budget and you have a schedule and you have to stick to it.
I had to do everything I could to keep him safe. He still got banged up and hurt himself a few times doing the shooting but, when you’re getting older you’re not quite as flexible and able as you were when you were young. I had to run that balance of how we get the audience filled with most of Jackie Chan stuff, but don’t put him in situations where he’s going to get hurt. He’ll do anything, so it was up to me trying to hold him back.
ON THE DRAWBACKS OF MAKING A FILM IN CHINA
Everybody in Hollywood, they want to come to China, they want to get the money that is here and throw around these ideas of co-productions and let’s work together and let’s make Chinese movies that appeal to the Western audiences, and let’s make Hollywood movies that appeal to the Chinese audience. Let’s put American movie stars in Chinese movies and let’s put Chinese actors in Hollywood movies. But it’s easier said than done.
I think that there’s going to be a lot of disappointment where it doesn’t work, because Hollywood doesn’t understand the Chinese culture. Chinese financiers and producers, both of those want to make Chinese movies that would appeal to the Western audience but there’s still a long way to go and lot of lessons to be leaned. I would say I’ve now lived in China for two and half years. I’m really immersing myself in this culture and understanding, trying to understand how it works and how this culture is good benefit for me and working together. But it has to be a natural fit.
You can’t just take a Hollywood script and change the name to Chinese guy and say okay great now we have a great Chinese movie. You have to really understand how you can integrate these elements and make them work in an organic way. That’s the biggest challenge and I think it’s going to take some time for that to work out.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by GeneChing
