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Philip Kwok Choy

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Local stuntmen have become victims of the slump in the Hong Kong film industry. While some, like Yuen, are becoming famous for their work in Hollywood, their work in HK has all but vanished - ironically, partly because of the success of the same Hollywood blockbusters, and partly because of the thriving trade in pirated VCDs. In 1992, the box-office income for locally made films was three times that of international movies; by 1997, the two were sharing the receipts 50:50. Worse, income had dropped from HK$1.2 billion to $540 million.

As a result, Hong Kong film makers have had to cut costs. "The film business can no longer support as big a group of stuntmen as it could before," says former stuntman turned TVB stunt director Philip Kwok Choy/Kwok Chun-Fung. "The old stuntmen are sitting by the phone waiting for work; the young ones are also sitting by the phone waiting for work. No one cares much about action anymore. It's whether you manage to find idols to fill the lead roles that matters. They can't cut the actors' shares, to they hire cheaper stuntmen to do inferior stunts."

"In the past most films hired a full team of stuntmen, led by a stunt director and two assistant directors. Some big productions even used as many as fifty stuntmen. Now studio executives hire just one stuntman for a film and 'promote' him to stunt director," he says.

Kwok was a protege of Shaw Studios director Chang Cheh, who brought the young stuntmen to Hong Kong from his native Taiwan in 1976. It was the heyday of Hong Kong action films, followingthe success of Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon and kung fu hits by Chang and another Shaw director, Cheng Chang-Ho. One of the most prolific directors in Chinese film history, with more than eighty films to his credit, Chang found young martial artists and shaped them into kung fu stars.

Like Jackie Chan, Kwok started learning acrobatics and martial arts as a child apprentice with a Peking opera troupe. He mastered his craft working with the older stuntmen, actors and assistant directors in Chang's stable - including Ti Lung (Chow Yun-Fat's co-star in A Better Tomorrow) And John Woo, now best known for directing action movies like Mission: Impossible 2. He played the lead in twenty-five of Chang's films, such as the 1978 hit Five Deadly Venoms and 1979's Daredevils Of Kung Fu.

Kwok still makes the occasional film : he was the villain in Woo's Hard Boiled, and he designed the stunts and acted as Michelle Yeoh's choreographer in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Last year, he worked on the fight scens for Christophe Gans, Le Pacte Des Loups/Brotherhood Of The Wolf, notably, none was a local production.

The forty-nine years old is waiting for an opportunity to move to the United States. "It's a saturated genre here, but it has just begun and is taking off slowly in America." he says. "We work in very different ways. The way they waste so much time and money on a simple shot that could've been done in twenty minutes and cost nothing annoys me sometimes. But they allow you enough time to design the scenes and train the actors. The money is good, too." In the meantime, Kwok has been directing stunts, TVB serials and television films, before being reunited with Michelle Yeoh as action choreographer on The Touch.

TVB retained the stunt teams when Sir Run Run Shaw closed the movie studio to concentrate on television production in 1985. "These days," Kwok says, "It's the only place where new stunmen are trained on a regular basis (about ten a year but few stay in the business for more than twelve months) and from which older stuntmen can secure stable income."

Written on April 14th 2002

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