For me it was a place filled with curiosity. When I was a kid, sometimes my father would ask my mom to go there to dance, but I was never allowed to go to Chungking Mansions. There was a nightclub there and my father worked there. But in those days, I based it off Chungking Mansions in the 1960s. They said, ‘You’ve made a film called Chungking Express, but you’ve never been here,’ so I went there and realized it looks quite close to Hong Kong. I just went there a few months ago, actually. “I called this film Chungking Express but I’d never been to the actual city of Chungking. We shot without permits, we were always hassled by the police, but it was a very smooth process, and we finished in six weeks.” They were basically travelers who came to Hong Kong, and we asked them, ‘Do you want to be in a film?’ They said, ‘Of course.’ It truly takes a lot of luck. It’s always moving, and she’s always standing there with a bunch of amateur players. Also, this is the first time someone like Brigitte Lin, who is something like the diva of Hong Kong cinema-this is the first time someone like her worked with a camera that never stands still.
“We had a very limited budget and limited time. Doyle, is this your apartment?’ ‘Well yes, do you want to come in to take a look, etc?’ So, he got many girlfriends out of it.” Every night he told me, whenever he went back to his apartment, there’s always a few fans there, who say, ‘Ah are you Mr. “After Chungking Express, there’s many film fans, especially girls, from Japan-they all came from Japan. “You know, though, he got rewarded at the end,” Wong joked. Funnily, he’s actually holding the camera and shooting when we flooded his very apartment. And I thought, ‘This is a good idea.’ I told Chris, ‘Your apartment is the best place for this story.’ So we took it over, and of course we made a mess out of it. At the time it had an escalator, and our director of photography, Christopher Doyle, lived just next to this elevator. “I shot in the central area also for some day shots. When the Beatles came to Hong Kong, they had their press conference there. It had one of the best ones in Hong Kong called Bayside. I never went out as a kid, though the area is a place for entertainment, for late nights, and Chungking Mansions was the place for nightclubs. Some people say the film is about this or that character, but I say, ‘No, this film is about Hong Kong, it is my love letter to Hong Kong.’ This is the area that I know. To me Chungking Express, it’s like the night and day of Hong Kong.
I know this area so well, so I shot half the film there.
#Chungking express movie#
It used to be very different it was apartments for movie stars in the 1950s, but later on it became like guesthouses. It’s a huge mansion with hundreds of hostels, so people from different parts of the world, especially backpackers, go there.
For those of you who’ve never been to Hong Kong, next time you should go there, because I think it’s a landmark. Basically, we shot the whole film in just two locations, one in Chungking Mansions. Relatively, it was the shortest production time of all my films. Why? Well, we shot the film in six weeks. But for Chungking Express, it was the opposite. So, there is a lot happening during the production. “Certain films, the process is really difficult: the weather is not right, the cast is not right, the place is not right. Hawaii International Film Festival’s longtime director of programming, Anderson Le, affably overcame some introductory ribbing by Wong (“Anderson, why do you ask me that question! It was 25 years ago, and after 25 years, it’s still that same question!” he jokingly responded to the first, somewhat innocuous query), and coaxed out some remarkable storytelling and reminiscences from the director. The night before my interview with him, Wong Kar-wai addressed a sold-out crowd assembled for a screening of one of his greatest films, 1994’s Chungking Express. In Directors, Festivals & Events, InterviewsĬhungking express, Hawaii International Film Festival, Wong Kar Wai
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