2013
In January, I ordered a series of Hong Kong film books and magazines so travelling would have no tedium. The idea was to read books when I’m travelling to sign a contract or doing a publicity tour. Also, I wanted to find information regarding the origin of the Mrs. Wong character in Sixty Million Dollar Man. I found the answer in At Full Speed: Cinema in a Borderless World and At the Hong Kong Movies: 600 Reviews From 1988 to the Takeover. She wasn’t Wong Jing’s mother or grandmother; she was a character in a detergent commercial. I purchased the last book because Paul Fonoroff complimented Wong Jing’s High Risk (in an online interview for Hong Kong Cinemagic) by saying that only he could have the guts and the audacity to take on one of Hong Kong’s biggest icons, and to do so with such viciousness and such humour.
Wong Jing’s belief in trends got me thinking about Fifty Shades of Grey. He believes that most people will only watch movies which their friends watch because they will have more to talk about and they will be liked as a result. The success of Fifty Shades of Grey is more to do with hype than quality. I learned that some things only become popular when they are advertised as being trendy. You have to bear in mind that the novel was primarily successful due to working-class people who are not well-versed in literature. It’s like Family Guy being more popular than American Dad! because it caters to working-class people by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Unlike Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, my novel sequels weren’t contrived. Even though it would later be divided into three novels, the protagonist’s story was always going to end before she was 33. When I started writing it in 2010, I realized that I might be asked to sign a three book contract instead of a three novel one. In that scenario, the second book would have been a biography about Wong Jing and the third book would have been my autobiography. It was serendipity when his book was released in 2011. I wasn’t even expecting it. It felt like the stars were aligning. As for my novel, writing a post-marriage novel would be like Exorcist II: The Heretic, Grease 2 and Airplane II: The Sequel.
In February of 2013, I ordered a novel that I used to describe my own despite not having read it - American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I saw the film in 2002. To write off the constant comparisons between two directors, I ordered the memoirs of Roger Corman (all-round filmmaker) and Wong Jing (this was my way of paying respect to someone who gave me guidance). Because I knew that I would eventually write my own memoir, I researched the genre to avoid pitfalls (especially reading reviews on Amazon).
Leonard Nimoy’s I Am Spock and I Am Not Spock could’ve been written differently. The latter should have been the title of Leonard’s first autobiography because it would be a way for him to prove there’s more to him than that Star Trek character. In reality, his first autobiography was published after the original TV series was cancelled and before the first Star Trek movie. On the other hand, I Am Spock should have been the title of a book whose sole purpose is to explore the entire history of him playing that character.
Similarly, the autobiography of Mötley Crüe would have been better if it was just about the band. That way, the individual autobiographies can focus on their lives outside of Mötley Crüe. As for Guns ’n’ Roses, I hoped that the 30th anniversary (2017) of Appetite for Destruction would encourage Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin to publish autobiographies. Because I’m a huge fan of Cheers and Frasier, I bookmarked Kelsey Grammer’s autobiography and George Wendt’s autobiographical beer guide. Lastly, I ordered a 1993 issue (May 14) of Entertainment Weekly which focused on Cheers because it had just finished. It actually had higher ratings than Seinfeld at the time.
In August of 2013, I ordered the 1999 edition of Jackie Chan’s first autobiography (I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action) because it had an extra chapter which explained what happened after the success of Rush Hour. It was worth reading because it disclosed the past of his father (who was a spy) and explained why Shanghai Noon was predated by a Jet Li movie which was produced by Once Upon a Time in China and America. The director of the latter was depicted by Jackie as a rogue with a heart of gold, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that he was a lovable rogue. He’s not exactly Santa Claus.
Watching Cheers on CBS Drama was agonizing because it was sponsored by a book of the month - none of which were as distinguished as my novel. Not so coincidentally, Fifty Shades of Grey was written by a TV producer. Just imagine how many strings that the novelist was able to pull. Watching Cheers on ITV 4 taught me how you can advertise an obscure movie within the context of a TV series. The Seven Samurai was referenced in Diane’s Allergy (1984) and Diane Chambers Day (1986). This may have influenced televisual scheduling of the classic Japanese film which inspired The Magnificent Seven. For example, Channel 4 had aired the film in the early `90s around about the same time when they were airing Cheers.
As for advertising books, there was a March 1988 episode of Cheers where Rebecca was reading Armand Hammer’s memoir. It was published on May 1, 1987. There was already a March episode where Cliff compares Sam to Hammer. Of course, advertising books can be done in a way which is artistically relevant. For example, The Greatest Adventure in the History of Cable (a 2008 episode of Psych) showed Shawn picking up Just Revenge (a novel by Alan Dershowitz) in his single dad’s trashed living room. There is a 1988 Magnum P.I. episode (A Girl Named Sue) which features a library containing some titles which were unavoidable to look at thanks to the director - From Cliche to Archetype, Radix, Black Money (the Ross MacDonald one) and Intrigue (a quadrilogy of spy stories by Eric Ambler which has an unexpected introduction by Alfred Hitchcock).
The good thing about staying at home to watch TV shows now and then is that I was watching shows which I never got the chance to watch from beginning to end or see at all e.g. MacGyver - a series that I thought was created for The Simpsons à la The Itchy & Scratchy Show. I learned that MacGyver was a real TV series in 2001 when I had read a film review of Tsui Hark’s Double Team on a website called Hong Kong Film Net.
