Barometer
Before Stephen Chow, there was Michael Hui. In 2020, the Hong Kong International Film Festival published a book about him that contains his greatest interview. Like the Sandra Ng book, it’s only available in Chinese. Ever since he was a boy, Michael could speak English (and he even taught it) but he was never properly utilized in an English language film. The Golden Harvest film company should have done more with him after failing to turn Jackie Chan into an American film star. In an early part of the HKIFF book interview, Michael Hui said: “When I first came to Hong Kong, my father told me that the most important thing in Hong Kong was making money. The most important way to make money in Hong Kong is to understand English. When I was in Primary 5 and Primary 6, I found that I couldn’t speak English well. There were no foreigners at home to practice with me, so I had an idea: chat with myself in English. Gradually, I learned to think in English. Until now, I think in English and it has become a subconscious thing.”
What he has to say about the importance of education: “Although I was admitted to the Chinese University, my scores were not high and I didn’t know what sociology was at the time, but they were willing to admit me. I was majoring in sociology and minoring in psychology. Only later did I realize that sociology is very great. Whether it is life or making movies, sociology is of great help. Simply put, it’s psychology about a person’s reaction. The interaction between two or more people is sociology. Human beings are unconsciously affected by many laws and follow the laws unconsciously. Everyone does things based on the values they think are correct, and those values are learned by us and given by others. Once you have these values, you cannot change them even if you know they are incorrect. After understanding this, how do you view people?”
Here is a Hong Kong comedian who can get away with social commentary: “It turns out that marriage is not for love, it is just a system. If a man and a woman get together and give birth to a child without caring about it, who will raise the next generation? How can society survive? Only with the marriage system and everyone signing a contract can humankind continue. If we continue to ask this question, in fact, filial piety is not something we are born with. It’s just that humans in the past had no one to protect them when they got older, so they had the idea of filial piety, asking young people to take care of themselves and for the sake of social peace. The headhunters will think that the more heads they chop off outside, the better they will be. So what is right or wrong? Looking at things this way will make you more objective. Movies require people to use their money to buy my or other people’s tickets. So how can I make them buy my ticket? The main premise of film design is sociology.”
The prospect of working on Enjoy Yourself Tonight at the TVB network: “Over time, they found my opinions useful and asked me to write jokes for them to perform. Sometimes I think of something that I think is funny, so I write it into a short joke and hand it in. Enjoy Yourself Tonight has three directors, and they all think that what I wrote is relatively fresh, because the previous ones were all in the style of old-time Cantonese films. I was influenced by British and American TV and movies. At that time, you could watch a lot of them on TV, and you started to see Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. In the early days of British and American TV specials, there were many jokes, singers came out to perform, and many sketches were added. At that time, I started to watch a lot of these things. So I started to understand and get used to British and American humor, especially British, because La Salle College is very British.”
The universal nature of film: “Many people like to sing English songs. Sam Hui also sings English songs. If you have a story that you want to impress others with and a thought that you want to convey to others, why should it be limited to a small place? In short, everyone on the planet should understand that movies are about human relationships and should be understood by everyone. For example, there was a South African director who filmed an African native walking around with a Coke bottle. The movie was a hit even in Hong Kong. This is how movies should be made. Need a star? No. Does it require a lot of skills and money? No. What matters is the idea. If a movie has no idea, it has to sell stars, production, and other fancy things. That just means there is no confidence.”
The science of comedy: “Every time there is action, storyboards are required. My storyboards are different from common ones. I also have to calculate when people laugh and where the laughter will come from. Comedy is all about rhythm. The screenwriter has written a joke that is almost funny, but if the actor performs it stiffly and the timing is wrong, it will not work. Even if the actor has performed well and has calculated the rhythm of his speech, it would be terrible if the director doesn’t know how to shoot. When he should show his eyes, he jumps to the top shot without seeing his expression. You have to cooperate, otherwise the effect will not be achieved.”
His motive: “Why do I like to make comedies? Because I like to satirize the world. Many things can only be laughed at because we cannot solve the real problem. As human beings, there are three questions that we cannot answer: Where do we come from? Where do we go after we die? What is the meaning of our decades of living in this world? No one can answer these three most important questions. Decades have passed, and the only thing that makes me happy is laughter and a sense of humor. So I spent my life doing comedy. What Hong Kong needs most now is to regain its due sense of humor. So the next movie, if directed by myself, will still be a comedy.”
