Hollywood Stunt Union Politics
On Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie, he had hired a Hong Kong stunt coordinator due to his exemplary expertise in wirework. The Chinese man, Tony Ching Siu-Tung, didn’t receive any credit but it became common knowledge on Chinese sites. Tony is the most magnificent maestro when it comes to literally handling wires. He is so marvellous, he should have been hired on more Marvel movies. He was the first choice as fight choreographer for The Matrix. Second to him was Corey Yuen, who rejected the Wachowskis for the same reason - the idea of having to do a job interview was seen as belittling, not to mention the notion of essentially doing screen tests as an audition process.
Coincidentally, Corey’s second-best status was what landed him the job of second unit director on the first X-Men movie. Unfortunately, his fight scenes were butchered in the editing room because the director (i.e. Bryan Singer) was self-conscious about being as influenced by The Matrix, an influence which was already there when the decision was made to have the heroes dressed in black instead of their trademark colours. Earlier this year, Hugh Jackman revealed in an interview with Steve Weintraub for Collider that, a week before its release, X-Men was 47 minutes longer. While the majority of the bulk was not fight action, it does explain something that I had read a long time ago on a Usenet forum about Asian movies: “Yuen was interviewed in some magazine articles I skimmed. He developed the fighting styles for each character.”
Herein lies the kicker - the success of The Matrix was primarily because of a legal loophole that allowed Yuen Woo-Ping to work outside the U.S. stunt union since the movie was filmed in Australia. Corey Yuen was already a part of the union thanks to his work on Lethal Weapon 4, but Tony Ching wasn’t a member of the union. Hollywood is strict about who should be dangling actors on ropes. This is why Tony miserably missed out on being known in the mainstream as the puppet master behind Spider-Man. Sam knew that the movie would be unfathomable without his involvement, so Tony could only be hired as a consultant - someone who could tell the director how to achieve the impossible. It’s because of carefully navigating the legal minefield of the Hollywood studio system that Tony has been tactful with varying degrees of success when faced with reporters on the two sides of the East and West equator.
In a 2007 issue (#55) of Asian Cult Cinema, Tony claimed that Sam wanted him to reshoot scenes. Tony skirted around the issue by saying that he wasn’t able to work on the movie because of 9/11, but he undermined his argument by going on to say that you need to earn Hollywood’s trust before you start work on a big movie. In the eyes of Westerners who follow the Asian movie scene, he was exposed by a Chinese news site (Monkey Peaches) who were proud to report in a March 7, 2002 news item that he had just left America after working on Spider-Man for over a month. There wasn’t much time between when he finished and when the movie was due to be released in cinemas (early May). Raimi must have been in dire straits. Tony began working on it after Hero was wrapped up in late January. Later on, a Chinese reporter began his interview with Tony by describing how Tony had just stepped off the plane having previously been in America to work on Spider-Man. When I did a Chinese Google search, I found an interview where Tony chose to not confirm nor deny after a interviewer was shrewd enough to reference it in passing as a prelude to a question: “You have worked on Hollywood movies like Spider-Man…”
In all fairness to Tony Ching, he may have a point about being modest in order to secure work. Yuen Woo-Ping was humble when talking to a Western interviewer about his own contributions to The Matrix. He claimed that there wasn’t much for him to do due to the storyboarding process. He was pretty much forced to say this since the Wachowskis tried to reinsert themselves into the creative process by claiming that they were responsible for most of the camera angles, as mentioned in the May 1999 issue of Cinefantastique). However, Yuen told a different story when he was interviewed for a H.K. book called A Tribute to Action Choreographers. In a long speech, he let it be known that he was the boss. No matter how much the Wachowskis talked a good game and tried to put on a show for the production featurettes, even they weren’t as prophetic as Morpheus to predict that a cast member like Carrie Anne-Moss would come along to politely burst their bubble by passive-aggressively saying that Yuen’s experience as a film director was too extensive and wonderful for himself to be sitting on the side-lines. You can read their quotes in my 2005 article called Hollywood 2.0 (over at my Pop Cult Master blog).
I wouldn’t put it past Sam Raimi to have found a loophole during the making of Spider-Man since it was precisely because of the U.S. stunt regulations that John Woo wasn’t allowed to hire a H.K. stunt coordinator, Philip Kwok, to work on Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Hard Target (Raimi was one of the producers). Philip had previously worked on John Woo’s Hard-Boiled, which was well known for having key parts reassembled for Hard Target. As such, we may have missed out on some stellar martial arts action; especially in light of the fact that Philip had just seen some of his best work being reshot by a jealous Stanley Tong during the making of Jackie Chan’s Police Story III: Super Cop. Working with Philip would have reminded JCVD about working with Corey on No Retreat, No Surrender. Therefore, we might have seen more instances of H.K. fight directors heading West.
Dion Lam, who worked as a wire handler on The Matrix, had legally gained Hollywood’s trust by the time that Sam hired him to work as Tony’s replacement on Spider-Man 2. He was credited as second unit director for good reason since he already passed the test by working on a U.S. TV series (Sammo Hung’s Martial Law) and a U.S. film on home turf i.e. Steven Seagal’s Exit Wounds didn’t need to be filmed in Australia. As for why Tony didn’t work on Spider-Man 2, he was busy working on Seagal’s Belly of the Beast. Tony and Dion have worked many times together in H.K. cinema. They were usually accompanied by an assistant named Joe Ma Yuk-Sing. It would have been lyrical for him to work on on Spider-Man 3, even if it was just to work on the comparatively practical fight between Peter Parker and Harry Osborn.
