Wong Jing
On the eve of the opening of his new movie “To Live and Die in Mongkok,” renowned director Wong Jing talks to June Ng about marriage, communism and those infamous “dirty jokes.”
My career began at a TV station as a scriptwriter. It was nothing more than a job to me but writing is obviously my strength.
I studied Chinese at university simply because I’m an opportunist. It’s so hard to get into higher education and I got an A in Chinese in all my public exams but I’m not particularly passionate about the language.
I simply have a super ability for memorizing things. I can memorize irrelevant numbers and even passages that I don’t understand.
I do it real fast: when people need 30 hours, I only use an hour and a half.
Studying well and performing well in exams are two difference things. I’m only good at the latter.
Being a university student was my part-time job. My full-time job was a scriptwriter for a TV station. I got full-time employment terms and was the assistant creative director by the time I was in Year 4. The company just couldn’t function without me even though I told them I had to make time to go to school.
It’s not hard to get a job in TV. It’s no trouble at all if you’re talented. People who moan about getting left out are all talentless.
In 1980, I jumped into the movie industry. I was offered a chance to be a director for the first time, and I took it. I do anything I think is right.
I’m competitive. Either I don’t join in or I have to win. It’s not like I win every time but I’m never at the bottom.
Every few years I would like to shoot some alternative subject apart from fully commercial work. Psychologically, I need to balance myself as well.
It’s a headstrong decision to make a movie about crazy people. Many of them are around us and they’re the time bombs of society. And there will be more—so many kids are using drugs nowadays, implanting seeds of mental illness in their brains.
My comedies are in fact a true reflection on everyday life. It’s unfair that people stereotyped me after I made a movie that made fun of poo and wee. That was 20 years ago and I haven’t used the same jokes since.
My film “The Romancing Star” is a comedy about guys pursuing their dream girls. But in fact it’s inspired by communism and has a leftist undertone—it’s about class struggle. The good poor can defeat the bad rich.
Many people, including a lot of columnists, say I’m a romantic person. I got married at age 23, but I never thought marriage meant settling down.
The beginning of true love is not about holding hands or having sex, it’s about marriage. It’s a commitment to walking the path of life together.
But whether or not it works depends on the efforts of both parties, that’s why we have a system call divorced.
Only fools will play the “forever” card and only the most irresponsible people say things like, “I’ll take care of you forever.”
I won the best scriptwriter award from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society two years running. I never got a Hong Kong Film Award but I’m not bothered. Every award has its own game and its own set of rules. Some are favorable to you, some are not.
Once you realize your name can’t be removed from Chinese movie history, everything becomes easy.
Society keeps changing and so do its values. If young people refuse to work after 8pm on Fridays because they think they’ll die if they don’t hang out with their friends, you can only accept it. It’s their choice to put a higher priority on a social life than a career.
For the last ten years I’ve been feeling pessimistic about Hong Kong. How can I be optimistic? People in Legco do not speak from the heart.
The government looks down on local films. If they looked up to us, the movie industry wouldn’t be like it is now.
Hong Kong movies don’t need the government’s help. Whatever people say about funding is all bullshit.
