The two movies that changed John Woo’s life forever: “A very influential idol to me”
Hong Kong action cinema experienced a major boom in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to the international recognition turned household names of stars like Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. However, with every boom, can a bust be far behind?
The genre flagged somewhat throughout the ’80s, struggling to recapture its early days, but would eventually rise again, following reinvention by a generation of young, bold new filmmakers. One such filmmaker was the legendary John Woo.
Born in Guangzhou amidst the Chinese Civil War, Woo and his family fled to Hong Kong to avoid persecution from Mao Zedong and his emerging regime. He made his first film in 1974, but really established himself as a force to be reckoned with in 1986, with the release of Better Tomorrow. Regarded as a pioneer of the ‘heroic bloodshed’ and ‘gun fu’ style of action filmmaking, Woo has gone on to make many more incredible and important movies, such as Mission: Impossible II and Red Cliff: Part I, which became the highest-grossing film in Chinese box office history.
It’s always interesting to know where a director gets their ideas, but when they are responsible for influencing so many others that came after them, it becomes a matter of historical importance. In his book, The Film That Changed My Life, Robert K Elder spoke to 30 different directors about the movies that inspired them to get behind the camera. His subjects include Edgar Wright, Kimberley Pierce, Jon Waters, and of course Woo, who had a hard time narrowing his choices down to just one.
“Rebel Without a Cause and Mean Streets had equal but distinct impacts on his life and career,” Elder writes, “As any passing viewing of his films indicates, loyalty means a lot to him. He could not abandon one of them.” So, Woo did what any good parent would do when being asked to pick their favourite child, he chose both of them. He was the only one allowed to do this, with the exception of Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, who opted for both Purab Aur Pachhim (East and West) and It’s a Wonderful Life.
The director was particularly taken by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, especially how he looked. “I combed my hair like him, but I couldn’t afford to buy wax, so I had to use water,” he revealed, “I even talked like him. He was a very influential idol to me.” Woo is far from the only person inspired by the tragic icon. Nicolas Cage has admitted several times that, were it not for James Dean, he would have never become an actor.
With regards to Mean Streets, he expressed, “If I hadn’t seen this movie, I wouldn’t know what I was living for”. The plot of the movie, which was the first to pair up Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, was a major inspiration for Woo’s influential film, The Killer.
A great creative mind can take inspiration from anywhere, even if it’s got nothing to do with what they eventually make. The fact that Woo was able to pull from two wildly different sources to carve out a career that looked nothing like either is a testament to his genius vision.
