Zhuang Xiao’s scenes should have gone quickly too, but he was having terrible luck. As the big boss, nearly all his scenes were opposite the male lead, and they were fight scenes at that. According to the plot, if the hero was not going to beat you up, who else was he supposed to beat?
But the moment the male lead stepped in and the fighting started, everything turned into an endless slog.
Young Tony was a diligent, serious student. He pursed his lips, puffed his cheeks, and learned the movements while filming. Zhuang Xiao was even one of the people teaching him how to fight. Tony stayed grave from beginning to end, earnestly settling into a horse stance, and the moment he assumed the opening posture his head was already drenched in sweat. It was not the heat. He was nervous in front of the great hero.
Pei Yan had already begun deliberately sitting in the wrong chair. He drank from his own pot of calming, heat-clearing tea while sitting in Zhuang Xiao’s chair and watching the monkey show.
He watched them repeat the same takes over and over.
To be fair, the movie was still about “Drunken Fist,” so Chinese kung fu had to be showcased in all its glory. And naturally, it was supposed to be showcased through the male lead, not through their crowd of villainous bad guys. The problem was that the male lead happened to be the worst fighter on the entire set.
The action director patiently explained and demonstrated again and again. Tony drove in with a punch, stepped onto Zhuang Xiao’s thigh to launch himself into a kick, failed to plant his foot properly, slipped, and with a puchi went face-first into the ground right in front of Zhuang Xiao. The director yelled, “CUT!”
Zhuang Xiao cut in with an elbow and raised a knee. Tony blocked and retreated. Pa! He lost his footing and got knocked flying by Zhuang Xiao. The director roared, “NO, NO, NO! Not like that!”
Drunken Fist depended on swaying and staggering, footwork that looked chaotic without actually being chaotic, a convincingly drunken form paired with lightning-fast punches. Young Tony, however, had genuinely chaotic footwork. He staggered straight into Zhuang Xiao, forcing Zhuang Xiao to physically support him while secretly correcting the other man’s messy steps so the shot would not expose the mistake.
Pei Yan watched with a deepening frown, thinking, Fuck, just let me do it.
Fat Charles called NG again, spun around, and hurled the script down in fury.
Sha Yunfei was a well-known action choreographer. In the industry he carried the nickname “Flying Great Sage” and had trained many young actors, plenty of whom respectfully called him “Master.” He turned his head and cursed in Chinese, “What a fucking useless idiot,” because the other side could not understand him anyway.
Tony’s face had gone pale too. A crowd of assistants surrounded the handsome young man, wiping his sweat and discussing things in low voices. Nobody wanted their own mistakes to hold up production. It did not matter if you personally were willing to reshoot the scene over and over. The entire crew was waiting on you, and they could not afford to waste the time.
Tony was a handsome young man, black-haired and fair-skinned, with a certain refined East Asian quality around the brows and eyes from that one-eighth Asian ancestry of his. Pei Yan had to admit, in fairness, that the kid really was good-looking. Tony kept a lollipop in his mouth and sucked at it constantly, probably because he was starting to feel lightheaded. The poor child was almost being tortured into hypoglycemia. Every time he saw Master Sha walking toward him, his legs practically went weak.
As long as he was not filming action scenes, he was actually very likable. His dramatic scenes, line delivery, and acting all passed without a problem.
Put him on a motorcycle with a cigarette between his lips, let him look cool and throw a flirtatious glance, and whistles immediately rose around him. That was natural charisma. No wonder the Facebook-and-Twitter traffic star from across the Pacific got to play the male lead.
The moment they filmed action, everything turned into a blind mess, and the entire crew went blind along with him.
Tony’s team were whispering among themselves now, perhaps considering whether to make a suggestion to the director: stop filming martial-arts moves. Change every scene into bed-scene choreography instead. Bed scenes were easier! Mr. Zhuang did not want his bed scene, did he? Fine, do not sanitize ours. We’re willing to perform!
In the next shot, the two men stood on the narrow railing of a prop balcony, almost like standing on a balance beam. Zhuang Xiao needed to throw a vicious punch, Tony would block, then kick the villain boss off the balcony.
Pei Yan remained in the standard “construction worker squat” behind the famous director, perched on Great Hero Zhuang’s chair and staring without blinking. Tony’s kick did not send Zhuang Xiao flying.
The kick went wildly off target instead. Zhuang Xiao did not even have time to throw himself outward on his own before the foot slammed hard into the inside of his thigh, somewhere very unfortunate.
Zhuang Xiao seemed to grunt, his expression changing. He covered his crotch, jumped down from the balcony, and walked away.
Pei Yan shot straight up from the chair. “Fuck…”
A move fit for a preschool martial-arts class had almost become lethal. Zhuang Xiao bent over afterward, his face twisted in pain. What the fuck was wrong with today?
Tony’s face turned green too. Mortified, he kept saying, “Sorry! I am so sorry!”
He genuinely had not meant to do it. If he had been aiming on purpose, he could never have kicked that accurately.
Pei Yan grabbed a towel and hurried over, squeezing into the crowd, but he was too late. Sa Risheng had already gone over to wipe the sweat from his boss.
“Are you okay? Did he hit you?” Xiao-Sa bent over and rubbed his back, asking anxiously.
“Let me rest a bit…” Zhuang Xiao said quietly, still bent over.
That was the problem with filming martial-arts action. It did not matter how skilled you were. You could not genuinely beat your opponent to death with three punches and two kicks. You never knew when the person standing across from you would turn out to be a complete idiot, a pig of an opponent!
He really wanted to kick that pig of an opponent to death.
Sa Risheng flung down the towel. “I’ll stand in for you.”
Zhuang Xiao waved him off. “Give me ten minutes.”
Sa Risheng said, “I can do the fight exactly the same!”
Usually taciturn Xiao-Sa expressed his fury through a sideways glare. This was such a simple preschool-level move that even a pig could do it. How could that pale little chicken on the other side be this stupid?
Zhuang Xiao said, “It’s a face close-up.”
Pei Yan cut in. “They’ve got a ridiculously powerful post-production team anyway. They throw money at effects like it’s free. Let them composite it and swap the head! I’ll help you back to the trailer to rest. Let Xiao-Sa take your place.”
Zhuang Xiao waved him off too and did not go back to the trailer.
The tip of Tony’s shoe had definitely caught him there. Zhuang Xiao endured the pain for a full ten minutes, straightened up, and finished the move and the shot all the way through until the director called, “Good.”
*
This was Pei Yan’s first time working on a production like this. He was seeing a lot for the first time, and his feelings about many things were very different from before. He had never imagined that after spending years in America and working on Hollywood sets, this was what things were like for Zhuang Xiao too.
There was not much difference in treatment between famous stars and newcomers. Nobody flattered you or carried you on a pedestal, none of the careful fawning a domestic production lavished on its biggest names. Even the shooting process and atmosphere felt different. Everyone clocked in on time, did the work they were paid for, and clocked out when the day was over. There was no all-night overtime. The work was rigorous and procedural, but there was also a distance to it, a coldness.
When work ended, everyone went their separate ways instead of gathering together. Several of the Americans invited Tony out drinking and socializing at a bar. His fight scenes might have looked like dog shit, but those people lived in the same social world. Chinese faces were forever rigid cultural symbols pushed to the margins.
In Pei Yan’s heart, Zhuang Xiao was the “number one” man in the Chinese kung-fu film world. Nobody outside had officially crowned him, there was no public consensus. It was a hat Pei Yan had placed on Zhuang Xiao himself, his own private verdict.
But reality was this imperfect, and it was discouraging. Looking at the set today, if they had replaced the male lead with him or Zhuang Xiao, or even Sha Yunfei or Sa Risheng, any one of them had enough foundation to perform a classic kung-fu routine beautifully, fluid and pleasing to watch, without cheating the audience who had paid for a ticket.
But the production simply had not chosen Zhuang Xiao or Pei Yan. Who were you? They were not going to use you.
Why stay here? Who did not enjoy being surrounded by stars and treated like the center of the room?
Among your own people, at least you were a performer who could win a full house of applause. There were people willing to lift you up.
Did foreign soy sauce taste good? Only the person drinking it knew. Zhuang Xiao spent most of his time here anyway and rarely moved around in the domestic industry. Occasionally he made a friendly appearance in a familiar person’s film, but he seldom joined promotion and never chased headlines. He simply did not like showing his face.
Tony came to Zhuang Xiao’s trailer in person, friendly and apologetic, to check on him.
They exchanged pleasantries and a few harmless jokes. Tony said he would treat Zhuang Xiao to dinner later to make amends, and Zhuang Xiao agreed.
That was how relationships between actors in the industry worked. Everyone kept a gentlemanly distance. They were neither excessively intimate nor quick to make enemies.
Pei Yan waited outside the trailer almost as though standing in line. He waited while Tony, the assistant director, the cinematographer, and various crew members went in one after another to offer their concern. He was the last to enter. He poked his head inside and saw Zhuang Xiao lying on the narrow cot with a bag of ice in his own hand, shorts hitched up while he iced his groin.
“Icing it?” Pei Yan asked.
Zhuang Xiao gave him a bland look. You can fucking see that for yourself, can’t you?
At least everyone else had put on a polite show of sympathy. Someone like Pei Yan never came with good intentions. “Tsk. He really hit it? Knocked them off?”
Zhuang Xiao rolled his eyes. “I didn’t fly. My balls did.”
“Aiya, shattered!” Pei Yan looked deadly serious. “Playing a villain comes at a high price. Tomorrow you stay in the trailer and rest. I’ll go on for you.”
“Forget it, you.” Zhuang Xiao knew Pei Yan was only talking nonsense to cheer him up. “You’ll take the dirty kicks for me?”
“I’ll kick him for you. Who kicks dirtier than I do? Let’s see who kicks who once I go up there!” Pei Yan naturally sat down at the edge of Zhuang Xiao’s cot and looked at him.
Zhuang Xiao laughed.
Pei Yan was delighted. Mr. Zhuang was joking with him now. The moment he laughed, that dimple appeared. His hair had been let loose, and he was lying half-turned on the cot with three buttons undone at his collar… What a fucking beautiful man. He really was gorgeous.
Pei Yan said, “When he kicked, why didn’t you dodge? Those two hits you gave me last time looked pretty fast.”
Zhuang Xiao snorted. “Can that be the same? Your punches and kicks follow a system. You were trained by a school and a master. The instant you move, I know roughly where you’re going to kick. Him? Does that kid have any idea where his own foot is going? That kick was unbelievably off target!”
Zhuang Xiao had not complained this much even to Xiao-Sa just now. Pei Yan burst out laughing.
“Never taken a loss like this before, huh?” Pei Yan looked positively delighted by his misfortune.
“Really haven’t.” Zhuang Xiao snorted. “Just wait. Your turn comes next scene.”
“Then I’d better protect my balls. Those are important treasures! This little salary isn’t worth bankrupting myself and losing the whole family line!” Pei Yan grinned and leaned backward, laughing, half reclining on the cot too. “I’m going to ask the old guys in wardrobe to make me a leather cup before I dare go on set.”
The two chatted happily for a while. Pei Yan said, “I won’t drag you out for spicy food and alcohol tonight. Spicy food heats you up and makes injuries hurt worse. Another day.”
Zhuang Xiao nodded. “Sure. Another day.”
The production’s food truck served an evening snack: freshly grilled Mexican sausage hot dogs.
Pei Yan collected six hot dogs from the truck and shouted from a distance toward Zhuang Xiao’s trailer, “Hey! What sauce do you want?!”
The person inside opened the trailer window and yelled back, “Whatever! They all taste bad!”
Pei Yan squeezed a little of every sauce offered by the enthusiastic Latina auntie at the food truck. Red, orange, yellow, green, a whole rainbow of sauces to make the boring food slightly more interesting.
He carried a huge plate of hot dogs into the trailer. Zhuang Xiao frowned the moment he saw them. “I told you. They’re all bad.”
“I’m starving. I can’t wait for dinner. At least this is meat.” Pei Yan said, “Don’t waste food. Eat some.”
Zhuang Xiao said, “You choose first. Take the ones you like.”
Pei Yan said, “You choose. I’m fine with anything.”
Zhuang Xiao said, “They all taste the same to me. You go first.”
Pei Yan picked one up and took a huge bite. He chewed for a moment. “Fuck… this is awful!”
Zhuang Xiao said, “Told you. Try another. I’ll eat that one.”
Pei Yan said, “I already ate half of it. I’m not done. You take that one.”
Zhuang Xiao said, “That brown sauce is sweet. That one’s the worst. I’ll eat that.”
Pei Yan said, “The green sauce is spicy! Don’t eat spicy stuff right now.”
Zhuang Xiao said, “Then why did you put so much chili sauce on them?”
Pei Yan said, “Fuck, how was I supposed to know Mexican chili could be this hot? The green one is insanely spicy!”
Laughter exploded inside the trailer, two voices layered together. Pei Yan ate while complaining, “This is fucking disgusting! What kind of flavor is this? Worst hot dog I’ve ever eaten…”
He cursed every bite and somehow still cleared the entire plate of terrible fast food. A good mood had boosted his appetite. They cleaned everything up, leaving not even a bread crumb behind.
*
That evening, at an internal meeting among the production’s higher-ups, there was an argument over an important issue.
Fat Charles slammed the script down in front of the producers. “I haven’t even gone up there to fight personally and that little idiot has already worked me to death! This is unshootable. One fucking shot takes more than ten takes before it passes. It wastes time, labor, film stock! The schedule is impossible to control!”
The producer and the studio representative sat at a small table, cigars pinched between their fingers, discussing it with the director. It was not such a big deal, they said. These days, popcorn blockbusters were all made this way. How many people actually knew real kung fu? Half the chest muscles were painted in later. It all depended on special effects, post-production, and editing. Otherwise, with such deep skill and experience, what exactly was the point of having a major director like him?
Those dazzling, seemingly supernatural fight sequences were, when all was said and done, assembled in the editing room. The handsome musculature and the fierce blood-red light in an actor’s eyes could all be painted in later on a computer.
So although young Tony got thrashed so badly by professional stuntmen on set that he looked utterly pitiful, once the movie reached theaters after post-production polish, the male lead would still be the most imposing and domineering person in the film. All those broken fragments of footage could be edited into a fluid routine. It would be more than enough to fool ordinary North American audiences.
Could the audience really tell who actually knew how to fight?
The heroine in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had looked beautiful fighting on screen and become hugely famous. Did she actually know martial arts?
Fat Charles said at the time, “The budget is going over. Don’t blame me.”
The producer said, “Fuck, we still need to keep the budget under control as much as possible.”
Fat Charles said, “Forget next week’s location work, going out to sea and onto the island. Just these major fight scenes we’re shooting now, we have to use doubles. Then we have to burn money in post compositing and replacing heads. Happy now?”
The producer thought it over. “Tsk. Professional stunt people aren’t expensive, are they? Those guys are cheap.”
Fat Charles picked up the script. “I think Ian Pei is a good fit. Most importantly, he’s about the same age and build, same face shape, similar shoulder width and leg length. Easy to composite. I think he’s perfect as Tony’s double.”
The quiet change in the production process caught Pei Yan by surprise.
When he came back to set the next day, the director directly called him and Zhuang Xiao over together and had them reshoot the entire series of shots Tony and Zhuang Xiao had filmed the day before, fighting on the balcony railing like it was a balance beam.
On a film set, nothing was impossible. Pei Yan wore the male lead’s costume and a black wig matching Tony’s hair color and style.
The instant the director yelled ACTION, a flurry of techniques dazzled everyone watching. Pei Yan immediately returned Zhuang Xiao’s Toast and Switch Cups, his own knuckles giving a faint crack under the force he generated.
At last he had found a chance. According to the script, Zhuang Xiao could not fight back. Pei Yan landed the move on his chin, and Zhuang Xiao rapidly staggered backward, pretending to be overwhelmed. Pei Yan advanced and struck again, his staggering footwork seemingly chaotic yet perfectly controlled. He led with the elbow, followed with a palm strike, and held the upper hand firmly, aggressive and razor-sharp.
When the final movement ended, he did not let Zhuang Xiao fly backward. Instead, he grabbed him hard by the chest!
Zhuang Xiao seized his arm too. After a brief backward suspension of his body, Zhuang Xiao slowly pulled himself upright with the strength of his waist, and the two looked at each other.
What should have been a sequence assembled from broken shots had somehow become a one-minute continuous take between the two of them, every step advancing, not a drop leaking through. The director and everyone around him stared with eyes wide open.
When the old man finally called stop, he threw down the script again, fired off several vulgar FUCKs, then came over and bumped fists with both men. “Excellent! That’s what I want. That’s the take.”
Using this take meant the shattered footage Tony shot yesterday would be discarded. The post-production department could prepare to burn money.
And this was only the beginning of the day.
The next major shot was difficult enough that even Zhuang Xiao found it troublesome. Sha Yunfei’s team told the director outright that no actor could perform it and that they needed one of their stuntmen or a professional stunt performer.
The move involved the male lead, a lone hero, fighting through the crime syndicate’s rabble in the abandoned vehicle yard. With superhuman nerve and skill, he would vault over high and low obstacles, dodge several attacking vehicles in succession, run up a high wall, then backflip while a car sped beneath him.
The stunt double needed excellent physical ability, and the driver’s speed and distance had to be controlled precisely.
The Zhuang Stunt Team lined up and had already tested the original action design repeatedly, measuring and laying out the optimal running route and vehicle trajectory.
The producer’s people kept holding a quiet discussion with the director. They looked extremely serious, as though some major decision had to be made.
Pei Yan lowered his head and wrapped bandages around his forearms and shins, glancing sideways at the important people. He could not say there was not the tiniest sliver of anticipation in his heart, even if he thought the possibility was very small.
Heh.
The production had been preparing for a long time and filming for nearly two weeks. Replacing the lead now and starting over would cost an enormous amount of money.
Zhuang Xiao stood diagonally across from him, narrowing his eyes at the director and producers, then glancing once at Pei Yan.
Zhuang Xiao did not look nearly as optimistic or inclined toward fantasy. Some hopes were simply unrealistic.