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Ray Pride

By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, January 9th, 2006 - Comments Off on Shanghai's surprises: lo-fi filmmaking in the east of the East
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Shanghai's surprises: lo-fi filmmaking in the east of the East

“Last month, in a smoky basement bar at the heart of old colonial Shanghai—the legendary Bund—an assortment of young amateur filmmakers gathered for an improvised short-film competition. The event organizer, Juan Vargas, had come to Shanghai from Colombia… and turned to film production after realizing the potential in the market. ““We are trying to encourage people to make films,” Vargas told Ilan Carmel for China Business. His new prodco, Mei Wen Ti, had just finished its first feature for 3,000 Euro and on ten days notice, banded the filmmakers together for 15 shorts… These amateur filmmakers toiled day and night for 10 days to produce 15 short films, each several minutes in length, just so they could get their foot in the door and mingle with the rising small community of independent filmmakers in China’s eastern metropolis. One of these entrepreneurs was Frenchman Severin Bonnichon, who, like most of the contest participants, had used equipment from home to shoot… The short, slightly intoxicated Bonnichon said he had made a few short films back in France, but in Shanghai he was at a disadvantage because he did not have access to proper equipment…
friends in shanghai.jpg
“Tthere are two sides to the film industry in Shanghai,” writes Carmel, “the independent film sector, which is barely in its infancy; and the government-run Shanghai Film Studio, which has been releasing mainly propaganda films that are embarrassing even relative to typically low-quality features produced by China’s domestic film industry…. “Beijing also supports much better universities and training institutes for film production,” said Liu Haibo, a lecturer in film and media studies at the Film and TV Institute of Shanghai University. “There is no comparison between the quality of the training centers of Beijing and the talent they attract [and] what is available in Shanghai. Shanghai is open only in terms of its economy, infrastructure and its position as a financial center; in terms of arts and culture, it is a very conservative society and environment.” … As still another reason for the weak film industry in Shanghai, Liu mentioned the state policy of allowing only big investors to enter the business, as well as artificially directing investments to big studios in Beijing. Furthermore, Shanghai has seen a high turnover in its pool of film professionals and a brain drain since the early 1990s, mostly to the benefit of Beijing’s studios and production companies.” [More history, money woes and restrictions on depicting “the negative aspects of modern urban life” at the link.]
NEWSWEEK TOOK their own Shanghai snapshot recently. [Image from this site.]

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon