MCN Blogs
Ray Pride

By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Sunday, January 8th, 2006 - 1 Comment »
Be Sociable, Share!

The times, they are a Chang: WKW's art director, editor, costume designer

Wong Kar-Wai‘s art director, costume designer and editor William Chang Suk-ping gives a rare interview to Alexandra A. Seno in the Herald-Tribune: “With a reputation in the industry as a shy and quiet genius who almost always declines to speak to the press about himself, Chang is best known as Wong’s frequent collaborator… “Editing is about proportion, rhythm…” On his career as Hong Kong’s most brilliant art director-costume designer, he said simply that he begins by asking: “What is the ambience?” Chang, whose soft-spoken manner belies his firm opinions about many things, creates worlds as he thinks they should seem: just the right interiors in which he can see the actors, wearing just the right clothes…
2046 chang.jpg
“Actually, I don’t like period that much, but I can do it,” he said with a laugh. His secrets: research on eBay and watching old films on local television and the Turner Classic Movies cable channel. For ideas, he said, “I just walk around, watch TV, just live and let things come.” … Chang also works extensively as an interior designer, in private residences and commercial spaces. He recently created a very modern foreign teachers’ dormitory at Guangdong’s Shantou University for Li Ka-shing, whom Forbes calls Asia’s richest businessman, and he’s currently working on an urban spa in the heart of Hong Kong’s business district… Chang, 52, rarely gives interviews because he thinks he is just repeating himself. “I haven’t changed. Inside I keep the same passion for films…” At home, he said, his entire personal wardrobe consists of T-shirts, four pairs of jeans and four jackets, including the neon-yellow windbreaker he was wearing. He owns only two pairs of footwear at an given time: a pair of sports shoes that he uses until they fall apart, and a pair of black leather ones… “for film festivals.” … “I don’t like fashion. It’s transitory.”
wkw-calendar-200508 sm.jpg
THE CHINESE FILMMAKING BOOM gets a look-see by David Eimer in the Independent.
PLUS, AT LOSSLESS, loving, lovely Wong Kar-Wai-inspired calendars are posted each month by members of wongkarwai.net. The link is for the January calendar page; later entries will be here.

Be Sociable, Share!

1 Comment »

One Response to “The times, they are a Chang: WKW's art director, editor, costume designer”

  1. James Seo says:
    January 14, 2006 at 6:56 am

    The WKW calendar page is down while I switch over to a new domain. They will be back up later at: http://lossless.net. For now, you can see the current January calendar here: http://lossless.blogs.com/main/2006/01/wong_karwai_cal.html. You can also see the previous calendars from 2005 by either changing the year and date in the URL above or by browsing my blog’s archives.

Movie City Indie

Comments Most Recent Archives

Quote Unquotesee all »

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