More than 20 years ago, Stephen Chow, the most popular comedy star in Hong Kong, established a film company with a few friends called Hong Kong Playmate Film Company. In order to make the company famous, he went to the Shangri-La Hotel to find Liu Zhenwei and asked Liu Zhenwei to direct Cai Star Film Company’s "Pioneering Work".
Liu Zhenwei was the most popular comedy director in Hong Kong at that time, and had a good cooperation relationship with Zhou Xingchi before. After the two talked, Liu Zhenwei came up with an idea that had been buried in his heart for a long time: filming a subversive "Journey to the West", the plot summary is-the rebellious Monkey King was crushed under Wuzhi Mountain for five hundred years! Until Tang Seng appeared and asked him to go to learn the scriptures. However, Monkey King is such a rebellious person, shouldn't he be so obedient? So the first thing Sun Wukong did when he jumped out of Wuzhishan was to bring Tang Seng down, kill him, and restore his freedom!
Liu Zhenwei wants to shoot such a rebellious Monkey King, a monkey with flesh and blood. Since he wants to have flesh and blood, Sun Monkey must first be a mortal, there must be love entanglements, and there must be a contradictory life-the tragic love story of Journey to the West begins like this.
It is said that after listening to Liu Zhenwei's idea, Zhou Xingchi was stunned. He stared at Liu Zhenwei's face, and it took more than a minute to come back to his senses. He said in an exaggerated tone: "Is it right? Did you make a mistake? !" Popular comedy directors shoot love tragedies, comedians shoot tragedies, the two have never dabbled in this aspect. This is a big adventure for both.
But in the end, Liu Zhenwei persuaded Zhou Xingchi for the reason of expanding the audience. The two finally decided to go to the mainland to shoot and cooperate with Xi'an Film Studio. When
first saw the script outline, the script of "Journey to the West" did not arouse more interest from West Film Studio, but considering Stephen Chow’s market appeal and the commercial interests of Hong Kong films, West Film Studio finally agreed to cooperate and provide location shooting. Base, in July and August 1994, "Journey to the West" officially started shooting.
In order to make this "pivot" of the Playmates Film Company, the film investors invested more than 60 million Hong Kong dollars. This was a massive production at the time, and Liu Zhenwei served as the director and screenwriter, Zhou Xingchi, Zhu Yin, Wu Mengda Well-known big-name actors such as, Karen Mok, Lan Jieying, Lu Shuming, Luo Jiaying, and Chen Xiaodong as martial arts instructor, and well-known composer Zhao Jiping as the soundtrack to the film, including the photographers are the top configuration in Hong Kong, for this film, Stephen Chow has a grand goal and High expectations.
In order to catch up with the New Year's Day in 1995, the filming work was divided into three groups in more than 100 days. Group A was shot by Liu Zhenwei in charge, group B was in charge of martial arts scenes, and group C returned to Xi’an after the location shooting. During the composition of the interior, the actors and staff rushed to the scene to shoot. Time was tight and hard work. During the shooting of
, Zhou Xingchi and Liu Zhenwei continued to modify the script and pursue perfection. Although the time was very tight, the quality of the film was very strict. Even in order to play the supporting role of the Bodhi ancestor, Stephen Chow asked Liu Zhenwei to play in person, and Liu Zhenwei had to be hard. Shaved his scalp to play the role of Bodhi Patriarch.
And Stephen Chow is a person with wild imagination. Many classic scenes are added by him on the spot, such as the classic line in the play: "Once there was a sincere love in front of me..." I came up with it temporarily while taking the bus.
This eventually led to a film that couldn't hold so many whimsical ideas. Liu Zhenwei had to change his plan and split the original complete film into two and divided it into two episodes.
Writing scripts while filming, and rushing to work to shoot these things are quite incredible from the perspective of colleagues at Xiying Film Factory. Almost every staff member at Xiying Film Factory who participated in the filming of "Western Journey" mentioned that the time was tight and work. hard. In more than one hundred days, the completion of the filming of the two episodes of the movie is exhausted for Hong Kong actors who are used to intensive and high-intensity labor, not to mention the mainland staff who work slowly and carefully.
After the filming of the entire film was completed, Xiying was even more disagreeable with the finished film. In many of them, the filming time is short and the script is not perfect. The whole film structure is wanton, funny, vulgar, and gags throughout. It's completely a bad film pattern that smashed the signs. Zhang Zien, who was the deputy director of art at the time of
, believes that this film does not represent the artistic pursuit of the West Film Studio, and can even be regarded as cultural garbage.
In this cooperation, Xiying Studio has invested more than 100 film crews. At the beginning of the filming, the actors in Hong Kong and Xi'an had disputes over trivial issues. Since then, due to the uneven role distribution and communication problems between the two sides, the two sides have fought each other.
According to Lu Shuming, who played the role of the Bull Demon King, recalled: “At the time, they were all really fighting, because there were many Xi'an martial artists in the crew. They had conflicts with their partners when communicating with the action scene. After being scolded, they started fighting. Finally, Xi'an All of the martial arts masters were fired. Other members of the crew revealed that there were even Stephen Chow and his assistants in a group stand.” The staff of the
West Studios also revealed that the entire crew was in a mess at the time, and there were actors from Hong Kong. With the producer unable to control the scene, the martial arts instructor Cheng Xiaodong also locked himself in the room and did not dare to come out. In the end, Ding Xiaopeng and other producers from the West Film Studio negotiated with the representatives of the martial arts actors to ease the situation. .
And the well-known composer Zhao Jiping invited by the crew, got the script and read it many times without feeling. I didn’t know where to start the arranger. Finally, I came to the shooting site to find inspiration. It happened to see the Spring Thirty Mother and the Bull Demon. During the shooting of that scene, I saw "the whole studio is full of intestines and blood vessels", and I felt greatly despised and regarded it as a rotten film. Therefore, after Zhao Jiping wrote the classic song "Reed Dang" for "Western Journey", he told the crew A special request was made: Don't put his name on the end of the film.
......
In this way, in the eyes of contempt, "The Moonlight Treasure Box" was launched on New Year's Day in 1995, and the box office was once hot. In two days, the total box office revenue of 60 Hong Kong movie theaters was 500. More than ten thousand Hong Kong dollars, slightly inferior to Jackie Chan's "Red Fan District." "A Journey to the West" was released in Shanghai in August 1995, and later in the three northeastern provinces. The box office was once in a good shape.
However, as if to confirm everyone’s predictions, the "Better Start" of "Western Journey" did not last long, and the subsequent overall release took a sharp turn. Even in the most popular Hong Kong market at the time, it finally ended with 25 million. The final box office of "The Great Sage Marries" released more than two months later was only 20 million. Compared with Zhou Xingchi's previous film box office, it can be described as bleak.
In Beijing, "Western Journey" was regarded as a case of failure. In February 1996, "Moonlight Treasure Box" was launched as a winter holiday film, and in May, "The Great Sage Gets Married" debuted. Both films cost only 200,000. Around the box office closes, some film companies decided to replace "Journey to the West" with domestic films two days after the screening to avoid more losses.
At that time, the audience thought that Journey to the West spoofed the classic Journey to the West. The whole movie was incomprehensible, and the newspaper criticized it as one of the top ten bad movies.
talked about the box office loss of Journey to the West, which directly caused the box office myth Stephen Chow to lose money for the first time, and eventually led to the closure of Playmate Films. Director Liu Zhenwei went to Canada. He did not touch movies for a long time, and once wanted to leave the movie. circle. And the starring star Stephen Chow was dropped by the number of people who said, "It's good to be an actor!" For a long time after that, Stephen Chow did converge a lot, and he didn't dare to make a big production. After
experienced the box office disappointment, "A Westward Journey" was almost silent. At most, some funny and absurd comments were heard. At that time, most viewers felt puzzled by how a story was properly disassembled into two episodes. Seeing incomprehensibly, and accustomed to seeing six-year-old children, the Monkey King Monkey King, how can it be difficult to accept the new version of Zhou Xingchi's interpretation, how can Zhou Xingchi start to instigate love story? In short, for "Moonlight Treasure Box" and "The Great Sage Gets Married", the audience feels that besides being strange, it is still strange.
However, gold always shines. After two years of silence in 1995 and 1996, by the end of 1996, "Journey to the West" had undergone a dramatic change. Piracy of VCDs in the mainland began to ramp up, and "Da Hua Xi Journey" rose to fame. The enthusiasm of the audience was as unstoppable as the surging river, spreading virally among students and the Internet. Those who did not understand "Da Hua Xi Journey" and did not watch "West Journey" were considered to be related to The times are out of touch, and various versions of stories adapted from "Western Journey" have also emerged. Young people have repeatedly appreciated the joy of cheap piracy with their inexhaustible enthusiasm. Watching "Western Journey" has become like listening Things are as common as pop songs.
The popularity of "Journey to the West" in the market made the creators unexpected. Zhou Xingchi and Wu Mengda also discussed this event for a night, trying to understand the reasons for the phenomenon of the film.He also failed to understand why the boastful Journey to the West became popular, but Zhou Xingchi himself was rather baffling. The director of
, Liu Zhenwei, who returned to the movie again, was also confused by King Kong. He said in an interview: "In 1999, Wong Kar-wai called to tell me that "Western Journey" was sought after by students from Peking University and Tsinghua University in the Mainland. I was a little skeptical at the time. Is he talking nonsense? I said it’s impossible. I can’t think of such an example in the history of film. Generally, when it breaks, it breaks. After a few months, Zhou Xingchi called, and then I believed it. This movie must be Great changes have taken place. Zhou Xingchi will not call me for no reason. Every time he calls me, he always asks me for something. At this time, he has already been to Peking University to give lectures. Then I learned, my God, sells VCD All of them are very profitable!" The turnaround of
was really unexpected and very proud.
Speaking of the past, Liu Zhenwei smiled: "It's embarrassing, and those who scold me are even more embarrassed. Peking University, the most powerful in China, they all agreed, how should Hong Kong film reviews be written? Many people started I came out to explain. The people who scolded me very harshly at the time all praised me violently. It was ridiculous. I made them to death, first beat me all over my body, and then came and beat me up, saying it was good. Not bad. Every time. After many years. After the mainland was on fire, they still couldn’t face the reality. They felt that these people in the mainland didn’t know how to watch movies. The Xi’an Film Studio, which we worked with at that time, looked down upon me and Stephen Chow. They are all "Red Sorghum", "Singing While Walking", Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou's movies. The production director Ding Xiaopeng told the people at Xi'an Film Studio on the spot that there is no way to cooperate with our Hong Kong side. They have a look After a few years, they praised us, and the posters of "Journey to the West" are now hung in the lobby of Xi'an Film Studio. How realistic!" With the help of the Internet, more and more people Going to see this movie, there are many people watching it over and over again. Every time they see new insights, the movie is constantly being interpreted, and the status of film history has been rising. Therefore, after more than 20 years, the "Western Journey" Douban scored Has reached a high score of 9.2, has become a classic in the classics!
There are few movies that can rise from a movie to a cultural phenomenon like a Westward Journey. These perceptions are more of a projection of the audience’s own growth process. "A Westward Journey" also accompanied the growth of a generation and became our youth and memories, which will last forever.
