ONE NIGHT WITH Q : How Maggie and me survived some Dragon Heat on the mean streets of Mongkok.
Our upcoming DD release Dragon Heat brings back a mixed bag of memories. It was the last film I worked on as an independent producer before joining TWC. It was also the last Hong Kong movie Maggie Q appeared in before she took off for MI3 and Hollywood fortune and fame. I have to admit that these two facts are connected, and, as part of the lead up to our DVD release of the film, I’d like to share some memories of one particular night of the shoot.
During the casting sessions for Dragon Heat (which was shot under the title Dragon Squad), we found the finding of our leading ladies a particular challenge. After various candidates had come and gone, we were still missing the female member of
our young Interpol team. I threw Maggie’s name into the mix, and director Daniel Lee dutifully took home her show reel and some other Maggie films (including the cult classic Naked Weapon). Daniel came back much enthused. I don’t see her as the lady cop, he told me, but I have something else in mind…
Subsequently, I met Maggie at the Jewel nightclub on Pottinger Street. We have this role for you in Dragon (Heat), I told her. She raised a perfectly manicured hand. If this is another one of those &^*&^%$* cutesy giggly girly Hong Kong policewomen, Logan, she spat, speak no further. I took a breath. No, it’s a Vietnamese lady sniper, mean as hell, with pigtails and a really big gun. Oh, I’m so in, she said, and that was pretty much it.
Except for the fact that, with most of our budget gone, I had to get down on both bended knees (in the Clipper Bar of the Mandarin hotel) to persuade her management that the project had merit beyond her simply doing a favour for a friend. While this was going on one of our production team, who shall remained shamed but nameless, was telling everyone who would listen that Maggie would never do the film, and trying to recast the role behind my back. Suffice it to say, Maggie’s name in tieng Viet (she’s half-Vietnamese) translates as ‘endless loyalty’ (or, at least, it should), and she duly signed on for Dragon Heat boot camp.
Given that this was (unbeknownst to us) Maggie’s last Hong Kong actioner for the duration, she went out with several bangs. There was the bang heard when she first picked up the sniper rifle, and toppled floor ward. There was the bang of the dressing room door when Q first saw the pants wardrobe had selected for her. (The designer assured us that this was what all the best-dressed Vietnamese snipers were wearing this season.) There was the bang of a stuntman Maggie sent crashing down through a nightclub table…
This last took place during a night shoot. The scene, set in a seedy Mongkok nightclub, was shot in, um, a seedy Mongkok nightclub. We hired the place overnight, and Daniel Lee commenced shooting exteriors of the place as soon as darkness fell. In the scene, Maggie accompanies one of the main villains, played by Korean actor Huh Joon-ho. (He was previously in Volcano High School and Silmido.) For some reason, Maggie was Maggie, Michael Biehn was Michael, but Huh Joon-ho was always ‘Mr. Huh’.
Mongkok means, literally, ‘busy corner’, and we attracted more than our fair share of unpaid Triad ‘extras’ as we prepped our first shots showed Mr. Huh and Maggie arrive at the establishment. Maggie was sporting her mid-calf length flared jeans. When DID Bay City Rollers reform, I wondered out loud. Where IS my sniper rifle?, Maggie demanded of the prop master (and then placed an order for Logan-piercing ammunition.)
Their mission is to deliver a message to a local gang boss. This role was originally intended for the late, great Jimmy Moy. Jimmy, a Chinese American from Chicago, was a wonderful larger than life character. He had made and lost fortunes on the stock market, and relocated to Thailand, where he and his good friend Steven Seagal had formed a production company. I knew Jimmy, and brought him and Steven on-board to help produce Dragon Heat.
The director, the other producers and I had all traveled to Bangkok to meet Jimmy. (I’ll never forget that his office had one of those maps of the wall with the flashing lights, just like the bad guys in 60s spy flicks.) Noticing how Jimmy was heavily tattooed, Daniel offered him the gang boss role in Dragon Heat. (Jimmy played a similar part in Seagal’s Into The Sun.) By the time we came to shoot the scene, though, Daniel had forgotten we had cast Jimmy, and had hired the guy you see in the film. I called Jimmy with the bad news, but he seemed fine about it, mentioning that he hadn’t been feeling well, and that he was happy to be spared the rigours of a night shoot.
(This call proved tragically prescient. Just a few weeks later, Jimmy died of a heart attack. I asked that the film be dedicated to his memory.)
Once inside the nightclub, Mr. Huh and Maggie are harassed by the boss’ henchmen. One of them searches Miss Q lasciviously, but then the tables are swiftly turned. She applies a vicious eye gouge, then lifts him off the floor before slamming him down. The action isn’t stylized, but you can really feel the force of the impact. Throughout the film, Daniel tried for a style more in keeping with the Bourne Identity thrillers, and the edgy action scenes soon found favour with fans, especially in Europe, after the Hong Kong DVD release.
There’s a brief dialogue exchange, and, on the set, Maggie was speaking Vietnamese, the first time, I believe, she’s delivered dialogue in her mother’s language. Later, the lines were dubbed into Chinese for the Hong Kong version, and the Vietnamese unfortunately fell by the wayside. (That said, Ms. Q has a presence that defies dialogue, and her last scene, which I’ll describe in another blog, was one of the most powerful in the film, precisely because there was none.)
After completing part of the scene, Maggie and I walked out onto a balcony being used for wardrobe and make-up. (No expense spared on a Hong Kong actioner!). Below us, we could see a shop where all the ‘ladies of the evening’ would buy their distinctive primary coloured spray-on shirts and shorts. It was called Ho’s Fashion.
Back in the club, Daniel and the crew worked out the logistics of Mr. Huh and Maggie making their escape from the club, leaving one of the henchmen pinned to a pillar by a knife blade. Our action director, Chin Kar-lok, learned the trade as a key member of Sammo Hung’s team, and has been an action star himself.
In the early hours, my brain started to go numb with fatigue. I saw Maggie leaning against a wall, and sat down, leaning against her, my cheek on her shoulder. Enjoying this moment of camaraderie to the full, I launched into a litany of all the things that were bothering me about life in general. When I finished, ‘Maggie’, said, to my amazement, in perfect Chinese: I don’t know what you’re on about, but I’m sure it will all work out okay. I jumped away from she whom I suddenly realized to be Maggie’s stunt double. I thought you were Maggie!, I sputtered. That’s what they all say, she muttered.
(To give Ms. Q her due, she once call me in a dark hour with some salient advice that I still carry with me: ‘It’ll be all right in the end, and, if its not all right, it’s not the end.’)
Besides being a macho movie star, Mr. Huh also has a career in Korean musical theatre. We were much surprised to learn that he had to rush back from the Dragon Heat shoot to appear in a stage production: Songs from Chicago. (Sung in Korean.) He is very image conscious. Shooting out of sequence, we shot him and Maggie entering the interior door of the club after we shot the action inside. Before each take, Huh’s hair-dresser ran in to fix his hair. Before each take, Maggie, standing behind Huh, cracked us up by impersonating the hair-dresser running in to fix his hair. (It’s not that she doesn’t respect her fellow workers. Night shoots make everyone a little goofy.)
As the hours passed, tempers frayed. After the tenth take of lifting an opponent of
his feet, Maggie turned on me. Work all night for peanuts, she rasped, and there’s not even anything I can eat. (Maggie is a strict vegetarian.) How about I run to the all night McDonalds?, I suggested. How about I let you live?, she responded. I headed out, grabbed a cab, bought the burgers… Half-way back to the set, I realized they got the order wrong. Everything had meat. I briefly considered throwing the meat away and serving Maggie gherkin-and-lettuce-in-a-bun burgers. Nah. She still had access to that knife… Back to McDs, and I returned with meat free McMuffin meals.
We walk back out to the balcony. It’s that darkest hour before dawn, and the hooker fashion store is still open. They should have a slogan, suggested Maggie. ‘Here at Ho’s/we never close.’ I wondered if primary coloured lycra was really all they were selling…
(Dragon Heat was as much an adventure to make as it is fun to watch, and I’ll cover different aspects in upcoming blogs.)
