RECORDING EDISON: In the studio for a Dog Bite Dog commentary.
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus, wrote Gershwin, when he said the world was round; they all laughed when Edison recorded sound… Thankfully, such was not the case when I met the amiable Edison Chen to record our commentary for the forthcoming Dragon Dynasty release Dog Bite Dog. We had to start at midnight, given Ed’s tough shooting schedule on his latest movie venture.
I first met Edison back in my Media Asia days, at a party held to launch the company’s upcoming slate of films. Originally, Ed was slated to play the villain in Gen-Y Cops, sequel to (yes, folks) Gen-X Cops. I had worked on the former, writing dialogue and coaching the actors on how to say it. On the new film, I was promoted to co-writer (with Felix Chong, who later found greater fame with the Infernal Affairs series.) It was presumed that star Nicholas Tse would reprise his role from the 1st film, but, at the last minute, a dispute between MA and Nic’s management company forced him to pull out. Edison was suddenly promoted to the lead, and we had to hit the ground running. It was a real trial by fire for Ed, and, looking back, I don’t think any of us realized the pressure he was under. For his very first movie role, he was expected to fight like a Jackie Chan stuntman, act opposite Paul Rudd and get smashed through a wall by a giant robot. He lived to tell, and we’re both proud members of the ‘Gen-Y Survivors Club’.
It took Edison a while to find his feet in the Asian entertainment world. Initially, his management tried to mold him into a typical Canto pop balladeer and cast him in insipid romantic movie roles. Ed’s own sensibilities were and are much more urban. He didn’t want to sing, he wanted to rap. He didn’t want to mouth lame dialogue, he wanted to play challenging roles. He didn’t want to be a puppet, he wanted to master his own fate. Over the years, he’s impressed me with the single-minded way he achieved each of these goals. He’s now head of his own multi-media company, Clot. He designed a sports shoe for Nike (that sold out in hours) and recorded a track for a Kanye West album. Despite his various successes, I never felt he had really found his way as an actor.
Oddly enough, Edison was, from the outset, put to better use by Japanese directors than Hong Kong ones. Tokyo pulp meister Takashi Miike cast him in Dead Or Alive 2, and Ed later co-starred in the well-received Japanese drama Under The Same Moon. On the home front, he was featured in several misfires before finally being used to decent effect by Andrew Lau in the Infernal Affairs series (available now from Dragon Dynasty). Check out Infernal Affairs 2 to see Edison and I acting together (if that’s not, in my case, too strong a word…) Yes, Ed got his Hollywood break in Grudge 2, but, as would be proved in Dog Bite Dog, that film came nowhere near to showing the range of his talent.
When I first heard word that Sameway, a Japanese-backed, Hong Kong-based production company, had Edison playing a vicious Cambodian hitman, I figured this was the worst casting decision since Bill Murray remade Razor’s Edge. When I first screened Dog Bite Dog, I literally couldn’t believe this was the same guy. Two young women who happened to be in my apartment at the time also stopped in their tracks and watched the whole movie, which is definitely no chick flick. Later that day, I happened to run into Edison on the street outside his office building. We’re going to buy that movie, I told him. Promise me you’ll do a commentary with me. (I constantly get complaints from fans asking why we don’t get more Asian directors and stars to do commentaries, and the only reason is that either they don’t want to, or they can’t speak the language.)
And so it came to pass that Ed and I sat down to reminisce about his experiences making the film, and I’m sure fans will enjoy the rare opportunity to get some first-hand insights into the Hong Kong film-making process. They can also appreciate my limited knowledge of New York architecture. At one point, I describe a local building as resembling the ‘Gridiron Building’ (where I meant, of course, the Flatiron… ouch). Of course, Ed, who studied in New York, waited until we’d left the studio to inform me of my error. What? , I sputtered, why didn’t you tell me when we were in there? “Yo, dawg,” he replied, “You being so smart and everything, I figured you were probably right, and I got the name wrong, and now I realize I was right after all.” And that’s a sentiment you may share after you catch his performance in Dog Bite Dog.
