Q&A
with Simon Chung
Q: As
a director based in Hong Kong, did you have free reins to film “Speechless” in
China? Where did you shoot the scenes?
I
didn’t have official permission to film in China, so I just shot it the
“underground” way. I shot it in a small city called Shantau, and in the
northern part of Guangdong province in the
south of China.
Q:
Did you face any censorship by Chinese authorities on the topic of
homosexuality?
Since
the film contains homosexual content, the authorities would not have granted
permission to shoot, and once it’s made, it would not be able to be shown there
officially. Hopefully when it comes out on DVD, the people in China could
access the film on pirated copies and online.
Q:
Did you have official government permission to shoot the film, or did you shoot
on the fly?
As I
said, we had no permission to shoot. However, for some of the locations, we
sought the permission of the relevant authorities, like in the university and
the church. For the church we did not tell them about the content of the film,
and the love-making segment was added on in post-production.
Q:
Has the film been shown in China, and if so, what was the reaction of
audiences?
I
showed it at Shantau University, and the students had some issues with
homosexuality. They couldn’t understand how the character of Luke would just go
up there and pick up a guy. I guess they don’t know how shallow gay men (or men
in general) are!
Q:
How has gay life evolved in China? Westerners who have never been to China
believe that gay life is mostly underground and secretive, except perhaps in
the major cities. How realistic is the movie in terms of showing gay life?
The
two Chinese characters in my film are both from small towns, and for such
people, homosexuality is mostly underground. Some may not even be aware of
their own sexual desires. Of course nowadays with the Internet people can read
about such things, but it’d be difficult for them to find someone to have sex
with, much less a sustained relationship. (Mind you, Grindr and Facebook are
both banned in China.) Perhaps some will have furtive encounters in public
baths or toilets, and that’s it. Most gay men and women in China have
heterosexual marriages, even in big cities.
So for Han and Jiang in my film, they would probably not have acted out
their sexuality until they had met Luke.
Q:
Talk about the casting of Pierre-Matthieu Vital as the “speechless” Frenchman
found naked along a riverbank in rural China, and where you found him? Although
he has no dialogue in the first half of the film, later he speaks in flashback
scenes. Is he fluent in Mandarin or was that dubbed? And what about the casting
of the other main characters?
Pierre is a friend of a friend of mine. He works in
Guangzhou, 2 hours by train from Hong Kong, and makes frequent trips to Hong
Kong, where I first met him a few years ago. He’s been working in China for 5
or 6 years, but in real life he’s not fluent in Mandarin. I gave him his lines
before hand, and he practiced them with his Mandarin tutor.
The
guy who plays Jiang, the hospital aide, is from Beijing. His name is Gao Qilun.
I know him from another film he did for a Hong Kong director a couple of years
back, but since then he had not done much acting. I flew to Beijing to meet
him, but he didn’t want to be in the film at first because was trying to
develop another career. And then the job he was waiting for fell through, and
he decided to become involved in Speechless.
The
guy who plays Han, Jiang Jian, is from Guangzhou.
Aside from acting he also models and is a magician! The actress who plays Ning
is Yu Yung Yung. She was born in Indonesia, studied in Australia, and now lives
in Hong Kong. I saw her in another independent film called 26 Happiness Road.
Q:
The plot plays out as a fascinating mystery: Why did this handsome young
Westerner become so traumatized that he is speechless? How did the story line
come about?
I
think Luke was traumatized because he held himself responsible for Han’s
comatose state. He felt that if it wasn’t for him, Han would have just went on
with his relationship with Ning, and eventually gotten married. He was also hit
by the realization that an innocent college romance would have such dire
consequences.
The
inspiration for the film came from the “Piano Man”, a guy who washed up off the
eastern coast of England a few years ago. There was no ID on him and he refused
to speak, so they took him to a mental hospital. He was given a piano and
started playing, and stories became circulating of him being a musical genius
who went mad, like the guy in Shine. In reality he was a gay student from
Germany who had a mental breakdown. I transplanted the story to China because I
wanted to see what would happen to such a character there. The film goes both
ways: it is about homosexuality in China from a Western perspective, and also
about Chinese perception of Westerners.
Q:
How does “Speechless,” your third major film, reflect your evolvement as a
director?
As a
screenwriting, I was trying out different things with narrative structure, such
as how the film shifts gear when Luke leaves the hospital, and again when Ning
appears. Also I was playing with different narrative perspectives, such as when
Ning tells her version of the story, and later on you see things from Luke’s
perspective.
Q: How
difficult is it for an indie filmmaker to get funding, particularly for movies
with LGBT themes?
Most
of my films have received funding from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council,
but it’s not enough for a feature film. I had to get additional sources of
funding, such as DVD rights.
