He came into the world as Wu Yu-Sheng in October, 1946. Originally hailing from Guangzhou (Canton), in the south of China, his family fled to British-controlled Hong Kong in 1950 to escape the newly organized Communist government. Woo and his parents lived in a shantytown slum until a terrible fire destroyed the whole works in 1953, then survived on the streets for a year before finally settling in government housing. “The neighborhood had lots of drug dealers and gangsters,” Woo says, “There was gambling and prostitution. Every day I had to deal with a gang. I used to get beat up by a gang and I used to fight back very hard. I got in lots of fights. But I had great parents who taught me to go straight and to live with dignity and be a decent man.” His father soon contracted tuberculosis, and would die from the disease while Woo was in his teens. “Because we were poor,” Woo says, “I always thought we were living in hell.”

Throughout those grim years, only two things kept Woo’s spirit intact. The first was an event he now sees as miraculous: he became the beneficiary of an anonymous donation from an American family intended to send destitute Chinese kids to school. “I was deeply impressed,” he says, “with the altruism of the American family who paid for my education that my family valued but was simply unable to supply.” Soon Woo was in a Lutheran school and attending church, with the goal of both to “make decent young men and women out of us slum-dwellers. And, I must say, the school achieved its aim.”

When his teachers complained that his Chinese name was too hard for them to pronounce, he chose a solid Christian name, John, as a substitute. Soon, he considered himself “a fervent Christian,” going so far as to flirt with becoming a minister so that he might somehow repay the kindnesses laden on him by the church. He attended a Catholic high school, and made his first money doing work at various churches. “All of these things,” Woo says, “made me learn what dignity is, what honor is, and gave me a lot of hope.” Even after his father died, he remained unbowed and refused to join a gang, do drugs, or succumb to any of the other pitfalls of life in the slums. When asked how he managed to keep on the straight and narrow in such trying circumstances, his response is simple: “I had a great mother, and I was devoted to the church.”

The other thing that transformed Woo’s life in those years was cinema. “My mother was a huge fan of American classics,” Woo says, “so she often took me to the movies. They were free for kids. Because we lived in the slums I loved movies so much for helping me escape from that hell. There was so much beauty in movies.” It got to the point where Woo found himself cutting classes in order to sneak away to see all the latest pictures. By the time he graduated high school his mind was filled with filmic lessons learned from classic American movies, the French New Wave, the gangster films of Jean-Pierre Melville, the samurai films of Kurosawa, and much else.

He began making short experimental films of his own in an attempt to mimic the beauty he saw on screen, funding them by working as a ballroom dance instructor at yet another church. “I wasn’t a great dancer,” he admits, “I just knew the moves and taught people. But that made me learn the ability of the body to move, and to see the romance in physical action.” In hindsight, this peripheral education would have the same brilliant effect on his future filmmaking career that military drill training had on the career of legendary Hollywood dance choreographer Busby Berkeley. “As I’m shooting sometimes,” Woo says, “or when I choreograph action, I feel like I’m dancing. When I have my hero diving in the air, or shooting with two guns, it’s pretty much like ballet.”

Film school was not only beyond his reach economically — no such institution existed at all in 1960s Hong Kong. So after high school, he finagled his way into a job as a production assistant at Cathay Studios, and over a period of many years managed to work his way up the food chain, hopping from Shaw Brothers to Golden Harvest to Golden Princess. Eventually he became a director of formula martial arts flicks (one starring a very young Jackie Chan) and goofy comedies, but his heart still lay with those Melville pictures seen as a kid, with action and visuals filtered through a fertile mind’s eye chock-full of Christian imagery and iconography. “I tried to convince the studio to let me make a gangster film,” Woo remembers, “but they didn’t want me to.” As the comedies and martial arts flicks he made began to draw less and less at the box office, his rising star dimmed, and he found himself a has-been at the box-office before he had even the chance to do a single film with full creative control. “I was so very frustrated,” Woo says about the long doldrums of his early directorial career. “Some people even said I should go back to film school or just watch tapes and learn about film, which hurt me. You know, I do have my dignity. I’ve always believed I am a good director.”

Finally, in 1985 he got a break thanks to his friendship with director/producer Tsui Hark. Woo had previously helped Tsui through some particularly rough patches and lean years, so when in the mid-1980s Tsui was getting his own production company off the ground, one dedicated to the improvement and modernization of Hong Kong films, he gave Woo a chance to finally direct the kind of movie he wanted, a “homage to Jean-Pierre Melville, or Martin Scorsese, or Sam Peckinpah.” But this movie wouldn’t just be a copycat production, it would reflect Woo’s own outlook on life. “I wanted to make a film that would emphasize traditional values: loyalty, honesty, passion for justice, commitment to your family. Things I felt were being lost. . . .These are the values that I put in my films. My kind of hero fights for justice, for what is right.”

The result was A Better Tomorrow (1986 — the film’s original Chinese name directly translates to “True Colors of Valor” or “The Essence of Heroes”), a movie filled to the brim with guns, cool Armani clothes fluttering in the wind, male bonding, honor-killing, and Christian-inspired notions of sacrifice and redemption. And did I mention the guns? The movie was a smash hit and a cultural touchstone for a generation of Hong Kong filmgoers.

After fifteen long years, Woo had finally found his métier and become a bonafide auteur. He had also found an actor capable of epitomizing the noble yet conflicted spirit of the heroes populating his brutal, balletic action films: Chow Yun-fat.

Next week in For Conservative Movie Lovers, the ascension of Chow Yun-fat from ex-soap-opera star and “box-office poison” to Hong Kong’s answer to Steve McQueen.

Previous posts in the series “John Woo, Chow Yun-fat, and Hard Boiled”

Part 1

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

John Woo at Netflix. You can rent quite a few Woo items here, but alas, no A Better Tomorrow (1986) or A Better Tomorrow II (1987) quite yet. Still, what’s left on the menu is a rich list. From his early years, you’ve got Hand of Death (1976) and Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1979). From his Hong Kong gangster prime there’s his masterpiece The Killer (1989), the gritty Bullet in the Head (1990), the lighthearted and playful Once a Thief (1991), and of course Hard Boiled (1992). Then you’ve got his Hollywood oeuvre: Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997), Mission: Impossible II (2000), Windtalkers (2002), and Paycheck (2003). Finally, you have his latest triumph, the Chinese historical epic Red Cliff (2008), Woo’s attempt to make a film with the sweep and grandeur of Lawrence of Arabia. Have fun.

A John Woo tribute at YouTube. Courtesy of creator Ernest M. Whiteman III, here is a visual primer on why John Woo is held in such regard by fans as both an action director and as a filmmaker who possesses great emotional and thematic depth:

Crossings: John Woo Documentary. If you can stand the strangely compressed aspect ratio of this video at YouTube, here is a five-part overview of Woo’s life and career.

First, it must be noted that it is rather incredible that this speech got as much play as it did. Remember, this is a private citizen from Alaska who was a “failed” vice-presidential candidate, who has given no official indication she is ever going to run for anything ever again. The speech was a private affair in a foreign country and contained no real “news” whatsoever. The news media was barred and were forced to cobble together bits and pieces of what was said from the paying customers who attended. And yet, nearly every major publication gave the event heavy play and links to FOUR of those articles were displayed prominently on the Drudge Report all day long. 

This is simply extraordinary, a true testament to Palin’s enduring star power and just how much the media still desperately wants/needs their favorite target to stick around. It is also a vindication of her much maligned post-resignation strategy. 

The initial element that shocked me about the coverage of this Hong Kong event (other than its magnitude) was that, at first glance, the reporting left a remarkably positive impression of the speech. The New York Times in its second paragraph reluctantly admitted that those in attendance thought, “she was articulate, well-prepared and even compelling.” You can almost see the Times reporter and editors cringing at having to allow the Old Grey Lady to be soiled by such blasphemy to the modern liberal as the acknowledgement that Palin is not a complete dunce.       

The AFP service’s first quote in their article was, “She was brilliant,” though they added the caveat that this assessment came from a delegate who requested their anonymity (presumably to protect the ability to make future dinner reservations in New York or Los Angeles).  Meanwhile, Bloomberg, after quoting someone who left the speech early as calling it “boring,” at least allowed the head of the sponsoring group to call it “a great speech.” 

But a closer look at the coverage reveals that Palin Derangement Syndrome is still a robust strain within the news media and that the rules for reporting on her are completely different than anyone else in public life. 

The most egregious example of this probably came from Time magazine whose account claimed she ducked questions (when she did indeed take them), was laced with only disparaging comments form those in attendance, and which had a top ten list of Palin “spoofs” embedded right in the middle of the web version. But an item in both the New York Times and Associated Press accounts of the address deserves an extra special critique. 

In a classic example of the grossly distorted prism through which the Times sees all events (especially those involving Palin), their writer arbitrarily decided, with zero evidence, that the purpose of the speech was to “broaden her foreign policy credentials” for a 2012 presidential run. This then opened the door for the “reporter” to make a pronouncement that should set a new definition for the word gratuitous and a fresh standard for shoddy journalism.

The Times actually deemed it appropriate to publish: “Mrs. Palin was faulted during the campaign last year for her lack of foreign policy experience and expertise. As the governor of Alaska, she said in her own defense, she had a unique insight because ‘you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska’ — a remark that was widely lampooned.”

This is simply a stunning statement coming from the newspaper of “record.” Palin “was faulted for her lack of foreign policy experience and expertise”? By whom? For what reason? The reality is that Palin’s foreign policy experience, while meager, was still greater than our current President whose nonexistent credentials (little more than a mysterious college trip to Pakistan) were never remotely questioned by the media, and a rudimentary examination of the Vice-Presidential debate reveals that it was Joe Biden who made all the significant foreign policy blunders.

But even that pales in comparison with to the “see Russia” gem. 

First, the now infamous “Russia” statement was clearly made as an aside in Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson. Palin knew that the vast majority of American’s had no idea of the geographical proximity of Russia to Alaska (which, until after the Civil War, was actually part of Russia) and said it in a “gee, isn’t this an interesting fact?” sort of way.

Second, what she said was 100% factually accurate and relevant. As for the “lampooning” of the remark, that was done inaccurately by a comedy show with an obvious agenda. The Times should be embarrassed (if that’s still possible) even mentioning the episode in this context and to not at least point out the full context, as I just did, is flat out Media Malpractice.  

As pathetic as the Times reporting was, the Associated Press was downright juvenile in taking the exact same page out of the anti-Palin playbook. They wrote, “she was ridiculed during the campaign after contending her state’s proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy experience. “You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska,” she said.

However, amazingly, the AP hardly stopped there. They ended their piece of trash with this beauty: “Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Tuesday the group knew little about Palin’s speech. ‘We’re curious as to what she’s willing to say in private but not in public,’ Sevugan said. ‘Are there other countries that she can see from her window that she doesn’t want us to know about?’”

This is truly astonishing. Forgetting that the DNC feels like it needs to use old, factually empty, Saturday Night Live skits to ridicule a private citizen, how absurd is it that the Associated Press has no problem ending their “report” on Palin’s speech with a blatantly inaccurate quote from a highly partisan source without even at least a mention that Palin never came close to saying anything about seeing other countries from her “window.”   

This issue is a particular pet peeve of mine. After the election I paid a lot of money for a controversial Zogby poll which exposed that 87% of Obama voters wrongly thought that Sarah Palin had said she could she Russia from her “house” when it was actually Tina Fey who had said that on SNL.  Then, after I appeared on The View, I was interviewed on Barbara Walters’ radio show and, incredibly, she revealed that even she was under the delusion that Sarah Palin had actually said that. Unfortunately, even some “conservative” commentators have bought at least partially into this myth.

In the coverage of Palin’s speech we see some of the many spoiled fruits of both the insidious nature of the news media and of conservatives being either unwilling or simply unable to win even the easiest of battles. If a year later we still can’t correct the record about a simple factual statement Sarah Palin made about the geographic location of her home state, how the hell can the truth win any argument?! 

While it’s obviously the media’s fault that this lie has become such a large part of the Palin mythology, I have been disappointed with the timid response of conservatives on this issue and others like it. My guess is that it is because we can’t believe that people really believe this crap (trust me, the evidence is overwhelming that they do) and that , with only occasional access to talk radio and Fox News,  it is just too hard to correct so we move on to other more pressing matters.

While this view is understandable, it is also remarkably shortsighted. Much like Obama was elected largely because Republicanism was killed by a series of unreputed legends over the previous ten years (Clinton was impeached for sex, Bush stole Florida, Bush lied about WMD in Iraq, Bush caused Katrina, Republicans caused the economic meltdown, etc.), the same death by a thousand lies could befall Palin.

Regardless of your view of her, our side just doesn’t have nearly enough talent to allow anyone like her to be needlessly taken out. On the bright side, the outrageous coverage of Palin’s first major post resignation speech proves that the news media is convinced that they haven’t yet finished the job.