IGN DVD: Dragon Dynasty is releasing two films from different eras of your career. Was there a particular reason they paired these two films or you felt they would be appropriate to be re-released at the same time?
John Woo: I only knew about Hard Boiled. What is the other one? Is it Last Hurrah for Chivalry?
IGN: How are these two films personal benchmarks for you?
Woo: Hard Boiled is my last film in Hong Kong, before I moved to the US. It is the one film which is most accepted by the audience in the West. Ironically, it is one of my most personal films, as it contained a lot of my own feelings toward Hong Kong, which I might be leaving soon.
IGN: Because of movies like Kill Bill, Shaw Brothers-style martial arts has really made a comeback in recent years. How do you feel Last Hurrah for Chivalry fits into that legacy?
Woo: Last Hurrah was the only Wuxia movie I made, although I did three martial arts films before that.
IGN: Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou have returned in recent years to this territory to pay tribute and update the genre with contemporary technology and special effects. What interest do you have in returning to it yourself to make a similarly updated version of this wuxia style?
Woo: I have no plans to do a Wuxia movie. There is absolutely no Wuxia or martial arts in Red Cliff. I want all the action to look realistic.
IGN: Hard Boiled is an all-time action classic. What if anything do you recall from the experience of making it or releasing it to an international audience that is significant now?
Woo: When I made Hard Boiled, I had no idea that it would be released to an international audience. I just wanted to make a film to team up my two favorite actors, Tony Leung and Chow Yun-Fat. The saddest thing happened when scriptwriter Barry Wong died midway through the shoot, when the script was half-finished. While I was mourning for Barry, I had to finish the script based on the treatment he left behind. This was during production.
IGN: Hard Boiled seems to have come from an era of action where style superseded everything - sometimes even believability. How much work do you do on a film to make it a realistic universe or does that matter in the service of telling an interesting or entertaining story?
Woo: I think my style for that film works well with the story. They compliment each other.
IGN: You don't record a commentary on either of these films. Were there time limitations or do you have any interest in discussing your movies through interviews and commentary tracks?
Woo: I did the commentary twice on that film, one for Criterion and one for Fox Lorber.
IGN: What other films would you especially like to see remastered or re-released for international audiences?
Woo: For my own films, I would like to see Bullet in the Head remastered. The original cut was actually almost three hours. After I moved to the States, I had, at one time, planned to restore the film to its original form, and to have a new original score. But to my horror, I discovered that the lab has thrown away the negative of the cutout footage, without my permission. But still, it remains my most personal film to date.
IGN: You are an expert filmmaker when it comes to creating epic set pieces or huge sequences, and countless reviews examine your visual style. Has your focus changed as you have matured as a director in terms of finding stories that are less action-oriented or more grounded and dramatic?
Woo: Two years ago, I did a 19-minute short film for UNICEF, Song Song and Little Cat, which was part of the feature All the Invisible Children. It has absolutely no action in it, and people were very surprised. I like action, but it was always the characters and the drama which come first.
IGN: What are you working on next?
Woo: I am working on several things right now: 1) a love story, 2) a contemporary thriller set in Beijing, 3) a western set in the Pacific Northwest, and 4) a period adventure on the explorer Cheng He. One of them will be my next movie.
