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shaolin temple

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We didn't know how movies were made. And there were no action choreographers. Instead, the director told us the basic story, and we took what we had learned in class to design our own fight scenes. We'd show the director what we had come up with, and he'd say, "Well, in this scene, you have the advantage" or "Your character should be more vulnerable. Make the villain stronger." And we'd go back and change it. Come back for more feedback. Go back and change it again. Before the movie even began shooting, we'd already choreographed all our fight scenes. It's not like most Hong Kong movies, where you create the action on the set, on location. We didn't know any better and we had no experience, so we made up most of it ourselves. It was a good learning experience.

My memories of the filming involve all four seasons--winter, spring, summer and autumn--because it took 2 years to make that movie! Well, definitely more than 12 months. The role called for us all to shave our heads, of course. That made winter a very cold proposition. Woollen caps were an absolute necessity. Then came the heat of summer and we tossed away the caps. After a few more months, we still hadn't finished shooting. Wintertime rolled around again. Out came the caps. All of those movies from the 80's took about that long to make. Very slow.

The best part about making that movie was...that we didn't have to train anymore! Good-bye to 8 hours a day of mandatory drills and practice. Compared to what we'd gone through for the past few years, making a movie was a breeze! Even though we were waking up at 5 or 6 to get to the set, and shooting from 8 until sunset, this was nothing. This was relaxing. Didn't we have to fight all day? Sure, but this was nowhere near as tiring as wushu class. In fact, after we finished the day's shoot, we'd go out again and play soccer or basketball. There must have been about 30-40 of us young people. It was like we had too much energy.

And we weren't very nervous either, since we were used to being around cameras from childhood. Acting, though, was a little harder...that was something that we had to work at. But to be able to take something of your own and put it up there on the big screen--that was a genuine pleasure.

The worst part of making the movie, I'd have to say, was not physical. Like I said, shooting for 10 hours a day was not a problem. But Henan in December is very chilly, and we had to shoot by the Yellow River--the river where ice floes drift downstream in the winter. There was a scene in the movie which called for our characters to fall into the river, climb out and then start fighting. Falling in...oh man. The act of willing yourself to jump into that icy river, wearing only a thin set of clothes... Never before--and never since--have I experienced such intense coldness. You jump into the water, and by the time you surface, you're frozen. Imagine your whole body numbed away. You can't feel your own...well, you're already past the point of being able to feel pain. There's nothing. The only sensation I had was that something was throbbing in the water...boum boum boum...and that it was probably my heart.

So we thought that we only had to endure this once--for maybe 5 minutes--and then it would be over. Ha! Little did we know that the fight scene on the riverbank would take another week to shoot. For the purposes of continuity, it had to look like we'd just crawled out of the water. So every morning, we had no choice but to take a bucket of that icy water and pour it over ourselves. Agony! Not so much an agony of the body than of willpower. The rest of the cast and crew were standing by wearing thick overcoats, but we had to douse ourselves with ice. Sure, we tried hot water, but it would be freezing by the time it hit the body. In the movie, that fight scene probably lasts two minutes, but the process of shooting it took us about 3 or 4 days. Oh, it was hard. And back in those days, we had no protective clothing. Nowadays, we have thermal this and waterproof that. Back then, we didn't know about these things, and anyway the budget wasn't very large. The only thing we could afford was our own stamina. After the fourth day of shooting, though, I couldn't extend my fingers anymore. My striking palm had shrivelled up into a claw. It took a week of Chinese medicinal treatment to regain the full use of my hands. I guess the tendons had shrunk from all that repeated freezing and thawing!

Pretty memorable, that movie.

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