• Hong Kong Home
• Whats On
• Features
• 
• 
• Bookmark this site

Known for his dark humour on screen, the bad boy of Hong Kong cinema is on a journey into the centre of his own personal universe

Read our other features:
Final cut: Who decides what you see?
Johnnie To: The Auteur
Wong Chun-chun: The accidental feminist
Wong Jing: The crowd pleaser
Herman Yau: The cult director 

Pang Ho-cheung, our cinema’s current poster-boy, and the man behind such wildly innovative films as You Shoot, I Shoot (2001) and Men Suddenly in Black (2003), recalls his early decision to become a film director: “I loved watching films when I was little, and my parents always said, ‘you’re always watching films instead of doing your homework. You should work in the studios instead of having a proper job!’ They meant to lecture me, but I thought to myself, ‘what a good idea’.”

For those who have followed his inspiring body of work, it is easy to envision Pang as a slightly unhinged character. In his feature debut, You Shoot, I Shoot, a hit man strapped for cash is paired up with an aspiring filmmaker in a very unusual business venture – clients hire the duo to eliminate their worst enemies (and, in one case, parents-in-law), and film the murder for their own viewing pleasure. Meanwhile, in his follow-up effort, Men Suddenly in Black – where a gang of four are given the mission of cheating on their wives, while the latter take a trip to Thailand – Pang spoofs the local gangster film tradition in every imaginable way.

“Actually, I don’t think my films are as special [as people say they are],” Pang explains. “I’m only making films that I’d like to see if I am the audience. It’s a habit of mine to comment on how I’d like to change the plot around every time I finish watching a film in the cinema.”

As I find out, his sense of dark humour, which came like a breath of fresh air to the increasingly formulaic Hong Kong cinema of the early noughties, is not so much an attempt to cause scandal than it is the director’s own way of dealing with life. “Ever since I was a kid, I haven’t been very capable of facing up to heavy issues. That’s why I use humour to help myself get through difficult situations. I often have a secret smile on my face at funerals, because I’ll think of happy moments to overcome the sadness. Although my films are often considered comedies, I see them as tragedies viewed from different angles.”

Make that a multitude – Pang’s films are characterised by their abundance of absurd ideas. In the director’s version of an inspiring coming-of-age story, A.V. (2005), a group of college students conspire to hire their favourite Japanese porn star for a fake movie shoot; while in the foul-mouthed Exodus (2007), his characters stumble across a secret society of women who kill men. According to Pang, “the plots of my movies may be very strange at times, but they’re not so strange as to be impossible in real life – the emotions involved are all firmly attached to reality, and should echo with audiences.”

If nothing else, the initial concept for Exodus proves that Pang is a thinking man; in fact, he may think a little too much. “This idea [of a secret woman society] came up when I was in secondary school. I noted my female classmates always went to the restroom together, and stayed there for quite a long time, [ever since] I’ve harboured the belief there must be some secret based around it.”

On the other hand, the edginess of his films may just well be a consequence of intense introspection. Naming Stanley Kubrick and Werner Herzog as his creative influences, Pang explains to me, “Herzog makes [others] understand that it’s really your inner self you need to challenge every time you make a film. I feel that [filmmaking] is like a journey into the deepest part of your soul: to find out how far you and your colleagues can go in the filming process, each time pushing yourself further, experimenting with new things.”

So will we audiences see an even darker side of Pang in his future films?

“I’m planning to make a thriller,” he says. A laugh-free thriller? “The type in which people are really murdered, with lots of blood and a very high body count…” his voice trails off as he begins to conceive his new movie. A natural born director, we’re glad Pang listened to his parents.

Edmund Lee

Read our other features:
Final cut: Who decides what you see?
Johnnie To: The Auteur
Wong Chun-chun: The accidental feminist
Wong Jing: The crowd pleaser
Herman Yau: The cult director