Thanks to Ayako for tweeting the link!
The stunning Tony Zhao photos that we saw the other day were taken while Keanu Reeves was in the China Daily News for an interview. They have posted a colored photo from the day along with the interview. The interview contains some new information that we have not seen before.
The article and photo is here. The translation was extracted with the google and bing translators. No copyright infringement is intended.
Update: China.org has just posted a translation of this article. Theirs is better than what I have come up with, so rather than finishing the translation, you can read theirs here.
After finishing The Matrix films, Keanu Reeves and Chen Hu reamained good friends. The friendship continues to this day and Chen Hu starred in Mr. Reeves directorial debut Man of Tai Chi.
The story of ‘Tai Chi Man’ is quite simple. A yound courier, Chenlin Hu is a tai chi master. In order to renovate the Taoist martial arts Temple that he has gone to since childhood, he participates in Mr. Reeves’ Donaka Marks underground fighting matches to earn the money. During this time, the police have been investigating the illegal boxing matches and Chenlin Hu must make a choice.
Mr. Reeves stresses that this project was very personal because here he is 13 years later working with his good friends Yuen Woo-Ping and CHen Hu again. He repeatedly stresses that there would be no film without Chen Hu.
Mr. Reeves says, ” It is hard to describe why you become friends with someone. We like to talk about our respective families to each other, Chen Hu talked about his master and we we share a similar sense of humor.”
Mr. Reeves was greatly impressed with a story that Chen Hu told him about his master. The Master would place bird seeds on his hand to attract the birds. When the birds would perch on his hand, he would be able to control the bird’s song.
In ‘Tai Chi Man’ the fighting scenes were not magical. The fight scenes in Tai Chi were designed to show the close and realistic action while the choreography was dazzling The Matrix. Perhaps this is because the those in The Matrix were able to train for 8 hr a day for 4 month. The 10+ fights which comprise 40 min in the film, were done by Chen Hu who has been studying martial arts since he was 8 yr. old.
The only fight scene that Mr. Reeves has in the film is the last fight which is the ultimate shown down with Chen Hu that takes about 10 min. Mr. Reeves was able to complete most of the action himself. However, there were a few extremely dangerous actions that he was not able to do because of his previous neck surgery and a stunt double completed those.
According to Mr. Reeves, the script was originally Chen Hu’s idea. After reading the script, he felt the need to modify it and found at least 3 Chinese writers to improve the story. He did not want to do just a summer blockbuster but instead wanted to show some of the culture and philosophy behind tai chi. One of the tai chi principles that is emphasized is balance.
To be continued…