James Schamus’ Kung Fu Writing

A Conversation with James Schamus

by A.G. Basoli | Published February 3, 2007

When it comes to independent film stalwarts, James Schamus has worked with some of the biggest. For Ed Burns' breakthrough film, The Brothers McMullen, Schamus served as executive producer and he helped to produce that film's follow-up, She's The One. He has also worked alongside Todd Solondz, again as executive producer, on his much-talked-about film Happiness. Yet, one can't think of Schamus without immediately thinking of director Ang Lee. Schamus holds the rare distinction of having collaborated on all of Ang Lee's feature films, serving as either producer, co- or executive producer or screenwriter, beginning with Lee's debut feature film Pushing Hands. High points of this collaboration include co-writing the art house hits Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet; adapting Rick Moody's novel The Ice Storm (which won Best Screenplay at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival); writing the Civil War epic Ride with the Devil; and, most recently, co-writing the martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In a MovieMaker interview, Schamus shares how he tackled the martial arts genre, worked with his Chinese counterparts to fine-tune his Western sensibility, and what it feels like to have taken part in a film that seems likely to become the first Chinese blockbuster.

MovieMaker: How familiar were you both with the Chinese classical culture and Kung Fu movie tradition of Hong Kong when you first started working on the (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) script?

James Schamus: I had read a lot of classical Chinese literature in translation and I had seen a lot of the classical wuxia pian as well as Kung Fu movies. I felt as if I knew what I was doing when I sat down and started working on the screenplay, but it turns out I was completely wrong. In fact it was an enormous learning curve working on this screenplay. When I began I was culturally tone deaf. And, to a certain extent was able to use my own ignorance as something of a strength.

MM: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was originally a Chinese novel. How close did you stay to the original text when creating the screenplay?

JS: The original text is a five-volume novel written about 75 years ago in Chinese, so I can honestly say I don't know because I didn't read it. It was never translated. Ang worked for about a month and half on a summary of the novel. He just pulled out the elements from the novel-which goes on for thousands of pages-that he was most interested in focusing on. So I think, unless we were going to make a 200-hour mini series, it would have been impossible to be faithful to the book. At the same time I think I ended up being rather faithful to those parts of the book that Ang was really interested in seeing make their way to the screen.

MM: Is it true that the script was tailored to an American sensibility rather than a Chinese one?

JS: I wouldn't put it that way. We wanted to make a quintessentially Chinese film that could speak to worldwide audiences in much the same way that Hollywood makes quintessentially American films that speak to worldwide audiences. The film embraces its international audiences, I hope, with the same amount of generosity that Hollywood films often have toward worldwide audiences. So, rather than making a kind of Hollywood version of a Chinese movie, I think we ended up making a Chinese version of an international blockbuster.

MM: In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you worked with two other screenwriters. Can you tell me a little about this collaboration?

JS: It was basically a great amount of back and forth, especially with Wang Hui Ling, who added so much to my first draft in terms of the kind of cultural specificity, nuance, and sense of propriety that was lacking.

MM: Being a martial arts film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is filled with fight scenes. How do you write such high-flying action into the script?

JS: In the first draft we would have all the dialogue up until the fight and then I would write the following words: THEY FIGHT! At the beginning of the script, I wrote a little paragraph that said 'Even though the fight sequences are not written in the script, you can rest assured that they'll be the greatest fight sequences ever in the history of cinema.'

MM: Wasn't that difficult on the actors, though, the fact that their lines had to be worked directly into the fights on set?

JS: Sometimes, yes. It's a venerable part of the wuxia pian genre for fighters to pause and exchange dialogue of various kinds. In American movies, when people start fighting, it's because they are so angry they want to kill somebody. That's how Americans fight. By then they're just screaming and their veins are coming out their foreheads. But in the wuxia pian genre you fight usually rather reluctantly, and usually you're engaged both emotionally and philosophically. So what was difficult for the actors in this film was that they were required, in our fight scenes, to really act... In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, very few of the fights are between people who actually want to kill each other. The fights function in a very different way from most martial arts films, even. They try to teach each other, or learn more about each other, or figure out a way to stop somebody from doing something they shouldn't do for their own good.

MM: What kind of reception do you expect for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

JS: One of the great things about being a writer and producer is that you don't have to be a prognosticator of future events, but I can point out what it's doing in its first week in Western release. It just opened in France last week, and I believe the proper term for its release would be a blockbuster! Number 1 in Paris; just probably the biggest runaway hit for a non-English or French-language film maybe ever in the history of France. So we're feeling very confident.

COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Comment by Joseph lewis on 7/27/08 at 1:27 pm

I’m glad more film makers are taking Chinese culture seriously.  The kung fu genre is fantastic in its own right, but there are much deeper lessons to be learned from our Eastern brothers and sisters.

I’m learning more about Taoism and practice Tai Chi Chuan .  My teacher is also a retired medical doctor, so learning about the similarities and common ground is as fascinating as the differences.

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