Word: yuen
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...certainly owes much to his action choreographer, as both a colleague and an inspiration. Some of Crouching Tiger's most sensational exploits echo earlier Yuen films. The spectacle of a lady thief flying over rooftops is a highlight of Yuen's 1994 Fire Dragon. And the up-a-tree skirmish? Catch the warriors perched on flaming poles in 1993's Iron Monkey...
...master, 55, doesn't mind collaborating with younger auteurs--like the Wachowski brothers, whose The Matrix, that kung fusion of Hong Kong technique and Hollywood technology, featured some prime Yuen sorcery (he is now preparing the two sequels). "When I'm working with good directors," he says, "they'll often come up with ideas that profoundly inspire me. And then if I can make them workable, we'll shoot them...
...fans of Eastern action epics, Yuen is revered as the deviser of artful torture for Asia's top actor-athletes: Jackie Chan (the 1978 Drunken Master), Sammo Hung (Magnificent Butcher), Jet Li (The Tai Chi Master) and Michelle Yeoh (Wing Chun, with its amazing battle over a plate of tofu). In period epics and modern cop dramas, his heroes and villains have used chopsticks, pigtails, calligraphy brushes, umbrellas and robe sleeves as impromptu weapons. His melodrama is never mellow: a little girl is bundled in dynamite (The Red-Wolf); a heroine battles a predator...
...Yuen comes from an illustrious family of martial artisans. His father Yuen Siu-tin (Simon Yuen) was a martial-arts teacher in films as far back as the 1920s and earned late stardom in the title role of 1978's Drunken Master. Wo-ping's four brothers have carved notable, knockabout careers in movie action; one of them, Cheung-yan, supervised fight scenes for the new Charlie's Angels. The brothers often work together, billed as the Yuen Clan...
...though, Yuen had a collaborator as stubborn as he is gentle--determined to put on film the beautiful, impossible stunts he had dreamed of since childhood. Yuen had to play the stern adult. "Ang would say he didn't want to shoot things Wo-ping's way because it was an Ang Lee movie," Chow Yun Fat recalls. "But his ideas couldn't be worked out. Finally, he'd go to Wo-ping and say, 'Master, I'm wrong. Let's do it your way now.'" But Lee did persuade Yuen of the need for the film's bamboo scene...