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By Bryan Walsh
Posted Monday, October 3, 2005; 21:00 HKT
There's a golden rule among Hollywood producers: never risk your own money when making a film. But that assumes you can convince someone else to pay for your project, and in 1999 investors weren't eager to fund Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a Chinese martial-arts film shot by an art-house director. So with the cast already filming in China's Xinjiang province, producer Bill Kong put up some of his own cash to help fill the gap. "There were times when I was on the verge of jumping off the roof," recalls Kong, 52. "It was pretty scary." Production continued, funding finally came through, and Crouching Tiger went on to gross $128 million in the U.S. and earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Not bad, as investments go.
You've probably never heard of Bill Kong, and that's the way the shy film producer likes it. "I have been able to work with great people, great directors and actors," he says. "I'm just a guy who's been lucky." But there's more than luck involved when you have a track record like this: Crouching Tiger, Hero and House of Flying Daggers were all produced by Kong, and each grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Under Kong's behind-the-scenes guidance, Chinese-language film has blossomed commercially around the world. "Bill is the one who really figured out how to make money off China," says veteran Hong Kong producer Nansun Shi.
Kong's father owned cinemas in Hong Kong, and formed Edko Films to distribute independent films from around the world for them. Not long after the son began running the business in 1989, however, the cost of the films was rising even as the quality was dropping. His cinema chain (which now includes 12 theaters in Hong Kong and six co-owned on the mainland, including the country's first multiplex) still needed movies to show, so Kong moved into film production. Crouching Tiger was his first major project; his latest will be the Zhang Yimou drama Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, which premieres at the Tokyo International Film Festival in October.
For all his success in bringing Chinese movies to Western audiences, Kong's real goal is the creation of a self-sufficient pan-Asian film market, with China at its center. "The future of Asian films can only be in Asia," he says. That future will need a steady supply of homegrown movies good enough to draw people away from pirated DVDs and into the theaters. "I'm just trying to do whatever I can to help good films get made," says Kong. That's good enough.
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