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An Unorthodox Screenwriter Promises Drama

• Byline:WANG FEI-YUN
• Publication Date:11/01/2009

Screenwriter Wang Hui-ling (Courtesy of Wang Hui-ling)

By allowing her characters “to speak,” writer Wang Hui-ling has captivated audiences in Taiwan and around the world.

Like many film production staff whose contributions are outshone by the glamour of the stars or the authority of the director, screenwriter Wang Hui-ling remains unknown to most local audiences, but her works are definitely not. There are few Taiwanese today who have never seen a television series or a movie based on one of her scripts, which include the feature films Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), martial arts fantasy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and espionage thriller Lust, Caution (2007) as well as the biographical TV series April Rhapsody (2000). Wang’s dramaturgic talents have charmed their way into millions of living rooms in Taiwan as well as mesmerized cinema audiences around the world.

People might wonder where this Academy Award nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay has acquired her know-how. Surprisingly her formal training is in notes rather than words, as she graduated with a teaching degree from Taipei College of Education in 1983 with a major in piano. Could it be that she transfers her technique from writing in other genres into her on-screen dramas, say from poetry, short stories or novels? Or could her characters come from drama in her own family life? “The only other thing I’ve ever written is my diary,” Wang says plainly. As to a complicated family life, Wang confesses almost apologetically that is not the case. “My parents are both elementary school teachers. My sister who is dear to me is even squarer than I. My life so far is going smoothly. No, there is absolutely no drama in any terms.” The question remains, though: How did the young music graduate develop into one of the leading screenwriters from Taiwan?

At 18, Wang was taken with the coming-of-age romance Follow Sunshine, Follow You (1982), by director Ding Ya-min, saying that she was attracted by its fresh style of dialogue and realistic characters. “When Ding and a couple of young writers shifted from novels to scripts, they instilled a fresh perspective into television series. Perhaps out of a sense of emulation, I wanted to mould characters that could come to life through my pen and quicken a viewer’s heartbeat.” As a result, she wrote a script and sent it to a contest held by local television station CTV the same year. She did not win the contest, but she did receive a script template and a letter of encouragement from one of the jury members. Wang submitted another script a year later and vividly remembers a request she added humbly at the end of it, writing that she would like Li Tian-zhu and Yu Shan, two popular stars in Taiwan at the time, as the lead actor and actress “should my script be accepted.” To her amazement, her wish came true. “I still can recall entering the studio for the first time, watching the then heartthrob [Li Tian-zhu] striving to memorize my dialogue,” says Wang, who was only 19 at the time. “I was overwhelmed with thrills, stupefaction and mortification.” She has never turned back to her secure teaching career since, resigning from her job in 1984 and committing herself to scripting full time.

Scriptwriter in the Making

In the following decade, Wang authored more than 30 primetime soap operas. Some were hits and turned their actors into stars, while others garnered awards. Wang’s own explanation for her success is her assiduousness. “Since I have no formal training, people often attribute my success to a gift, but it’s not true,” Wang says. “I compensated for my lack of training with tremendous effort.” If she watched a show or movie, she would follow it up by sketching the storyboards. Saying that structure was a point of weakness for her, she borrowed scores of Hong Kong-produced dramas and analyzed the recurrent formulas she noticed in them.

 

Wang’s biographical television series April Rhapsody, about the life of Chinese poet Hsu Zhimo, ignited a media frenzy afterit was broadcast on Public TV in Taiwan. (Courtesy of Zoom Hunt International Productions Co., Ltd.)

But despite this early “training,” Wang cannot tolerate such repetition in her own work. She strives so hard to avoid repetition that she gets stuck if her characters utter a single line or phrase that rings the ominous bell of familiarity. While this might sound easy, it is absolutely not that way in practice considering the scriptwriter’s output with each television show typically running for one hour from Monday through Friday for 20 to 30 episodes. Yet such an unrelenting commitment to originality barely scratches the surface of Wang’s strict self-imposed demands. The writer says every story of hers starts by being acted out in her mind a long time before the director calls for the cameras to start rolling. “When I write, I have a very clear picture of the setting, the ambiance, the characters; even the soundtrack is already on. The characters speak to me with their distinctive voice and unique tone. It’s like taking dictation from them,” she says.

But before aspiring writers turn green with envy at how “easy” this sounds, they might do well to consider what this process used to entail for Wang to get everything to her satisfaction. During the 1980s, when personal computers were uncommon in Taiwan, Wang would do all her work manually. For every rewrite, she had to copy the work from the very beginning. Eventually all this writing by hand took its toll and resulted in serious shoulder pain as well as tendonitis in Wang’s fingers and thumb.

After the writing for a series was complete, then there was the actual production. Fully aware a successful show requires seamless cooperation from every member of the cast and crew, Wang would add notes to her scripts to help the lead actors and crew members accurately envision the show as she saw it in her mind. Anyone who has the chance to read one of Wang’s original scripts, especially the first or second draft, would be surprised at the lengthy footnotes included and the abundant notes inserted between lines of dialogue. Such notes could be elaborate descriptions of the general ambiance of a scene, a profile of the complex emotions a character is experiencing or meticulous suggestions about preferred camera movements. Even during those times when she was under the relentless pressure of squeezing out a one-hour episode per day, she would still make time to include hundreds of extra words to help an actor capture the mood of the character or setting.

“Sometimes I wonder if this [providing such extensive footnotes] is the right way to pen a script,” she says. “This is my dilemma. I’d like the actors to fully realize what I want to express, but I don’t want them to play the part verbatim.”

Neither did this unorthodox way of working end in excessive notes. It was common to find Wang’s imposing figure in the studio—at 176 centimeters tall she is a conspicuous presence among local people—offering uninvited advice on casting, acting, sets, music, costumes, makeup and practically every other element in the making of a show. When asked about this unusual working habit, Wang cannot hold back a hearty laugh. Although some directors complained about her formidable involvement, she took part in virtually every aspect of the TV shows, from location scouting to rectifying an actor’s accent.

“She’s stubborn and tenacious when it comes to quality control of the production,” says producer and filmmaker Hsu Li-kong, but his remarks are in an admiring rather than a disparaging tone.

For her part, Wang would not have it any other way. “I’ve always told myself if I’m true to my work, even if the majority of the audience don’t receive the show well, the script can somehow touch some viewers. Therefore, I can still score 50 percent. But if I intentionally write to cater to the audience’s taste, my works could end up being a 100 percent fiasco.”

Wang’s approach seems to have paid off with rave reviews and a frenzied response from local audiences for many of her television series. Between 1982 and 1994, she was nominated for the Golden Bell Awards twice, winning once, and her shows set record-high viewer ratings on several occasions.

Leap to the Big Screen

After this triumphant stint working on TV series, in 1992 Wang was recruited as a screenwriter for Ang Lee’s full-length feature film Eat Drink Man Woman. Initially, it was Hsu Li-kong who passed a proposal based on Wang’s hit television series Four Daughters to the then emerging filmmaker and asked Wang to pen the first draft. Lee has been quoted as recalling his first meeting with Wang saying, “We chatted for a marathon 12 hours. I enacted the story while reading the script; then both of us nearly split our sides laughing. We share a similar sense of humor and taste in movies ... Wang’s sense of drama is unusually acute.”

 

Film director Ang Lee, second left, attends the premiere of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Taipei in 2000. Wang is credited with adding much of the emotional depth to the movie with her rewrite of the Chinese script. (United Daily News)

For her big-screen debut, Wang finished the first draft for the film within a mere 15 days. According to Lee, Wang provided rich substance for the subtle and delicate interactions between the protagonist and his three grown daughters, with some of the film’s awkward situations revealing Wang’s lucid understanding of human nature and sense of humour.

Surprisingly Eat Drink Man Woman was a hit among foreign audiences more than with local viewers. It was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign-Language Film and received six nominations for the US-based Independent Spirit Awards. It was also selected as the opening night feature for the Directors’ Fortnight of the 1994 Cannes International Film Festival. By contrast, the feature did not garner a single award at local festivals and grossed a little more than US$1.5 million at the domestic box office.

For Wang, the long-term implication of this initial cooperation with Ang Lee was two-fold. It helped her to recognize that a movie “belongs” to the film director, which in turn led her to redefine her role as a screenwriter, and her partnership with Lee and producer and screenwriter James Schamus was to become a unique working arrangement repeated in later hit movies.

Life on Film

After Eat Drink Man Woman, Wang scripted another three primetime television soap operas, among which The First Family was one that set record-high viewing ratings. However, she felt the local show business scene was more and more stifling. “Perhaps once your small feet have been unbound, your old shoes will never fit again,” she says. So, in 1996, she moved to Vancouver, where she lived until 2001 and still spends summers.

 

Ang Lee, second left, attends the premiere of Lust, Caution in Taipei. It seemed natural for Lee to ask Wang Hui-ling to pen the script for the movie after her extensive research into the life of author Eileen Chang. (United Daily News)

Between 1998 and 2004, she devoted herself to scripting two biographical series: April Rhapsody (2000) about Chinese poet Hsu Zhimo (1897–1931), and The Legend of Eileen Chang (2004) about the Chinese writer of the same name. Both series were later broadcast on Public TV in Taiwan, but originally, many had doubts about her choice of subject matter for the two series. Even producer Hsu Li-kong, while a fan of Wang’s writing, wondered whether the tumultuous life of a Chinese poet, who lived some 100 years ago, could stir the heart of contemporary audiences. As for Eileen Chang (1920–1995), while she is widely considered the first truly modern Chinese writer, she was also well known for being a recluse cut off from the world. Could her uneventful life make an interesting drama series?

Wang willingly accepted both challenges, saying she had empathy for the two literati. “They were both the most ‘selfish’ people in Chinese history,” Wang says. “They strove to be true to themselves at any cost.” Hsu pursued true love in defiance of public opinion and the wishes of his mentors and family, while Chang dared to fight social expectations of women and committed herself to writing until her last breath.

The audience response to both series dispersed any doubts. April Rhapsody, broadcast on Public TV in Taiwan, ignited a media frenzy. For a long while, quotes from the show such as “promise me a future” hung on the lips of Taiwanese youth who otherwise could not care less about poetry. Other lines from the show were used in advertisements and played repeatedly. Even the script was published after eager requests from fans.

As for the The Legend of Eileen Chang, Wang says she initially held little hope of gaining permission to shoot the series in mainland China when she submitted the script to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. One of the reasons for this was the film’s subject matter, which included Eileen Chang’s marriage to Hu Lancheng, a pro-Japan collaborator during World War II. As it turned out, however, it seems that the warm sentiment of Wang’s storytelling can melt even the most impassive heart—a censor’s. The script not only survived the mainland administration’s strict censorship, but remarks from one of the censors noted that he was deeply moved by the story and looked forward to seeing the series.

The Legend of Eileen Chang was eventually broadcast in Taiwan and mainland China, but in the mainland the leading characters were given different names and the whole show redubbed. The 20-hour series received mixed reviews and the viewer ratings showed that audiences were not used to a television series lacking the usual “drama.” People still downloaded the series from the Internet, however, and spin-offs such as CDs, DVDs and posters released by Taiwan’s Public TV sold extremely well. The script was also published.

Major League

In 1999, between writing April Rhapsody and The Legend of Eileen Chang, Wang was recruited again by Ang Lee to script the lavish martial arts fantasy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Although she had never penned a martial arts movie before, Lee sought her out for her ability in characterization and her knowledge of the Chinese classics. The film again saw the talents of Lee, Wang and Schamus at work, this time using the popular Chinese genre wuxiapian—films that feature martial arts and tales of chivalry in a historical setting—to tell a story of tragic romance.

In the book Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: A Portrait of Ang Lee’s Epic Film, producer and screenwriter James Schamus recalls the process by which they arrived at the final Chinese and English scripts for the movie. “We came to the script originally with a very strong narrative focus—breathless storytelling of a really fun kind,” he says. “But when the script was translated from English to Chinese, it was clear that there was a lot of the culture that was missing in the original English script—because we weren’t focused on how the texture, both verbally in the language as well as physically in the way the people related to each other, was going to make its way into the movie.”

Schamus credits Wang for “a very, very big rewrite” of the Chinese script that added much of the film’s rich detail and emotional depth. “When we translated that back [from Wang’s Chinese script into English], I was able to ingest an enormous amount of information in detail and feelings, which I never had before.”

In the film, Wang successfully shapes the complex female lead of the spoiled rich girl, Jen, whose wayward energy and pursuit of freedom disturbs the balance of everything and dominates the story’s development. Not only does Jen command the show, she commands the audience’s heart as well, with female viewers identifying with this sassy adventuress in spite of themselves. Remarkably, the same viewers also mist up for Jen’s angelic foil, Yu Shu Lien, the martial arts expert who keeps silent about her love for the protagonist Li Mu Bai on account of social confines.

The film reaped US$128 million in the United States alone—the biggest box office take of any foreign-language movie ever released there as of 2008. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for Wang and her fellow writers, eventually winning four Oscars including Best Foreign-Language Film. The screenplay was also nominated for awards from the Writers Guild of America, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Hong Kong Film Awards and Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards.

Future Rewards

Although Wang could not have known it at the time, her work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon combined with the biographical series about Eileen Chang that she penned immediately after that film would lead to even greater rewards. As luck or fate would have it, it was Wang’s trip to Los Angeles to attend the Academy Awards ceremony that gave her the opportunity to visit the Westwood apartment where Chang had spent her later life and led Wang to create The Legend of Eileen Chang. Three years later, in 2004, when Ang Lee decided to shoot Lust, Caution, a 26-page novella by Eileen Chang, it seemed natural that he sought out Wang once again, this time to bring Chang’s characters to life. Indeed, no one seemed better suited to the job given that Wang had toiled for the previous three years delving into Chang’s life and works to create the television series.

Lust, Caution went on to win the Lion d’Or at the Venice Film Festival in 2007 and gained predominantly positive reviews, but it saw returns of only around US$5 million—or one third of the production cost—in the United States, where its NC-17 rating excluded it from the main theater chains. However, it enjoyed both commercial and critical success across Asia, becoming the third-highest grossing film of 2007 in Hong Kong where it took in US$6.2 million and the sixth highest in mainland China, where it earned US$17 million.

“I envy myself for being so lucky as to cooperate with one of the greatest filmmakers in the past 15 years,” Wang says of her collaboration with Lee. “Working with him certainly stretches my perspectives in terms of viewing a movie or creating a screenplay.”

Many people might envy that chance, yet one must also feel admiration towards such an unorthodox screenwriter. After all, few have the ability to get under the skin of such a wide range of characters. Fewer still can turn work by an author such as Eileen Chang into a compelling script given that most of what happens is based on the characters’ emotional intricacies rather than outside events, or turn Chang’s suggestive, but sparse description of her characters’ inner world, into true-to-life dialogues.

Wang says for her next big projects she hopes to try her hand at directing a film and a staged musical. Still, the urge to breathe life into characters that touch viewers continues to drive her work. “People often assume writers are lonely,” Wang says. “Not me, I never feel alone knowing that somewhere in the anonymous mass, there are always some people waiting to listen to my stories.”

Copyright © 2009 by Wang Fei-yun