China Feature “Back to 1942”: Working with Adrien Brody, Tim Robbins, and Director Feng Xiaogang
Around Jan 2012 I was in LA for my annual trip to the states but before I knew it, it was time to leave the West and head back to China. My next project was on Director Feng Xiaogang’s film “Back to 1942″ (in Chinese it’s called 冯小刚的《一九四二》电影).
For those of you who haven’t heard of Beijing native, director Feng Xiaogang – he has directed some pretty awesome movies such as If You Are the One, Assembly, A World Without Thieves, Aftershock, The Banquet, and many many more. This time around though he directed “Back to 1942″ which was a passion project that he’s wanted to do since over a decade ago. He also got two oscar winners, Mr. Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody to play a priest and reporter respectively. For this project, I did production work coordinating and taking care of the western talent on the project. I also got to jump in as a refugee among 700 other refugees enduring a long arduous journey to find food and shelter.
For a few scenes in the movie Director Feng asked for my input on the action, which was nice as I was able to contribute my feedback and also gain more experience working on a feature film of this magnitude. I also helped translate between director Feng and the actors, which was a good experience for me because director Feng and the actors were very warm and enjoyable to be around. Director Feng always told great stories. Also by being around such amazing talent I was able to pick up some pointers in both acting and directing.
The film “Back to 1942” is about a tremendous famine in central China that claimed three million lives during the war of resistance against Japan.
After a day on set Adrien decided to stop by this shop and jam with a local keyboard player. He recorded it on his phone and Director Feng slapped it on his ‘weibo’ (Chinese version of twitter). He titled it 2 Pianists and the video got hundreds of thousands of views instantly. (There’s more to the story.) When Adrien got back to Beijing on a short break from shooting, he bought the keyboard player a new keyboard and had it sent to him because the old keyboard had some keys that weren’t working. It’s a pretty cool story and you can see the video of what we were watching here-
Though I had worked on films in China, this was my first time working with Hollywood actors in China.. much less two Academy Award winners. I had a really good experience working with them. I learned so much from them in work and outside of work. I have been a fan of Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption and Adrien Brody in The Pianist, Predators, Brothers Bloom, The Experiment, etc… and to get to see them work in person was amazing.
and even though we were shooting in cold weather in a dusty coal polluted environment, Director Feng and his team made this project go very smooth and feel very comfortable. I think Director Feng and the PAs, DP, Simon, and his core team were very bright and efficient. At least on the days that I was on set he was often able to finish before schedule. To me, he seems like a person that knows clearly what he wants and therefore he does not waste any time. He is very bright and can adapt to changes easily. For instance if an actor brings up a suggestion, he is able to think it through and make it work if he sees fit. He doesn’t seem to resist change just because it might throw him off track.
So after the cold and dusty days in Shanxi, after days with the 700 refugees, it was finally time for us to change locations. During this change in location, there was a small break because the scenes with the US actors didn’t start immediately. In that time we had the option to sit and chill or… go to an awesome tropical island. The choice was clear– it was off to paradise! Here is the post on my trip: to Boracay and Manila 2012.
Anyways, back to 1942.
We returned to China and continued filming the rest of the scenes. Though it was “work” I had such a great time with the cast and crew that it almost didn’t feel like work. Also when we went to Chongqing, the scenes were in more modern settings so we didn’t have to be in as harsh environments as the first half of filming.
Here are a few stills from set.
