This is an excellent exclusive interview which China Daily's Raymond Zhou conducted with Jay.
Very insightful and with a typical parting shot from His Royal DIAOness, which I've come to expect from him and was not surprising at all. ;)
I'm reblogging it here 'cos I like it very much and want to share it here for easy reference.
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2013-07/30/content_16854235.htm
By his latest film The Rooftop, Jay Chou proves he could be not only a music prodigy, but also a successful film director. Photo provided to China Daily
The movies he merely stars in may not be the best of the bunch,
but those he makes with full creative control never fail to turn heads.
Music sensation Jay Chou morphs from a wonder boy with a Midas touch
into a mature artist with more strengths than weaknesses, writes Raymond
Zhou.
Few entertainers or artists get to dominate a whole decade. For those that do, Act Two of their career is decidedly mixed.
Jay Chou has been a marginal player in Chinese-language cinema. Even
though his 2007 debut in feature-film directing was a smash success, he
was still seen as riding on the coattails of his all-engulfing music
accomplishments as Secret is built around extended passages of music.
The Rooftop, his follow-up that opened on July 11, is not meant to
shake off his image as a music prodigy. Rather, it was conceived as a
musical, with Chou composing more than two dozen tunes for it. But it is
not a conventional musical. Even the pair of lovebirds do not get to
warble a big duet. "I use the song-and-dance numbers as a kind of music
accompaniment," reveals Chou in an exclusive interview with China Daily.
"Ideally, a musical director should be able to translate the imagery
in his head into music. But most would hire professional musicians for
that. I happen to be trained in music and have an interest in movie
directing, so the creation process is more direct for me and the two
skills complement each other."
Not only did Chou compose all the original music, but he also
conceived the staging for many of the tunes. It is not surprising since
Chou directed most of his own music videos and many of his songs portray
exotic or historical scenes in movie-like vicissitudes. Some of the
numbers in The Rooftop turn out to have a Broadway quality, this for
someone whose exposure to the genre is limited to Moulin Rouge, Mama
Mia! and a few others. "I'm more into action movies, riding motorcycles,
etcetera," he says. The result is only the love story gets the musical
treatment while the gangster part is conspicuously devoid of singing or
dancing. "I cannot imagine villains singing their lines. It would be
weird, wouldn't it?"
Chou follows the philosophy that there should not be singing and
dancing for the sake of singing and dancing. His proudest number is a
love ballad set against the screen of a shadow-puppet show. "I was sure
others had used it before, but I wanted to use it to tell a story.
There's no special effect here. All the animals and flowers and
transformation were done with our hands and our bodies."
The story for The Rooftop was set in the 1970s partly for the purpose
of bridging a generation gap. Chou, never shy about admitting his
closeness to his mother, a single parent who brought him up, wants his
mother's generation to love this movie as much as he wants the younger
generation to embrace it. It also gave him an opportunity to create a
highly stylized world in which the rooftop represents a poor man's
paradise. Although he, or rather the male lead he plays, ends up getting
the girl, he designs a rival who is not only much more wealthy but
possesses better looks. That person turns out to be the lesser of two
villains but the immediate rival for his love interest. In Secret, this
role is a competitor in a piano playoff.
Chou says he identifies with the social underdog because he himself
used to be a struggling artist, having to sleep in the recording studio
when riding his motorbike home was too exhausting. "Even now, I don't
have many friends from wealthy backgrounds," he says, explaining that
his passion for vintage cars is more a matter of personal taste than one
of money.
Artistically, Chou has been praised for his taste. His music
background has given him not just the ear but the eye for fluid
storytelling. Although the story, which he wrote, is not strong or
original and the different genre elements fail to merge seamlessly, his
directing is assured with many strokes of genius.
"Everyone who wants to be a director has a desire to act, but he may
not be a good actor. I know what I want from an actor and have a way of
getting the result, but left on my own I may not be able to act it out,"
he says. Coincidentally, the China Film Directors Association echoed
his self-appraisal in a rare candid post on its micro blog account: "He
may not be a good actor; but he is absolutely a good film director!"
That means, we may expect greater things from the boy next door who
can play a dozen musical instruments and ooze cool mumbling words
unintelligible to most people. In a way, The Rooftop feels like a midway
stop as he explores the uncharted waters of narrative art. It is a
unique challenge in genre choice because the musical is extremely
difficult to pull off and, without creating much of a hoopla, it has
climbed over the 100-million-yuan ($16 million) mark in box-office
returns in the Chinese mainland, a first for a musical film. This in a
country where Les Miserables, for all its fantastic word-of-mouth,
grossed no more than half that amount.
"I'm glad that people mention Les Mis in the same sentence as The
Rooftop. I hope my work can be a new signpost when people talk about
Chinese-language musicals," Chou says. "But I have bigger ambitions."
