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How silent-movie comedians like Buster Keaton, and Mel Brooks, inspired comedy films of John Woo, including a Charlie Chaplin tribute, before his action career
- John Woo’s first films were comedies and the competition was intense. Weird characters acting out scenarios not too far-fetched were the key to success, he said
- He created a Chinese Charlie Chaplin in Laughing Times, and directed Tsui Hark in a 1984 film. Tsui then hired Woo for A Better Tomorrow; the rest is history
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John Woo Yu-sum made his name internationally by directing classic action films, but few outside Hong Kong know that he had a successful career making comedies before shooting famed gangster movies such as A Better Tomorrow and The Killer.
“One of Hong Kong’s latest and hottest show biz properties is a young director, John W.S. Woo,” wrote local critic Mel Tobias in 1977, in the Post book Memoirs of an Asian Moviegoer.
“Typical of the genre of young directors, John struck gold for [the] Golden Harvest [film studio] with Money Crazy (aka Pilferer’s Progress), a Cantonese comedy. Now he is walking tall and basking in the spotlight.”
Woo, who started out as a lowly script boy at Cathay Studios before moving to Shaw Brothers to work as martial arts maestro Chang Cheh’s assistant director, had already tasted success in 1976 with a remake of the Cantonese opera film Tragedy of the Emperor’s Daughter.
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