Facing a forest of reporters' microphones, Peter Ho Sun Chan speaks Thai with the slight accent of someone who remembers the tongue, but not the spontaneity.
"I only get to speak Thai when I come to promote my movies here," says the Hong Kong film-maker in English in a later session. "I don't read and write Thai. I can only speak it, and I don't have the vocabulary," he pauses. "Let's do this in English then."
English, naturally, since Cantonese is out of the question. In 1974 when he was 11, Chan arrived in Bangkok from Hong Kong with his parents. He lived here for seven years before leaving to study film in California, returning to Hong Kong in the late 1980s. He then rose quickly as one of the most prominent film-makers of the island city. As a director he's best-known for intimate love stories in which characters face contemporary dilemmas, and lately as producer he's developed several historical epics to feed the appetite of the thriving mainland Chinese market.
It was actually in Bangkok in 1975 that Chan saw the Shaw Brothers' film Xue di zi (The Flying Guillotine), a martial arts saga about a squad of assassins in ancient China who brandish fearsome discus-like weapons _ a film that Chan, as producer, has remade (as The Guillotines) and is now showing in cinemas across the region, including in Bangkok.
"I remember seeing the original Flying Guillotine at Warner Theatre in Mahesak," Chan says almost with nostalgia, realising that that cinema is no longer there.
"Before I watched Woody Allen, like most teenagers I watched all the Shaw Brothers' films. And they remain with me."
To Thai cinema-goers who grew up in the 1990s, Chan's 1996 film Tian mi mi (Comrades: Almost a Love Story), starring Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai as a couple of star-crossed lovers whose initial passions are not enough to sustain a relationship, is firmly lodged in our memories (the movie's theme song, Tian mi mi, is still keenly sung in Thai karaoke joints across the country). In 2001, Chan helped produce the Thai film Jan Dara and later the Thai-Hong Kong horror Gin gwai (The Eye), one of the scariest flicks of the past 10 years. Since the mid-2000s however, Chan has worked on several co-productions with Chinese investors and put out big-budget showpieces such as Tau ming chong (The Warlords), starring Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro; Shi yue wei cheng (Bodyguards and Assassins), about the plot against Dr Sun Yat Sen; and Wu xia (Dragon), a canny mix of detective story and martial arts spectacle starring Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011.
In The Guillotines, Chan lets Andrew Lau _ of Mou gaan dou (Infernal Affairs) fame _ direct while he supervises the project. The film stars mainland Chinese superstar Huang Xioming and pop idol Li Yuchun, as well as Taiwanese and Hong Kong stars. Chan elaborates on how the astounding rise of China as the largest film market has shaped the structure and direction of the industry in the South China Sea, and how Beijing authorities regard movies as part of their mega-drive towards a new economic hegemony. Chan's dual roles as both director _ an artist _ and producer, which is more like a manager, allow him to see the big picture of the increasingly complex activity of film-making as it strives to balance passion, art and business in a precarious equation.
''Hong Kong and China co-production has been going on for 10 years and I've been doing this for seven years,'' he says. ''If you want your film to qualify for a release in China, you need a certain number of mainland Chinese actors in it. Now in the whole Chinese film industry, not just HK and China, but also Southeast Asia, the star system is very concrete, meaning that you need a star who can 'open' the movie _ big names who draw a big audience. As it happens, the stars that sell tickets are male stars, and these are mostly from Hong Kong _ you have Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-wei, then Takeshi Kaneshiro from Taiwan or Jet Li, who's American _ so even if we like mainland actors we couldn't use them since we have to reserve the main role for these top [stars].
''What I've been trying to do is to make big martial arts epics feel younger,'' Chan says. ''When I watched Shaw Brothers films in the 1970s, the leading stars like Ti Lung and others were very young. But today, people like Jet Li and Andy Lau are in their fifties. In six or seven years they won't be able to keep doing this. You need a new breed. And in The Guillotines we use a younger cast of actors [from various Chinese-speaking territories]. We put an ensemble and make them bigger and we're not relying on any single one of them.''
As in other industries, the high-rolling Chinese money in the film business is simply dizzying. Although Chan has his ups and downs _ The Warlords was the biggest hit in China in 2007 while Wu xia was a flop in 2011 _ in general, the market is as heated as in other sectors. ''Private and even state-owned enterprises in China put money into film because it's part of their political agenda,'' says Chan. ''They feel that film and culture are hot commodities. Every state-owned company gets instructions from the top to get involved in film, and sometimes they don't care much about [what film it is]. Say, when you want to raise 100 million renminbi [491 million baht] for a film, you often have 300 million waiting.
''That's how it is now, but I don't think it'll be like this forever.''
The Guillotines, which is a 3D film, has the budget of US$20 million (612 million baht). The project, Chan says, has been in development for four years, and he chose to take the job of producer _ leaving the director's chair to Lau _ because he realises that historical epics and picaresque martial arts flicks aren't really his forte. In his words, he's not a ''visual and stylish director'', and even in The Warlords, the story relies more on the dramatic conflict than the widescreen set pieces of clanging swords and swirling dust. And yet it's surprising that among his many films, Chan cites two that seem, on the surface, to be strikingly stylised as those that remain closest to his heart. No, it's not Comrades: Almost a Love Story, but the romantic musical Ru guo: Ai (Perhaps Love) from 2005, and the martial arts drama Wu xia, which is about a kung fu ace who hides his brutal past to start a new life.
''Let me say first that Wu xia is one of my biggest failures, commercially and critically,'' he says. ''In mainland China, the audience is so stuck with what Wu xia means _ chivalry, bravery _ and they found it totally unacceptable [that the film is more of a detective drama]. The two-part structure of the story is very jarring to them. But I'm happy with the finished movie. Not that I've done a great film, but because I was never a stylish director. In that film I was able to jump out of my [comfort zone]. I did things I would not normally dare to do. It was like I was having a mid-life crisis and after that film I felt young again.
''And then the musical Perhaps Love is very personal to me. Everybody thinks Comrades: Almost a Love Story is my story, but no, it's other people's story. The style in Perhaps Love is flamboyant but the heart is very personal _ it's my most personal film.''
What's personal and what's marketable are parts of the delicate balance that any film-maker tries to maintain. Chan's approach has the practicality of Asian entrepreneurs and yet he believes in his individuality and artistic relationship with each movie he jumps into. He knows the rules of the game, and, in his own words, he never breaks them, but he might bend them to suit his needs. Some might say it's a compromise, but he brushes aside such suggestions. As both director and producer running his own company, Chan is neither solely the oppressed artist nor the authority figure with the money and power _ he's usually both at once.
In short, it's how to manage a love triangle between commerce, art and passion. Chan's been doing it all along, and The Guillotines is the latest example.
''I like small, intimate movies about contemporary people,'' Chan says. ''But nobody in China wants to see small movies. They only go to the cinema to see big movies. That's one of the reasons why I made a genre film like The Guillotines _ not just because it's big, but also because it's a Shaw Brothers film that I like.
''To guess as much as you can what the audience like is called being commercial,'' he says. ''Then on the artistic side, you try to make it better _ like Wu xia, which is a very commercial story that I tried to make different. The third part is the most important _ you've got to love it. You've got to love what you do. Because if you don't, then how can you keep doing it?''
