Barbara Wong Chun-chun graduated from the Hong Kong
Academy for Performing Arts School of Drama before joining
Hong Kong Commercial Radio to become a disc-jockey.
In 1993 she entered New York University Film School. Her
graduate film Hugo was awarded NYU Best Student Film
and in 1997 she directed, starred in and produced her first
independent feature movie A Carburetor for Suzy. Wong
returned to Hong Kong in 1999 and released documentary
Women’s Private Parts in 2001. Truth or Dare: 6 th Floor
Rear Flat was Wong’s breakthrough success in 2003 and
was followed in the same year by co-directing Protégé de
la Rose Noire with Donnie Yen.
The introduction to Truth or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat says
it is based on a true story. What’s the background to the
movie?
In the beginning, when I talked to [production company]
Filmko I said that I wanted to make a film about several single
young people living together. At that time I hadn’t got
into the game of Truth or Dare and then I met my writer
Fan, sat down and talked with her. She said “You know
what? I have a place where we stay together and play, drink
and have fun”. That place is in Tsim Sha Tsui and it’s a
sixth-floor rear flat. That’s exactly the address of the place.
So I went there and I met her friends, and then we hung
there for about two weeks and were always playing Truth
or Dare, and some of the characters in Truth or Dare are
based on them. And then, when my writer was writing the
script, she was really writing it in the sixth-floor rear flat. So
everybody had an intimate feeling about this film because
of that.
With this premise, how did you develop the characters?
First of all, the characters are from the real place. People
like Lawrence Chou’s character, for example, and Karena
Lam’s character is more or less like Fan. So the characters
developed from real people and then after I developed
them I started to cast. I spent a lot of time meeting with
young actors, like Patrick Tang, Laurence Chou, Roy Chow
and Karena Lam, and then not only did I do casting with
them but I also went out to drink with them. I hung out with
them so they wouldn’t feel nervous when they’re with me.
Normally most young actors are very afraid of the director.
I didn’t want that because I didn’t want them to act - I wanted
them to be natural, to be relaxed. So I spent a lot of
time hanging out with them and because of that I got to
know their characters, so I tweaked the roles I’d created a
little bit for them. Two weeks before the shoot was the time
I decided who was going to play who. We also developed
the characters together at a later stage, so even before
the shooting even the way they dressed gradually became
part of the characters.
Did the actors offer changes themselves? They all had input and that’s my style of directing because
I think when actors have input, it’s more truthful than having
to follow dialogues. Especially on a film like this. We
improvised a lot in the shoot and that made them feel very
natural and they could just be themselves. Even now when
we go out for drinks and dinner together they all say it was
a very memorable shoot because when they look back,
shooting Truth or Dare didn’t seem like a job to them. They
looked forward to going onto the set and having fun. That’s
was the most important thing I’ve captured in the film. If
not, it would be like a lot of local Hong Kong films where
young people are not playing young people - they’re playing
characters in a kind of sugar-coated way.
The movie has both young and old people. What were you
trying to show between the young characters and the elder
figures like Teresa Carpio and Hau Woon-ling’s roles?
Teresa Carpio represents parents - loving their kids, trying
to ask them to do the right thing and trying to discipline
them. But Hau Won-ling represents youth again, because
I’ve seen with people like my grandmother or some of my
parents’ older friends that once they hit 60-something or
70-something, they suddenly become kids again. They
don’t have pressure in life any more, just like when they’re
in their early twenties, because they’ve been through their
lives and it’s now the last stage. That’s why I have these
three generations.You can see Hau Woon-ling is just like
[the younger characters], and she is even more courageous
than they are sometimes. You can understand
because they are in the beginning stages of life. They don’t
know about life but Hau Woon-ling knew about it already -
for her it’s just, do it, don’t just say anything. With Teresa
Carpio, a lot of my older friends can relate to her character
when they watch the film. They can remember their own
youth and think it’s normal not to go home, to party all
night or not be serious enough facing your career. But at
the same time they relate to Teresa Carpio trying to force
kids to do the right thing because of love.
I heard the flat was built in an industrial building.
Yes. The hardest thing was that we built a new set and tried
to make it look old. And that took a lot of money and time.
In the beginning we tried to find a real location, but
because of the schedule of the actors, a lot of times we
would have had to shoot overnight. And if we used a real
place there would have been a lot of problems because the
neighbours might complain. We looked at a lot of apartments
and it was hard because they are small. In the film,
the set is small but at least it was moveable so we could
move away a room and shoot. In a real location you can’t
do that. Building the set was quite a hassle, and quite
expensive because of making it look old. Making it look old
took us a lot of time. The art director and his crew basically
didn’t sleep for three nights to make the walls look old,
and they put a lot of effort into the details like the floor, the
tiles and the bathroom. And finally, there were different
drawings on the set’s walls. We called up some friends who
were not art directors, or even in the industry. Four or five
kids came over at about 8 pm and asked, “What do you
want, director?” And I replied, “Anything you’d like to draw
on the walls”. I’m very happy with the set. I think there’s a
lot of detail and heart in it.
Tim Youngs