Lawrence Ah Mon talks on his contribution to the filming of City without Baseball.
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interview with lawrence lau (Ah mon) about city without baseball |
HKCinemagic : How did you get involved in City without Baseball? |
Lawrence Ah Moon :
I was friend with Scud.
The Hong Kong Baseball association approached him about doing a documentary on baseball in Hong Kong. When I first heard about it, my reaction was: "hum there is a baseball team in Hong Kong?" (laughs). But when we started looking into it and meeting the people, seeing how many of the players were very charismatic, not only in real life but also on screen when we tested them; immediately we thought since we have the actors ready and they have interesting stories to tell, it would be more effective to do a feature film rather than a documentary. And Scud had this ambition about doing films. He financed it himself actually. |
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HKCinemagic : Why did he choose to collaborate with you?
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Lawrence Ah Moon : He hasn't done any film before so he wanted someone of experience to, at least, make sure it gets done. And also we talked about the script, me and another friend helped him to develop the script. He wrote it himself but we helped. And when came time to shoot, he asked if I was interested to help direct. I think Hong Kong cinema need more people like him, who has passion and want to do something different. Because he's not interested in commercial films but wants to do something out of the ordinary. He's doing his second film which he is directing by himself. |
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HKCinemagic : How did you share the directional duties with Scud on City without Baseball? |
Lawrence Ah Moon : Basically, he's the scriptwriter and on the set I was the main director. His main input was in the pre and postproduction. I was already in Taiwan involved in Ballistic when they were doing post so I gave him my cut and then he reworked it, he finished the film. |
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HKCinemagic : Is his cut very different from yours? |
Lawrence Ah Moon : My cut was a bit too long, over 2 hours. So they had to take one character out: The girl who is involved with the trainer. There were 2 sisters involved originally, played by the same actress. But they decided to take the younger sister out of the film. |
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HKCinemagic : You did Dreams of Glory A Boxer Story a few years ago but the approach of the sport is very different between the two films. Why? |
Lawrence Ah Moon : In City without Baseball,
Scud
was more interested in the human relationships rather than in the sport. Although he's interested in baseball, he thought that, especially with HK audience, their interest level, their knowledge of the sport wasn't enough to make it the main subject of the film. He was more interested in the human relation and found it more acceptable for audience. In Dreams of Glory,
the sport was much more in the foreground of the story. |
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HKCinemagic : There is a real development of independent productions in Hong Kong recently with the efforts of Eric Tsang Eric Tsang or the Alive Not Dead community. |
Lawrence Ah Moon :
I think it has something to do with cable. There are a lot of needs for tele-features. And also because of technical developments. Everybody wanting to explore HD. And the way the film business has been going downhill in Hong Kong, people are looking for different ways to keep it alive. Small budget independent films are options for a lot of filmmakers. As far as I'm concerned, I don't mind it as long as it's an interesting subject.
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See also the interview with Scud on City without Baseball in the next page |