If the actors in the entertainment industry were asked to vote for the most challenging director, I think Wong Kar-wai would definitely be at the top, and maybe even at the top of the list.
No matter how big the actor in the entertainment industry is working with, this director can make them doubt life. After all, this director is really amazing.
Wong Kar-wai often shoots the same scene over and over again when making films, a practice that is very common in his creative process.
Even the big names in the entertainment industry, such as Zhang Ziyi and Tony Leung, who have very mature acting skills, are no exception.
Even Tony Leung once collapsed because of Wong Kar-wai's blow, and he cried bitterly when he returned home.
Maybe this is the reason why Hu Ge "went crazy" during his cooperation with Wong Kar-wai.
The reason why Wong Kar-wai has been able to launch one classic after another in the entertainment industry is precisely because he has carefully polished every detail of the movie.
Of course, it is precisely because of this meticulous polishing that his work is so eye-catching.
Although many actors know that working with Wong Kar-wai may not be pleasant, based on his reputation in the entertainment industry, there are still countless actors competing to chase after him.
However, Wong Kar-wai has always lived up to the expectations of these actors. Recently, his film "Prosperity" once again made the actors he worked with famous.
Including Xin Zhilei, Hu Ge, Tang Yan, etc., of course, there is also the 90-year-old old drama bone You Benchang.
You Benchang, who is 90 years old this year, has created many wonderful works in his decades of acting career, such as "Kong Yiji", "Gusu One Monster", "Fake Emperor" and "Qingming Restaurant", etc., bringing an unforgettable audio-visual feast to the audience.
You Benchang won the Best Actor Award at the China TV Golden Eagle Awards for the TV series "Jigong", which is undoubtedly the most classic.
At the same time, You Benchang's development in the field of drama has also been continuous.
In 2021, You Benchang was awarded the title of "Honorary Artist for Life" by the National Theatre of China for his outstanding achievements in the field of drama.
In "Flowers", "Jigong" played by You Benchang has excellent acting skills and line skills, coupled with Wong Kar-wai's careful polishing of the camera, the two are a perfect match, it is a perfect match.
You Benchang In this work, every appearance can hit people's hearts directly through the interpretation of the role, so that.
At the age of 90, it is not surprising that Yau Benchang once again won unanimous praise from the audience for his superb acting skills.
However, few people know that You Benchang did not come to this day without smooth sailing.
You Benchang was admitted to the Shanghai Theater Academy with the dream of being an actor, and in order to become an outstanding actor in the future, he studied very hard. Due to his hard work, You Benchang has always performed well in school, and his grades are among the best.
With his outstanding performance, You Benchang was assigned to work in the ** Experimental Theater after graduation.
However, once he stepped into the theater, Yau Benchang's Buddhist personality made him reluctant to compete with his colleagues for resources and not good at leading. Despite his outstanding professional abilities, he never received the attention he deserved in the theater.
For 29 years, You Benchang has played the role of a dragon in the theater.
In the past 29 years, You Benchang has watched many actors and directors around him drink, play cards, and appear on the screen, but he himself has never had such an experience.
Despite this, he has successfully become a celebrity with 79 inconspicuous small roles that he has carefully polished.
You Benchang appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala in 1984, and he left a deep impression on the audience with his 4-minute solo show in the "Pantomime" program.
In the second year after the success of "Pantomime", You Benchang created the classic work "Jigong" and continued to show his talent.
The filming of this TV series, which has only 12 episodes, lasted 8 months, and You Benchang devoted himself to it. It was his love of acting and art that allowed him to persevere.
At that time, since every scene of "Jigong" was filmed in actual locations, it was necessary to avoid crowds.
Yau Benchang began dressing up in Jigong's outfit early in the morning or even earlier, preparing to start shooting at dawn so that he could avoid the crowds.
Of course, getting up before dawn every day is only a small part of the problem, because in the play, "Jigong" played by You Benchang has a lot of meat-eating scenes, so the crew often prepares some meat.
When the weather is very hot, the meat prepared by the crew quickly spoils. In order not to delay the filming progress, You Benchang had to directly gnaw on the stinky meat, although he felt like vomiting in his heart, he still tried to show a very delicious appearance.
After the camera finishes shooting, spit out the meat.
During the filming of this film, You Benchang was willing to endure anything in order to ensure the effect of the film, which was far from enough.
In order not to affect the filming effect, in the scene where the "Jigong" Yamen was beaten by the board, the 52-year-old You Benchang directly asked to really play the board, because the group actors lacked acting experience.
Still, the ensemble struggled to get into the groove, and they ended up having to shoot 12 times before they finally got the most realistic results.
After the filming of these 12 scenes was completed, You Benchang was beaten so much that he couldn't even stand up.
It is precisely because You Benchang can be open-minded and generous that he finally succeeded in creating the classic "Jigong" role.
In the entertainment industry, many actors can easily fall into a state of conceit even if they have some popularity.
However, although You Benchang has created a classic image, he has always been able to stick to his original intention and concentrate on artistic creation, and did not regard being an actor as a means to make money, let alone use his fame to endorse advertisements to make money.
You Benchang regards art as his life's pursuit, and can even sacrifice his life for it. This is because deep down in his heart, art has always held a special place.
However, after completing the creation of the classic character, You Benchang has an ability that allows him to quickly free himself from the role and never become obsessed with the self in art.
As You Benchang stated:
For the sake of my love of art, I can do whatever it takes, even my life, but never fall into self-obsession.
However, this sentence has revealed the embarrassment of many actors, such as Liu Xiaolingtong, who has also played classic roles.
Back then, it is no exaggeration to say that Liu Xiaolingtong's performance of "Monkey King" in the 87 version of "Journey to the West" was outstanding and amazing.
Therefore, the "Monkey King" played by Liu Xiaolingtong has always been regarded as a classic by the audience.
Of course, in addition to his family background, the reason why Liu Xiaolingtong was able to portray "Monkey King" so well is also due to his unremitting pursuit of art like You Benchang.
It is reported that Liu Xiaolingtong was born into a family that made monkey operas a career, and since his great-grandfather's generation, this family has been famous for being good at performing monkey operas.
Liu Xiaolingtong's father's generation is even more blue than blue, because the monkey play is so good, he is even respected as the "Southern Monkey King".
Born in such a family, Liu Xiaolingtong began to learn monkey art since he was a child, and later joined the Kunqu Opera Troupe to engage in performance work because of his exquisite attainments in the field of monkey opera.
It was there that Liu Xiaolingtong met Yang Jie, the director of the 87 version of "Journey to the West", and got the opportunity to play "Monkey King" from Yang Jie, a role he once began performing in elementary school.
In the next six years, Liu Xiaolingtong followed the crew of "Journey to the West" around until the filming of "Journey to the West" was completed.
In order to play the role of "Monkey King", Liu Xiaolingtong has put in great efforts in the past 6 years and has experienced many unexpected tribulations.
At that time, no matter what the weather conditions were, the six-year-old children had to wear thick fur, follow the masters of the crew, and practice martial arts hard, no matter where the crew of "Journey to the West" went.
Since the character of "Monkey King" often wades into high altitude and deep ground and fights with various monsters, it is necessary to shoot a lot of dangerous actions.
The character of "Monkey King" is special because all his martial arts moves must include the movements of "monkey". And he also has some special abilities, such as seventy-two changes and the golden hoop rod to become bigger.
Therefore, no matter how beautiful, dangerous, or difficult the action is, it must be done by the six-year-old child himself, and no stand-ins are allowed.
This means that six-year-old children must have a solid foundation in martial arts. Therefore, during the filming of the TV series, the crew masters have never relaxed his martial arts training.
At that time, due to the limited funds and technology of the crew, in many scenes during the filming of "Monkey King", they even used a thin wire to hang it, which was only part of it.
Therefore, every play can lead to more or less injuries to the six-year-old child.
During the filming of the fight scene between "Red Boy" and "Monkey King", Liu Xiaolingtong even almost died.
At that time, according to the requirements of the original plot, Liu Xiaolingtong had to play the painful expression of "Monkey King" who was burned by the Sanwei Zhenhuo of "Red Child" and rolled on the ground in pain.
Although the performance of pain can be performed well, it is difficult for the crew to show the scene of being burned.
After discussion with the crew, they decided that they could only coat napalm on the outside of the clothes and armor of the six-year-old boy to block the high temperature of the fire. At the same time, the inner layer of the armor of the six-year-old child is put on asbestos clothing.
This vision is clearly not mature enough.
Whether asbestos clothing can actually block the heat of gasoline, the smell of gasoline, and the face that cannot be protected with asbestos are not discussed, but what kind of danger the six-year-old child will face in this scene.
Despite this, Liuxiaolingtong still appeared on the stage, and when the director gave the order, the fire quickly spread to his body.
Sure enough, the beauty of the six-year-old boy was not spared, and the eyelashes were instantly burned under the flames, perhaps out of the need for performance, of course, it could also be real pain, and the six-year-old child screamed on the ground.
After shouting loudly, the scene suddenly returned to silence, and it was only then that everyone realized that something was wrong and hurriedly stepped forward to extinguish the fire.
Thanks to the timely rescue, the six-year-old child was able to save his life.
In the 6 years of filming "Journey to the West", Liu Xiaolingtong spared no effort for art, even sacrificing his life, and it was this spirit that created his classic "Monkey King" image.
However, although Liu Xiaolingtong successfully created the classic image of "Monkey King", he was not able to withdraw from the role like You Benchang and showed his indifference to art.
As a result, Liu Xiaolingtong has been unable to distinguish the boundary between himself and the role after playing "Monkey King", and finally lost himself.
Liu Xiaolingtong once said on the show that after the release of "Journey to the West" that year.
In the hearts of every audience, there may be countless different "Hamlets", but my wish is that when the image of the Monkey King in "Journey to the West" is presented, there is only one unique Monkey King in the hearts of thousands of viewers.
He does regard himself as the only "Monkey King" and stubbornly regards himself as the "absolute spokesperson" of the Monkey King, which is based on some of the actions of the six-year-old child after that.
For example, the six-year-old child will confidently criticize other versions of "Monkey King".
After Stephen Chow's movie "Journey to the West" was released, Liu Xiaolingtong immediately criticized that the "Counting Wukong" who fell in love was simply reversing right and wrong, like showing the "shemale part".
Even so, the six-year-old boy shouted Zhou Xing to come out and stand up through the air, showing the act of destroying the classics, and apologized to the people of the whole country.
Six elementary school children held thousands of "classic school" activities, perhaps because they were too dissatisfied with Stephen Chow's version of "Monkey King".
These activities often use the actions in the role of "Monkey King" played by Stephen Chow as a negative teaching material to explain to everyone.
Even this is not enough, just after the game company developed a game about Monkey King, Liu Xiaolingtong did not hesitate to stand up and criticize the company.
In the eyes of Liu Xiaolingtong, the behavior of this game company constitutes an insult to the image of "Monkey King".
Liu Xiaolingtong later filed a lawsuit against the game company in an attempt to get it to stop publishing games about Monkey King.
Perhaps because he once played the role of the classic "Monkey King" and had a unique understanding of "Journey to the West", Liu Xiaolingtong later directly began to delete and modify this original work, and finally published his own version.
On the cover of the book, the six-year-old child also added his own **.
When the behavior of the six-year-old child **, many netizens ridiculed it.
For this work, some people even mistakenly think that "Journey to the West" was created by Liu Xiaolingtong.
After the six-year-old child published the book, he went to the former residence of Wu Chengen, the author of "Journey to the West", and set up his own sculpture there.
His extreme move quickly attracted widespread attention from the society, and many netizens discussed it.
In the end, even CCTV couldn't help but stand up and directly criticize the behavior of the six young children.
After successfully creating the classic "Jigong" role, You Benchang quickly got rid of this image and began to try other roles.
Even when he was sometimes asked about his experience of playing the role of "Jigong" when participating in the show, Yau always maintained a humble attitude, and even worried that his body shape was not as good as before, so he was afraid of desecrating his respect for this role.
In addition, he will try to refrain from showing emotions of excitement or pride.
The two have different attitudes towards the classic characters they have created, which also determines the stark difference in the reputation of the two.
Years have passed, and You Benchang has become an old artist with both virtue and art in everyone's minds, and even at the age of 90, he can still cooperate with famous directors like Wong Kar-wai.
Liu Xiaolingtong was deeply involved in the play, which caused a serious blow to his reputation, and there were almost few directors who cooperated with him.
Although You Benchang and Liu Xiaolingtong are both actors who have created classic roles, their life circumstances are completely different.
You Benchang, an old artist with both virtue and art, emerged, but Liu Xiaolingtong was controversial in his later years.
The endings of the two are different, which also gives a warning to the entertainment industry: you must first be talented, but also have morality. If you are misbehaving and narrow-minded, you are destined to not be able to develop for a long time in the actor industry. What do you think?