Chris Doyle, cinematographer
Sep. 5th, 2004 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe name Chris Doyle has been cropping up a lot in my recent web radio pieces. He had a piece in the Graf show I described in my Osaka Hour, and I mentioned a show of his photos, 'First There Is A Mountain', at the Fringe Club in my Hong Kong Radio impressions. One of my first reactions to Hong Kong was 'I feel like I'm in a Wong Kar Wai movie'. Chris Doyle was the cinematographer on Wong Kar Wai's most iconic movies: 'Chung King Express', 'Fallen Angels', 'In The Mood For Love'. He's the Toulouse Lautrec of contemporary Hong Kong, its visual Dickens. Imagine my surprise, then, when the man who did more than anyone else to frame my mental picture of this city turned up in person at my show on Friday. I also met him at a party at the Fringe Club the following night, a celebration of the Australian drag movie 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert', and kept running into him in bars around town... Here's how our first conversation went:
Momus: (Somehow recognising the smiling Australian with spilling grey perm and slightly slurry manner) Oh my god, you're Chris Doyle!
Chris: Yes! Welcome to Hong Kong, enjoyed the show! (To someone nearby) Watch out for this guy when he puts red gloves on! [Explanation: my Friday show was colour-coded. Red rubber gloves signified to the audience that the song's narrator was a murderer, or about to kill someone.]
Momus: That's amazing, my first impressions of Hong Kong were filtered through your cinematography, and now I'm meeting you! I just saw your exhibition in Osaka, and your photos upstairs. You were shooting a film in Thailand recently, weren't you?
Chris: Yes, how do you know all this?
Momus: Well, I follow your career!
Chris: How are you finding Hong Kong? It's your first time, isn't it?
Momus: Yes, and I've come from Japan, so I'm comparing it with that. I'm missing some things about Japan already. Like the bath-houses. Here they have saunas, but those are slightly different, I gather.
Chris: Yeah, you go in for a massage and after a while they ask you 'Do you want to turn over now?'
Momus: Turn over? Oh, I see! 'Turn me over, I'm done!'
Chris: What's embarrassing is when they're in the middle of it (mimes handjob) and you think they don't know who you are, and the girl says 'So, Mr Doyle, how's the new film coming along?'
Momus: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Doyle's new film, as a matter of fact, is coming along well. He's shooting it in Shanghai. Doyle really gets around. In the last couple of weeks he's done workshops in Edinburgh and Toronto. Yet he still manages to be the heart and soul of Hong Kong nightlife, the ultimate barfly, popping up everywhere. He tells me there've been attempts recently by the Australian authorities to reclaim him, cast him as part of Australia's cultural assets. He's having none of it. He's part of the Asian film industry, not the Australian one. Pointing out at nocturnal Hong Kong, he says, with slurry sentiment, 'This is my backyard. This is where I'm from.'
Momus: (Somehow recognising the smiling Australian with spilling grey perm and slightly slurry manner) Oh my god, you're Chris Doyle!
Chris: Yes! Welcome to Hong Kong, enjoyed the show! (To someone nearby) Watch out for this guy when he puts red gloves on! [Explanation: my Friday show was colour-coded. Red rubber gloves signified to the audience that the song's narrator was a murderer, or about to kill someone.]
Momus: That's amazing, my first impressions of Hong Kong were filtered through your cinematography, and now I'm meeting you! I just saw your exhibition in Osaka, and your photos upstairs. You were shooting a film in Thailand recently, weren't you?
Chris: Yes, how do you know all this?
Momus: Well, I follow your career!
Chris: How are you finding Hong Kong? It's your first time, isn't it?
Momus: Yes, and I've come from Japan, so I'm comparing it with that. I'm missing some things about Japan already. Like the bath-houses. Here they have saunas, but those are slightly different, I gather.
Chris: Yeah, you go in for a massage and after a while they ask you 'Do you want to turn over now?'
Momus: Turn over? Oh, I see! 'Turn me over, I'm done!'
Chris: What's embarrassing is when they're in the middle of it (mimes handjob) and you think they don't know who you are, and the girl says 'So, Mr Doyle, how's the new film coming along?'
Momus: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Doyle's new film, as a matter of fact, is coming along well. He's shooting it in Shanghai. Doyle really gets around. In the last couple of weeks he's done workshops in Edinburgh and Toronto. Yet he still manages to be the heart and soul of Hong Kong nightlife, the ultimate barfly, popping up everywhere. He tells me there've been attempts recently by the Australian authorities to reclaim him, cast him as part of Australia's cultural assets. He's having none of it. He's part of the Asian film industry, not the Australian one. Pointing out at nocturnal Hong Kong, he says, with slurry sentiment, 'This is my backyard. This is where I'm from.'
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Date: 2004-09-05 10:10 am (UTC)