Kung Fu Kubrick

"No-one is interested in me, I’m just a nobody director,” laughs Stephen Chow bashfully. “That’s why I have to try so hard when I make my movies.” As he’s just bribed me with a giant lollipop, I’m not inclined to quibble with anything the hyphenate auteur (writer-director-producer-chop socky superhero) has to say. All the same, I feel obliged to point out that nobodies tend not to gross hundreds of millions at the box-office. Or indeed, make the cover of Time magazine.
“Hmm. They must have run out of other people,” Chow says, smiling ruefully.

A likely story. Still, if it sounds as if the Asian megastar is being perversely modest, his otherwise glittering career has made a virtue of such ‘ordinariness’. Born in the impoverished slums of Hong Kong, Stephen Chow - known also as Sing-chi Chau or Xingchi Zhou - decided at age 11 that he had found his true calling: he was going to be the next Bruce Lee. “It’s all Bruce Lee’s fault,” explains the 42-year old. “I still remember seeing him on screen for the first time and the atmosphere in the theatre. People were shouting and cheering along. I decided right away that I wanted to be that guy.”
Things didn’t go quite according to plan. Despite extensive martial arts training and a pair of elevator shoes, the Hong Kong actor’s first screen audition confirmed his worst suspicions; “I just wasn’t tall enough to be a star like Chow Yun-Fat. He’s a big guy and I’m not. Not even with heels.”
Undaunted, he signed up for an acting class and took a job co-hosting the smash hit children’s show 430 Space Shuttle with future art house icon, Tony Leung Chui-wai. Though Chow admits to being slightly horrified by the prospect of entertaining a gaggle of kids, he found the experience surprisingly agreeable.
More importantly, his six year stint as a clown provided a useful testing ground for his "mo lei tai" brand of comedy, a nonsensical verbal blitzkrieg of puns, entendres and wordplay that’s equal parts A.A. Milne, Samuel Pepys and Benny Hill.
While he successfully broke into action movies with Final Justice in 1988, (for which he was honoured as Best Supporting Actor at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards) over the following decade he would first find mega-stardom with his lightning-witted banana-skin kung-fu comedies.
An unapologetic populist who isn't afraid to let snot drip from his nose while he’s kicking ass or wooing the comely heroine, Chow’s inspired and absurdist entertainments dominated the Hong Kong box-office through the '90s.
Films such as God Of Gamblers II, All For The Winner and A Chinese Odyssey took hundreds of millions of dollars and entranced Asiaphiles in the West. (It hardly needs to be said that Chow is Quentin Tarantino’s favourite living actor).
In 1997, having notched up a string of hits, Little Stevie (as he is affectionately known) suffered a crisis of confidence. “I worried it had all become stale”, he tells me. “I just felt the films were not so good anymore.”
Taking a career break from his grueling 10 movies a year schedule, Chow bounced back in 1999 with Shaolin Soccer, a buzz-bomb action comedy which would receive a global theatrical release and smash box-office records in Asia.
Never one to sit on his laurels, his current offering, Kung Fu Hustle has already outperformed Shaolin in the east and looks set to be a summer smash in this part of the world.
It’s deserving of such success. A delirious melee of axe-wielding hi-jinks, gonzo martial artistry, cartoon chases and mind-blowing special effects, Kung Fu Hustle is the most exhilarating and purely cinematic entertainment to chop its way to our screens since Jackie Chan lost his groove. In the wake of its release in America the film has earned favourable and wildly disparate comparisons with Buster Keaton, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Tex Avery, Bruce Lee, The Brothers Hui and Spongebob Squarepants.
As wacky as it sounds, these are all perfectly apt reference points. Both a loving pastiche of the kick-ass classics and a burlesque tribute to the less salubrious parts of Hong Kong where Chow grew up, Kung Fu Hustle utilises a 1940s tenement setting - known in the film as The Pig Sty - to virtually reinvent the martial arts genre. “There are still structures and slum communities all over southern China like the one in the movie”, explains Chow. “And I liked the idea of the '40s because although you can use cars and aeroplanes, back then people were extremely violent and needed to solve their problems by whacking each other.”
Chow plays the comic lead in Kung Fu Hustle’s, reprising the part of the lovable clown that has made him a movie idol across Asia.
Despite his superstar status, Chow remains refreshingly grounded. In fact, he is routinely described as one of the nicest guys in Asian cinema.
“All those people are probably lying” he smiles, shaking his vaguely greying locks. “I’m nothing special. All I like to do is make lots of people laugh. No matter what’s happening, no matter what’s fashionable in film, there’s always a place for fantasy and triumphing over the odds and getting kicked where it hurts.”

Kung Fu Hustle is released June 24th.