Flirtatious Scholar
According to Wong Jing’s 2011 memoir, he had been involved in reshooting and recutting Lee Lik-Chi’s Flirting Scholar 2 (2010). In Jing’s opinion, the original Flirting Scholar (1993) was obviously directed by its star: Stephen Chow Sing-Chi. This sequel had no Chow, but it was produced by someone whose production company (Win’s) had produced the original. The Mainland Chinese box office for Wong Jing’s On His Majesty's Secret Service (2009) was so encouraging that Triad producer Jimmy Heung Wah-Sing was willing to forgive him for his past transgressions by offering him to reshoot and recut Flirting Scholar 2.
Wong Jing was given the offer in March 2010. After he accepted, Jimmy Heung invited Jing to watch the three hour rough cut. Jimmy had worked on the script for several months with the three writers, one of whom included the passable director of the predecessor, Lee Lik-Chi. Wong Jing describes the result: “Mr. Heung didn't want a repeat of the first movie, so Lee directed a cerebral romantic story with subtle humour. Heung wanted a hilarious comedy that would kill people by having them laugh to death.”
You would think that Jimmy Heung would have been keeping tabs on Lee Lik-Chi by wanting to see the dailies, but Jimmy trusted him until it was almost too late. The result was like an arranged marriage where the groom demands that the bride removes her veil so that he can see her ugly face. Lee was lucky that Jimmy didn't order a hit on him. The Sun Yee On Triad are the scariest of them all. But I digress. Flirting Scholar 2 didn't work because the first movie was dependent on one's knowledge of Cantonese slang.
Flirting Scholar was a Hong Kong movie, and Cantonese is the main dialect of Hong Kong. With Flirting Scholar 2 being made for Mandarin speakers in Mainland China, the humour didn't have the same poetic flair. For instance, there's a Cantonese saying that is similar to the Western idom of happy wife, happy life. It goes: “Marry a chicken, live a happy chicken life or marry a dog, live a happy dog life.”
The reason why it works so well in Cantonese is that the Cantonese words for chicken (Ji) and dog (Gou) are almost homophones of other words (i.e. Qi = old beggar whereas Sou = old man). Despite their past grievances, Jimmy Heung was desperate for Wong Jing to do a salvage job despite the fact that the noughties wasn't the best example of his Midas touch. Wong Jing agreed to do the reshoots yet found himself in a quandary because the main cast members were busy with other projects. He was able to group them together for a three days of filming with the exception of the lead, Mark Huang Xiaoming (known in Cantonese as Wong Hiu-Ming). Unfortunately, Mark only had two days to spare.
When Wong Jing entered the editing room, he assembled the new scenes into the final cut but found himself having to cut down on some of Lee Lik-Chi's big scenes (namely the lantern festival). Jimmy was reluctantly satisfied with Jing's final edit, and went as far as vigorously publicizing his involvement so as to pique people's curiosity. The movie grossed over 60 million yuan, which was considered more than above-average. Wong Jing's take on the matter: “Director Lee made one mistake and everything was lost. If he had followed the boss's request and made the intended film, the film would have exceeded 100 million. Furthermore, if Lee Lik-Chi wanted to do a literary romance afterwards, the boss would definitely support it, so why bother?”
Wong Jing has the last laugh as he has the final say: “I had read an article that purported Lee to be the director of the good scenes, and myself as the director of the bad ones. I know who wrote it. But I laughed it off, and I was thinking about asking Mr. Heung to let me put the director’s cut of Lee Lik-Chi’s film online for everyone to download and see how good the original version is.”
Jimmy Heung died on November 20, 2014, so there is a sense that Wong Jing is holding back.