When filmmaking is 'Better Than Sex'

With projects like 'The Cabbie' and 'Double Vision' to his credit, Su Chao-pin is becoming Taiwan's golden boy of cinema




Source: Taipei Times

By Yu Sen-lun
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Apr 12, 2002,Page 7




" I like watching bad films. And I've seen too many bad ones. This is very useful for me. I learned a lot from those films when I began writing. -- Su Chao-pin, screenwriter and director

PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES


Su Chao-pin (蘇照彬) is one of the luckiest among new filmmakers in Taiwan. The first film script he wrote, The Cabbie (運轉手之戀), went to the Berlin Film Festival and won two Golden Horse awards in Taipei. The second script Double Vision (雙瞳), was a multi-million dollar, international project, produced by Columbia Asia. And now with his third script, Better Than Sex (愛情靈藥), he has become the director, recruiting pop stars like Chen Sheng (陳昇), Kwan Liang (光良) and Liu Hung-hua (劉虹樺) to play in his directing debut.
For a guy who was a computer science major and thought he would write programs all his life, his two years in film has been extra-ordinary. Soon after he became a creative director at MTV Taiwan and won an award for Best Creative Copywriting at the China Times' Advertising Awards, he was invited to write film scripts.
"I like watching bad films. And I've seen too many bad ones. This is very useful for me. I learned a lot from those films when I began writing," said Su with a child-like face, wearing his signature big, thick, black glasses. His friends nicknamed him Da Mu (大目) -- big eyes in Taiwanese.


Having a background totally different from Taiwan's film production circle gave Su freedom when he began writing films, which turned out to be a plus for his films. He is free from the influence and traditions set up by his predecessors, filmmaking masters who are usually into art and culture, and free to concentrate on what, in his mind, a good story is. The result is that he can always present something refreshing. There is a fluent drama with black humor and exciting car chase scenes in The Cabbie, and there is the psycho thriller about murder and investigation in Double Vision, there is the sex comedy for Taiwan's young adults, Better Than Sex. If you include the gangland action film A Chance to Die (想死趁現在), (co-written before The Cabbie), Su's film stories have covered all the various genres Taiwanese films have avoided in the past few years.

Su said when he began writing the script he had only two films in his mind, Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense. Now, he has found fun in writing thrillers with sci-fi elements. After Double Vision, which is right now in post-production, he is planning to write another sci-fi script for an English-language film.

"The film has totally changed the image of Taiwanese films being melancholy and depressing," said Mai Jen-jieh (麥仁杰), an animator, when he saw Better Than Sex last year. Being one of the judges of the Golden Horse Awards last year, he called the film "the best story of the year."
In Better Than Sex, Lin Tsu-chuang (林祖狀), a 15 year-old, naive-looking teenager in the gifted students class, is troubled and anxious about sex because of his extraordinarily large-sized penis. He dares not date girls and the only consolation for his anxiety is to indulge in the world of porn. He becomes good friends with the owner of porn bookshop, but becomes a loner and nerd at school, even ignoring the pretty girl Lin Xiao-ying (林小英), played by Liu Hung-hua, who secretly adores him and puts a tea egg in his drawer every day.

One day, Cheng the porn bookshop owner suddenly dies and leaves Lin a key to a secret path where Lin finds out there lives a porn star and her policeman husband (Leon Dai). Here, Lin discovers Cheng's secret and takes a place to peep in on the couple's bedroom everyday. Lin finally realizes that the porn world does not equal sex and that loving a person is really "better than sex." But Lin Xiao-ying, who was disappointed in love, becomes a rascal girl. She takes an electric bat, begins robbing convenient stores and is chased by policeman Leon Dai.

Basically, Better Than Sex looks like a Taiwanese version of American Pie. It has silly, daring and extremely funny comedic elements. It has pop singers playing the good-looking teenagers. And it has the music of rock star Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽) and rap band MC Hotdog. Hotdog even shows up in some scenes in the film. It also recruits Hsiao-ying (小應), the lead vocalist of famous underground band The Clippers (夾子) to play a role as a silly motorcycle gang member who has his hands chopped off at the end of the film.
The cinematic technique of the film is not impressive, and is most of the time scrappy and looks like a music video or commercial. And the actors are mediocre. But the wicked and daring story ideas make up for these flaws for a first-time director. Most importantly, Su has successfully gripped the major entertainment elements of a film, which have been lacking in Taiwanese filmmaking.

"This film is purely intended for Taiwan's teenagers," said Su. He said he originally just wanted to make a film filled with music. "Because I see tens of thousands of teenagers go to music concerts but not to movie theaters. Then I thought if I could bring at least 3000 of them to come to see my film, which also has music and rock stars, I would make it for the film," he said. And plus, Su added, jokingly, if the film earns box office receipts of NT$20 million, he would go running naked in front of the presidential hall.