Talent Is Optional

Daniel Wu has already proven he's an actor of remarkable presence and versatility, playing everything from the passionate paramour in the Stanley Kwan Kam-pang drama "Everlasting Regret" to an assassin in "Divergence," Benny Chan Muk-sing's cop thriller. At last year's Golden Horse Awards, the Chinese version of the Oscars, Wu won best supporting actor for playing a crime boss opposite Jackie Chan's hero in "New Police Story." Now Wu is earning plaudits from Chinese film critics for an entirely new role as director of the small but delightful "The Heavenly Kings," a "mockumentary" exploring the Asian pop-idol factory.

It is a bold break from the usual Hong Kong fare. Told in the fake documentary style of such Hollywood films as "This Is Spinal Tap" and "A Mighty Wind," "Kings" follows the rise of a fictitious Chinese boy band called Alive through the local starmaking system, a world where singers don't need to be able to sing and "professional" fans get paid $64 a day to become hysterical when their "idols" appear. When the film premièred in April at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, "The Heavenly Kings" was such a surprise hit that it quickly won a full commercial release in Hong Kong theaters instead of the limited art-house run or direct-to-DVD sale expected. Most films last a week or two in Hong Kong; "The Heavenly Kings" played for a month and is currently being vetted by other film-festival programmers. "I'm just holding up a mirror, looking at myself and the business," says Wu, 31, who also stars as one of the band members. "I am not judging it--just hoping that the movie will inspire people to make more alternative films and ask questions."

The film's warm reception proves Chinese audiences are ready to do so, even if it means turning a critical eye on themselves. Working from a concept by Andrew Lin Hoi, who costars in the film, Wu wrote the script in three weeks while on holiday in Africa. He decided to direct "The Heavenly Kings" himself after other prospective filmmakers wanted to turn it into what he calls a "typical Hong Kong" commercial project. Wu got a third of the $150,000 budget from Patrick Lee, a high-school classmate and a founder of rottentomatoes. com, an American Web site devoted to film criticism. The rest of the money Wu raised by promoting Alive--whose members also include Conroy Chan Chi-chung and Terence Yin Chi-wai, the only professional vocalist--as an actual band, performing concerts and doing commercials for unsuspecting companies. Working on an ad for JVC, the Japanese electronics brand, Alive asked to be paid in camera equipment, which they used to shoot their movie.

With "Kings," Wu takes his film career in a whole new direction. Born and raised in California, he arrived in Hong Kong in 1997 after graduating from the University of Oregon with an architecture degree. To finance backpacking trips, he modeled. Chinese art-house filmmaker Yon Fan discovered him in a T-shirt ad and gave him a lead part as a gay policeman in 1998's sensational "Bishonen." Wu fell in love with moviemaking, worked on his Chinese and took on a range of film parts. "For years people have been pushing me to be a matinee idol," he says. "I might look like that but I'm not like that." This fall, Wu will star in "The Banquet," an epic inspired by "Hamlet" and directed by mainland box-office king Feng Xiaogang. He starred in six films in 2004, three in 2005 and will be in another three by the end of this year.

For now, Wu has no ambitions beyond the Asian market. Though he tries to visit friends and family in the United States when he can, he is wary of working in Hollywood. "I don't think they have figured out how to portray Asian males in movies," he says. "It's always the laundryman or the gangster stereotype. I'm very happy in Hong Kong working on projects because of my ability to play the role rather than my race."

Wu's turn behind the camera has greatly impressed many in the local entertainment business, including his old mentor Yon Fan. "Hong Kong and Asian cinema is so boring," he says. "It's all the same. 'The Heavenly Kings' is so fresh." The movie delighted Yon so much that before its general commercial release, he bought full-page ads in Apple Daily, Hong Kong's saucy No. 1 newspaper. In big, bold Chinese characters he exhorted cinema fans to "Watch 'The Heavenly Kings' to get to know the real Daniel Wu for the first time." It most certainly will not be the last.