IT IS the 1970S in north America, and a child is being led by the hand through the corridors of a dingy cinema, the aroma of popcorn and chicken's feet twisting together in the air. Parting the velvet curtains that are heavy with dust, he leaves behind the Western world outside the cinema's glass doors - if only for a 90-minute reprieve.
His parents often take him to watch these Chinese films, the Taiwanese weepies about star-crossed lovers, the Hong Kong comedies about life in the big swinging city, the mystic ghost stories always set in musty old China, and those period costume dramas. These were the movies his grandparents and parents loved to see - Chinese faces with Chinese voices telling stories about Chinese people and for them these movies were a poignant reminder of the lives they left behind in Shanghai, or Hong Kong or Taipei or Toisan. For the child these films were not a reminder of a past life: he had been born and lived all his life in San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or Vancouver - not in China. Instead, these movies were an indelible suggestion of a future he could someday have, a future as a star in Chinese movies.
A future, incidentally, he might well live to regret.
It is 1995 in Hong Kong, and Glenn Chin has just flown in from Hollywood for a two-week round of flesh-pressing in Cantowood. 'I'm coming back to Hong Kong to make some connections,' he says. 'It's all about who you know. You have to know the players and you have to know the playing ground.' In Los Angeles, Chin is an actor of some success, having been cast in a small role in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. (Remember the fat Chinese guy cringing in a drug store booth who, within three minutes of being on screen, is riddled with bullets and slumps dead into his chair? If you do, then you've seen Glenn Chin in action.) To say that Chin is a 'big fellow' is to demonstrate that you do not own a thesaurus. Chin is a 1.67-metre, gi-normous 135-kilogrammer. And in a market like Hollywood, where it's said that for every 150 projects being made there might be one role that a Chinese actor might even be asked to read for, Glenn's chances for mega success, let alone making a decent living, are slim. Needless to say Chin finds himself typecast: 'A lot of the roles I get are for Japanese sumo wrestlers,' he says. In fact, he's found it a worthwhile investment to buy his own fundoshi, the underwear-like costume that sumo wrestlers wear.
Almost predictably, Chin, who was born and raised in San Francisco, explains: 'It's always been my dream to come to Hong Kong and star in the movies. When I was little my grandmother and I would go to the Chinese movies. But more than being a star, it's this whole thing about being connected to Chinese people.' At the moment, Chin shuttles back and forth between Hollywood and Cantowood. But his hope is to settle here: 'You have to live in Hong Kong to be really accessible to film-makers. You have to learn the culture, which is totally different from even American Chinese.' Of course, Chin's reverse migration is also about finding solid, varied, challenging roles, roles that don't call for him to wear a fundoshi. Since Chin first came out to Hong Kong in 1987, he's played, among other characters, a taxi driver, a mobster, and a fung shui geomancer - characters who are people from everyday life.
'In Hong Kong, I can go and read for almost every movie,' he says, which is not to say that he will get cast for every role. It's more that so far, the characters he has played in Hong Kong have had a lot more potential than the ones in the United States; in fact, Chinese actors have a lot more potential in Hong Kong. 'You never know what you're going to be playing next,' he says.
But after being cast in a movie like Natural Born Killers, how does he feel about settling for roles in Hong Kong movies like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III and Days Of Being Dumb; two roles he did take? 'Well, more and more, Hong Kong movies are getting better,' he says. 'Now some of the good movies are really good.' But if Chin's sights are set on solid, varied, challenging roles in some of these 'really good' Cantowood films, he's is going to have to join the line. Foreign-born actors, who have witnessed the grimy Hollywood star machine and have decided that they want no part of it, or that it wants no part of them, and furthermore, has no parts for them, are heading for what they believe are the brighter lights of Cantowood.
