Action master back in school

He was not exactly a stranger in a strange land, but action director Stanley Tong Kwai-lai might well be forgiven for feeling that way when he was filming his Hollywood debut, Mr Magoo.

Where he once had the nimble Jackie Chan, he now had 73-year-old Leslie Nielsen to present his stunt sequences as the fumbling, bumbling Mr Magoo. While Tong filmed Chan's Rumble in the Bronx in Vancouver, making Mr Magoo there presented a few more problems with the local crew members.

But on the whole, Tong says he has been 'lucky' in his first Hollywood experience. 'The studio gave me quite a free hand in what I wanted to do,' explained the boyish 38-year-old on a private trip back to Hong Kong recently.

It meant that, despite Hollywood studios having no such precedent, Tong managed to bring over his own people - including his director of photography, assistant director, and a stunt co-ordinator - to help him.

'Initially, they were quite reluctant to agree to it, but I told them these crew members were with me in Canada for Rumble in the Bronx and in Australia for First Strike, so they knew about international standards,' he said.

'The studio bosses liked my sequences in those movies, but I told them the sequences weren't the result of my work alone. There was a team working with me.' Still, the decision did not make him popular with the local production crew in Vancouver, who felt their positions were being usurped. He found their on-set reaction 'distracting', but he stuck by his people and was ready to pull out of the project if things did not work out.