Hong Kong film director Michael Hui on 30 years of writer’s block – ‘It’s like I’m trying to build a nuclear bomb’ – and why he has no regrets

Michael Hui Koon-man, honoured for lifetime achievement in the 2022 Hong Kong Film Awards, still hopes to make more films – if he can pen the right script

A perfectionist, Hui, who last directed a film in 1992, keeps throwing away the screenplays he’s written since, and confesses none of his past films please him

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Forty years after he won best actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards, Michael Hui received its lifetime achievement award. But he’s not done with filmmaking, he says. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 7:15am, 26 Jul 2022

It may seem strange to put the name of one of Hong Kong’s greatest filmmakers in the same sentence as writer’s block, but there is a case to be made that Michael Hui Koon-man has been suffering from exactly that for the past 30 years.

Hui’s career came full circle on July 17 when he received the Hong Kong Film Award for Lifetime Achievement – 40 years after he was named best actor for his part in Security Unlimited, which he wrote and directed, in the awards’ first edition back in 1982.

It has been 30 years since Hui – renowned for satires such as The Private Eyes (1976) – directed a film of his own, the last being 1992’s The Magic Touch. Though Hui revealed to this writer five years ago that he has never stopped working on new screenplays, he has struggled to come up with one he deems worth turning into a film.

In a change from other interviews that have taken a retrospective look at his many achievements, the writer, director, actor and sometime stand-up comedian sat down with the Post on the day of the Hong Kong Film Awards to ponder what lies ahead.

How do you feel about receiving the lifetime achievement award?

When I won the best actor award 40 years ago, I thought the trophies would just keep coming my way – and I got nothing for the next 40 years!