Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai is apparently getting ready to come to the United States to shoot a film about Hurricane Katrina. Wong Kar-Wai already has a cult like following here in North America. The folks over at CHUD give us the following:
Wong wanted to shoot the film in New Orleans, and went so far as to scout locations, but decided that the damage is still too severe, so he’ll be filming in New York City. He wants Adrian Brody to star, but the emaciated thespian won’t sign on until he sees a completed script – something he had no qualms about before King Kong, which didn’t have a finished script until well into shooting.
I imagine that the film will focus on at least one bittersweet love story, in typical Wong fashion. It will probably be competing with a Spike Lee project about the hurricane – if Spike can get the investors together. Of course I imagine that Wong had an easier time rustling up his 50 million dollar budget than Spike will, since I doubt Wong is going to be spending any time showing how the US government blew up the levees.
Here’s the thing. I’m all for telling stories like Carla, or about 9/11 or even about Katrina… but I’m also uneasy about how fast studios and filmmakers rush to tell them (yes… I still think it’s a little too early to be doing 9/11 motion pictures). It smacks of trying to monetarily capitalize on the tragedies… rather than just artistically trying to tell the stories (or maybe I’m just being naive in thinking it’s ever not about just trying to monetarily capitalize on the tragedies).
