David Konow: Does Woo storyboard his action sequences?

Steven Kemper: He does storyboard, but my experience with John is that because his storyboards are so complicated, and his scenes are so involved, that he almost ends up having to change something on the set, either because of some sort of a restriction that the location is forcing upon him, or a time restriction, that sort of thing. But what I do like about his boards is that you do get the idea of what he’s trying to do with the scene.

None of the scenes look like the storyboards when you’re done, but you do get an idea of what he’s going for. There are focus points in the sequence that we make sure to hold on to. You end up doing much more than John originally intended. What I really enjoyed about working with him is he’s totally open to stuff. And there are times when I try to recreate things that he wasn’t able to shoot for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s just something doesn’t work, or sometimes he can’t get the scene exactly the way he was hoping to. So it never matches the boards, but it works as a really good insight into what he’s trying to do. I remember some scenes where he’s come to me and said, "Look, I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. We’re going to have to make do, you know, do the best you can." And this happens to every director; it’s that old sort of like the best laid plans of mice and men. With John’s stuff I find that because he covers it so well and because he’s so open to experimenting with ideas, that I’ve never had a scene where we couldn’t make it work. John just covers everything so well and the action is so much fun, he’s not afraid to manipulate the speed of shots, even though they shot it normally. There’s usually a way out with him because his stuff is so nicely shot and you get so many interesting angles that sometimes it’s challenging. Woo shoots so much great stuff, to not sift through every frame is a crime. There were times I remember in the motorcycle chase in "Mission: Impossible II" where they were just out of time. He couldn’t get all the little pieces he wanted, so I would just go through and see what was missing and try to cheat it by using another motorcycle shot from another sequence if it was tight enough and you could tell the location hadn’t changed. His stuff is great to work with that way. It’s never really dangerous with John. It always seems to work out; don’t ask me why.

"Mission: Impossible II" was a hit but it still didn’t reflect Woo’s vision or style.

David Konow: When John Woo did his first American film, "Hard Target," he had a lot of problems with Universal because they didn’t understand his style. Do you feel his style too new or cutting edge for American studios at first?

Steven Kemper: Well, first of all, I know the good thing about John was that he had a certain following. There was a big enough niche of American fans who were very, very familiar with his Hong Kong pictures, and I think that little kernel of an audience actually gave his style more of a chance to take on. If you look at the wild success of "Face/Off," I think the reason why it took off doesn’t so much have to do with John’s style; I think what made it a hit is he finally had the right combination of things. It was a solid story that had some humor to it, with two stars that brought people into the theatres. I think he had the magical combination, and in reality his style ended up being secondary to the film. I think it was delivered in the right American package that the whole thing just became entertainment. I know there are people who are big fans of "Face/Off" who say it had too much of his stuff in there, and I think that can always be argued. However I think this movie ended up to be just so right on in so many ways that the style actually ended up being icing on the cake, again because it was thematically integrated that it was much more accessible.