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By Andrea Hamilton / SINGAPORE
ASIAWEEK
By last week, it had pulled in more than $2.4 million, beating Hollywood blockbusters such as Mission Impossible and Air Force One. Better yet, gloats Neo, Money topped Jackie Chan's highest-grossing film in Singapore, Story of CIA. It is the first time any Asian film, not to mention one from Singapore's unglamorous, fledgling industry, has surpassed the wildly popular Chan - himself the only Asian whose films have consistently beaten the West's. Despite a dollar-conscious promotion budget, Money held onto the No. 1 spot at the box office for a month after its May 7 opening. It was displaced only when the mega-hyped Godzilla came stomping into town June 4.
Ready for one more surprise? Money is in Hokkien - the earthy dialect of Singapore's street stalls and not something the crisply laundered members of the investing community are normally anxious to be associated with. And so it proved when Neo set off to raise funds for his project. He originally asked for just $285,000, only to be told he would be lucky to get a tenth of that. In the end, Money was made for $486,000 - a trifling sum in cinema terms. "Nobody thought there was a market for Hokkien," says Neo. "Now they are calling me, saying money is no problem."
Hokkien was chosen as a way to reach a different audience than the one drawn to the usual Western releases that make it to Singapore. "I wanted to produce a film my mother could watch," says Neo, 38. "She doesn't understand English all that well, and she's always asking why there's no Chinese movies for her generation. What's happening now is that children see my film and then come back with their grannies."
Neo uses the vulgar force of Hokkien to show what he describes as the "ugly side of Singapore" - a city that, from the outside, seems as button-downed as Bible class at the Salvation Army. Neo's character, an unpolished Chinese-educated executive, speaks Mandarin with his wife, inadequate English in the office and Hokkien with his coffee-shop buddies. He even loses out on a promotion to a younger, foreign-educated colleague because of his poor English - a development that helps lead to his financial downfall.
The jokes are funnier in dialect too, with a host of rude plays on words. The Mandarin and English subtitles do their best to keep up, but never deliver the same punch. Despite the Lion City's reputation for lacking a sense of humor, audiences have been roaring their approval. "Don't say we can't laugh at ourselves," says a local p.r. executive as she wipes tears from her eyes during a scene that could best be described as toilet humor encountering adolescent high spirits.
Yes, there's nothing slick about Money - no fancy sets, no special effects and no glamorous characters. No quality sound either. Shooting was of the on-again off-again variety as the production battled cash woes, including an attempt to declare the whole thing bankrupt. "We faced plenty of problems," says Neo. "The High Court issued a petition against our producer. It nearly stopped everything."
The motley cast of characters includes a dodgy, pockmarked contractor (Mark Lee), a hopelessly unhip coffee-shop boy (Henry Thia) and tattooed loan sharks, all of them relentlessly chasing money. Rude and crude this film may be, but Neo spent eight months toiling over the script, getting the jokes just right - and bracing himself for the censors. To his astonishment, Money passed without a snip, which Neo sees as evidence that the government is genuinely committed to promoting local films. Not that he was out to make political points, even though there are some barbed comments about the establishment. "We just wanted to have fun," says the comic. He has had plenty of practice at that, having hosted a weekly TV comedy show with Money co-stars Lee and Thia since 1990.
Now, flush with unexpected success, Neo is planning to see if his film works outside Singapore. A July release is being drawn up for Kuala Lumpur, with the movie's chances perhaps boosted by the fact that Neo's wife in the film, Zhuo Hui Qin, is a popular Malaysian DJ. It remains to be seen if Hokkien humor will tickle funny bones in Malaysia, Hong Kong or Taiwan. For Singaporeans, though, it's right on the money.
