21 June 2007
The Long Road to Iron Road
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Iron Road, a mini-series focusing on the Chinese
experience of building the CPR railway, is being directed by long-time John Woo collaborator David
Wu.
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It's a story that begins with a photo. The iconic image of the
Last Spike - the final piece of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, hammered into place back in 1885 - has come to symbolize
humanity's tenacity and innovation in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.
But as historians will attest, it is a controversial image. Though the railroad was built largely on the backs of Irish, Chinese, and
Native labourers who sweated, starved, and died in their thousands to complete the coast-to-coast line, their full stories
have long been excluded from official versions of the project's history.
Iron Road, a new mini-series due to air on CBC in 2008, is an attempt to set us straight on this crucial piece of social
history. Inspired by an opera of the same name by Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell, the film tells the story of a young Chinese woman who
travels to Canada from southern China in the 1880s to find work on the Canadian Pacific and ends up falling in love with the
privileged son of her railroad-tycoon boss.
"This is our way of saying sorry," said Raymond Massey, one of the film's producers, in an interview on-set in
China. Massey, who hails from Vancouver, has been with the project for the past year, initially helping to raise the $10 million budget
and now guiding the film through the potential minefield of a largely China-based shoot. The project is being directed by
long-time John Woo collaborator David Wu and stars Peter O'Toole and Sam Neill, as well as a host of
well-known Canadian and Chinese actors.
Iron Road is breaking ground not just in terms of its content but also because it is the first China-Canada coproduction
in 20 years. Anne Tait, another of the film's producers (and who first optioned the rights to the story seven years ago), remembered
pitching the idea to CBC: "The executive there said, "I've been waiting ever since I took this job for some independent
producer to come in and say they want to do this story. We were hoping it would be a Chinese writer, Chinese producer, but it isn't, so
let's talk."
In the end, joint Sino-Canadian financing was found, perhaps making the film one of the first of a new wave of
English-language features made partly with Chinese money. The unique arrangement, involving two Chinese partners, means
that two versions of the project - a four-hour miniseries and a shorter theatrical cut - will play in different
territories worldwide.
Appropriately enough for a film about monumental struggles and the clash of cultures, making Iron Road has been an obstacle course for
its production team, particularly the Canadian side. For Massey, the differences between shooting in Canada and China have made every
day a challenge, even on the well-known Hengdian Studio back lot, the biggest filmmaking facility in China. Controlling
noise on-set has been a particular problem.
"I lost it one day," recalled Massey, 23 days into the 30-day China shoot. (The final 11 days of filming took
place in B.C. in early June.) "I walked onto one of the other sets shooting here and screamed at them, "I have Peter O'Toole
over here, and this is completely unacceptable that I have come halfway round the world with my crew". I just totally lost it.
They were standing there terrified, wondering who was this lunatic. But I felt a lot better."
There are upsides to working so far away from home, and not just the local food, which Massey described as "amazing".
"Daily shooting costs here are one-tenth of what they would be back in Canada. If we had shot the whole film back
there, this film would have cost us 25 or 30 million dollars."
Iron Road also stars Canadian actors Kenneth Mitchell, Serge Houde, Luke MacFarlane, and Ian Tracey, as well as rising Chinese star
Sun Li as Chinese labourer Little Tiger.
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