No doubt the movie Chungking Express by director Wong Kar Wai is a masterpiece in itself I must have watched it about 3 or 4 times already and I simply love the cinematography and the whole vibe of the movie. Today I dont want to review the movie for you, you can find reviews on rotten tomatoes if you are looking for such kind.
I wanted to talk about a small little location in the movie the small fast food shack called the Midnight Express where young actress Faye Wong is working in the movie.
This movie was completely shot in Hong Kong when I was travelling to Hong Kong last year I walked around the city just looking for nice locations to photograph and what possibly could work for a scene in a movie, also I was wondering if I could spot some locations from the movie Chungking Express I wasnt really looking up an address or something I just wanted to experience the city how it is and see if I can discover something on my own.
I actually did that in Tokyo Japan aswell with the movie Lost in Translation which is another favorite of mine, maybe I should be a location scout haha ;-).
One morning I was walking around Lan Kwai Fong which is actually a pretty touristy area known for its nightlife bars and clubs. I would have never suspected a location from this movie in such an area, but I snapped a few pictures with my Lomo LCA its a small automatic russian camera which takes 35mm film please check my flickr for a few impressions.
When I got back home I was actually curious where this fast food restaurant could have been, I was pretty sure that it must have been replaced by something since Hong Kong is such a fast changing city. I went on to google and tried to find this location and found a blog entry mentioning it was turned into a convenience store after it was turned into several other businesses. You can see the original blog entry that I was looking at last year here.
Lets fast forward to yesterday the 10th of may 2009.
I was uploading some of my already developed LCA pictures from Hong Kong onto my flickr account I never really checked them out that closely I had a few favorites but I remembered that I had those pictures of Lan Kwai Fong. When I thought about it I remembered that I took this photo right here of a man balancing on a ladder and it looked like they were building a 7/11 store judging by those green orange red colors.
Now it hit me, wait a minute !? I was walking around Hong Kong the whole day looking for some kind of Chungking Express inspiration and without knowing it, it actually came to me ?.
I dug up the the blogpost and compared those pictures and yes I was there when they turned it into another 7/11 store a piece of movie history right in front of me and I didnt even notice haha.
Well this is my little story that makes this movie unique for me, my own little experience within the movie.
For one last time in remembrance of the Midnight Express lets watch Faye Wong do her little dance to the Mamas and the Papas with California Dreaming.
And thanks to the Hong Kong Hustle Blog for the information :-)
peace
Chrishimself