Black Sunglasses Leslie Louie

Shah of Persia · February 25, 2022

Current work: https://www.woonlok.com/

Leslie Louie is a Taiwanese-American film producer from Seattle. He grew up in the Chinatown-International district in Seattle.

His grandparents migrated from Taiwan (ROC). He is third generation. His mother of Cantonese descent and a neuro-biologist. His father was an eye doctor. His matrilineal grandfather was a Hong Kong film producer.

Leslie studied in business school and later moved to Hong Kong. He got a job as a scenario writer for theater, in the times before Hong Kong had a mature film industry. Through Three Mountains Studio he landed a screenplay for a film. During the uprise of Hong Kong gangster cinema he wrote the screenplays of three movies (A Night Apart (1986), Shanghai Superfly (1988), Trouble in Mong-kok (1989)) and continued to write and direct three movies (Lost in Kowloon (1990), Moon over Sham Shui Po (1992), Brother Number Three (1996)). Here he developed the foundation of his style. He became one of the fathers of Hong Kong triad films and gained cult popularity. His last film, Brother Number Three, was a big budget film he only directed.

After three films in three years, Leslie was exhausted and went on a hiatus. He produced, wrote and directed his own film: Songbird (1997), which was completely different from any of his work and went overboard with "his style". It became a Hong Kong box office hit. Afterwards, he also made Lovely Contemplations (1998) and Wild Devotion (1999), both of which were less succesful than his first solo-work, yet were still popular and became cult classics.

Working on his second film, Leslie got pulled away into the synthetic drug scene for a few years. He got involved with Bamboo Union and particupated in "Hollywood accounting". His addiction eventually caused a creative block that made him disappear from the Hong Kong film scene.

Leslie moved to Europe where he lived in Milan, Paris, Madrid and London. He worked in the fashion industry before moving back to Seattle and later lived in Los Angeles. In an interview, Leslie said he has had a "hard time reconcilliating with his roots and finding an environment with the right headspace. I always felt like a misfit."

He never had a breakthrough in the United States. He moved into different independent artistic endevours. Some of his work never saw the light of day. But he gained international cult popularity.

In early 2022, Leslie moved to Los Santos.

Personality

Leslie is in his early fifties. He's a cosmopolitan and globally oriented. He has a strong heart for his roots and engages in activities to preserve Taiwanese (and Asian) cultures. He's a strong proponent of Taiwanese sovereignity. He’s modest, an extraverted-introvert and anti-elitist. Many film stars that worked with him on set describe him as "a perfecionist, but very inspiring and a visual thinker". "His choice of clothing never seizes to provoke. Very fashionable and focused on details, but often they would just be tracksuits with loafers". He practices yoga, enjoys philosophy and identifies as buddhist.

Louie has a weak spot for old cinema and is a bit of a snob, setting high standards for his art. His films can be identified as style-heavy with vibrant color schemes, relying heavily on music and visual language. His movies often deal with the themes of love, anti-capitalism, futurism and modernity in contemporary settings and are somewhat dreamlike and spiritual, where he plays with mixing reality and fiction.

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