Taiwanese filmmaker Yeh Tien-lun (葉天倫) never thought his directorial feature debut, Night Market Hero (雞排英雄), a two-hour fictional comedy portraying the life and resilience of night market vendors, would be such a hit.
Since it opened on Jan. 28, the film has grossed more than NT$125 million (US$4.23 million) and has taken the No. 1 spot at the local box office for 10 straight weeks, making it the third-most popular locally produced film ever, after last year’s hit Monga (艋舺) and 2008 blockbuster Cape No. 7 (海角七號).
Local audiences gave the film an enthusiastic thumbs-up, saying the movie sends a positive, uplifting message, something they think is missing from most Taiwanese films. The movie has even inspired students in Miaoli to launch a petition to save a local market. So far, 4,000 people have signed it.
Describing himself as a “movie deserter,” the 36-year-old director, who majored in film at Shih Hsin University, has come a long way since his college days, when he did not have the confidence to practice his craft.
“I lost the courage to make my own films during college,” he said in an interview late last month. “How could one feel confident after watching all the great films made by Truffaut, Godard, Bergman and other genius directors? I didn’t think I stood a chance of comparing to them.”
A dark period in his family’s history also made the director hesitant about filmmaking. His father, Yeh Chin-sheng (葉金勝), a renowned producer of local TV serials, invested NT$25 million to make a film, but the movie was such a flop that it only made NT$5 million. His father had to sell all of his assets and their house to pay off the debt.
Yeh Tien-lun feels that movie-making is in his DNA. He grew up watching his father shoot and edit films, even though it was his father’s later failure that cast a shadow over his filmmaking dreams and resulted in his choice not to pursue a career in the industry after graduation.
For 10 years, Yeh Tien-lun worked as a professional voice actor for advertising firms, a stage actor and a dancer. He even did a stint as a choirist.
Life was relatively easy with a job as a voice actor, Yeh said.
“I made NT$3 million every year. I traveled around the world whenever I wanted. I was in my early 30s, but I felt like I was stuck. I heard a calling and I knew the whole time that I did not want my life to end without making a film of my own,” he said.
The director said that he was a big fan of art-house films, but also said he watches Hollywood blockbusters and Hong Kong comedy movies. When he sat down with his sister, a screenwriter, they decided to focus on something familiar — a story about ordinary Taiwanese people — and make it interesting and funny.
Night Market Hero follows a group of vendors at the fictional Ba Ba Ba Night Market, whose lives are peppered with food rivalries and disputes about seemingly trivial matters. However, their internal skirmishes diminish when they find out that local politicians and property developers want to shut them down and seize the land on which many of them have made their living for more than a decade. The vendors eventually rally together to save the market.
Taiwan’s night market culture really says a lot about the country’s national identity, Yeh Tien-lun said.
“We are very resilient. We don’t become depressed when the odds are against us. We work very hard. Foreigners paying their first visit to the local night markets are always amazed by the fact that vendors work past midnight,” he said.
The film has generated some criticism, however, from those who argue that Yeh paints too optimistic a picture of night markets in Taiwan. They say that in real life it would not be possible for vendors to stand up against politicians and land developers.
“Criticism is a good thing. The local film industry needs the audience,” Yeh Tien-lun said in response to his critics. “But for me, many moviegoers go into the theater in search of a dream. They want to know there will be a better tomorrow and I want to be a dream-maker.”
The director also thinks that Taiwan really needs more diversified feature films so that a broader range of people are drawn to the cinema.
Even with the recent box office success of Taiwanese films, Yeh is cautious about whether to call it a renaissance after 20 years of gloomy box office figures.
“So far, only three films have broken the NT$100 million threshold. It’s too early to tell whether Taiwanese movies are making a strong comeback,” he said.
However, there are some key strategies for selling a locally made film, including a good cast, a movie budget of at least US$1 million, a distributor that knows how to market effectively and a good story that local people can relate to, he said.
“Nevertheless, in an industry where things change very fast, the success of one movie never promises anything for another one,” he said.
Night Market Hero has been nominated at the third Okinawa International Movie Festival, which will be held between March 18 and March 27, to vie in the “best comedy” category against the US feature film No Strings Attached, directed by Ivan Reitman, and Japanese film Omuraisu (Omelette Rice), directed by Yuichi Kimura.
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