Parodyist For Hire: Hu Ge's new life

The Southern Metropolis Weekly's latest print edition had an interesting article about videos and movies online. The article profiled and compared some of the people working in this area and analyzed the business models and economics behind each. One of the people profiled was none other than Hu Ge, the Shanghainese man that caused a stir with his parody of The Promise, director-turned-hack Chen Kaige's latest attempt to waste several hours in the lives of innocent and hard-working people. That parody, a short film called A Bloody Case That Started From a Steamed Bun, got Hu Ge in trouble with the aforementioned hack, who threatened Hu with a lawsuit. The net result has been to make the once unknown Hu Ge into a cause celebre cum indie movie rebel. Not suprisingly, he's gotten some offers, most notably, to make another parody, this time with the approval of the filmmakers. The filmmakers behind the film 血战到底 (Karmic Mahjong). We think that the media might have already seen the parody version (which is basically advertising for the film itself) and were disappointed: Hu himself acknowledges that he made Steamed Bun for fun and because he was pissed off, whereas Karmic Mahjong is already comic and a bit of a spoof (we will review it soon), making it hard for him to find the inspiration. Unlike the first film, however, he isn't allowed to bring in bits and pieces from other movies and TV shows or music -- otherwise known as copyrighted material -- which also made his job harder. These days, Hu is living in a house in the suburbs where has a "studio" and is hatching plans to make a real, live-action film on digital video. The problem is, not many people have expressed interest thus far in investing in it.

Photo from Sina.com.