BBC News:影视大亨邵逸夫逝世
And next to the passing of one of the great movie moguls, Sir Run Run Shaw who's died at the age of 106. He founded a film production company in Shanghai in 1927. Yes, 1927. His empire eventually covered Asia, influenced Hollywood, spanned TV as well as films and brought Kongfu movies to the west. That film though is very hard to tell from the audio, perhaps was called the Five Fingers of Death.
"My grandfather was a great friend of his. So our families have known each other for three generations. And those of us of my generation have always remembered him as being singularly the most important man in Hong Kong in the sense that he provided us with endless films and of course the great television station the Pearl Channel which remains today the most popular channel in Hong Kong. And the Kongfu films, for example, were all made at the Shaw's studios. He really was an icon of my generation."
"So he found the ingredients for popular culture in TV and film. But how did he retain his dominant position?"
"He came from Ningbo which is where all the cleverest Chinese mainlanders came from. And he was very assertive. He was an artist himself. I think he made the first Chinese talk movie as early as the late thirties. So he had a passion. And when he started making all his movies, people were not entrepreneurial as he was. And he simply managed to pick all the actors and all the right people. And he had acute business sense so that he never ran out of budget, although he famously turned down Bruce Lee. Well, you know, nobody is perfect. He got that one wrong. But nonetheless, my point is that notwithstanding his missing Bruce Lee, he still maintained the dominant position. And that proves how clever he was."
