Bade Haji Azmi’s ultra-modern Kuala Lumpur is populated by drug dealers, illegal street racers, and transvestite prostitutes. Mr. Azmi presents this vision in Gangster, his recent Malaysian action film, which is equal parts social drama, racing film, and gangster morality tale. With an elliptical structure and converging storylines echoing those of Amores Perros and Crash (which Azmi correctly points out came out after his film), Gangster is more than your average mindless exercise in car chases and shoot-outs. It is also the first action film to succeed at the Malaysian box office, and stars Malaysia’s most popular actor Rosyam Nor in three very different roles.

Cinema Strikes Back’s David Austin and Charlie Prince sat down recently to talk with Mr. Azmi, who was in New York for the US Premiere of Gangster at the New York Asian Film Festival. Following are excerpts from Mr. Azmi’s comments (edited somewhat for space and grammar).

[Gangster is playing at the NYAFF one last time on Wednesday, June 21 at the Anthology Film Archives. See full schedule here.]

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On His Background in Film

My late father worked in film. He was a chief cameraman for our national film board, and in turn also a chief cameraman for our national television. He was also directing at the same time, making films for the national film board or documentaries. He left because he wanted to do films, formed a company, and started doing films. That’s where I started at around the age of 18. He taught me a lot, all the basic things about camerawork - especially about cameras, although I started as an assistant sound man because I was so new. I actually started working as a young talent between the ages of 11 and 14, before my father put me behind a camera at the age of 18. He taught me all the basic things, all the theory and at the same time the practical side, we’d go out in the field.

I was there for 2-3 years, then I was doing commercials for 5 years, where I learned more details about the whole production, but my interest was more in camerawork. I’m no longer doing any commercials. I started doing photography at the age of 19. I was the youngest director of photography at the age of 21 - that was the youngest then, but is not any longer.

On Writing and Directing

I tried a lot of things in order to express or tell stories through my work, but there were always limitations that made me think I could not achieve what I wanted. The only way was to become a director. As a director, I can be nearer to the audience. At the same time, I thought that, by writing, I can tell the story I want to. My productivity is better if I can write at the same time I direct. This is my third film [as writer and director]. After I did my first movie with [producer] S. Ro, people thought I’m more keen on doing action films. It’s a bit of a problem, because they only want me to do action films, but my interest is more in drama, and I still believe there has to be a good story. I think Gangster is successful not just because of the action sequences, but because of the story itself, the way I did it, the way I wrote it and the way I shot it.

I did once [direct without also writing the script], but it wasn’t successful, it didn’t work. My first and second films failed, so I lived through that failure. I didn’t write the script. I had a hard time convincing the producer, who came up with the money and had the power. I knew it wouldn’t work in the earlier stages because the script was not good, it wasn’t ready yet, but [the producers] pushed me because they wanted to go ahead with the script. It didn’t work. I stopped directing for more than 5 years - in between I worked as a director of photography. I am the first choice in my country for DP, so I can live on that, but I still had that dream. I knew I could not do more as a DP - I have to write and tell stories.

During that 5 years, I wrote and re-wrote the script which won me awards for best director, actor and screenwriter – K.L Menjerit. I wrote and kept rewriting until producer S. Ro bought the idea. I told him that I had a bad experience, I have to make sure that you believe in my story, and only then will I come back and direct the story. He believed in it and bought the idea, and it was as successful as Gangster. We got both – a hit film and an award-winning film, 3 awards for me, and best film of the year. It’s been going well since then. That’s not an action movie, but people think it is because there are 4 minutes of action in it. People were impressed, so they started calling me an action director, thinking I was good at that. [K.L Menjerit] is a romantic drama. I love to do romantic dramas because I believe in emotions that can touch the audience. I believe in good stories, but people are more impressed by action. Gangster is the first action film that was considered successful [in Malaysia], because of that, people were quite impressed, and thought I could do action films.

On Being Typecast as an Action Director

[Producer] S Ro loves to see me doing something new and setting a new trend for the local industry. I told producers that I can do something good but it wouldn’t be successful. It’s a dilemma, doing good movies that don’t sell, like so-called art films. It’s the same in every part of the world. We have to do something that can bring the audience back to the cinema, to make sure the industry survives. It’s not a cultural issue.

On the Creation of “Gangster”

It gets harder every year, making movies. We have a lot of good movies coming in from all sorts of countries, and a lot of entertainment, good TV programs - that is part of the challenge. I have to come up with something better every day. They want me to do action films because they believe people want to watch my action films, and I have to take the challenge. We had action movies but they failed, mostly because of the scripts themselves, and action sequences that were not done well, and storyline that were very bad, there was no story there. My producer wanted me to do action films, and the crowd wanted to see more action, when they watched my previous films they asked for more action in my upcoming films. S Ro wanted to prove that we could do something new. But we need more of a budget than for the normal drama because we needed a lot of things - it involved time and a lot of people, action stunts, props to crash. I asked for a proper budget, and I started writing, it took me three years of rewriting and rewriting. I was thinking about the audience and at the same time, how to do the film well. It took me two years, picking local subjects that would interest the audience. Two years to plan the whole thing.

The management of the shooting brought back my previous experience. I had a bike scene in my earlier film. I applied that experience except this time it was the whole film. Technically, I had no problem because I’m a cameraman, I started very young. For me, it is more difficult to write than to shoot. The stunt crew had been working with me for some time - they had been doing action sequences for more than 15 years. I knew them very well, what they can do and what they can’t.

Initial D came out after my movie. Everybody thought my movie would be like The Fast and Furious, because audiences saw the trailer long before my movie came out. At first they thought it was a foreign film, until they saw my name and the actors. Then they watched the movie and they saw everybody was there, all the local guys are there, all the locations are in Kuala Lumpur itself. Before people even saw the edited cut, they thought it was going to be like F&F, just a copy, but I knew I what I was doing. I don’t want to bite off other films - I want to do a Malaysian film that has its own storyline. After audiences saw it, they realized that there was a car race, but it was a local subject, a typical kind of thing happening in KL. We have night racing, illegal racing. The film is not related at all to the F&F storyline, and the audience accepted it as a Malaysian film.

On Shooting in Kuala Lumpur

KL is very modern, what you saw is KL, the crowds, the streets. Everything is happening in the city itself, the night stalls, all things around the city itself. I had to shut down streets [for the extensive car race scenes], but with my experience it went very smoothly, sometimes we only closed the streets for less than two minutes. We planned everything before we went into a main street, we had one shot, opened the road again, come back if necessary and did a second take, and moved on.

We shot the film in 50-60 days. Editing took about 11 months. [Azmi later explained that the entire film was shot for less than $500,000 US.]

On Working With Rosyam Nor

Everything had to be different in Gangster. I didn’t want to come out with just another action film that you can relate with other films, like F&F or Hong Kong films. In the end, [Gangster] is not a HK film. Rosyam Nor acted in my previous films. I have to make sure with every film I came out with something fresh and different, to give him a challenge, and to give satisfaction and a surprise to the audience and to him as an actor. He’s the most popular actor [in Malaysia] and also won best actor for my first film. He’s my good friend and co-producer on one of my films. I know him very well, he understands how I work, and we get along very well. When I had the idea of having him play three roles, I called him and suggested it to him, and everybody was so excited. We worked together a few months before I finished the script, he was giving me suggestions.

On His Family in Film

I’m also married to an actress for 16 years [Erma Fatima], she is also a director now. My sister-in-law [actress Umie Aida] and my cousin acted in Gangster, and my niece has also acted in one of my movies. I co-directed once with my wife - she wanted to be a director - just monitoring her, not really telling her what to do. After that, she went out on her own. This is my first time working with my sister-in-law after many years, and my cousin, he acted in a lot of movies before, but this is my first time working with him because I thought the character suited him. The same with my sister-in-law.

On What Is Popular in Malaysian Cinema

Comedy, mostly comedies. And a lot of producers, they come up with the money, so they start asking people to do comedies, but not S Ro, he likes to do something different as long as it is good. I’m lucky to be one of his directors. Already other people are starting to do action films like this, though I don’t know about the stories. I sent two of my crew to work with them, they know how I do it, so they can help the producer and director.

On Production in Malaysia

It’s mostly independent, we don’t have studios. S Ro has a big cable TV company, with a sister company which produces movies. There’s another private TV station that also has a sister company that produces films. Private producers can ask for government subsidies, but they have to pay it back with some interest.

On Censorship

I don’t like to make the excuse that censorship is giving us a lot of problems in doing good films. I’ve seen a lot of Iranian films, good films. They have stronger censorship, but produce a lot of good films. I had the same thought when I was very young, after I watched Cinema Paradiso. I realized you can do good films without sex, without violence, and without involving a lot of sensitive issues; it’s all about how you tackle the subject, how much you understand about the whole thing, the censorship, the country, the sensitivity of the people and the government. I understand it very well, and I won’t give the excuse that I can’t do good films because the censorship is too tight.

Lately, censorship is not that tight anymore - we have a new agency that understands better about art. This change came during former Prime Minister [Mahathir] Mohammed’s reign. It all started before the government change. We don’t have any single film that is banned, instead we have little cuts, cigarettes may not be portrayed, you can have gunshots but not so many gunshots, and at the end of the movie there has to be a payback for the crooks. You can touch on religious issues, but you have to understand very well how to tackle any sensitive issues like race, religion, politics …. As long as you know how to conquer that, you won’t have any problems.

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Thanks to Bade Hj. Azmi for graciously participating, and to Grady Hendrix and the Subway Cinema crew for their assistance.