My Article: Street Racer Approved.

Hong Kong Street Racing.

I finally gathered enough copies of BC to hand them out to a few of the racers. I was a very surprised how happy they were about it. I thought they would be blasé about it, coz they are always featured in the car mags over here.

The guy’s who I took the photos of were well pleased. They thought it made them look mysterious and cool. Better than the usual photos of their cars that feature in the magazine coz you know mine is ART and the usual is CAR PORN. Ha Ha. That’s how I like to see it anyway. So I was really really relieved as I figured they might think they were too small as their cars get a full page spread.

I am not sure how they feel about the articles yet, coz most of them aren’t so great at English, and it will take them a while to sort through it. Except I already got, “ILLEGAL CAR RACING?”

“Errr. Isn’t it? You drive too fast.”

“Hmm.”

“9:30pm is too early. More like one.”

“Yeah, but that’s when they used to pick me up! Then we would go somewhere and they would stand around until late before they raced.”

“Yeah, at 1am”

“You’re right I should have made it later…” (He was right, I thought 9:30 was good, but it probably is too early.)

I was also a bit embarrassed by the title as it was “Live Fast, Die Young” and since it was about them, I didn’t mean imply they were going to die early at all, but the article has a lot about why they drive so fast even if they can die and it’s catchy. And someone else in the blog world, (as in Fin from Guttural Vomit) helped me with that one. But I did tell them that I had nothing to do with the title and it was chosen by the editor. Nothing worse than being perceived as cursing them to die right?

The only person who read it all was Candy, Fai’s girlfriend. Now I am not sick, I think I was probably too harsh on her character, she’s actually been a real proponent of the film at the start. She kept going, “Oh. That’s so true!” “They are all like that.” “Yes, they say that all the time!” and she asked me who Dee was, and I said “Who do you think?” and she said, “Could be any of them, they all say things like that all the time.”

I was really happy about that too because the whole idea of the article was try to get into the minds of these racers, and what they thought. At least it showed whatever I picked for the article was representative of who they are, and how they feel about the world.

I generally got a sense that as little as they could get through, they felt I was concentrating on them, and making them the center of the story rather than the cars itself. Which was new to them, a different angle and I think they appreciated that because when I started filming all I ever got was, “Why do you care about us? Why don’t you film the cars, or the important people. We’re nobodies.” And I would try and explain that, they aren’t “Nobodies.” And that I was fascinated by what they do and who they are. And they were real Hong Kong people in their own right and I was here to tell their stories. Maybe after this, they get more of an idea of what I am trying to do, and I hope they will be more willing to let me film them again.

Now I have to wait for the guys to go through the whole thing. I am sure there will be loads of complaints about minute details like, “No one in HK has a silver AE111” I kept saying, “I know I didn’t want the cops to hook you guys in!! So I changed the descriptions a little! Which is what the editor wanted!”

Well. So far it’s a success, I always think if you write or do something that doesn’t please the subjects of the piece, and they can’t see themselves in it, then you completely failed regardless of what the public or critic thinks. Well so far, it seems that I capture some of their “heart voices” (Sum Xing), which means I did my job well.

And when they were driving off, I saw them all checking if they got their copies, and made sure it wasn’t bent and put it in a safe place. And I heard one thing I never heard any of them say to me before. Which was “Thank You.”

Live Fast, Die Young:
A Night with the Hong Kong Street Racers