I Make Movies in Republican-Era China, and the Western Powers All Kneel

[Sharp-tongued maverick + overwhelming superiority + saving the nation through Republican-era entertainment]

Gu Shuangge has three nicknames in the Republican-era arts scene: the Tyrant of the Set, the Mad Dog of the Literary World, and the Bane of Foreigners.

On set, actors would rather take a slap than risk a third retake. In his newspaper column, he rips into comprador elites, warlords, and stuffy literati. A literary grandmaster reads his work and slaps the table in admiration: “I’ve written all my life, and still I’ve never cursed with half the force of a single page of his!” At the Paramount Ballroom, he publicly humiliates a foreign singer. At a European film festival, he leaves a Hollywood director speechless. Before the whole world, he declares: “Chinese culture needs no one’s charity.”

No one knows that his mind holds a century’s worth of films, music, and memories from the future. All they see is a madman who started out with a discarded movie camera and, in just a few years, built an Eastern entertainment empire that keeps Hollywood’s giants awake at night.

Some hate him to the bone. Compradors put a bounty on his head, warlords issue warrants for his arrest, and the foreign powers establish a secret committee to destroy him.

Others are willing to die for him. Students, workers, and rickshaw pullers pool their money to buy his development bonds. Progressive actresses risk their lives for his films, and masters of Chinese martial arts fend off seven assassination attempts for him under cover of darkness.

“How much is your backbone worth in silver dollars?” a comprador tycoon asks with a sneer.

He raises his camera and points the lens at this slumbering age:

“Every frame this machine captures is worth more than your life.”