Hollywood: Becoming a Mogul Starting with Saw

Late autumn, 2003. Beside a trash can in a Los Angeles tent encampment.

Lu Xun had just been knocked unconscious by a homeless man high on meth. He felt the two crumpled one-dollar bills left in his pocket and sneezed in the cold rain.

His predecessor was an undocumented worker who had overstayed his visa. With no legal status and a huge debt to a human-trafficking broker, he had nowhere left to turn.

To stay alive, he tore down a small underground B-movie casting ad from a telephone pole:

[Low-budget horror feature urgently needs a special effects prop apprentice. $40 cash per day, one hot pizza included. Must be hardworking and not faint at the sight of blood.]

In a shabby warehouse reeking of latex and cheap ketchup, Lu Xun stared at the ghastly, touchably realistic severed limbs, their flesh and bones mangled and exposed, and went numb.

“Those American B-movie guys wouldn’t actually be sneaking into the morgue to ‘build a Gundam’ just to save money on silicone molds, would they?”

At the time, a young, sleepless, dirt-poor Chinese American director named James Wan was crouched on the curb, clutching his hair over a production shutdown caused by cost overruns.

When Lu Xun casually fashioned a history-making “reverse bear trap” out of scrap metal pipe and cheap gelatin, then pulled out a stack of cigarette-box papers covered in god-tier storyboards...

The night sky over Hollywood quietly changed color.

From the basement miracle Saw, made in 18 days, to a horror universe that conquered the globe, the Marvel boom, and finally a Chinese tycoon in charge of the global conversation.

Lu Xun: “I came to Hollywood for three things: make money, get my identity cleaned up, and, while I’m at it, buy the Big Six studios.”