China influences the movies Hollywood makes. But it may not need the U.S. anymore
SAM SANDERS, HOST:
I bet most of you have never heard of this movie called "Kundun." It came out in 1997. And it's a biopic about the 14th Dalai Lama.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "KUNDUN")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) You must be a very high lama, a great Tibetan monk. So this is a good thing. Don't be scared. You're not the first boy to be discovered like this and certainly not the last.
SANDERS: You know, by many metrics, this film should have been a big success. The Dalai Lama was a celebrity in the '90s, at least to other celebrities. This film was directed by Martin Scorsese. And it was produced by Disney. You put all those ingredients together and you expect a hit, but not so with "Kundun."
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SANDERS: This movie made just under $6 million at the American box office. It was a flop - a major flop. Why? China.
ERICH SCHWARTZEL: Executives at Disney were already looking at China as a growth market.
SANDERS: That is longtime friend of the show Erich Schwartzel. He covers the film industry for The Wall Street Journal.
SCHWARTZEL: They were saying to themselves, you know, eventually, we might want to build a theme park over there. We might want to release our big movies over there. We might want to sell toys over there. And they had all these grand plans that were completely waylaid by a phone call that one executive in Burbank got one afternoon from the Chinese Embassy saying that they were very offended.
SANDERS: Erich says this Disney executive had no idea what was going on.
SCHWARTZEL: It turns out that the Chinese officials, upon learning that this movie was being made about the Dalai Lama, who they consider something of a state enemy, was going to be an affront to national affairs and cause for them to suspend business with Disney at large.
SANDERS: Disney couldn't afford to lose China's business. So naturally, the company got Henry Kissinger involved. I'm serious - Disney had Henry Kissinger on retainer, the former secretary of state and national security adviser to President Richard Nixon.
SCHWARTZEL: He was helping them do what he did for President Nixon, which is navigate China.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: Disney proved more difficult, I think.
SANDERS: So Kissinger comes up with this proposal for Chinese officials.
SCHWARTZEL: Saying, look, we've got this movie that is offensive to you, but it will be far worse if we don't release it, you know, 'cause Hollywood...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Will be up in arms because of the free speech issue. You're going to look bad. So why don't you let us release it, but we will bury it? And that's what they did. It came out on Christmas.
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: It was released on, like, four screens and never really went much further. And it was really the first time we saw a single release threaten a corporate parent, where you have studios learning the hard way that they cannot cross China.
SANDERS: You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders. And today on the show, we ask a question - what does China want from Hollywood? Erich has a new book out all about this. It's called "Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, And The Global Battle For Cultural Supremacy."
For the last few years, you've seen the headlines - China making a big play to influence, if not own, a lot of the American film industry. And this may seem like a recent phenomenon, but as Erich just told us, China's had its eyes on Hollywood for a few decades now. In this chat, Erich explains how it all began, how it might end, and what all this means for movie viewers like you and me. I promise you will learn a lot in this episode. All right, enjoy.
SCHWARTZEL: Starting around the release of "Avatar," studio executives started to see that not only was the Chinese box office growing, but it was inevitable that it would become the biggest box office in the world. And this was at a time when domestic moviegoing was really stagnant. And ticket sales were not going up year over year, but in China, they were going up, you know, 10%, 15%, 20% year over year. So it didn't exactly take, like, a Harvard MBA to realize let's put money there 'cause that's where...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...The growth is. And so around 2008, you started to see grosses that were really material to a studio's bottom line. And eventually, studios started to realize, look, if we want to show our movies in China, which requires getting these movies approved by Chinese censors, we can't put anything in them that will jeopardize that.
SANDERS: So this kind of story has been in the headlines for a while now as China's box office power grows and the country's investment in Hollywood grows. The American film industry is sometimes bending over backwards to make films that make China happy. For viewers who want to just notice these things more the way that China can flex its muscle in American movies, what does one look for on screen? What are the telltale signs of Chinese influence? I mean, you've kind of given a few, but give us a list.
SCHWARTZEL: Oh, you will start to see them everywhere.
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: So basically, one of the easy things to look for is Chinese product placement. So you might notice in a movie like "Venom" that, for some reason, Tom Hardy is using a Chinese messaging app on his phone. You also might notice that there might be some supporting actors or actresses. Sometimes they have something to do, sometimes they're just there, it seems, for almost, like, decoration. Those are Chinese actors and actresses who are often cast in roles that they can then try to use to promote the film in China. But then I think actually the more interesting layer is seen in movies like this new movie "The 355."
SANDERS: This is the one with...
SCHWARTZEL: This is the one with Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Penelope Cruz - team of female secret agents.
SANDERS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE 355")
JESSICA CHASTAIN: (As Mace) Remember that story that they told us about in training about George Washington's first female spy during the revolution? They called her agent 355.
SANDERS: Wait, it already came out?
SCHWARTZEL: Yeah, it already came out. But you're forgiven for missing it. I don't think...
SANDERS: OK.
SCHWARTZEL: It didn't really take off. I went to see it for the reason anyone goes to see a movie, which is how is China portrayed in this?
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: And so it's interesting because in the final climactic shootout that takes place in Shanghai, there's all these bullets flying. This hotel room is just completely demolished. And then at the end, the Chinese police run in to kind of restore order.
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: And it's a - I don't think many viewers would really even clock it, but it is a fascinating reflection of what you have to do when you portray China, which is that you need to make sure that even if there is a big shootout in the streets of China, that you will at some point see some kind of authority make sure everything's OK.
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: So I think it ranges from the cosmetic to the deeper, more thematic choices that at this point Hollywood has really just absorbed.
SANDERS: Wow. So when did China decide to make the American box office one of its goals? There was a long period of time where China was culturally cut off from the rest of the world.
SCHWARTZEL: You're absolutely right. And so back in the '90s, the Chinese economy was growing at quite a clip, and the Chinese leaders were really trying to come out of the Cultural Revolution and become an economic force on the world stage. And one of the initiatives they oversaw was the largest internal migration in human history. We had hundreds of millions of Chinese people moving from the countryside to these newly built cities. And so whenever you're building a new city, what do you need? You need a hospital, you need a shopping mall, and you often need a movie theater.
And so the movie theaters started being built at a clip, and it didn't take very long for there to be more movie theaters in China than there are in the U.S. So two things were happening. One is that Chinese authorities wanted to build their own entertainment industry, and they wanted to support this new homegrown theatrical market, but they also saw how Hollywood had shaped hearts and minds around the world for a century. And as they wanted China to become something of a global superpower, they wanted to have that kind of cultural cachet and influence themselves, and that was going to require building their own entertainment business.
SANDERS: Wow. And it kind of worked out, huh? Like, numerically, in comparison, how does the American box office stand up to the Chinese one at this point?
SCHWARTZEL: It's - I mean, COVID really accelerated what had been an inevitability and gave China the No. 1 box office in the world. That happened in 2020, when - of course, I mean, a major asterisk here is that a lot of theaters in the U.S. were closed for much of that year.
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: But nonetheless...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...It was a symbolic passing of the baton that very few people think will be reversed. And so in China now, it is very common to see Chinese movies collecting 600, $700 million at the Chinese box...
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Office and doing as well in...
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Their country as "Spider-Man" does here. The key difference is that Chinese movies, despite the best wishes of so many Chinese filmmakers and Chinese officials, still do a vast majority of their business in China. They haven't quite bridged the gap of getting international audiences to show up, like Hollywood did, starting in the '40s and '50s.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: Coming up, how movies get cleared by Chinese censors. Spoiler alert - it's complicated.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: So on top of the American film industry making films that run here in America look more China-friendly, they're also making these movies with the hopes of getting them to screen in China as well. But China only takes a certain number of American movies every year. What is it - like, 34?
SCHWARTZEL: That's right.
SANDERS: And they have a really intricate and detailed process to get American films cleared by Chinese censors. A lot of American movies get rejected nowadays, sometimes for things people have said many years ago. I was surprised to learn that the new "Space Jam" movie, which seems pretty innocuous, wasn't allowed to run in China. Can you break down what goes into China accepting or rejecting an American film?
SCHWARTZEL: Right. So it's this delicate dance that the studios have to play where they finish a movie, and once the editing is complete or about near complete, they send it over to China's Ministry of Propaganda, where officials...
SANDERS: Wait, wait, wait. It's called Ministry of Propaganda?
SCHWARTZEL: It is. It is. And...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: ...In China, there is something a little bit lost in translation here.
SANDERS: OK.
SCHWARTZEL: China uses the word propaganda a little differently than we do...
SANDERS: OK.
SCHWARTZEL: ...In the States. As you can probably tell, like, calling themselves the Ministry of Propaganda...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: ...Kind of implies that they don't view it the way that - (laughter) you know?
SANDERS: Yeah (laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: As maybe - or as Orwellian as Americans would if...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Our government had a Ministry of Propaganda.
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: But the Ministry of Propaganda has this group of censors who - sometimes they're sort of roaming officials. Sometimes they're film studies professors. Sometimes they're longtime state bureaucrats. And they will watch the film, and sometimes they'll say, this movie's not screening in China at all. Sometimes they will give notes and say, if you cut X, Y, Z, you know, maybe this line of dialogue. And sometimes if it's a movie that's relatively innocuous, they will just show it with no changes made at all.
But it is - the approval is necessary to screen in Chinese theaters, and sometimes that approval comes just days before a movie is going to be released. So it's a level of uncertainty that the studio chiefs really despise, but there's nothing they can do because they still want to show their movies in China. And so after the censors will give the movie a look - and sometimes if they reject the movie, the studio executives have to try to guess why. I mean, it's very hard...
SANDERS: Wait. They don't, like, say, here's why?
SCHWARTZEL: I mean, sometimes you can backchannel and find out, this is the problem, this is the reason why. But there's no memo, really, given that explains why the Chinese Communist Party censors have rejected the film. And what it does is it actually creates a system more powerful than if they did because think about it. If you see a movie like "Space Jam," which, as you said, you don't think is going to be a problem...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Get rejected, you might second-guess anything that seems risky or anything that seems like it's on the bubble. In the case of "Space Jam," now, there are a couple theories, none of which, as I said, have been, you know, substantiated or confirmed by the Chinese authorities. But one is that the NBA's controversy with its China policy with regards to the Hong Kong protests from...
SANDERS: Oh, I remember that.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Several years ago might have...
SANDERS: Some players got in trouble for tweeting about the Hong Kong protests, right?
SCHWARTZEL: It was a GM in Houston who...
SANDERS: Oh.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Tweeted support for the Hong Kong protesters. And after that, it kind of enveloped LeBron and a bunch of other players who didn't want to wade into that and in some cases said that they disagreed with the GM or that he was mistaken. That could've just been too radioactive a situation for the Chinese censors to want to wade into, right?
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: They see a movie. It's got a big NBA presence. The NBA kind of crossed the Communist Party not too long ago. Maybe not the best time.
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: But I have to say, it was - it's - and it was a big blow because that movie was certainly made with the understanding that the NBA is very popular in China and they could make a lot of money there.
SANDERS: Well, what if China just felt like I felt, which is that the first "Space Jam" is a modern classic and should not be redone (laughter)?
SCHWARTZEL: Absolutely possible.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: Maybe the censors said, we cannot inflict this on our people.
SANDERS: Yeah, yeah. So what's crazy about all of the hoops that American movies have to jump through is that, like, no one is sacred when it comes to China. Chloe Zhao, at one point China's film darling - her film "Nomadland" won best picture at the Oscars here a while back. She got in trouble with China, and one of her movies was also rejected, too?
SCHWARTZEL: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, she - at first, the Chinese state media was really quick to embrace her. They called her...
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: ...The pride of China when she was nominated for several Oscars for "Nomadland." But, I mean, and this will show you the degree to which Chinese authorities and, in some cases, Chinese citizens, will look for infractions. And it was that she had given an interview several years earlier in which she had said that growing up in China was growing up in a place where there were lies everywhere. And this interview was eight years old. It was conducted before she had...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Anything close to the profile she has now. And whenever word of that interview spread throughout Chinese social media, all coverage of Chloe Zhao and her Oscars was essentially wiped...
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: ...From the Chinese internet.
SANDERS: Whoa.
SCHWARTZEL: And the Oscars were not shown in China because of her involvement. It was very hard to find any coverage of her anywhere on the Chinese internet. And then several months later, when her Marvel Studios film "The Eternals" (ph) came out...
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: ...It was also rejected from release in China. And so it's a fascinating case because here is a filmmaker who grew up in China and then moved to the U.S. and started ascending to really the highest heights of Hollywood but still found herself...
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Answering to Beijing.
SANDERS: It's so fascinating. I mean, hearing you talk about all of the difficulties that, you know, powerhouses like Chloe Zhao and Disney and LeBron encounter with China, I'm wondering how cooperative was China with you over the course of your reporting this book?
SCHWARTZEL: I traveled there several times, and I have to say - I mean, obviously, I took precautions not just in my reporting, but also in when I was talking to people and making sure that they felt safe and remain safe. But I have to say, there's part of the story that is happening in China that - which is the story of an entertainment industry that has essentially exploded overnight and is making movies and trying to export its culture with a fervor that the U.S. exercised in the mid-20th century. And there is an enormous amount of pride in that. I mean, the sets that I would visit - they've got these massive, fascinating soundstage lots where essentially you can drive around, and you drive through different dynasties. So if you're making a movie in a particular dynasty...
SANDERS: Whoa.
SCHWARTZEL: ...You go to this lot. But if you're moving to the 15th century, you drive to this lot...
SANDERS: (Laughter) That's amazing.
SCHWARTZEL: ...And you can film there. I mean, it's really just - it's amazing. And so I think there was this interesting toggling of it being obviously a sensitive story to report, but also there being people, especially in China, who really wanted to show how they have mounted this competition to the U.S. so quickly.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: Up next, why American audiences should care about China's influence in Hollywood.
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SANDERS: As someone who watches a lot of movies, often for work, I have been obsessed with this story for years now. You know this. We talk about this.
SCHWARTZEL: Yeah, you're one of the few friends I can talk to about some of these crappy movies.
SANDERS: (Laughter) Yeah. But I was thinking, getting ready for this interview, how mad am I supposed to be as an American about this? You know, I mean, on the one hand, this emerging power is stealthily taking over one of our biggest and most important industries. But on the other hand, I see these movies. I liked "Shang-Chi." I thought it was good.
And I think that, like, the problems that I have had with the film industry - historically, they don't concern China. I've been concerned with representation of people from America from marginalized backgrounds since before China got involved with Hollywood, you know? I've been concerned about how there seems to be so many comic book movies and nothing else. And it's like, that was kind of happening before China, too. As a consumer of film, how worried should I be about this? And how bad is it, really?
SCHWARTZEL: I'll tackle that in two ways.
SANDERS: OK.
SCHWARTZEL: So I think the first is if you're angry that all you're seeing are superhero movies at the box office, I don't think China is going to help you there...
SANDERS: OK (laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: ...Because one of the reasons those movies are being made with such frequency is because those are the big, global...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Films that can be shown in every country around the world and actually which have shown to be particularly popular in China. So that kind of economic reality has been fueled in part by...
SANDERS: OK.
SCHWARTZEL: ...China's taste for those kinds of movies.
SANDERS: Got you.
SCHWARTZEL: I thought a lot about your question, though, because if you go back through history, there are certainly times when Hollywood has become what they called an adjunct of the State Department. And Hollywood studios have made a concerted effort to help the U.S. government, whether it was during World War II with trying to sort of foster patriotism here and abroad or during the Cold War when every bad guy was a Soviet. There's always been this kind of assumption that I think has waned in recent years that Hollywood will do America's bidding when called upon. I mean, I even think about movies like "American Sniper" - right? - that are clearly revising history in ways that make America...
SANDERS: The hero, yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...Look more victorious than reality would bear out. But what I would ask is, you know, if we can all agree that the movies ship culture around the world and also ship values around the world, I think it's worth examining what values American movies ship around the world versus what values Chinese movies ship around the world, whether it's free expression, which is clearly not a priority in China, or certain kinds of representation on screen when it comes to gay characters or even characters who don't have sort of, like, a perfect moral compass. There are kind of values that are being downloaded through these films being shipped around the world. So when one country with a different ideological framework is making them, there are going to be different values in their films as well.
SANDERS: Yeah, yeah. So at the end of last year, The Hollywood Reporter declared that 2021 was the year that the U.S.-China film relationship, quote-unquote, "unraveled." And there have been a few articles in the last few months that speculate that China is maybe starting to be done with the American box office, and they're over us. And there's this idea in some of the coverage that over the last two decades or so, China learned a lot about how to make a film industry from America. And now that they know how to, and now that the American box office continues to decline, they don't really need us anymore. Are there any signs that China might one day tamp down its aspirations in our film industry? And is that happening right now?
SCHWARTZEL: It is happening. And I think...
SANDERS: Wow.
SCHWARTZEL: ...It's been part of a plan since the earliest days. The term that's often used is technology transfer. And it's this concept that in China, if you are a company like Boeing, you can go over to China and get these lucrative deals. But in exchange for market access or financing, you will help them learn how to build airplanes or build semiconductors, that you will transfer your technology as part of the deal so that China can do it themselves. And this did happen with the film industry, which is kind of a fascinating concept to begin with because making a movie is not like building an airplane engine.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: There's something else at work there besides just blueprints. But nonetheless, we started to see a number of Hollywood directors, producers, stunt coordinators, sound designers go to China and essentially freelance and show largely Chinese crews how to make movies in the Hollywood style. And as Chinese movies got better, which they - I mean, over the past five or six years, they've gotten markedly better and more diverse. They're no longer just a bunch of big propaganda war epics. They have, you know, family comedies and family dramas and science fiction and all sorts of genres. You started to see Chinese audiences do what you would expect them to, which is prefer to see Chinese movies.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: And so you started to see this shift where the share of movies at the box office started to grow in the Chinese bucket. So, like, Chinese movies started doing a lot better. And by virtue of learning how to do it from their Hollywood counterparts - you're absolutely right - they eventually said, you know, we don't really need Hollywood as much as we used to. And...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SCHWARTZEL: ...So the studios now have these business plans that have a big, fat zero where they thought they'd have hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese grosses.
SANDERS: Wow. To quote DJ Khaled - congratulations; you played yourself, Hollywood (laughter).
SCHWARTZEL: Oh, that's perfect. Actually, yeah, that's - damn, I wish I could update my book. That's (laughter) - he sums it up beautifully.
SANDERS: (Laughter) Yeah. So, I mean, now that China has the know-how and wants to make their own film industry shine globally, have they done it yet? I mean, as good as they've gotten, have they made a "Fast & Furious" franchise yet? Have they made something that can really compete globally with the biggest American film franchises?
SCHWARTZEL: No. And this is the Achilles heel. And we've had, over the past two years, a really kind of cruelly timed comparison here with the films and TV shows coming out of Korea, with "Squid Game" and K-pop and "Parasite," just winning Oscars, dominating Netflix, dominating the pop charts. I mean, Korea is managing to do what I think China's ultimate aspiration is.
SANDERS: Oh.
SCHWARTZEL: There's - there are a couple issues, though. One is that China would never allow a show like "Squid Game" to be made and then exported around the world. It's just - it's far too violent. There's far too much class commentary in something like that for China's authorities to approve a script like that. But what I was fascinated by was not necessarily Chinese culture catching on in America but Chinese culture catching on elsewhere in the world.
So in January of 2020, I think, like - officially, like, seven weeks before the world shut down, I went to Kenya, where - if you go to all sorts of parts of Africa, you'll see tons of Chinese investment in the form of bridges and ports and train stations, but there's also been this massive influx of Chinese culture to the point where if you walk into apartments far outside Nairobi in rural Kenyan villages, it's not uncommon to see people watching Chinese soap operas to pass the afternoon.
SANDERS: Wow. Wow. That's fascinating. I've got one more question for you, then I got to let you go. But as China continues to be an issue in America, as politicians of both parties talk about it and, in some ways, make the entire country a bogeyman, what is the biggest misconception in the American public about this country's ties to China and relationship to China, be it Hollywood or something else?
SCHWARTZEL: I mean, I think it's like any - the story of any other. I took several trips to China, and I loved every single one. And I do worry about the tone that this conversation can take sometimes, especially when you travel to China, and there is just such a humanizing force there on the ground and such a hospitality and a real moment of national pride to take in alongside all the rhetoric and the rancor.
And in some ways, Chinese authorities are doing themselves a disservice by so aggressively policing how their movie is portrayed in film because it has really hamstrung American filmmakers from exploring China in all its complexity. And allowing it to be humanized, allowing it to be - to have stories that are complicated, you know, that are thorny, that are a little messy, I mean, that is where empathy and relatability can be grown through cinema - right? - not necessarily by seeing a country where everything seems so polished and everyone there always does the exact right thing. I was very cautious while writing this book about reminding readers to separate the state from the people, especially in a case where President Xi and the Communist Party have become more powerful and more encroaching than ever.
SANDERS: Yeah.
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SANDERS: Erich Schwartzel, thank you for this coverage. Thank you for your book. And I look forward to having you back on to talk about more of this very soon.
SCHWARTZEL: Any time. Thanks, Sam.
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SANDERS: Thanks again to my friend Erich Schwartzel. His new book is called "Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, And The Global Battle For Cultural Supremacy." It's out right now. You can catch more of Erich's reporting on the film industry in The Wall Street Journal.
This episode was produced by Anjuli Sastry Krbechek and edited by Jordana Hochman. Listeners, we are back in your feeds on Friday. Until then, be good to yourselves. Thanks for listening. I'm Sam Sanders. We'll talk soon.
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