Actor, tech pro and returning DBer Philippe Joly has a ton on his plate. Just the way he likes it. Elizabeth Kerr reports
Multi-hyphenate Philippe Joly is sitting outside at an Admiralty bistro, not far from the home he just gave up for Discovery Bay – again. We last spoke to Philippe for Life on Lantau in Before Times, otherwise known as 2019, and even though the Russian-French actor-stunt performer-directortech entrepreneur-writer-festival director didn’t get out of town much during the pandemic, he says he’s never been as busy as he was in COVID.
Philippe has plenty to tell. He speaks enthusiastically about the intervening years, his new flat, projects on the go and guerrilla filmmaking. He and his girlfriend have been back in DB for about four months, a decision born of a combination of economics and luck. “It’s been eight years since I lived in DB full time. A ton has changed,” he says. “We were looking at six months down the road but then we saw this place with a huge terrace. I wanted outdoor space with room for a pool table. I took the ferry at 10am, visited at 12pm and signed a lease at 4pm.” So far, the three of them – there’s a rabbit – are happy with the new digs. “The rabbit has a palace. It lives in every room.” And yes, there is a pool table on the terrace.
Peak Performance
Time has been good to Philippe, who barely looks like five years have passed. He’s still got a salt-andpepper beard that serves him well for his work as Hong Kong’s premier movie bad guy who always dies – an SAR Sean Bean as it were.
“They need a bad guy in every movie, he’s often nonChinese, and he almost always dies,” Philippe says gleefully, about his path to cornering the market on movie villains – often Russian or Italian mafia types. His first role in Lawrence Gray’s Lust and Found, quickly led to From Vegas to Macau with Chow Yun-fat, and Pound of Flesh with childhood idol Jean-Claude Van Damme. Over the years, he’s worked with the likes of Jackie Chan, John Cusack and Adrien Brody; Andy Lau, Tony Leung ka-fai, Lau ching-wan and Louis Koo.
Philippe’s sanguine about the downtime that came with COVID but argues that at the same time a lot of other things were possible. He couldn’t hop a plane to China for feature film roles, but there was nothing stopping him from creating his own. Which he did with friends every weekend. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t have been making short films every single week. It was like practice. Go three years without doing something and you ‘forget’ how,” he recalls. “They were various levels of quality but a couple were really good. And it was fun.”
Philippe’s on-screen whirlwind continued after lockdown. He and a skeleton crew shot a rash of shorts (find him on YouTube), like Family Business, a six-minute gangster comedy about the notorious toilet paper crisis of 2020. Then there was an indie starring Byron Mann (The Modelizer), a segment in The Goldfinger as a leader of the KGB, and a role in TVB’s Flying Tiger as Russian villain Ivan. “I beat up Michael Wong and then gave a very hard time to the leads Bosco Wong and Oscar Leung,” he says with a smile.
Philippe faced Andy On in Abduction, played a part in Herman Yau’s The White Storm 2: Drug Lords, and appeared in Battle of Defense 2, starring Robert Knepper. Meanwhile, City Intruder heads to mainland screens this year, and though 2021’s Ultimate Code got eaten by four huge blockbusters, he’ll get another chance when the same crew reunites for a sequel. Philippe’s most famous roles, though remain unseen: Juno Mak’s now mythic Sons of the Neon Night is in production limbo, and the Chinese sci-fi behemoth Variant vanished into thin air.
“The Friday of the release comes, Variant is supposed to be out and I don’t even see it on the box office list,” Philippe says, throwing up his hands. Variant’s release was cancelled abruptly due to COVID and Philippe hopes it will be out this summer. “It’s a riff on the greatest sci-fi ever. I cut off someone’s head with a light sabre and get eaten by a monster! It’s my most original death so far,” he declares with a chuckle. “And I hope Sons comes out eventually. All my scenes are with Lau Ching-wan and Tony Leung Ka-fai. It’s the biggest role I’ve ever had in terms of who I’m working with and it’s frustrating no one has seen it.”
Matters In Hand
Philippe may be resigned to things beyond his control, but he’s not one to sit idle. His considerable energy is going into honing his filmmaking skills and entering events like the Nikon Film Festival (in France) and working on a feature-length documentary about submarine tourism and wine (coming soon). That took him to Curaçao, and on the way home he stopped to see his daughters in Los Angeles. He’d never been to the US. Philippe also decided to rework The Art of Dying for a Living, his pseudo-memoir backburnered in 2019. He took out 100 pages and is confident he’s got a winner.
“Originally The Art of Dying focused on working as an action and stunt performer, and on safety, but then I thought why not just write a guide to acting as a foreigner in this region,” he asks, shaking his head like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s very different from Hollywood or Europe, and there’s lots I can talk about. I hope to have it out by summer.” That’s assuming he can find the time for a final polish while he organises the Aotearoa International Film Festival (in Hong Kong, aotearoaiff.com), a rollicking community event aimed at celebrating New Zealand and Hong Kong cinema. “There’s about 3,000 Kiwis in Hong Kong, and I think plenty of Hongkongers will like it too. Both cultures are heavily influenced by the movies. I hope we’ll get a haka onstage. Go big or go home, right?”
Entrepreneurial Spirit
The final iron in the fire is the app and NFC-powered BLK Cards (www.blkcards.com). “You come up with solutions for problems that you have, and a business comes from it,” Philippe explains of the genesis of the all-in-one name card that brings together your most frequently referenced digital information on a single platform. It’s ideal for anyone with multiple jobs, job titles and businesses – like Philippe. “Traditional business cards still have a place in Asia, but I need more than one. With this I’ve reduced costs and it’s more sustainable. I print less.”
BLK Cards is a personalised, contactless tool that brings together multiple functions in one app allowing users to share their information as they see fit. Philippe’s biggest market is the US right now, but given the brand-new, wearable option, it’s likely to gain more traction everywhere. As if on cue, the cash register “ka-ching” notification sounds on Philippe’s phone. “There’s definitely a travel opportunity to this,” he says. “When you’re travelling, you don’t take business cards with you. When you’re surfing or by the pool, you don’t want a bunch of stuff. This is waterproof, so you don’t have to worry about it. Everything you need is with you.”
Given he’s been letting his entrepreneurial flag fly for the last 20-odd years, and that acting, which started as a hobby, has become another arm of his career, what does Philippe call himself? An actor? A filmmaker? A tech pro?
“Both. All. I’m like Batman,” he finishes. “You can’t have just one basket, because if something happens, you don’t eat for three years. And I’d rather just do it, whatever it is, than not. The worst that happens is you try and it doesn’t work out. I like being busy. I don’t like being bored.” You don’t say?