Taiwan is bracing for Super Typhoon Sinlaku tonight. A typhoon in autumn always seems ominous: the path is less predictable; the moving speed is slower--and the slower it moves the more rain we will see.Fortunately, when I left the office this evening, the rain was not yet pouring. It was intermittent, a typical pattern for a looming typhoon. I even managed to reach the bus stop without using my umbrella.
Making a detour in the eve of an autumn typhoon was probably not a good idea. It would be much safer if I could beat the typhoon to my home. But I had put this detour for so long that I felt the need to make it happen tonight.
I could have chosen Cape No. 7 over Lemon Tree during the 2008 Taipei Film Festival and saved myself the trouble of making this detour. I did not because, perhaps like most people in Taiwan, I had little expectation from Taiwan's film industry.
Then where did the urge come from? I realized that I was simply attracted into the eye of another super typhoon.
In the early October last year, Super Typhoon Krosa made landfall in northern Taiwan, while Cape No. 7's production team led by director Te-Shen Wei started shooting on location in southern Taiwan. The shooting was therefore suspended for one day. Director Wei said he was nervous about the situation: They had just started shooting the ending scene that involved a live concert on a beach. The expensive stage was constructed and about one thousand extras were summoned. It was not the scale of the scene that made the director nervous, however; it was the uncontrollable weather.
The super typhoon was not the only thing that made the director nervous. The huge NT$30,000,000 personal debt that the director determined to take was surely a prominent one. Although Cape No. 7 was a success during the 2008 Taipei Film Festival, winning Best Music, Best Cinematography and Grand Prize, the buzz somehow cooled down on the first day of its commercial release. The performance of its box office in the first two weekends was a lackluster. Looking at the box office numbers, was Director Wei ever worried about how to repay his debt?
It turned out that Cape No. 7 was just forming into a super typhoon itself. In the third week, the locally produced film captured the number one spot in the box office.
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