John Woo is well known to American audiences for his action films. He has recently returned to China to make Red Cliff, a story based on The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is widely known in Asia, but less well known in the West. He recently met with members of the press in a round-table interview to talk about his film.

Since many of his films involve guns, he was asked about making this film with the ancient weapons involved in the story.

We used a lot of weapons, but they all came from history. We've done a lot of research, studying history, and then we designed all the weapons from the history.

This was a movie I always wanted to make. I wanted to make this movie for over twenty years. It has a very special meaning to me. I grew up with the story. There are so many heroes that I admire, and all those heroes gave me a lot of influence. Like in the film there was a young general [Zhao Yun]. He had a very famous scene, saving a baby in the middle of a battle. It was from the history. He had become an icon and I used it for Yun-Fat in Hard Boiled. In Hard Boiled he was saving a baby in the middle of gunfire.

He was asked about what age he found this story of the Three Kingdoms and which characters he was interested in.

I grew up with the story. I started to learn this part of history by reading a comic book when I was eleven or twelve years old. Also I've seen quite a few movies about the stories. I particularly like the Battle of Red Cliff—the spirit. The Battle of Red Cliff was a very famous battle in Chinese history. I think most Asians have known about it. It's about how a smaller army can defeat a larger and more powerful enemy. Sort of a combination of teamwork, innovation, intelligence and courage. That really attracts me. And I greatly admire Kungming [Zhuge Liang], one of the major characters in the film. He's the most smart guy in history. He had a lot of strategy and war tactics, and people learn so much from him. Even nowadays some businessmen in Japan and Korea and China are using his tactics for doing business.

Another thing was about the battle sequence with the burning ships. That's very famous in Chinese history. Chinese people all know about it. The idea was the hero sends ten little boats on fire and rams them into the enemy's navy of 2000 battleships. Because of the direction of the wind the ten little boats set the entire enemy navy on fire. It's a brilliant strategy relying on understanding nature. It became a very challenging project: never been done before in Chinese movie history.

He was asked about the experience of going back to China to make the film as opposed to making it here.

I think it's hard to make this kind of movie in Hollywood... especially for a Chinese historical film to be made here. The only way was to do it is in China. In China, everything is so easy—so simple. They love movies and want to do a good business. So I just walk into the office and let them know I want to make a movie about Red Cliff, and they said, "Okay. Let's do it." It's that simple. I didn't need a complete script. And I don't need to take advice from anyone; I don't need to take notes from anyone; I don't need to take any meetings. I just close my door and do my own work. It was great.

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