Natural Born Fantasist

Some people are naturally full of fantasies and Johnson is among the extremes of these people. What he thinks of is a story that consists of vivid images and even before he has filmed it, there is a complete film inside his head. Johnson emigrated to Canada at an early age, his father was a businessman, his mother a teacher. As his parents gave him quite a strict upbringing, so every day after school, he had to stay at home and his companion was his parent's approved toy - Lego. He often spent days building up his models to while away the days and it was these building blocks that developed his unbounded creativity and his abundance of fantasies.

"When I was young, I liked to watch Japanese robot cartoons and naturally wanted to have the models, but my father and mother said this was no good for me and I was only allowed to play with lego, because it is more stimulating and educational. But I really wanted a robot toy, why am I forced to play with lego? So I took the boxes of lego that my parents bought me and mixed them all up to build my very own robots. I remember I built them like the ones on the series 'God Mars', where you could pull it apart into six different robots or build them together into one big robot." Johnson relishes his memories.

Dolls as Actors

Since them, every toy that Johnson came across became an accessory to his creativity. For example when the G.I.Joe doll became popular in Canada, he would buy them one by one, not because he wanted to collect them, but to use them to start 'filmng'. Some were villains, others were heroes and then he would write and direct his own stories as he arranged for his toys to have a battle between good and evil as well as some emotional relationship stories and 'Infernal Affairs'-style twists as a movie was completed in his mind.

Although it sounds like a story of a boy who was neglected and lacked family love, but it was this training that left him with a deep grounding for his creative talent.

Still don't think he is imaginative enough? Later, he even went so far as to start rearranging the characters from Jin Yong's novels. He explains: "At the time, I was already very serious and after reading the novel 'Return of the Condor Heroes' with it's ancient settings, I was already formulating a science fiction version of it. Then I drew them all into comic strip form, giving them scripts and speech. I remember in the original story, Kwok Sheung chopped off Yeung Guo's arm with a sword, but in my version, she had a laser cannon that blasted Yeung Guo's arm apart."

Impersonating Leslie Cheung

Life in Canada was very boring and apart from 'filming' at home, then Johnson would go out with his family for meals. Luckily at that time, there was the invention of Karaoke and all the restaurants had invested in this amazing machine for customers to fulfil their popstar dreams on the stage. "The restaurant was like a retro music hall and if you wanted to go and sing on stage, you had to write on a piece of paper and queue. At the time, my voice was breaking, so with a voice that was neither deep nor high, it was ideal for singing Leslie Cheung's songs. His songs were very magnetic and Leslie's stage presence was very charming, so I learned this as well for added appeal."

Maybe many people are like Johnson, developing their passion to perform from the karaoke stage. When he was fourteen, Johnson returned to Hong Kong for his summer vacation and at the time, an auntie knew he loved to karaoke, so she suggested he took part in a singing contest at Yuen Long's Fairview Park. Singing Leslie's "Love Cross" and dancing on the stage in the same way as Leslie, he won applause and screams from the crowd and from that day on, he was hooked to the buzz from performing on the stage.

Several years later, he went to university in Canada to study Fine Arts, where he had to take courses in woodwork, sculpture, drawing and animation. Why did he choose to study Fine Arts? Maybe it was related to his creative urges, but for Johnson, who always likes to challenge tradition, his final project was not presented in the form of the usual woodwork, sculpture, artwork or computer animation, but in the form of a silly short film that got him a top mark.

Failed First Creation

Having behind him creativity, fantasy, performance ability and filming experience, Johnson returned to Hong Kong in 1998 with the aim of joining the production team of a film crew."If you want to get into the industry successfully, you have to be able to show your worth, so I entered a competition at the Arts Centre and took it very seriously, using a five figure sum to employ actors and a production crew, while I became the leading actor, director and scriptwriter. Unfortunately, my film was a commercial romance and the competition was judged by a group of artisans, who looked it from a different angle, so of course I was quickly ousted."

After this failure, Johnson felt a little hard done by, so when he saw that Stephen Chow was holding a training class for his new film "King of Comedy", he entered it straight away. His aim was not to become an actor, but to find someone who would help him get his justice. He says: "I felt that the film was very good and there was no reason why I would lose, so I would carry the film around with me and show Lee Lik Chi and Sandra Ng."

However, after they saw the film, they were still unmoved. Conversely when Johnson attended the audition, he left a different impression on Sandra: "At the talent show, there were 300 people there, but 90% of them would do impressions of Stephen Chow. At the time, I thought: 'If you do Stephen, you'd definitely lose out, how can you be funnier than him? These people have no personality, I am so bored!'. Later when it was my turn, Sandra asked me what I was doing and I just said: 'Human Model' off the top of my head. Then I followed the music and did a random silly dance. Truthfully, I did not know what I was doing, but my movements were lewd and comedic and the whole panel were rolling on the floor laughing. Sandra then said to me: "That's fine, you're in!"