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In 1997 or so, we lunched with Leslie and Ang Lee in New York. Ang said he was hoping to get to his long-delayed martial arts project, and Leslie practically auditioned for the part. Which part? I didn't know at the time. But in 2001, Leslie told Stephen Short: "If Ang Lee had asked me to play the part Cheng Chan plays, the film would have been a different story again." He meant: better.
In April 2000 we saw him at the ultra-swank China Club, where one woman came to our table and asked Leslie to autograph a CD of his. (How did she know he would be there? Or did she always tote the disc, hoping she would spot her favorite Canto-popinjay?) That afternoon, Leslie was so glamorous he was glowing. He said he talked with Zhang Yimou, and hoped to star in a film about China's first emperor. The Hero role most suitable for Leslie went to Tony Leung, his co-star in three Wong Kar-wai films. A wary soul could start to see these occasional blips of rejections as a trend.
Christmas 2000: Vegas! Two Caucasians and a South China sea of Asians had the casinos to themselves. At the MGM Grand, Jackie Chan headed an all-star revue that filled a 13,500-seat arena with tickets at $75 and $150. Over at Caesars Palace, Leslie had stopped with his Passion tour. Through an idiocy of scheduling, the two concerts went on at the same time. So, two nights earlier, I'd flown to Toronto to see Leslie's show. For his evening of Passion he donned eight Jean-Paul Gaultier outfits, in ascending order of outrageousness, from a white tux with angel wings to a naughty skirt (and long black wig). At his Toronto concert a voice cried out, "I love you, Leslie!"; he said, "I love you too, whether you're a boy or a girl." The line happens to be one he delivered in the hit 1994 comedy He's a Woman, She's a Man, but it winks at the man's pansexual appeal.
While I was enjoying Jackie's Vegas extravaganza, Mary was being serenaded by Leslie. Directly. Again he performed most of the concert in Cantonese. This time he offered "a special song for Mary." It was White Christmas, in English.
The next day Leslie met us on the Caesars ground floor to take us up to his suite. As usual he poured on the charm: doting, droll, sweet as a cinnamon roll. But when he realized he was being pursued down a remote corridor of the hotel by one of his myriad Japanese groupies (Leslie was elected Best Actor 10 years in a row by Japan's 17,000-member Cinecity fan club), he spun around and shouted, in English, "Go away! Get the hell out of here!" The young woman receded; I like to think it was exactly what she wanted. Anyone can get a star's autograph. But to receive a flash of his rageprivate Leslie ad-libbing the movie Leslieis a compliment masquerading as an insult.
There you have it: our five brushes with the master of painted faces. I pause in sadness to know there won't be a sixth.
DIVA
Even in 2001, Leslie was guarded about his future. "I was asked to do a Japanese TV series with Norita Fujiwara, but at my age I don't want to go back and do TV dramas. I don't care how big the Japanese market is. I might get more money through endorsements, but what's the point? It would downgrade me. I want to play things by my heart." He paused and smiled: "I like that line. 'I have to play things by my heart.'"
And what did this survivor of the 70s, 80s and 90s think about his standing in third-millennium Hong Kong? "I've worked bloody hard for 20 years," he said passionately. "I was penniless, dying hard for my groceries. I can now live in a reasonably sized detached house. I'm still very strong in Japan and Korea. But I may be a little pass in Hong Kong. The place is so extravagant, vulgar, expensive. People have forgotten what integrity is. Money comes first. I may be too soft for Hong Kong. I don't always count myself as one of them."
Spoken like a true diva: above, aloof, alone, yet avid for attention. He was at home on stage, because he knew he was so good at commandeering audiences, and because their innocent ecstasy turned him on. But while watching Leslie perform, I thought I saw him watching himself, as much the critic as the creatora luscious showbiz courtesan, bringing the crowd to climax as he calculates both what he gives and what the box office takes.
Not that Leslie performed by rote. His instincts to entertain, goad and seduce were as genuine as he trusted the audience's response would be. He had an almost naked love for being loved. What I should have realized is that that love could be a gnawing need, and with that need might come the hint, the suspicion, the certitude that the fire of the fans' adoration would one day cool. His CDs wouldn't go to No. 1. His movies would earn less money; the directors he wanted to work with would get someone else. (And why did it so often have to be Tony Leung?) The accountant inside him could see diminishing returns around the cornerperhaps, as Grady Hendrix suggests, in the mirror. The last thing Leslie wanted was to become an oldies act.
A glittering raiment of ego had cloaked and cushioned Leslie for nearly 30 years in the limelight. Still beautiful, still looking a decade younger than his years, at the end he had all the perfections but one: a belief he was not as perfect a Leslie as he had been. Or that he was not seen to be as beautiful, as necessary, which for a magician is the same sad thing. What to do? Leslie's choices of films, songs, plumage, concert strategies had been brazen and true. Could his choice of a solution to his despair be just as daring?
I have no informed idea what circumstances led Leslie to take his life. But I imagine he felt an artist's grim pleasure as he determined the form of his suicide. It would be audacious, yet in a grand tradition. Chinese actressesfrom the first superstar, Ruan Lingyu, in 1935, through the 60s luminaries Lin Dai, Betty Loh Tih, Kitty Ting Hao and Margaret Du Juan, to the troubled Pauline Chan last Julyhad chosen early death (usually by sleeping pills) as a final starring role. These womenall womenended their careers with a crimson exclamation point. Leslie Cheung, the cinema's greatest man-woman, would trump their startling exits. Instead of riding out the inevitable decline, he made the most sumptuous gesture possible: a swan dive from a swan diva, from the balcony of his enduring eminence to the sidewalk of his misery.
I wish him a better tomorrow. I'm no scholar of Buddhism, but couldn't a body, just this once, come back as himself? Leslie could see, then, how much he was loved, respected, treasured and missed.