I think some of you may have heard the story already. Edison Chen, a hugely popular singer and actor in Hong Kong, brought his broken Macbook to a repair shop. Someone there recovered his hard drive, where they found shmegabytes of naughty, full-frontal and exposed-genital jpegs and mpegs, all ready for wide distribution over the Internet.
Unfortunately, these pics and vids weren’t just of Mr. Chen and a few women he picked up at the bar. They were of actresses and singers, some of whom were either engaged to be married or already married with kids. One apparently was Maggie Q, whose career had been blossoming recently in several action flicks.
Yes, to many of you, this is old news. But I happened to have drinks with Chin Han last night and asked him if he knew anything about it all.
He said he doesn’t personally know Edison nor any of the actresses involved, but that Maggie Q is represented by the same manager as he is. Apparently, the mess will get messier before it gets cleaned up.
As for the images released on the net, it’s nearly impossible to erase the damage. In fact, there was an interesting piece on NPR this morning about Repairing a Bad Online Reputation, and that it’s very difficult to do.
For starters, try googling “Edison Chen scandal” and you’ll see why. The first 300 hits are stories relating to the pictures or the actual pictures.
The NPR piece says that you’d have to spend a lot of time on the net putting out information of the positive and non-sexual sort to counteract what is out there right now. In fact, I just added to that whole mess with my blog entry. Now, Edison will have to add one more piece of info to counteract this entry.
Chin Han says he was surprised that Edison had taken a bit part in Dark Knight, since he is much more famous than Chin Han is. I won’t say what he said about Edison’s role since it’s a potential spoiler, but if you watch the movie just to see Edison, it’s possible you may blink your eyes and not catch him at all.
Chin Han says he’s been playing it relatively safe lately, especially in light of what happened to Heath Ledger. Both actors shot their last scenes on Dark Knight on the same day in London last October.
I remembered something we had discussed last June, just before he left for London. He was complaining about the jet lag and having trouble sleeping. I actually gave him a single sample of sleeping pills and told him that if he liked it, he should have someone on the set prescribe him some.
I actually don’t know if movie sets provide on-location doctors who can prescribe medications. I do know that nearly all tour managers for musicians provide one of these, however, and so I assumed it would be the same for him on the movie. This was probably how Mr. Ledger got his six or so prescriptions written for him, without much care for how he cocktailed them.
To my relief, however, Chin Han enjoys little more than an occasional Pinot Noir, mostly for the health benefits actually. Not trying to paint him as a goody two shoes or anything. But I think it’s safe to say that if you google “Chin Han scandal,” you’ll probably only produce this blog entry.
As for the real scandal, don't expect Mr. Chen to profit ala Paris Hilton style from the video/pic releases, no matter how impressive his schlong may appear to some of you. Apparently, the triads control much of the entertainment industry, and they're none too happy about the potential loss of income of some of their talents.
Reportedly, there is already an offer on the table for one of the hands of Edison Chen. How much, you ask? Half a million Hong Kong bucks. That's about $65K over here.
No comments:
Post a Comment