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Thanks so much for your efforts in setting me straight Danny. Keep in mind I’m not a follower of the canto pop music, so the information I have on the relative stardom of these singers is limited to the supplements on DVDs and the bio info I could find on the net(if it happened to be in English). So to summarize, please check me on this, of the eight actors I listed all have recorded records, some concentrate on their singing stardom more so than others. Would this breakdown of music concentration look something like this?:
Heavy Concentration: Sammi Cheng, Anita Mui, Andy Lau, Leslie Cheung
Medium Concentration: Jackie Chan, Stephen Chow
Low Concentration: Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung
Looks like to summarize the reasons HK does crossovers:
1. Low Cantonese Population(7 mil). Entertainers all fighting for the same audience, so they diversify to maximize income.
2. Some of the major media companies have stakes in both film/TV and music and encourage their stars to crossover to maximize $$.
3. HK population likes to see their stars keeping busy(ie always finding their way to their audience, be in it TV/film/music/advertising)
As far as how the above 3 reasons relate in the US to the ability to crossover:
1. Films require a much loner time commitment in the US than HK, so Singers might not want to block out that much time for an acting gig, and actors wont have much time to cut an album.
2. By now, I’m pretty sure the huge corporations that own the film industry also have stakes in the music industry, so you’d think it would create an environment conductive to crossovers. My previous comments on the US music industry and how it is apparently better for them to create stars from scratch rather than exploit someone’s stardom are possible reasons why crossovers aren’t encouraged by these studios as much here in the US.
3. I think the US is no different, we like to hear about our favorite stars morning day and night as well(Access Hollywood, The Inquirer, E!). The only difference is the whole stigma attached to changing your artistic medium here in the US. For example, a Film Actor doing commercials is very rare here in the States, mainly because commercials are considered the bottom of the acting totem pole in terms of prestige(Commercials
On that note, I just NetFlixed Magic Kitchen(Media Asia), and the DVD opens with a Pepsi Commercial with Sammi Cheng. I’ll take Sammi hocking me Pepsi over Shaq and Britney any day.
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