Stelios attributes this to the intransigence of the major film distributors, which, appalled at the idea of punters seeing first-run pictures for as little as 20p, are refusing to do business with him. I have another explanation.
Eating rubbish, overpriced food in the dark is a time-honoured element of the cinema-going experience. There’s a cinema in Milton Keynes where you are positively encouraged to bring your own nibbles. No popcorn deliquesces under Perspex, no frankfurters perform a lardy log-roll over the grill, and no jelly snakes are sucked and then put back in the pick’n'mix. It is owned by Stelios Haji-Ioannou – the entrepreneur with a thing about the colour orange – and it operates on the economic model that is now synonymous with his name: ticket prices vary with demand, and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I was so deeply involved in that story and those characters that I dreamed I saw him walking into my bedroom saying, ‘farewell, my job is done’.” A wistful smile passes over his face.

“I told him the story not so long ago, and he said to me: ‘We are all controlled by our destinies.’” Or by our pasts, perhaps.’Together with You’ is released today. “I was having dinner with some friends when I heard of his death,” recalls Chen “But I wasn’t shocked. I knew that he was looking for something that doesn’t exist in this world He was too sensitive He wanted everything to be perfect. His body was completely destroyed in the fall, but the face was still good. He deserves to act in heaven.”A memory of Cheung occurs to Chen: “I remember a dream that I had after I’d wrapped the production of Farewell My Concubine. Mutual friends told him Cheung was lying low after a professional disappointment “He wanted to direct a movie, and failed.

That was a serious blow.”On April Fool’s Day 2003, Cheung arranged to have tea with his friend and former agent, Chan Suk-fan, at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong When the actor failed to show, she rang him on his mobile. He picked up the call on the terrace of the hotel’s 24th-floor gym, told her that he’d meet her outside, and kept his word by throwing himself over the railings. Earlier this year, Chen recalls, he was in Hong Kong to see Leslie Cheung, the lucent star of Farewell My Concubine, and was puzzled to find that his calls were not being returned. What can I do?” Heather Graham, he confesses, was the producer’s choice.”The lesson I’ve learned from this experience,” he says, “is that you must make sure that the story is yours and that you can see the film as if it was your own child who grew up in front of you.” It seems he agrees it was a bastard of a picture.Darker forces than Hollywood producers have denied him the cast he wanted for his next picture – a martial arts epic he hopes will achieve the same success as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I didn’t really have a big control over how the film was made I had a very short time to finish everything Some of the actors were pre-cast before I got involved.