{"id":708702,"date":"2026-07-24T11:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708702\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T11:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:21:11","slug":"film-director-mike-christie-on-wham-10-days-in-china-superdeluxeedition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708702\/","title":{"rendered":"Film director Mike Christie on Wham! 10 Days in China \u2013 SuperDeluxeEdition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wham!\u2019s<\/a> April 1985 trip to China is one of the more interesting episodes in the band\u2019s relatively short lifespan. On the face of it, this was a cultural exchange: an East meets West excursion in search of understanding and common ground, but the reality was a little less romantic. The visit was conceived by Wham\u2019s co-manager Simon Napier Bell as one gigantic publicity stunt designed to generate headlines and front-pages around the world \u2013\u00a0a short-cut to Wham! \u2018Making It Big\u2019, particularly in America. And it worked.<\/p>\n

For reasons still unclear to this day, the services of Oscar-winning filmmaker Lindsey Anderson were secured to make a documentary film of the trip. Anderson is best known for his counter-culture classic If\u2026. (1968), part one of an acclaimed \u2018Mick Travis Trilogy\u2019 (1973\u2019s O Lucky Man!, and Britannia Hospital from 1982 being the other two films). Producer Martin Lewis appears to have been a fan and Anderson\u2019s documentary work from the 1950s (he won his Oscar for Thursday\u2019s Children, a film concerning the education of\u00a0deaf\u00a0children) would likely have been a factor in the decision.<\/p>\n

This commission was beset with issues. As became apparent, Anderson had no real interest in Wham! and George Michael<\/a> and Andrew Ridgeley disliked him. That he hurt his foot early in the trip didn\u2019t help; for a while the director had to be pushed around in a wheelchair (he later managed to walk with a cane) and in posthumously published diary entries Anderson admitted he simply took the job for the money.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Lindsay did pull together an almost finished documentary, which he called \u2018If You Were There\u2019. It ran for one hour and 18 minutes and I\u2019m lucky enough to have seen this cut. It covers most of the key aspects of the trip (arriving at the airport, checking in at the hotel, visiting the Great Wall Of China, lunch at the Ambassador\u2019s residence, out and about mixing with locals, the two gigs, etc.) but, as George and Andew perhaps should have expected, Anderson is very interested in China and there\u2019s a lot of it in his cut. He occasionally uses his film to make some socio-economic points (footage of Wham! performing \u2018Everything She Wants\u2019 is given the subtitle \u2018To Give You Money\u2019 and is intercut with shots of TVs and large ghetto blasters being available in shops in China) and British Wham! fans looking forward to watching their idols play in China probably didn\u2019t want to see shots of dogs hanging up waiting to be butchered and snakes being skinned alive.<\/p>\n

I actually liked Anderson\u2019s cut and with some small adjustments it could have been a compelling documentary, but the reality was that is not what Wham! were after. They wanted something approaching an extended promo video with \u2018China\u2019 as window dressing. Anderson was fired from the project during post-production and George and the band\u2019s management team, took control of the edit and, using the footage that had been shot, they fashioned exactly that: Wham! in China: Foreign Skies was a rather bland 60-minute cut where the viewer is left to work out what is happening (Anderson\u2019s cut at least has a structure and title cards) and removes anything is likely to paint Wham! in a negative light (for example, no George and Andrew in the back of a car joshing about how the only reason there are there was for \u201cthe publicity\u201d). Foreign Skies was previewed over a year later at Wham!\u2019s The Final show at Wembley Stadium, and issued on VHS, Betamax and Laserdisc in October 1986. After that, it was rarely spoken of and never reissued.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Cut to 2026, and over 40 years later, filmmaker Mike Christie (Hansa Studios: By the Wall 1976\u201390,\u00a0New Order: Decades\u00a0and\u00a0Suede: The Insatiable Ones) announces that he has made what will be officially the third version of the Wham! in China film. Wham! 10 Days in China takes a retrospective look at the trip using restored and never-before-seen archive footage, combined with interviews with those who experienced the tour firsthand, including Andrew Ridgeley, Pepsi and Shirley, some of the producers\/assistants, members of the press and most notably some Chinese fans for whom the experience left an indelible mark.<\/p>\n

Next week, Mike\u2019s film will hit cinemas and will be broadcast on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer in the UK in August. I recently spoke to Mike about his film \u2013 enjoy this long read:<\/p>\n

SDE: How did Wham! 10 Days in China come about? Was it something that you sought out?<\/p>\n

Mike Christie: It\u2019s one of those mythological kinds of projects; everybody knew that this trip had been filmed and that the rushes [raw, unedited visual and audio footage recorded during shooting] had been pretty much buried. It goes back to January 2023 for us: Fred, the development producer I was working with at that point, he mentioned it. It became slightly more relevant coming up to the 40th anniversary. I think after the 40th anniversary, you can\u2019t really be sure there\u2019ll be many people left to tell the story, so we got in touch to explore it. What made a difference was the fact that I had already made multiple documentaries in China [including The Art of China with Andrew Graham-Dixon 2014] and the notion of there being multiple perspectives, including the Chinese perspective. That caught Andrew [Ridgeley]\u2019s interest because, as you know from the previous two films, that hadn\u2019t been portrayed. So, we went through the process. Ultimately, the GM Estate and George\u2019s sister, Yioda, had to sign up for it. And everybody was aware of the different sensitivities of the history of the project.<\/p>\n

There was no real way of truly understanding the trip when they were there<\/p>\n

Mike Christie<\/p>\n

SDE: I\u2019m interested in those sensitivities, because arguably George and Andrew don\u2019t necessarily come across too positively in the film. They wander around slightly bemused, bewildered and on occasions frustrated. They openly admit that they\u2019re just there for publicity and Andrew even says it to someone [in a scene at the British Ambassador\u2019s residence] that \u201cwe\u2019re not really here for their [meaning the Chinese fans\u2019] reaction\u201d.<\/p>\n

MC: I think that\u2019s a line that\u2019s consistent all the way through, certainly through my film. What was intriguing was that from the moment he saw the first cut, I always wondered whether Andrew might censor himself. But he was like, \u201cno, that\u2019s the honest version\u201d. And he never cut anything. Which surprised me.<\/p>\n

SDE: I\u2019m wondering if one of the reasons Andrew was interested in coming back to Wham! in China was because of a sense of guilt around the fact that it was pure commercial opportunism and maybe they didn\u2019t think about the Chinese people and the Chinese aspect as much as they should have?<\/p>\n

MC: Andrew was open in our interviews about the fact that he really wasn\u2019t sure the trip was a good idea, but I don\u2019t know if it was guilt. I think there was definitely a curiosity. Andrew felt a really strong urge to revisit it, that was clear, and I think that\u2019s partly why the Chinese perspective worked within the mix for him. But I think it might have been that there was no real way of truly understanding the trip when they were there. And that\u2019s reflected in the first two films [If You Were There and Foreign Skies] which make no effort to understand it.<\/p>\n

SDE: They\u2019re both extremely young at the time. It\u2019s a bit like your parents making you go on a holiday somewhere that you\u2019re not interested in. There\u2019s that \u201cWhy are we here, exactly?\u201d vibe going on.<\/p>\n

MC: And they cope extraordinarily. I mean, Andrew\u2019s 22 years old, George is 21. I found it really staggering, when you\u2019re looking through these rushes, watching their relationship \u2013\u00a0it\u2019s very solid. Andrew has got a clear set of values, which I think he holds to this day. George has a very clear sense of himself, the band and his own values as well. It\u2019s kind of refreshing how honest they were in all that footage; they\u2019re not pretending and when they must put a \u2018PR smile\u2019 on, they\u2019re admitting to it.<\/p>\n

SDE: They are polite, friendly with the locals and patient when having to go through the rigmarole of meeting the dignitaries and all that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n

MC: And there is so much more of that. I\u2019ve lost track of the number of banquets that we had rushes for. It took us a while to settle on the title for this film but the fact that having been on tour, I\u2019m used to itineraries and I thought \u201cit feels like an itinerary\u201d. You can imagine what the actual itinerary was like: there was probably five things a day!<\/p>\n

SDE: With Foreign Skies, the original cut, did you have to go back and re-educate youIrself about what that film was? Obviously, it\u2019s not widely available, although it can be found on YouTube.<\/p>\n

MC: For a long time during the development period, we only had Foreign Skies. Fred, the development producer had done this pilgrimage to Sterling University [the only place it is possible to view Lindsey Anderson\u2019s original version] which is a long way \u2013 it was quite a rigmarole. But Andrew always had a copy of that, so eventually just before we started, he was able to share it. Obviously, I watched them, more than once but I made a point of very rarely revisiting them once we got into pre-production, because you don\u2019t want to be influenced. There was a lot about Lindsay\u2019s edit \u2013\u00a0I don\u2019t think it\u2019s cut, but the edit \u2013\u00a0that kind of appealed and there\u2019s some things that I just thought were weird. I mean, it\u2019s pretty obvious he was completely the wrong choice to make the film. And I think the big telling thing is the bit of interview we used of Lindsay at the end where he gets asked by one of the crew, something along the lines of \u201cwhat is it you\u2019re doing\u201d. And he kind of goes, \u201cOh, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve been asking myself that for a couple of weeks\u201d. He admitted he was only doing it for the money before he went and towards the very final days, he didn\u2019t really know why he was there. So, it was kind of doomed to fail. It was always a complete mismatch.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty obvious that Lindsay Anderson was completely the wrong choice to make the original film.<\/p>\n

Mike Christie<\/p>\n

Anyway, I watched them and for quite a long time, we weren\u2019t sure what was going to be in these film cans [the rushes]. So, we were tracking down high-quality versions of these two cuts, because we thought that we would have to use them \u2013 we\u2019d be cutting some of the scenes [from the previous finished films]. But it took seven months, for all the transfers and for an incredible restoration process and as it worked out, we were probably halfway through the edit before we realised we were never going to need to use clips from either of the pre-existing films, because there was stuff coming in constantly. We realised that we really could focus on the story of those ten days. I thought we\u2019d do more preamble, we thought we\u2019d do more aftermath, but we covered that off in the interviews. So, there was no need for me to revisit the films too much. But I\u2019m like this when I\u2019m making a film about anything. I try not to get too influenced by stuff, especially since this is a unique film. I mean, I was quite worried. I wondered if I was putting myself in a kind of poisoned chalice situation. It was quite stressful.<\/p>\n

SDE: As a fellow filmmaker, do you have much sympathy for what happened with Lindsay Anderson?<\/p>\n

MC: I\u2019ve got mixed feelings. Ultimately, I think there\u2019s no doubt about his talents; his abilities. I mean, that\u2019s pretty obvious, given his pedigree.<\/p>\n

SDE: He won an Oscar\u2026<\/p>\n

MC: Exactly. And more than one of those movies are good. Do I have sympathy? It\u2019s sort of it\u2019s a weird one. I don\u2019t think he should have taken the project, but he clearly needed to. I think he made a mistake and I don\u2019t think he could recover from it. I don\u2019t think he had the ability to make something in the modern world of the 1980s, and I think he let himself down \u2013 but I think he knew that. I think when you look at the three films as a triptych, if you like, the only one that actually tells a story is the new film.<\/p>\n

SDE: With your film, there\u2019s a few different layers to it. You\u2019re telling a story that\u2019s already been told, but then you\u2019re also stepping back and from high up looking down on what happened. What are the challenges in terms of that approach, compared to making a normal documentary where you\u2019re just going at it fresh, without the baggage of other stuff that exists?<\/p>\n

MC: It depends how you want to view it. For me, it\u2019s like a crime scene: 40 years ago, they went to China and bagged the evidence. But then no one ever analysed it. So, the challenges are innumerable on a narrative, technical and personal levels. I had to think long and hard about style for the film. I don\u2019t know if you, how much you\u2019ve observed the style of the ten days film, but\u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like a crime scene: 40 years ago, Wham! went to China and bagged the evidence, but then no one ever analysed it.<\/p>\n

Mike Christie<\/p>\n

SDE: I was going to ask you about that. You\u2019ve obviously got the talking head cutaways for the interviews. There\u2019s a trend these days to maybe not do that so much. An example being the Paul McCartney film, Man on the Run, which I think is all done with voiceover\u2026<\/p>\n

MC: Also like the Senna film [Asif Kapadia\u2019s acclaimed 2010 Ayrton Senna documentary]. The Wham! film [Chris Smith\u2019s 2023 Netflix documentary] was the same thing, it was voices only and an archive. We talked about it; it would have been entirely doable, but we made a conscious decision at the beginning, not to. I think it\u2019s interesting to see people\u2019s faces. I think you do get something [extra]. It\u2019s the difference between a phone call and a meeting in person, right? Your body language tells you quite a lot and you lose that for a start.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if you noticed, but one of the things we worked really hard on, and it was really hard to do, was not to have a \u2018then and now\u2019 feeling where the archive exists in this odd bubble and then you cut to an interview shot in somebody\u2019s beautiful apartment in Paris or a five-star hotel. The most recent example of this is the Kylie documentary. Our idea was to bring it into a single, timeless space where the archive footage doesn\u2019t jar \u2013\u00a0it doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s being viewed through a window. So, there\u2019s a lot of stylistic stuff going on that\u2019s quite subtle, but most of the interview settings were meant to feel like it could be in China.<\/p>\n

SDE: The traditional understanding of what a film director does is they stand around and tell the camera operator where and what to film, whereas with the film you\u2019ve made that role changes a bit\u2026 or does it?<\/p>\n

MC: I spent a lot of time at the beginning of this process asking, \u201cwhat\u2019s my job? Am I finishing Lindsay\u2019s film? What am I doing?\u201d. The role does change to a certain extent. Initially, after wondering if I was finishing Lindsey\u2019s film, I saw his cut and I thought it wasn\u2019t a cut. This was a rough cut or an assembly [the very first version where all the footage is compiled together]. He was nowhere near, and I don\u2019t think he ever would have got there because he didn\u2019t have the narrative. So, I stopped feeling I was finishing his film when I realised he hadn\u2019t directed the footage \u2013 he sat in background. When we talked to the camera operator and the documentary team, they said they weren\u2019t getting any direction. When you asked earlier about whether I felt sympathy towards Lindsey, I think this project doesn\u2019t denigrate Lindsey\u2019s reputation and ability, but ultimately, I think he failed the project. But he did us all a favour; he captured this thing. So, fundamentally you\u2019re working with footage. And as I\u2019ve already said, I tried to ignore the previous cuts \u2013 we\u2019re just working with the rushes and we\u2019re not cutting from those films. There\u2019s very, very few shots that you\u2019ll find in \u201810 Days\u2019 that\u2019s there in the other two films, because that material had physically been cut from the reels \u2013 it wasn\u2019t in the reels, so we\u2019d have to go back to the masters to bring it back in. And we only did that with some of the concert shots.<\/p>\n

Your job is to make the audience feel and understand what happened.<\/p>\n

Mike Christie<\/p>\n

But getting back to your specific question about my role\u2026 before we started filming, we\u2019d spent the best part of a year-and-a-half thinking about it and then Alice, the producer, came in. When I make films I draw badly \u2013 I draw these shapes, mind maps, layers and curves and one of the things I drew early on was the emotional curve of this film. I knew how it was going to feel. Your job is to basically take all the perspectives and all the complexity and all the raw material and capture the essence of it and all the different layers. And I think that was the goal. That\u2019s your job. Your job is to make the audience feel and understand what happened.<\/p>\n

SDE: I think most people of a certain age remember when we Wham! went to China, but they may be shocked to realise that they only played two gigs there.<\/p>\n

MC: And two gigs in Hong Kong [beforehand]<\/p>\n

SDE: Those were never filmed or captured then?<\/p>\n

MC: No. And they felt like British gigs because it was a British colony. They did that because of the proximity to China \u2013\u00a0and for the money, because it cost a lot of money. I mean, the whole caboodle cost, allegedly, a million quid. They certainly spent a lot of money on the documentary shoot because they had six film cameras. And thank God for that, because when you look at the stuff at the end of my film, when you see a bit of America [a peak forward at the Whamamerica! tour later in 1985], you\u2019re looking at video footage. My understanding is The Final gig was only shot on video, too. It doesn\u2019t hold up. Thank God they took film cameras [to China].<\/p>\n

SDE: Simon Napier-Bell says a few times in your film that the only purpose for the trip was to break America in a big way. But the reality is, by the time they got to China, Wham! had enjoyed three number one singles in the US from the Make It Big album (\u2018Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go\u2019, \u2018Everything She Wants\u2019 and \u2018Careless Whisper\u2019) and the album itself had gone to number one. I mean, how much bigger do you want to be in America?<\/p>\n

MC: Yeah, I think I asked a similar question early on. I started working in the music industry in 1988, but I\u2019m not an expert on the mid-80s American music market. My understanding is that wasn\u2019t enough to do stadiums. That would get you onto the thirty-date theatre tours that they were trying to avoid so I think they were trying to leapfrog a whole stage.<\/p>\n

SDE: How difficult was it tracking down some of those key Chinese audience members that you interview in the film?<\/p>\n

MC: It varied. Simon [Napier-Bell] was a consultant on the project, for lots of different reasons, but he still had quite good contacts in China. And still he was able to do interviews in China, which meant that he could plug the fact that the documentary was in production and we\u2019d get people contacting us. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort and we had a producer in China who was working hard. I think we had a shortlist of about 10 or 12 people. But you know, there were 130 people in the tour party. There were a lot of people who fed into the research, but we couldn\u2019t interview everyone. Some people don\u2019t say anywhere near as much as I\u2019d like them to, but the Chinese contingent took a long time and it was the last thing we filmed, as well. We were shooting over a six-month period, and the last bit was China and we nearly didn\u2019t get in; it was touch and go.<\/p>\n

SDE: Was the Chinese perspective the thing that made Andrew, in particular, interested in cooperating?<\/p>\n

MC: I don\u2019t think he\u2019d say it was the only reason, but I think it was a strong reason. And I think it was the point of difference because no one else had explored that. I\u2019ve been to China; I understood the culture, I understood the history. But the thing is, we say this now, but we genuinely didn\u2019t know the impact, until we found those [Chinese] contributors and we\u2019d done the research and then we understood their stories.<\/p>\n

That trip transformed so many people\u2019s lives, but going back there transformed Andrew\u2019s understanding of it.<\/p>\n

Mike Christie<\/p>\n

SDE: What is you film about, ultimately?<\/p>\n

MC: I think all directors need some sort of device to unlock a film. Lindsay didn\u2019t find his, Foreign Skies, as we\u2019ve discussed is what they wanted it to be, but what I found is that the films that work best are the ones that are clear about what\u2019s unlocking the narrative. And, this new film, for me, is about two things: pressure and perspectives. I think the Chinese perspective unlocks all the other perspectives because it\u2019s the counterpoint. The pressure is obvious all the way through. But Andrew\u2019s perspective shift at the end, is so dramatic. It\u2019s really moving and beautiful. That trip transformed so many people\u2019s lives, but going back there transformed Andrew\u2019s understanding of it.<\/p>\n

SDE: The scene with George enjoying a massage is revealing, in a number of ways\u2026<\/p>\n

MC: We had a long discussion about the massage. There are two things that gave us permission to include it. A: George actually says, \u201cI\u2019ve got no issue with you filming my buttocks\u201d during the scene. And B: The fact that it\u2019s in Foreign Skies, even though it\u2019s much shorter, at just 20 or 30 seconds, it\u2019s still in there.<\/p>\n

SDE: I was surprised that he was he was willing to let that shot be in Foreign Skies, but in your film\u2026<\/p>\n

MC: \u2026 there\u2019s a lot more buttocks!<\/p>\n

SDE: Yes, but you get that nice interaction with the member of the crew he\u2019s talking to; his guard is completely down.<\/p>\n

MC: During that scene, he says something along the lines of \u201cthey kind of wanted us here, but now they want to forget we\u2019re here\u201d. It\u2019s actually very hard to find George talking about China.<\/p>\n

SDE: Which is one of the other problems you were faced with. A bit like when Apple did The Beatles Anthology when John Lennon wasn\u2019t around. A person\u2019s view of something five years after it happens may be different to their view 40 years later. Andrew has got his view today, George has got whatever views he had, whenever they were recorded. He is no longer with us, so that must have been a challenge.<\/p>\n

MC: We were never sure whether we\u2019d find a lot [of archive commentary about China] or not a lot. Some recorded views were a year or so later, but I think there was a lot of politeness. But we did manage to find enough of George talking about it to make him present. We found some other interviews in strange places. Some of it\u2019s from TV shows and one of them was interview from the Library of Congress in America. You can download the whole interview. It was the same with Lindsay\u2026 the same problem, finding his voice. One of the things that really upset me is the one person who was massively absent is [Wham! co-manager] Jazz Summers [who died in 2015] which I think is a huge shame. It\u2019s something we did try to address, but ultimately, there were no real usable interviews. There were interviews he did for his book, but they weren\u2019t usable for different reasons.<\/p>\n

SDE: Having spoken to Andrew and gone through all the George Michael archive interviews, do you think there\u2019s a difference in their opinions of that trip or are they very much aligned?<\/p>\n

MC: I think everyone\u2019s quite consistent, actually. As a documentary filmmaker, I am very suspicious of biopics, because I don\u2019t trust testimony and memory; I think we\u2019re all quite poor witnesses. There\u2019s a film I made about Hansa Studios and the one thing that was really reassuring about that was the fact that people who hadn\u2019t seen each other for decades were telling the same story. And one of the great things about this Wham film, particularly when we did the difficult scene about Raul [D\u2019Oliveria, Portuguese trumpet player with the band, who stabbed himself in the stomach on an aeroplane during the trip], was that even though these people had not talked for years, but there were all consistently remembering things, such as the speed at which the plane descended. So, it\u2019s possible to cut everyone\u2019s interviews together and there\u2019ll be a continuity because their memories aren\u2019t dissimilar. I\u2019ve found it comes at a certain place in people\u2019s lives. People have a really clear memory of their twenties, on the whole. When I was talking to Martin Gore for the Hansa film, he had a clear memory of that period, and I think a lot of that is because he was like 23, 24, or 25 \u2013 it\u2019s a really formative period.<\/p>\n

I think what\u2019s interesting is we thought that George was more negative about the whole trip [than he actually was]. We felt at the outset George had a bit of a downer on the footage, the trip, the film, the whole experience, but we never found anything that really mirrored that. He says at the beginning that it was \u201creally difficult\u201d but we found very little evidence of him having a very negative view of it. Because he\u2019s no longer with us, what you don\u2019t get is the thing you get with Andrew at the end; the whole coming to terms with it and having a bit of a more positive spin on it, which is a shame.<\/p>\n

SDE: Simon Napier-Bell is surprisingly unapologetic and bullish in your documentary about the goals of the trip. He doesn\u2019t really reflect much and, for example, suggest \u201cmaybe we should have made more effort to do this, that or the other\u201d. He\u2019s just like \u201cThe whole thing was about publicity. We did it brilliantly. The end.\u201d<\/p>\n

MC: [laughs] I like Simon a great deal. I think he\u2019s an incredible man. But the thing is \u2013\u00a0and this goes back to my distrust of memory \u2013\u00a0is that sometimes people don\u2019t remember what happened, they remember the last time they told the story, and I think Simon had actually got so used to telling \u2018his version\u2019 of the story that we had to challenge him. I mean, there\u2019s some interviewees we couldn\u2019t use in the film because they were unreliable witnesses. Their story didn\u2019t fit with anyone else\u2019s. But it was very interesting, because we filmed his interview over two days \u2013\u00a0it was the second longest interview after Andrew\u2019s \u2013\u00a0and overnight, he came back the next day and told us he went through his notes and he checked this, he checked that and he worked out where his anecdotal version had slightly diverged from reality and he corrected it.<\/p>\n

In answer to your question, he might seem very matter of fact \u2013\u00a0and I think that\u2019s that is how he is \u2013\u00a0but I would say a lot of the interview was a lot more thoughtful. We couldn\u2019t always find the place for some of those sections, but he\u2019s an interesting character.<\/p>\n

SDE: One of the memorable scenes in your film is the press conference. That\u2019s not in any of the other films. That sequence sums up the band\u2019s uneasy relationship with the press, particularly with Andrew where he seems to have feelings of pure hatred. The film also reminds us of the power of the press back then; printed media, the tabloids. The amount of press following them around was incredible, but that was the deal with the devil, wasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

MC: The Faustian pact, yeah, exactly. Whether they were expecting that amount of press corps following the round, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

SDE: The rushes that you found, had they been \u2018lost\u2019, as people always say when they find tapes, or were they just stored somewhere and no one had bothered to look at them?<\/p>\n

MC: They weren\u2019t lost, they were in storage, but there was a degree of that \u2018Raiders of the Lost Ark\u2019 warehouse, in terms of \u2018what are we going to find\u2019? No one had opened the cans, and we genuinely didn\u2019t know what we were going to find. The biggest difficulty was [the fact that] it\u2019s film. So, anything that went into the [two previous] films was cut out of these reels and the sound is separate. So, you\u2019ve got this ridiculous workflow, which takes an hour for every minute of footage where they\u2019re literally sticking bits of film back together; fixing the physical issues with it, scanning it digitally, and then taking the sound and syncing everything up manually. The workflow is extraordinary.<\/p>\n

SDE: Do you think they\u2019ll ever release just the concert, in full?<\/p>\n

MC: The problem is that the cameras weren\u2019t directed, they\u2019re just filming. That\u2019s a problem because sometimes you\u2019ve got six cameras and they\u2019re all on different shots. And sometimes there\u2019s three cameras running because the other are changing their mags and they\u2019re all framed on the same shot, but at a slightly different angle. There\u2019s a couple of songs where there\u2019s only one camera running! \u00a0So, you know, you\u2019ve got a problem\u2026<\/p>\n

SDE: They could do the audio of it though. That would be quite good. I noticed Chris Porter recorded it all.<\/p>\n

MC: So yeah, Chris Porter remixed these. We remixed from the 24-track multis, so the audio was properly restored and there are 5.1 mixes.<\/p>\n

SDE: Presumably, they\u2019ve just done what is needed for your film? He hasn\u2019t gone off and done the whole thing?<\/p>\n

MC: No comment [laughs].<\/p>\n

SDE: Does this now feel like your film? You\u2019ve got to the end of the process; you\u2019ve stamped your personality as a filmmaker on it. It\u2019s very much your film now, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

MC: I\u2019ll take you back to a key word here, which is perspectives. So ultimately, I would say, what\u2019s the audience perspective? I think the audience perspective is that the only film that tells them what happened and shows them what happened, is 10 Days in China. I think a mainstream audience wouldn\u2019t get through the other two films, although fans would. I think there\u2019s a place for each of the films, but I think the best films feel like time machines; they transport you to a time and a place, and then they really convey what happened there and what it felt like. And if that\u2019s the goal, I think it has achieving that. We won\u2019t know until the audience see it, but certainly the limited audiences that have seen it so far find it absolutely fascinating on those different levels.<\/p>\n

SDE: Who is the audience for this film and did you have any pressure or guidance to perhaps make it appeal to a younger demographic? Or do you think the audience is primarily people of a certain age that enjoyed that era?<\/p>\n

MC: I think there\u2019s more than one question there. I think if the first question is \u2018what audience did we make the film for?\u2019 The second question is \u2018what audience will the film find?\u2019 The audience we made the film for, we felt was, obviously Wham! fans, but also cinephiles; although one of the complications with that is how little we have of Lindsay Anderson in the film, because he was so absent due to what I would call a dereliction of duty. So, you\u2019ve got Wham! fans, cinephiles to some extent \u2013\u00a0since it\u2019s an interesting document \u2013\u00a0but then I think it\u2019s also an historical and cultural document, the China stuff really pulls people in. And at the end of the day, even people who don\u2019t know anything about George Michael or Wham! will recognize \u2018Careless Whisper\u2019 or \u2018Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go\u2019. So, I think there are multiple audiences. It\u2019s also worth acknowledging something Andrew said, which is that this is the only film footage of Wham! in a dressing room; sound checking; jamming. That\u2019s incredible.<\/p>\n

SDE: Let\u2019s just talk briefly about the final scene, a slightly cringeworthy scene where Lindsay gets ignored by George backstage after the final gig. I presume you chose to put that in to kind of make a point?<\/p>\n

MC: Yeah, because that final scene, if you look carefully, reveals everything. There\u2019s [producer] Martin Lewis stood in the background with Lindsay in the foreground; There\u2019s that moment where Simon Napier-Bell comes in and does one of his kind of eyebrow arches and walks away; and George ignoring Lindsay. Initially, we had that shot unedited and it was too long. There was another 20 seconds of Lindsay with his hand on George\u2019s shoulder and George just ignoring him. That speaks volumes.<\/p>\n

\"\"Wham! in China with Lindsay Anderson<\/p>\n

SDE: It\u2019s good to see Lindsay in it because when they did the showing of his version at the BFI they promoted it with a still photograph, which I think it was at the Ambassador\u2019s residence, in the back garden. It\u2019s the only time I\u2019d ever seen a photo of them together, so it\u2019s nice to see him, in your film.<\/p>\n

\u00a0MC: Like I said, you don\u2019t want in any way to undermine the guy\u2019s canon of work, which obviously is extraordinary, in its own right. But ultimately, I think if you could talk to him now, he\u2019d probably say he just regretted getting involved with this project.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Mike Christie who was talking to Paul Sinclair for SDE. Wham! 10 Days in China is in Cinemas from 28 July 2026 and will be shown on BBC TV in the UK in late August.<\/p>\n

SuperDeluxeEdition.com\u00a0helps fans around the world discover physical music and discuss releases. To keep the site free, SDE participates in various affiliate programs, including Amazon and earns from qualifying purchases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wham!\u2019s April 1985 trip to China is one of the more interesting episodes in the band\u2019s relatively short…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-708702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}