A special exhibit dedicated to Chinese puzzles (yizhi youxi) was on display in 2011 at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), New York City. Mathematician Peter Rasmussen and Wei Zhang created the Classical Chinese Puzzle project. Peter Rasmussen told 'Wired' magazine, "In English, the phrase 'Chinese puzzle' is frequently used as a metaphor to describe something difficult, complex, intricate — or even senseless. For us, however, 'Chinese puzzle' has a specific meaning. Puzzles are usually — but not always — games that are played by oneself, use physical apparatus, and involve arranging, disentangling, putting something together or figuring out a sequence of moves to arrive at a predetermined goal."
In 2014, the Cédric Klapisch's film, 'Casse-tête chinois' ('Chinese Puzzle') was released. 'Chinese Puzzle' was the finale of a trilogy which started in 2002 with 'L'Auberge Espagnole' ('The Spanish Apartment'), then followed by 'Les poupées russes' ('Russian Dolls') in 2005. Cédric Klapisch told 'comingsoon.net' at the time, "'L'Auberge' I wrote the script in two weeks, 'Russian Dolls' in four months and this one I wrote the script in eight months. I really needed the eight months. It was a lot more complex to write, I needed more time to think about it and I also needed to spend some time in New York to be able to write the story that wasn't only a touristy way of showing New York. I really felt like I needed time for this movie.
"I also needed some time to think more about what they became as actors, all of them, and to think more about what they became as characters between ‘Russian Dolls’ and now. Some characters have changed and some stayed the same. It was interesting to work on their destiny but they don't have the same rhythm, all the characters, so it's not like everyone's changed a lot. A very individualistic rhythm for every character."
The three movies grossed between $15 million and $20 million in France. By the time of the 'Chinese Puzzle', those roommates, as Peter Bradshaw of 'The Guardian' reported, were "pushing 40 with complicated lives: divorce, remarriage, jobs in different cities, stepkids. Fitting it all together is the 'Chinese puzzle' of the title, and Klapisch turns China into a pert motif for exotic muddle (as in, perhaps: 'Forget it, Jake, it's Chinese-puzzle-town') … For all its goofiness and silliness, the story bops amiably and fluently along. It's a sort of boxset drama where the best stuff is in the last episode."
Cédric Klapisch informed, "It really started when I was in Tribeca (for the Tribeca Film Festival) because I had this title in mind, 'Chinese Puzzle' and I thought I would do something in China. When I was in Tribeca (New York), I said to myself, 'I went to NYU Film School, I’ve learned how to make films here and every time I go to New York I want to shoot something in this city because I love New York.'
"I went to Chinatown and realized it was so much bigger than when I was a student almost thirty years ago and I realized that China is here. What I like about New York is that it’s kind of a metaphor of the rest of the world – there’s a neighborhood for every country of the world – so I realized that maybe China wasn’t the right place to shoot the movie and New York was the right place. I really got that when I was in Tribeca walking around.
"It’s almost the opposite of a TV series where you try to have the architecture of the whole thing before you start to write the first episode. I wrote the first (movie) and I had no idea there would be a sequel and then I wrote the second one four years later and then at the end of 'Russian Dolls' I said, 'Maybe in ten years from now it’s going to be interesting to make a third one,' but even during the eight years between movies, almost all the notes I took I threw away when I started to write the script. I had to start with, 'Okay, it takes place in New York. What’s the story, what's the starting point?' I don’t always know where to start with when I’m writing so I have to invent the whole story one after the other."
The Chinese puzzle on the Reg Grundy's TV drama 'Sons and Daughters' (1982-1987) about the interwoven lives of two Australian families, Sydney's Hamiltons and Melbourne's Palmers, Rowena Wallace told 'Fairfax Media', "There hasn't been a lot of communication between the writers and actors. It's very frustrating when you don't know where a character is heading. You play scenes in a block one week and you think 'Oh, I see, that's what she's up to,' and you relate to a certain character that way. Next week you find that it wasn't that at all, that’s not the reason you were doing that, and you think ‘I’ve gone and blown it now completely.'
"So I decided right at the beginning that it was better to be enigmatic about just about everything. A soapie's a strange thing. The writers don't know where it’s going. I suppose it’s like life really – we don’t really know what’s going to happen – except it’s a speeded-up version. I'd like to be involved in something that has a beginning, middle and an end, that is a fully rounded thing I can get a perspective on, where I can do a complete performance. Like on stage: that’s what I’d love to do. I'd love to get back on stage.
You don't know where it's going to end, so you don’t really know what you’re working with."
Charles Frank told 'Soap Opera Digest' in 1983, "I used to pick up the script for 'All My Children' and treat it as if it was a new play every day, with a beginning, a middle and an end … I'm very glad and grateful for working on 'All My Children'. It taught me a lot as an actor; how to work in a studio situation, how to keep concentrating with the cameras moving around and how to be extremely technical while still staying natural. It was probably the most valuable experience I think any actor could ever have. ('Emerald Point N.A.S') is a good show, well-written. The people look good. They have a formula like Aggie Nixon does with soaps. If you get the sets, the costumes, the words and the actors, you've got a show that will be a hit."
Rowena Wallace believed, "As far as craftsmanship is concerned, working on a soapie can be very detrimental to your craft or it can be a huge advantage. You work under enormous pressure, and you have to do all the things that an actor wants to do with something in the shortest possible time, which means you've got to work very quickly. You can learn an awful lot from it.
"On the other hand, because of the nature of the beast, many compromises have to be made with everybody involved: directors, technicians and actors. You can never really give rein to artistic expression. And I think if you're in that situation for too long, the continual frustration of not being able to give rein to that creative urge (which everybody involved in this business has) can make you ill. It can make you quite sick. There's not much time. You don't get much help, you just do it the best way you can. Fortunately, for an experienced actor, you've learned – not tricks, so much, but just ways of dealing with a situation."
Critics credited Rowena Wallace for "brilliantly interpreted" the part of Patricia the Terrible on 'Sons and Daughters'. Using her "ice-cold eyes, prematurely silver grey hair and a Siamese-cat grace", Garry Shelley expressed, "I enjoy 'Sons and Daughters'. From an acting point of view, with one or two exceptions, it is at present a happy experience. Rowena Wallace, coldly insensitive because of her tendency to social climb, is lovely to hate. Hers is a gloriously-bitchy character, with iceberg eyes and a match-striking face."
As M. Scott Peck discussed in his 1983 book, 'The People Of The Lie', Rowena Wallace observed, "Patricia Hamilton has more humor, more relish for life and for doing terrible things to others … The public seems to have taken to Patricia with warmth and affection, appreciating the way the role is played, identifying with her. The wives of taxi-drivers, I'm told, recognize her as an amalgam of their mothers, sisters and relatives. That's just the way Aunty Flo behaves, they say." Harry Robinson conceded, "Truth to tell, 'Sons and Daughters' would be nothing without Patricia. She gives the show whatever conflict and tension it has."
By the 3rd season of 'Sons and Daughters', Rowena Wallace told John Miner, "You get to a point where not only do the writers start to run out of ideas, it's as if the actors run out of energy and ideas for their contribution as well. It seems to me as if this project, which started two and half years ago and gathered its own momentum, has become like a living organism: it is a thing that works us, we don't really work it. It's losing its momentum, and it either needs some kind of shot in the arm, to go in another direction completely and get a new energy, or its going to peter out. It's inevitable that will happen. I’m beginning to feel that my character has been and done all the things she can possibly be and do. There's nowhere left to take her."
Patricia Dunne, Rowena Wallace remarked, "I think, in a way, that she became like a conglomeration of things that women are; attitudes that women have. It was like somebody decided to make a list of all the things – this is on a fairly superficial level – that women do in relationships, and they shoved them all into Patricia and she lived through everything. It's like she's a shining example of what can go wrong to everything.
"It's an interesting character. I think that she's, in a way, almost cathartic to some people. She gets away with saying and doing things that nobody ever could in our society. If there really was a person like that, she wouldn't last five minutes. I think there is an area of catharsis there. Because they say they love the way she schemes and manipulates, and then they love it when she falls flat on her face, then they love it when she struggles back up and says, 'Bugger you lot, I'm a survivor. I'm going to get on with this.' There's a spirit there, a tremendous urge to survive and spirit to get on: people identify with that."
M. Scott Peck died in 2005. In 1978, his book 'The Road Less Traveled' was bought by a record 12 million readers. In the March 1991 edition of 'Playboy' magazine, M. Scott Peck spoke to journalist David Sheff in a no-holds barred interview, "I was called to write it – that one and each of my other books. They said, 'Write me. Do it.' I was under orders. (Orders) from God.
"You know when you are called. The word for it is vocation, which means calling, and is thought to come from God. I suppose it’s a matter of faith, but I believe that some of our drives, our intuitions, do come from God or from Whoever God is – something outside that is wiser, smarter than we are. Well, the most common response I've gotten to my books has been not that I’ve said something radically new but that I’ve said the kind of things that people have been thinking all along but are afraid to talk about. Well, life is difficult.
"People are no longer accepting the answers they've been given; they want more. They realize the old program doesn’t work. There’s a larger and larger segment of the population that has made a decision to question the givens–things the culture takes for granted, things people’s parents taught them. They are becoming enlightened. Some go to therapy, some to A.A. … I believe, along with many other people, that perhaps the greatest event of the 20th Century occurred in 1935 in Akron, Ohio, when A.A. was established. A.A. was the beginning of the self-help movement, and also the beginning of the integration of science and religion on a grass-roots level."
Rowena Wallace believed, "As far as craftsmanship is concerned, working on a soapie can be very detrimental to your craft or it can be a huge advantage. You work under enormous pressure, and you have to do all the things that an actor wants to do with something in the shortest possible time, which means you've got to work very quickly. You can learn an awful lot from it.
"On the other hand, because of the nature of the beast, many compromises have to be made with everybody involved: directors, technicians and actors. You can never really give rein to artistic expression. And I think if you're in that situation for too long, the continual frustration of not being able to give rein to that creative urge (which everybody involved in this business has) can make you ill. It can make you quite sick. There's not much time. You don't get much help, you just do it the best way you can. Fortunately, for an experienced actor, you've learned – not tricks, so much, but just ways of dealing with a situation."
Critics credited Rowena Wallace for "brilliantly interpreted" the part of Patricia the Terrible on 'Sons and Daughters'. Using her "ice-cold eyes, prematurely silver grey hair and a Siamese-cat grace", Garry Shelley expressed, "I enjoy 'Sons and Daughters'. From an acting point of view, with one or two exceptions, it is at present a happy experience. Rowena Wallace, coldly insensitive because of her tendency to social climb, is lovely to hate. Hers is a gloriously-bitchy character, with iceberg eyes and a match-striking face."
As M. Scott Peck discussed in his 1983 book, 'The People Of The Lie', Rowena Wallace observed, "Patricia Hamilton has more humor, more relish for life and for doing terrible things to others … The public seems to have taken to Patricia with warmth and affection, appreciating the way the role is played, identifying with her. The wives of taxi-drivers, I'm told, recognize her as an amalgam of their mothers, sisters and relatives. That's just the way Aunty Flo behaves, they say." Harry Robinson conceded, "Truth to tell, 'Sons and Daughters' would be nothing without Patricia. She gives the show whatever conflict and tension it has."
By the 3rd season of 'Sons and Daughters', Rowena Wallace told John Miner, "You get to a point where not only do the writers start to run out of ideas, it's as if the actors run out of energy and ideas for their contribution as well. It seems to me as if this project, which started two and half years ago and gathered its own momentum, has become like a living organism: it is a thing that works us, we don't really work it. It's losing its momentum, and it either needs some kind of shot in the arm, to go in another direction completely and get a new energy, or its going to peter out. It's inevitable that will happen. I’m beginning to feel that my character has been and done all the things she can possibly be and do. There's nowhere left to take her."
Patricia Dunne, Rowena Wallace remarked, "I think, in a way, that she became like a conglomeration of things that women are; attitudes that women have. It was like somebody decided to make a list of all the things – this is on a fairly superficial level – that women do in relationships, and they shoved them all into Patricia and she lived through everything. It's like she's a shining example of what can go wrong to everything.
"It's an interesting character. I think that she's, in a way, almost cathartic to some people. She gets away with saying and doing things that nobody ever could in our society. If there really was a person like that, she wouldn't last five minutes. I think there is an area of catharsis there. Because they say they love the way she schemes and manipulates, and then they love it when she falls flat on her face, then they love it when she struggles back up and says, 'Bugger you lot, I'm a survivor. I'm going to get on with this.' There's a spirit there, a tremendous urge to survive and spirit to get on: people identify with that."
M. Scott Peck died in 2005. In 1978, his book 'The Road Less Traveled' was bought by a record 12 million readers. In the March 1991 edition of 'Playboy' magazine, M. Scott Peck spoke to journalist David Sheff in a no-holds barred interview, "I was called to write it – that one and each of my other books. They said, 'Write me. Do it.' I was under orders. (Orders) from God.
"You know when you are called. The word for it is vocation, which means calling, and is thought to come from God. I suppose it’s a matter of faith, but I believe that some of our drives, our intuitions, do come from God or from Whoever God is – something outside that is wiser, smarter than we are. Well, the most common response I've gotten to my books has been not that I’ve said something radically new but that I’ve said the kind of things that people have been thinking all along but are afraid to talk about. Well, life is difficult.
"People are no longer accepting the answers they've been given; they want more. They realize the old program doesn’t work. There’s a larger and larger segment of the population that has made a decision to question the givens–things the culture takes for granted, things people’s parents taught them. They are becoming enlightened. Some go to therapy, some to A.A. … I believe, along with many other people, that perhaps the greatest event of the 20th Century occurred in 1935 in Akron, Ohio, when A.A. was established. A.A. was the beginning of the self-help movement, and also the beginning of the integration of science and religion on a grass-roots level."
