Hong Kong: April 1, 2003, 6:41 p.m.
A morbid thought perhaps, but I envision you preparing for that fatal dive off the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel with utmost concentration, bird-like grace. You have decided, for whatever reason, not to endure this world and what it awaits — wrinkles and thinning hairlines, the transition to respected — such an ugly word, respected — elder statesman, the wasting away.

Do you have any regrets when you jump? The Hong Kong press, as hysterical as ever, will conjure up numerous suicide scenarios. Was he on the verge of a break-up with Daffy? There will be whispers of sordid affairs, heated arguments. Or perhaps you were overtaken by ghosts and demons as a result of Inner Senses. You would have scoffed at these storylines. Too pat, too reductive. Perhaps it was all of the above. Perhaps the pendulum swung one final time, renewal giving away to inescapable despondence. We can only guess, and you would have appreciated that. Your parting gift is one more enigma, more raw material for the myth, immortality stretching out a little bit longer with every new bit of speculation.

Your long-time associate Kenneth, no surname, will say it best at your funeral with this message: My boss with irreplaceable splendor — forever you will be my bright little star. A different actor in a different movie said stars don’t fall out of the sky.

Nor are you eclipsed by moonlight. I choose to remember you by the film Moonlight Express (1999). It is a trifle of a movie, resplendent with cutesy Japanese actresses and a weightless love story... yet your sheer Leslie-ness shines through the noise. You are an undercover cop, a silky rebel with a cause. You are also a bereaved lover with a shot at redemption with a stranger. And most importantly, an apparition — for you are the spitting image of the stranger’s dead lover. We appreciate the subtext: you have been a ghost of our collective dreams all your life, the specter of what was, what should be. And thus I hold my breath when your character — exhausted, bruised, beautiful — regards himself in the mirror, unsure of what is real and phantasmal, seeking the answer to all his questions, for it is as if you are looking at yourself through us for the first time, bemused with your own magnetism. No vagaries of age, not a trace of smugness — only the watchful eyes of a dreamer who dares to dream a thousand dreams of you. If only you were looking at a mirror that evening, and saw what should have been so patently obvious, what we all saw.

It is said your one regret is that you never had a chance to direct, but it is just as well. That face is meant to be before mirrors, before cameras. Forever.