Chan, Solo
An accomplished writer, director, producer, star and stuntman, Jackie Chan has always fought hard to do things his way.
At the tender age of six-and-a-half, when Chan Kwon-Sang was deemed old enough to look after himself, his father packed him off to train at the Peking Opera School.
"Like the school in Fame (1980)," he remembers, "they taught much more than opera, and we had lots of different classes: singing, acting, jumping, kicking, stick fighting, knife fighting, gymnastics, acrobatics. It was very tough. A lot of students dropped out. We started with a hundred, and one by one they gave up. Sometimes the teachers would beat us for no reason.
"We trained from five in the morning until late at night, and I admit I wanted to leave as well. But my parents had moved to Australia and I had nowhere to go, so I stayed there for ten years. Now I'm glad I did, because I learned a lot from being there, and it trained me to be independent. Education is the most important thing. Without it, I might have ended up washing dishes for a living."
Finding work as a stuntman on an endless parade of low budget martial arts movies, Jackie Chan worked with Bruce Lee on Fist of Fury (1972) and Enter the Dragon (1973), dying for the camera on a daily basis.
"At the time he was my hero, a very big star," says Chan. "Wherever Bruce Lee went, people surrounded him, and he had a hundred yes men too. A friend of mine, someone who studied at the Academy with me, actually doubled for Lee, because Bruce knew kicking and punching but couldn't do the somersault kick. Later, when the movie came out, the audience were clapping and cheering my Kung Fu brother, but they thought it was all Bruce, as we didn't even have a small credit."
Could this be why he always did his own stunts, to avoid taking credit for someone else's work? "Not really," he says, characteristically adding, "I just wanted to be outstanding. I doubled for many actors for many years, so I knew what to do - what kind of kick, what kind of jump - so I designed each fight for myself, and because of that I was always the best man for the job."
If you want a job done properly, as the saying goes, you have to do it yourself - but in this instance there's no end of danger involved. As anyone who's seen a Jackie Chan movie can confirm, the outtakes accompanying the closing credits usually include footage of one of his signature near-death experiences.
"Every time I got hurt in a stunt, it scared me a little bit, but as soon as I got back on the set I was back to normal," says Chan. "I always had to do my own stunts. I don't know why. I don't know what kind of energy pushed me continually to do those kinds of things. I'd think about Christopher Reeve and it frightened me - I didn't want to end up in a wheelchair for the rest of my life."
Creative control has always been of prime importance to Chan, who knows what it feels like to be messed around by clueless American directors. "A lot of them don't know what they're doing. Some of them can direct but they don't know action; some of them know action, but they really can't direct. That's why I chose to do it myself. In America, they have a director, an action director, a script writer, a lighting director, an editing director - too many directors!
"Sometimes it works, if you've planned well enough in advance, but it just doesn't work for me. So I write, direct and edit for myself. In America, when you get a script, the writer often leaves room for a fight scene without explaining what kind of fight scene it should be. There's dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, then a space with the word 'fighting' in it, and that one word keeps me busy for months. In America, they can't write a good fight scene, they don't care, one punch and you're down. But I want to fight in a hotel lobby, a swimming pool or an elevator, not just follow the script."
Taking a cue from Frank Sinatra, Eastern action's number one son does things his way. He always has and he always will, and that's the secret of his success. "I'm lucky I made it so big," he admits, "because there are a lot of other fighters out there."
The difference was, "everybody was doing the Bruce Lee style, and I wanted to do the opposite. "He kicked high, so I kicked low. When he's a superhero, I'm a normal guy - that's my personality. I love action, but I hate violence. A lot of children see my movies, so I add a lot of comedy to balance out the action. In my movies there's no sex, no make love scene, no dirty words, no dirty violence - always clean, no blood, always happy-go-lucky."
What’s your favourite Jackie Chan movie?
Lovely..didn't know about 'Enter the dragon'! Would he have beaten Bruce in a real fight I wonder? (Queue Tarrantino argument..) Always seemed like a nice guy as well.