Jackie chan, american action hero Arise Roby

Jackie Chan, American Action Hero?
- By Arise Roby
ALL AMERICANS LOVE JACKIE!!!
ARISE TRAINING & RESEARCH CENTER

ALL AMERICANS LOVE JACKIE!!!
Whenever Jackie Chan leaves Hong
Kong to make a public
appearance in Shanghai, Taipei
or Tokyo, or in Kuala
Lumpur, Singapore or
Seoul, hundreds—sometimes
thousands—of his fans gather in a
frenzy of adoration. Last
June, Chan, the martial
artist, comic actor and stunt man
who is Asia‟s biggest movie
star, flew to Los Angeles for
MTV‟s annual Movie Awards. He
was met at the airport by about 25
people. Among the signs and
banners held aloft, a bright pink
strip read: ALL AMERICANS
LOVE JACKIE. SOME JUST
DON‟T KNOW IT YET.

Martial arts devotees and patrons
of Chinatown movie houses
have known to love Chan since
the late 1970‟s. More recently,
his signature blend of comedy
and combat, honed over 43
films, has turned him into a cult
icon among a more diverse
audience, including Hollywood
film makers and Generation X
hipsters for whom high-octane
Hong Kong films have become
required viewing. At the MTV
awards, where Chan was given
a Lifetime Achievement Award,
Quentin Tarantino heatedly
proclaimed him a cinematic
virtuoso on the level of Buster
Keaton (one of Chan‟s
acknowledged influences) and
Fred Astaire.

Now that the action-comedy format he
pioneered in Hong Kong has become a
dominant genre in Hollywood, Chan will
try to leap across the chasm separating the
art house from the multiplex. This
Friday, Chan‟s “Rumble in the Bronx” will
close the Sundance Film Festival. On
February 23, New Line will release the
film in 1,500 theaters across the country.
(It broke box-office records in Asia last
year.) This year, Miramax will release the
two movies that preceded Rumble—Crime
Story and Drunken Master II; in the
fall, the Topps Company is publishing a
Jackie Chan comic book miniseries.
Maxine Hong Kingston once
wrote, “Nobody in history has conquered
and united both North America and Asia,”
but at 41, Chan has a chance to do just
that.

“When I‟m making a movie,” he explains, “I always think: „Is children gonna see it? Yes. Is it
cheap dialogue? No. Is it sometimes too violent? No.‟”
What sets Chan apart from the movie stars we
are accustomed to is immediately apparent
on a humid morning in Kwai Chung, a
landfill area outside Hong Kong. Chan
and his crew are shooting a scene from
Thunderbolt, the follow-up to Rumble. A
large derrick holds a two-ton shipping
container high above the ground, swinging
precipitously at the end of a steel
cable, like a railroad car where a
wrecking ball ought to be. Inside, Chan
caroms from side to side, scrambling to
get out before the container strikes its
target, a ramshackle auto garage. Seconds
before impact, Chan leaps down to the
garage‟s second floor, dives over a
balcony railing, turns a midair somersault
and lands on his back—just as the wall
above splinters into oblivion.

In an earlier shoot, Chan
dangled by his hands from
the bottom of the swinging
shipping container. The
night before, he did his own
daredevil driving in a street-
racing scene, several times
turning to admonish his co-
star, Anita Yuen, cringing
next to him in the passenger
seat, with a curt “Shut up!”
when her involuntary cries
of terror threatened to break
his concentration.

Now the crew stops for lunch and Chan
collapses into a chair. He reaches for a
copy of The Apple Daily, a local Chinese-
language tabloid. Die Hard: With a
Vengeance is opening in Hong Kong, and
the paper has a photography feature
about the film‟s special effects. In one
picture, Bruce Willis‟head is shown close
up against a green background, but it‟s
sideways, as if lying on the ground.
The next photograph shows a car barreling
down a busy city street. The third shot
combines the two scenes, producing the
illusion that Willis was actually brave
enough to lie down in the car‟s path.
Chan studies the photographs and shakes
his head ruefully.

First and foremost, Chan is a cinematic Evel
Knievel, devising and performing bravura
acrobatic stunts that straddle the line between
courage and lunacy. The powerful devotion of his
fans is largely a result of how clearly he risks his
life to entertain them. “I want people to come out
of the movie thinking, „Jackie Chan is good,‟
not, „The special effects are good,‟” he has said.
He is both Elvis Presley and Steven Spielberg:
naughty boy and mensch, movie star and
auteur, heartthrob and philanthropist. He
produces his own films and those of other
directors, makes pop records and organizes
charity events, including an annual race-car
extravaganza. He owns a piece of the local
Planet Hollywood, a modeling agency called
Jackie‟s Angels and a shiny, hip store full of Chan
paraphernalia. Cans of a popular herbal soft
drink, Bobo Tea, are labeled “A Jackie Chan
Product.”

“How can I get out from Bruce Lee‟s
shadow?” - Jackie
In 1975, the 21-year-old Chan was chosen to star
in a Bruce Lee sequel. Fiercely
charismatic, Lee had been the first
international superstar out of Hong Kong, and
in the wake of his death, producers were
desperate to find a successor. But the film
Chan made was a commercial failure, and his
next several pictures did just as poorly. He
didn‟t carry himself like Lee. On screen, he
appeared scrawny and lacked authority.  The
problem, as Chan now puts it, was, “How can
I get out from Bruce Lee‟s shadow?” His
solution was simple. Just as Samuel Beckett
made his mark by taking the extreme opposite
tack from his former employer, James
Joyce, Chan set out to become an anti-Bruce
Lee. “I look at Bruce Lee film,” he says.
“When he kick high, I kick low. When he not
smiling, always smiling. He can one-punch
break the wall; after I break the wall, I hurt. I
do the funny face.” ARISE TRAINING & RESEARCH CENTER

He signed a contract with Golden Harvest, he became
the highest-paid actor in Hong Kong
Chan was remade, in a pair of 1978 kung fu
comedies, as an overeager underdog who succeeds
mostly by  accident. Both films were wildly
successful, and Chan, who was being paid $385 a
month, suddenly found himself the object of a
bidding war. When Chan signed a contract with
Golden Harvest, Lee‟s old studio, he became the
highest-paid actor in Hong Kong, a distinction he
has held ever since. Today, his fee is 30 million
Hong Kong dollars per film (about 4 million
American dollars). He also earns a percentage of
the profits, a unique arrangement in Hong Kong. 
More important, Chan was given complete control
over his work. During the next decade, he
wrote, directed, produced and starred in a series of
increasingly ambitious films. He studied old
Hollywood movies, inspired by the outsize comic
stunts and escalating mayhem of Buster Keaton
and Harold Lloyd. In the films of Frank
Capra, Chan discovered a kindred sympathy for
the common man.

“Sometimes,” he says, “everyone‟s asleep, and my mind
is still working. - Jackie
In actuality, Chan is married, to a Taiwanese
actress, Lin Fung-chiao. They have a son,
Jaycee, a shy, skinny 12-year-old who is
much better at video games than at martial
arts. Chan and his wife live separately,
however, and he also sees other women.
Not that he has a lot of leisure time: he is
almost always at work, promoting his work
or thinking about new work. Like the
Buster Keaton character who lives in a
theater in a short film called The
Playhouse, Chan often sleeps at the
Golden Harvest complex while he is
shooting, using his office as a studio
apartment. (It has a shower, refrigerator
and microwave oven.) “Sometimes,” he
says, “everyone‟s asleep, and my mind is
still working. I come downstairs in the
middle of the night and edit.

The Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation
He is also a founder and officer of the Hong Kong
Directors Guild, Performing Artists Guild and
Society of Cinematographers. The Jackie Chan
Charitable Foundation provides scholarships to
young people for education and training in the
arts. When stunt men are injured on his films, he
pays for their medical care. One day in Kwai
Chung, the actresses who play his teen-age
sisters burst into tears after filming a dangerous
shot in which an entire three-story building
crashes down around them. They are unhurt, but
very shaken. Chan takes them aside and recounts
episodes of paralyzing cowardice that he has
experienced over the years. Gradually, the whole
crew gathers around to listen. By the time he is
done, the two girls, along with everyone else, are
laughing. ARISE TRAINING & RESEARCH CENTER

Even if an American wave of Jackie-mania doesn‟t
materialize, Chan says he will have few regrets. Late one
night, he stands outside his production company‟s building
on the Golden Harvest lot. Around the corner, a sound stage
holds an elaborate set—a lavish pachinko parlor—that will
be demolished in a fight scene next week. The parking lot in
front of Chan is filled with high-performance cars and
motorcycles, many of which he owns. The next building over
houses Filmtech, an equipment-rental company he started
as an excuse to buy himself the latest high-tech camera
gear. “Twenty years ago,” he says, looking around, “I work
here as the lowest stunt man. Now I have all this. I am very
happy.”

Jackie chan, american action hero Arise Roby

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