INVENTING THE DRAGON [203 - 209]

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INVENTING THE DRAGON

The process of turning me into a star began the very next day. I met Willie for lunch—his treat, to welcome me back to Hong Kong—and was told a little bit more about the company’s plans.

“First we do New Fist of Fury,” he said. “We’re calling it a remake, but it’s not a remake, really. All of the original stars will be playing their roles from the first film, but it will be a completely new story. More of a sequel, in fact.” 

I nodded, wolfing down my food. It’s always hard for me to concentrate on business when there’s a meal in front of me. 

“Of course, before anything else, we’ll have to sign you to a contract. Standard operating procedure, you know,” he said. “All by the book.” 

“Could I have another bowl of rice?” 

Willie smiled benevolently. “Anything you want, dear boy.” He gestured with one finger and a waiter quickly brought a steaming, fresh bowl of white rice to the table. 

I decided I could get used to this kind of star treatment

.

After lunch, we went back to Lo Wei’s offices, and I proudly signed my first-ever acting contract. The agreement was pretty much the same as most contracts back in those days. I agreed to act exclusively for Lo for eight years, receiving U.S.$400 per month, and an additional U.S.$400 at the completion of each movie. I’d have to work on whatever projects Lo wanted me to work on. I’d have to play whatever roles Lo wanted me to play. And Lo would have the power to veto any major decision in my life—according to the contract, I couldn’t even get married without his approval. (“Why would women pay money to watch a married hero?” said Willie philosophically. “Besides, marriage is a distraction! You’re young; your career should come first.”)

It sounds pretty harsh, and I guess it was. You have to remember, though, this was back in 1975, and it was Hong Kong, not Hollywood. Here in America, the stars are very powerful; they have agents and managers, and they have control over every aspect of their professional lives. Hong Kong has never really given up the studio system. Actors still work under contract, and they still don’t have the kind of clout you’d expect. Even the very biggest stars often work on two or three films back to back, 

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shuttling from production to production, and sacrificing sleep—and their personal lives—in the process. 

Hong Kong stars are workers, doing a difficult and often tiresome job. The rewards can be great, but we don’t have the illusion that what we do is glamorous. That stuff is made up by the tabloids and magazines. 

After I signed the contract, Lo introduced me to the other members of the company’s skeleton staff. Everyone seemed very nice, but the person I felt most at home with was Madame Lo, who reminded me of my big sisters back at the academy. She was in her early thirties, ten years older than me (and quite a bit younger than her husband), but she treated me very much like a son. 

In fact, a few years later, she had to have an operation that left her unable to have children. When Willie and I went to visit her at the hospital, she was heartbroken and crying. “Don’t worry,” I told her then. “I’ll be your son.”

And from that point on, I always called her “Mother,” and it always made her smile. 

I never really understood her relationship with Lo. She was his second wife, and they’d been together for a few years; they would stay together until Lo’s death in 1996. From her appearance, you wouldn’t think she was tough enough to stand up to Lo’s constant shouting and screaming, but of all the important people in Lo’s life, she stayed with him, even when Bruce and Raymond Chow—and later, Willie and I—all left him behind. 

I suppose he was good to her. Underneath all of the bluster, he had a softer side, which he rarely showed to the rest of us. Then again, Ms. Hsu would bring out the best in anybody. 

Lo arrived soon after our introductions were finished, having taken the morning off for one his usual trips to the racetrack. He positively glowed with benevolence; apparently, his chosen horse had come in first, and both the money he’d won and the omen the win represented were enough to put him in a rare good mood. 

“Ah, I see the formalities are completed!” he said, lighting one of his foul cigars. “Put the contract on my desk, Willie, and I’ll sign it later. Right now, we must move on to more important things—the things that will make our boy here into a star.” 

He dropped his body into a chair and motioned for me to stand up. “Okay, Jackie, take off your shirt.” 

I looked at him in confusion. “What?” 

Lo creased his brow in impatience. “Don’t be stupid, boy,” he barked. 

“When I tell you to do something, just do it. You think people are looking at your face in these movies?”

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I looked in Madame Lo’s direction and flushed slightly. She let out a small giggle and covered her mouth. Oh well, I thought. What did I have to lose? I peeled off my T-shirt and, as an afterthought, flexed my muscles. 

Lo nodded. “Not bad,” he said. “It ain’t Bruce Lee, but you work with what you got. Besides, when I started with Bruce, he was nothing—skinny as a stick. But after my special training program…”

I looked over at Willie and Madame Lo as Lo babbled on. Willie was rolling his eyes. Madame Lo was laughing affectionately. Maybe that was the secret to their relationship; Ms. Hsu was able to take her husband’s excesses with a grain of salt. 

Anyway, after Lo finished with his description of how he’d made Bruce into a superman, he returned his attention to me. “Okay, the body checks out. Give me a smile, boy.” 

I grinned on cue. Lo blanched. “Willie, we gotta fix his teeth. Write that down.” Willie was cleaning his glasses and nodded absently. 

“While we’re at it, we should do something about your eyes. The audiences like big eyes. There’s an operation that’ll take care of that. Willie, write that down too.”

Willie stared at his fingernails, still nodding. I choked. “An operation?”

Lo furrowed his brow again. “Did I tell you to trust me or did I tell you to trust me? Besides, what’s a little operation to someone who jumps off buildings for a living, eh?” He had a point. 

“Now, the most important thing of all, boy. Your name. What’s your name?”

I looked at him like he’d flown in from Mars. “Huh? My name’s Jackie,” I said. 

“No, you dolt, your Chinese name,” he roared. 

I considered my options. “Well, Kong-sang, I guess.”

Lo threw up his hands. “Kong-sang?” What kind of name is that for a star? Willie!”

Willie sighed and turned his attention to his boss. “He’s been using the name Yuen Lung, Lo.”

Lo repeated it to himself under his breath. “Yuen Lung. Yuen Lung. Well, it ain’t bad, but it doesn’t quite do it for me. A stage name has to have punch. It’s gotta say that you’re the top of the heap. A hero.” 

Madame Lo piped up with a suggestion. “How about Yun Lung?” she said. “It sounds like Yuen Lung, and it’s very pretty—‘cloud dragon.’”

The boss waved his hand impatiently. “Pretty ain’t what we’re looking for here. Besides, a dragon in the clouds can’t be seen, right? Doesn’t exactly shout success for a movie star.” 

“How about Zi Lung?” I said. Zi lung means “child of the dragon.” 

“Forget it,” said Lo. “You’re a hero, not a kid, kid. We don’t want people to think you’ll grow up to be a dragon someday, we want people to say, ‘Hey, this guy’s already a dragon.’”

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Finally, Willie chimed in. “How about Sing Lung?” he said. 

Sing Lung means “already a dragon.” 

Lo snorted and tried to come up with reasons to dismiss that suggestion as well. After a few minutes, however, he conceded that Sing Lung was as good as we were probably going to get. 

And that’s how I got the name by which I’ve been known ever since: Jackie Chan Sing Lung—

A new dragon for a new generation. 

I was filled with excitement when shooting began on New Fist of Fury. I’d woken up early that morning, eaten a big breakfast, and nearly ran over to the set. Willie was already there, deep in discussion with the director of photography. Lo, of course, wouldn’t get there until much later in the morning. There seemed to be some agitation in Willie’s usually serene features, and I trotted up to him to find out what was wrong. 

“Morning, Willie,” I said. “What’s going on?” 

Willie looked up and raised an eyebrow at me. “Good morning, Jackie. Well, it seems that the stunt coordinator that we’d hired for this film has suffered an accident, and of course we ‘d hate to hold up production to find a new one,” he said. “It’s a bit of a concern.” 

I blinked. “Why look for a stunt coordinator when you have the best one in town right here?” 

Willie looked surprised, and then nodded in agreement. “Quite right, dear boy!” he said. “You don’t mind stunt coordinating in addition to performing?” 

It certainly didn’t bother me. To tell the truth, I was far more confident about my action direction than my acting. “Do I get more money?” 

Willie looked up at the sky as he calculated in his head. “Er, yes, about nine thousand Hong Kong dollars, I suppose. 

Nine thousand dollars? “That’s three times what you’re paying me to be the lead actor!”

He looked at me sheepishly. “Well, yes.” He said. “But you’re an experienced stunt coordinator, and a rookie actor. It’s logical, if you think about it.”

He patted me on the shoulder again. “Potential, Jackie. You have to think potential.”  

I looked at him, dumbfounded, and then shrugged and headed over to wardrobe. That’s Hong Kong showbiz. 

My costar in the film was Nora Miao, who played Bruce’s girlfriend in the original Fist of Fury. She was beautiful and very kind. I’d worked with actresses before, 

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some very big names, but this was the first time I’d worked with a star as a peer. When I had problems with my lines, she helped me out, and as a stunt coordinator, I found her very easy to work with. Though she wasn’t a martial artist, she was flexible and athletic, and she carried off her fight sequences quite gracefully. 

I, on the other hand, was awkward and stiff as an actor. Part of the problem was my discomfort with the role I was expected to play—intense and angry, a screaming demon with a heart full of vengeance. 

Lo Wei wanted me to be the new Bruce Lee, and that went against my whole personality. The experience was frustrating, and I knew that I wasn’t doing my best. 

“I’m terrible,” I said to Willie, after shooting wrapped one evening. 

We were sitting in a quiet local bar, drinking beer and trying to release the tensions of the day. Lo had been in a nasty mood from the moment he arrived on the set, screaming at everyone within earshot, even driving poor Nora to the brink of tears with one of his tirades. After several hours of throwing tantrums, Lo left the set in a rage, ordering the cinematographer to finish the day’s shooting by himself. Most of the afternoon’s sequences were fight scenes anyway, so I found myself in the unusual position of serving as acting director, suggesting setups and camera positions to the bemused D.P. (director of photography). 

Willie exhaled a plume of smoke, and stared off into the distance. “It hasn’t been a very easy shoot so far, has it, Jackie?” 

I leaned my chin on my arms and stretched forward against the bar. “I just don’t know if I’m cut out for this, Willie. Lo wants me to be Bruce—you know, a Chinese superman. That isn’t my style.”

“Mmm,” said Willie, taking a sip of his drink. “No, it isn’t, is it. Well, the truth is, Jackie, it’s not anybody’s style—other than Bruce’s. It’s a sticky situation. Everyone is looking to replace Bruce Lee, not just us. There are producers traveling all over Asia—Korea, Malaysia, China, everywhere—telling people, ‘Hello, you look a little bit like Bruce Lee; come on, I’ll sign you up.’ There are actors out there who are doing nothing but watching Bruce’s movies, imitating Bruce, trying to turn into Bruce. I’m sure it’s enough to drive someone nuts.” 

“It’s driving me nuts.” I leaped off my stool and struck a mock ferocious pose. “Here comes the new martial arts hero, Bruce Liu! I mean, Bruce Lai! Bruce Leung!” I hopped from foot to foot, shadowboxing. “Bruce Table! Bruce Lamp! Bruce Chair!”

Shouting a bloodcurdling war cry, I slammed my fist down on the bar, then faked a scream of pain, shaking my hand in mock agony. Stumbling backward, I fell into a chair, tipped it over, and rolled into an upside-down position, then stood up holding the seat of my pants as if I’d ripped them, a mock embarrassed expression on my face. 

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Then, as if nothing had happened at all, I sat back at the bar and drained my drink. Willie, who’d looked shocked when I began my antics, was now laughing and applauding silently. “And that, I suppose, is your style?”

I shrugged and motioned to the bartender. “I’ll have another beer, mister.” 

“Make that two,” said Willie. “Make that two.” 

We were sitting in the office, our nerves on edge, waiting for Willie to arrive with the box office returns. Lo was puffing madly away on one of his infernal cigars, while I briskly swept the office floor with an old straw broom, working off my anxiety. 

It wasn’t my job, but I did it out of habit. Despite being away so many years, my training under Master stayed with me, and it probably will for the rest of my life. Even today, when no one’s around, I occasionally sweep the floor at the headquarters of the JC Group. 

It drives Willie crazy. “What if someone comes in and sees Jackie Chan acting like a janitor?” he always tells me. I don’t care. I think it’s nice to be tidy. 

I’d finished sweeping, and was emptying the wastebaskets when Willie finally arrived. He struggled with the door for nearly a minute before getting it open, then walked in, tossing his coat onto a chair. He didn’t look happy. 

“What is it?” snapped Lo. “Don’t just stand there like a fool; give us the news!”

Willie quoted a figure that sent Lo flying into a fit.

“You gotta be kidding me,” he said. Willie stared at Lo without blinking, until the director finally tossed his cigar butt into a nearby trash can—which, fortunately, I’d just emptied—and stomped out the door and down the stairs, slamming it behind him. 

I slumped down onto a desk; I’d been through this before. “I guess my luck hasn’t changed,” I said to Willie. “I should just get my return ticket to Australia now. Before the company goes bankrupt.”

Willie sat down next to me. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jackie; the company will be just fine,” he said. “Despite Lo’s little tantrum, the truth is, we’ll probably make the film’s cost back in Southeast Asia. I’m in charge of sales here, and frankly, I’m pretty good at my job. After all, I’m not just here to decorate the office.”

He pulled a pack of smokes out of his jacket pocket, tapped it on one end, removed a cigarette, and lit it. He looked around. “The office is looking remarkably nice today.” And then he noticed the broom leaning against the wall near my shoulder. 

“I thought I told you not to do that, Jackie.”

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“I know.”

“It’s not necessary.” 

“I know.”

I sighed and picked up the broom to put it away. As I walked toward the closet, I spun it rapidly in my hands, fending off an imaginary attack.

“That’s more like it,” he said, smiling. “That’s what you’re here for. And don’t forget it.”