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THE THREE
AMIGOS
While Winners and
Sinners was rocketing to the top of the box office charts, I’d been working
diligently with Edward Tang, my screenwriter, on ideas for my next
project.
Edward had been assigned to
me by Leonard when I’d first signed on with Golden Harvest, and the partnership
had just felt right from the start. Since then, Edward has scripted nearly
all of my films; no other writer I’ve ever worked with has had his amazing
ability to take my stray thoughts or suggestions and spin them into
full-fledged cinematic epics.
He’d been as upset as I was
when Dragon Lord failed. However, while I’d been sulking at home,
Edward had spent his time watching other movies, especially American
blockbusters, trying to find fresh inspiration.
The film that finally excited
him enough to get back to work was Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven
Spielberg’s blockbuster homage to Hollywood’s action history.
Eager to do something
similar—a period piece full of guns and goons and swashbuckling stunts—Edward
came to me with a story he called Pirate Patrol, in which I’d play a
turn-of-the-century Hong Kong coast guard captain forced to work as a land
cop after buccaneers destroy my fleet. Despite the disapproval of the
by-the-books chief of police, I manage to unravel a conspiracy, discover the
secret location of the pirate hideout, and take care of the pirates once and
for all.
I liked the idea. The
script was set in a more modern era than any of my previous films, so the look
of the movie would be unique—like a classic Hollywood film, only with a Chinese
cast and a Hong Kong setting.
I think I mentioned earlier
that I’ve always loved Hollywood’s black-and-white silent classics—the comedies
of Keaton and Lloyd and Chaplin that, even after decades, continue to make
people smile, scream, and laugh. The early silent greats were comic
pioneers, setting a gold standard in screen humor for everyone else who’s
followed since.
What people forget
sometimes is that they were also, in some ways, the first action heroes. Without
special effects and without stunt doubles,
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they did amazing things,
falling and flying, climbing and tumbling, using their bodies to make miracles
on screen.
I’d gotten hooked on the
old silents because much of the story was told physically, which meant that,
despite my limited English, their antics were as funny to me as they must have
been to their original audiences. Maybe funnier, because I understood what
it took to make them happen.
Well, Edward’s story seemed
like a perfect opportunity to bring the comic sensibility of the old Hollywood
silents to Hong Kong cinema. In late-night brainstorming sessions, we
worked to add sequences that would celebrate the great stunts of silent comedy—like
Harold Lloyd’s high-altitude tango with a clock tower from Safety Last,
and Buster Keaton’s intricately choreographed chase sequences.
Actually, I’d already
included an homage to Keaton in Dragon Lord, with a scene where a large
ornamental facade collapses onto me and I survive being crushed because I’m
standing in the exact space where an opening in the facade exists. My
inspiration was Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., in which he misses being
crushed by the falling wall of his house because he happens to be standing in
the doorway. (I did an even bigger version of this stunt later in the
sequel to Pirate Patrol—but that’s getting ahead of myself.) But that
was an exception; in Pirate Patrol, the action style of the silent
classics would be the rule.
For our ambitious ideas to
work, the film’s other principal roles—a straitlaced police officer and a local
con man—had to be played by actors who understood action in the same way I did,
martial artists who could speak the language of my choreography with perfect
fluency.
Deciding who to cast was
hardly a problem. I’d known from the very beginning that there was one
thing that would make this movie complete.
Well, two things, really.
Or, actually, two people:
My Big Brother Samo and my
Little Brother Yuen Biao.
“To old times,” said Samo,
raising a bottle of beer in a toast to me and Yuen Biao.
It was the final day of
production, and after we’d wrapped, he and Yuen Biao and I had celebrated by
going back to the same bar where we’d spent so many evenings back in our
stuntman days. The bar was the site of countless rounds of beer and games
of pool, and even years after we’d gone on to bigger things, it still felt like
home.
“And old friends,” I added,
returning Samo’s toast.
Yuen Biao made a difficult
shot on the billiards table and crowed as the ball dropped. “We should
come back here more often,” he said. “Best table in town.”
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There were a lot of things
we should do more often, I realized. Working with my brothers had been the best
experience in my film career so far. Our different personalities balanced one
another out and brought a special warmth to our on-screen characters. And
their martial arts skills complemented mine perfectly—Yuen Biao the agile
acrobat, Samo the strong and surprisingly nimble brawler. When we worked out
fight scenes, we could almost read one another’s minds, we knew one another so
well. Of course, we had our differences: Samo was Biggest Brother, and he
always demanded respect from us. “Your voice may be loud, Jackie,” he’d
say, “but my voice is louder.” I knew that secretly, and sometimes not so
secretly, he resented the fact that I’d become a big star. That alone
meant that we couldn’t work as a trio forever; they needed their space, to
make careers and identities beyond being “Jackie Chan’s brothers.”
But still, I knew that as a
team, we were stronger and better than any of us were alone. And for as
long as it could last, I wanted us to stick together.
I was right about how good
we were as a team.
Pirate Patrol, which was eventually released as Project A,
was a huge success on every level. It was critically acclaimed. It
made tons of money at the box office. And in many ways, it was a
groundbreaking film in martial arts cinema: it showed that it was possible to
make period films that didn’t feature the Shaolin Temple or wandering warriors,
while keeping the dynamic fight sequences and thrilling stunts that give kung
fu movies their appeal.
I think that a lot of the
success of Project A was a result of the three of us working as
one. On the other hand, Project A was also the first film in which
I did something that has since become my signature:
The really, really, really
dangerous stunt.
The super stunt has become
the thing that makes a Jackie Chan movie unique. People come to see my
films in part because they expect a fast-paced and funny experience. But
the truth is, lots of films are exciting and hilarious. A Jackie Chan
movie has something else: the thrill of high risk.
No blue screens and
computer special effects.
No stunt doubles.
Real action. Real
danger. And sometimes, real and terrible injury.
In shooting my stunts, I’ve
hurt myself in hundreds of ways and nearly died dozens of times. People
have called me crazy, and maybe they’re right, because you need to be a little
crazy to do the things I do. Which isn’t to say that I don’t know the
meaning of the word fear. I’m terrified
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every time I have to put my
body on the line, but somehow, I still manage to do it anyway.
The big stunt in Project
A was a sequence in which, after a wild chase through back alleys and then
up a flagpole, I leap to the top of a clock tower. From there, I drop from
the face of the clock to the earth, more than fifty feet down.
We didn’t have any special
technology to do the stunt. It would simply have to be done, by a real
live human being, and I remembered the words of the stunt coordinator, long
ago, who’d told me not to make a stuntman do anything that I wasn’t willing to
do myself. The chase ended with me on top of the tower; at the end of the
scene, I had to be at the bottom. There was only one way to get from the top of
the tower to the bottom, and that was for me to fall.
To prevent me from smashing
into the ground and bursting like a watermelon, there was a series of cloth
awnings, which I’d hit and rip through one by one—hopefully slowing the speed
of my drop and making it nonfatal.
“Are you sure this is even
possible, Jackie?” Yuen Biao had asked me, looking at me like I was some kind
of idiot for even suggesting the stunt.
“Uh, sure,” I said. “No
problem. We’ll just test it first.”
My stuntmen were not eager
to try the fall themselves, and so we worked out a compromise: a bag of dirt
was dropped from the tower, through the awnings, and to the ground.
The first time we did it,
the bag exploded when it everywhere.
“Not good,” said my head
stuntman, shrugging.
That was an
understatement. We tightened the awnings and tried it again. This
time, the bag survived the fall.
Maybe I would, too.
So the next morning, I
climbed to the top of the tower, and a stuntman helped me out onto the clock
face, where I dangled from one of the hands of the clock, hanging out in space
as the cameras rolled. Minutes went by, the metal of the clock hand
cutting into my palms. And then, finally, I shouted for the stuntman to
pull me back inside.
I kept on imagining the
exploding bag of dirt and thinking, That could be me!
I know that the movie
posters all say that I have “no fear,” but that’s just marketing. Anyone
who really thinks I’m not scared out of my wits when I’m about to do one of
these stunts is nuttier than I am.
The next day, I tried
again. And again I let myself get pulled back in. And again. And
again. And again. For six days, every morning began the
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same
way, with me climbing up to the top of the tower, dangling for a few minutes,
and then bailing out.
“This
is ridiculous,” I said finally, on the seventh day.
“I
told you that a long time ago,” said Samo, who by now was thoroughly tired of
watching me not do the stunt. Though I was the film’s director, Samo was far
more experienced than I was, and throughout the shoot he helped me make
decisions on where to place cameras and how to frame shots. “Let’s just
cut the stunt and move on.”
I
waved him off. “That’s not what I’m saying,” I snapped. “The stunt is
good. I’m the one that’s bad. No more excuses; today I’ll do it for
real.”
This
time, I told the stuntman to leave as soon as I was out hanging on the clock
hand. There was no choice for me now; without someone to help me back
into the tower, the only way for me to get down was to let go and fall.
And
I did.
Free
fall.
The
rip of fabric as I hit the first awning, and then the next, and then finally,
the hard-packed dirt, rolling to muffle the impact as much as possible.
I’d
survived, even though I’d landed hard on my neck. After a little ice was
placed on my injury, I told the crew to set the stunt up again.
“What?”
shouted Samo, his eyes wide. Yuen Biao looked just as shocked. I explained to them
that we hadn’t had enough cameras rolling to get the effect I wanted. We had
just four at the time; later, I’d use as many as ten in order to capture the
angles I wanted all at once.
This
time, however, I figured that I’d have to repeat the stunt—and again, for a
total of three completed takes.
We
needed the takes, but I’ll tell you the truth: I was a little irritated with
myself for chickening out so often earlier, and I wanted to prove to Samo and
Yuen Biao, and everyone else, that I had successfully conquered my fear.
All
three of the successful falls were combined in the final cut of the film. I
didn’t let the footage from some of my uglier attempts go to waste either; I
added it to the end of the movie, running under the credits.
This
was something I’d started to do with Dragon Lord: show the “no goods” of
stunts and fight sequences under the final credits, to make it clear that what
we were doing was real, and really dangerous. Dragon Lord had some
difficult stunts, such as the “bun pyramid” scene in the opening action sequence,
but nothing as wild as the stuff in this movie. For Project A, we
had so many “no goods” from different scenes that I could have made an entire
feature-length blooper reel if I’d wanted to.
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As
my movies got bigger, and the stunts more and more
complex, our “no good” footage files ballooned. To be honest, sometimes
the “no good” footage is a lot more spectacular than the regular footage! But
I run a family operation; if kids saw some of the things that happen to me
and my stuntmen and fellow cast members during our shoots, I don’t think they
could sleep at night.
Saco de areia
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