THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996 TAG: 9602240045
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
``ONLY `JURASSIC PARK' is bigger than me,'' Jackie Chan was saying. ``For real.''
In spite of the boldness of the statement, he didn't sound like he was bragging.
``There is `Jurassic Park' - No. 1,'' Chan said, holding his hand above his head to signify. ``Then, Jackie Chan, me, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 and so on.''
That's in Asia - and just about everywhere else other than America.
Jackie Chan is arguably the most loved movie star in the world and undeniably the biggest non-Hollywood star. In the United States, he has enthusiastic cult followers, called Chan-atics, who own every one of his 30-some action videos. But the mainstream has largely eluded him.
That's all changing this weekend. ``Rumble in the Bronx,'' a movie that features Jackie dangling from a hovercraft, waterskiing in tennis shoes and jumping from a roof to a balcony, opens in 1,500 theaters in the United States.
He uses no stunt doubles and he does it all with a mischievous, boyish grin. Sparked by this world-class daredevil, ``Rumble'' a film that brings Hong Kong-style movie madness into American malls.
To get a close look for himself, Jackie interrupted filming the last scenes for his next movie, ``First Strike - The CIA Story,'' and flew from Hong Kong to New York.
``I not so sure about the American market,'' he said in imperfect but eloquent English. ``The American market almost kill me before.''
He bounds into the room of the Essex House Hotel, just off New York's Central Park, with the energy that suggests he was looking for something, maybe a table or a chair, to jump over. At 5-feet-9, he is a youthful-looking 41, with a grin as infectious as any virus in the land. It's difficult to look into his face and not smile back.
``Why I not big star in America before now?'' he repeats my question, beaming with glee, as if failing in the American market was of little consequence. ``Is easy to answer. Jackie's action is not power - not one-punch. I am not fighting the real fight. Americans like BOOM, one punch. And you're out. Americans like to take action movies seriously. They like superheroes. I am not superhero.''
Elated now, moving about the room, he says: ``See this table? In American movie, Stallone would break this table with one punch. Is impossible. No one could crush this table with one blow.''
Explaining the basic difference between his style and that of American action heroes, he simply says, ``When someone pulls a gun on me, I scared.
``If 25 guys come up against me, I am, most definitely, the underdog.''
Chan's fight scenes are carefully choreographed, with the music chosen first and the action set to the tempo. ``I want everyone to feel they are dancing with me,'' he says.
He often uses inanimate objects as part of the fight scenes - sofas, chairs, refrigerators, ladders, skis, bottles, skateboards. He seldom, though, uses a gun or a knife.
His image has been carefully calculated. Stanley Tong, the young director of ``Rumble in the Bronx'' who accompanied Jackie from Hong Kong, said there is only one requirement to get Chan to try dangerous stunts. ``Jackie must be happy. All I need to do for him to make a great movie is to get him interested, get him challenged. He likes to take challenges.''
Although mainstream American theaters have not shown most of his movies, Chan has been a darling of the usually elitist American critics for decades.
``He is the last good guy,'' Time magazine proclaimed. ``In American terms, he's a little Clint Eastwood (actor-director), a dash of Gene Kelly (imaginative choreographer), a bit of Jim Carrey (rubbery ham), and a lot of silent movie clowns: Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.''
In reviewing ``Police Story 3: Supercop,'' the Los Angeles Times raved, ``Chan recalls what Hollywood has largely forgotten: how to make pure escapist entertainment that's fast, light, topical but unpretentious.''
After ``Police Story'' (1986) became a surprise hit at the New York Film Festival, with Chan performing one of his most dangerous stunts, a slide down a pole decorated with live Christmas lights, the New York Times wrote that ``for more than 20 years, he has refused to let a stuntman fill in for him during dangerous scenes.''
Chan comes from poverty and is, even today, uneducated.
He was born Chen Gan Shen to Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. His nickname was A-Puo (Cannonball). Barely able to feed him, his parents almost sold him, for $26, to the British doctor who delivered him. He was still a baby when his parents moved to Canberra, Australia, where they have worked as maid and cook in the Hong Kong Embassy for the past 40 years.
``Very poor family,'' he said. ``I still uneducated, but my father very good cook. I hope my son, now age 13, will speak English but be able to read and write in Chinese also. He will be educated.''
At age 7, Chan was sent back to Hong Kong and indentured to the strict Chinese Opera Research School, where for the next 10 years he was schooled in the rigorous discipline of the Peking Opera. He is still a little bitter about those years. Students were whipped or starved if there was any hint that they were slacking off.
``Very strict, but Jackie learns much,'' he confides. He was schooled in acting, singing, dance, mime, martial arts and acrobatics but not in basic ``book'' education.
Upon graduation, at 17, he became a movie extra and stuntman for the Shaw Brothers studios. He eventually became stunt coordinator and, in 1971, got his first role in something called ``Little Tiger from Canton.''
For years, and at least nine films, the studio featured him in a series of routine blood-and-thunder films.
After Bruce Lee's death under mysterious circumstances in 1973, the studios tried, in seven quickies from 1976 to 1978, to make him into a new Bruce Lee. The films were failures.
With a martial arts parody, ``Half a Loaf of Kung Fu'' in 1978, the real Jackie Chan was born. When he was loaned to independent producer Ng See Yuen, he transformed the Hong Kong movie industry with the kung fu comedy of ``Snake in the Eagle's Shadow'' and ``Drunken Master.'' In ``The Fearless Hyena'' (1979), his chopsticks food fight became an instant classic. Box office records were broken in Hong Kong, and he became a major star in Japan.
He came to America to appear in ``The Cannonball Run.'' The all-star film was a box office hit, but he was barely noticed in it.
``I buy house in Hollywood - the whole thing,'' he says. ``I think because people come to see Burt Reynolds and Farrah Fawcett, they also will notice Jackie. Not so. Burt Reynolds name in big letters. Jackie down in corner, in tiny letters. In Hong Kong, it was other way round. Jackie in big letters, but too late. America almost kill me. I was nobody in America, and my Hong Kong fans were mad. I was almost finished, but I go back to Hong Kong.''
The resulting career in Hong Kong has been a series of action films that would make Schwarzenegger, Norris, Stallone or Eastwood cringe. Jackie hung from a hot air balloon. Jackie jumped from buildings. Always the camera stayed still with no cuts, so that the audience could see the scenes weren't done by doubles.
Chan broke his right ankle in a ``Rumble'' scene in which he had to jump from a bridge to the narrow rim of the moving hovercraft. After only one day off, he finished the film in a cast.
``I can hang from hovercraft without putting weight on ankle,'' he explained.
As always, his film ends with outtakes showing injuries and mistakes that occurred during the filming.
To follow with a counterpunch to ensure the Chan invasion, Miramax plans to release the 1994 comedy ``Drunken Master II'' in America later this year.
If it doesn't take, Jackie Chan won't despair.
``This time, I stay in Hong Kong and make my own movies - not try to go Hollywood,'' Chan said.
``I not one-punch. Jackie punch-punch-punch. Little punches.'' ILLUSTRATION: NEW LINE CINEMA
[Color Photos]
Jackie Chan
NEW LINE CINEMA
Jackie Chan takes care of a bad guy in ``Rumble in the Bronx.''
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB