INFOCUS | INTERVIEW| JACKIE CHAN
The tough Jackie ZLWK DQ HOÀQ FKDUP Introductions are for greenhorn actors, not for veterans and certainly not for living legend Jackie Chan, who has relentlessly enthralled his audience with awesome action for over four decades. The fact that he has a fan following that cuts across age, gender, boundary and class, is no small feat. Even actors of action genre such as Arnold and Sylvester, despite their Greek-god akin chiseled cuts, have not been able to extract the admiration of such a wide demography as Jackie Chan does. ICEC Team
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e it ‘Rush Hour’ or its sequels, grandmas to five-year olds, and everyone in between, enjoy his humor laced spell binding action with equal enthusiasm. While Jackie’s earlier hits of ‘80s , ‘The Fearless Hyena,’ ‘ Half a Loaf of Kung Fu,’ ‘The Young Master’, established him as an action hero, his more recent Hollywood blockbusters such as ‘Shanghai Noon’ and ‘Shanghai Knights’, catapulted him to the posi-
tion of a hero who packs action with the message of love and peace. After ‘Drunken Master’, Chan decided that movies have a larger effect on society and hence started featuring in movies that were devoid of debauchery and violence. The gutsy actor thus focused on action movies but started using props, as regular as table napkins and spoons for novelty in action sequences, thus breaking the monotony of typical kung-fu format. Chan Kongsang aka Jackie has used charms of his
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stunt, dangerous somersaults and lifethreatening multi-storey jumpings, to enthrall fans even when it meant putting life in danger. In a recent interview with ICEC he said, “I have broken every bone in my body doing stunts.” With equal candor, he admits, “I don’t like to do them.” Nevertheless he did, for decades because that is what he knew the best. He did daring action because if he didn’t do them, the risk of getting fired loomed. A choice he could ill-afford in the rising days of his career. Back than
in China, most production houses worked on limited budgets. “A lot of things we could not rehearse, such as jumping off a building, we just did it. It was not like America where you had a calculator to judge wind and speed.” Original stunts (no body doubles) were synonymous to Jackie. This choice gave him his identity and made Chan a Hollywood Jackie. Now, the 59-year old is swearing off the high-action and is focusing on becoming an “actor”, a la (Robert) De Niro, of Asia. Moving beyond action, he now wants to “act” and concentrate on good scripts and is even interested in doing song and dance sequences in Bollywood. One can see a renewed sense of appetite in this producer-director of action–comedies such as ‘Project A’, ‘Police Story’, and the hit period film ‘Mr. Canton and Lady Rose.’ Rising from humble beginnings and scripting a success story does not rest on luck. Jackie remembers moving with 2 USD in his pocket struggling for work. “It was Chinese New Year and there was no work,” he reminisces. With the money, he could only afford bread, that too with anxiousness on how long the feed is going to last. A stoic personality, not for once, does the star cling on to godly sentiments or religious notions to hook his success
there. For him, m, it is sheer hard work all the way. It took him six years to write the movie ‘CZ12 ‘or Chinese Zodiac that he co-produced, wrote, directed and d also starred in. The movie is close to his heart due to the theme which revolves lves around Chinese relics, nationall treasures – the missing pieces of 122 Head Statues of Chinese Zodiac. Talking king about the movie, says Jackie, “Why hy should a country’s historical pieces es be in the museums of other countries? tries? They should be returned back ack to their original countries.” The movie has been made for a purpose, he emphasises. ses. Controversies trail public blic figures and Jackie has been een no exception to this trend. At the 2009 Boao Forum when he made a statement: ement: “We’re too free. Chinesee people should start gaining control”, ntrol”, he drew wrath ath of his fans and nd followers. Sitting ting at New Delhi,, clearing the air, he says that the media dia picked up the worst to attract an audience. Putting his comments in context, ntext, the actor argued what he meant. “If If my son goes wild, takes drugs….I have ve to control him… If I give freedom, youu should know how to use that freedom.. m.. you should use freedom the right way.” y.” India has as a special place in his heart. A good ood relationship between India and China is what he hopes for. It is not a matter of wishful thinking but ut conscious effort that made the hero attended the Chinese Film Festival al (organized by ICEC in June at New w Delhi) by cancelling his Toronto itinerary. nerary. He did not mind taking a commercial ommercial flight in lieu of his chartered rtered bird. The pretty co-stars of ‘CZ12’, CZ12’,’ Yaoxing Tong and Zhang Lan Xin also made the event special. The five-day ve-day Chinese film festival was as inaugurated with Chinese Zodiac. In this photo ia-China Chronicle e takes feature India-China Chronicle ers through Jackie’s our readers India visit. September ber 2 2013 India-China Chronicle |19|