Jackie Chan continued...

"I don't know how the intense training affected me as a child or shaped me as an adult. All I know is that I draw all my creativity for fight directing from those years of arduous training. But I would never put my kids through it and would never tell anyone to do the same thing."

Between the hours of intense opera training, Jackie appeared in old-style Hong Kong "singing" films and was eventually seen as a stuntman in several Bruce Lee movies. Most of the top Hong Kong fight director/choreographers are graduates of Chinese opera school, where they learn a wide range of acrobatics, weaponry skills, and martial arts.

From 1976 to 1978 Chan, cursed as "the next Bruce Lee," starred in a series of kung fu quickies that were all box office flops. However, the fight sequences in these pictures contain a commanding excitement. In Snake and Crane Art of Shoalin (1978), the final fight is loaded with intricate, hair-raising maneuvers as Chan eludes three spear-wielding assailants for over five minutes. Spinning, ducking, and parrying, he evades the spear points with stunning accuracy.

Later in 1978, Jackie's knack for making the complex look humorously simple was revealed in Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (aka Eagle's Shadow) in which he plays a bumpkin who learns to fight in spite of himself. This new comic persona was carried over into a series of similiar productions, Drunken Master and Fearless Hyena (both 1979), culminating in the classic The Young Master (1980), which featured an excruciating fight sequence (full-force kicks, punches, and body slams) during the last 20 minutes.
Jackie was now primed for his American debut in The Big Brawl (1980), directed by Robert Clouse, who helmed Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon. But Chan met with Hollywood's refusal to listen to constructive advice.

"[Clouse] didn't see eye-to-eye on how a fight scene should be put together and how simple things can make a scene have more flair. There is a roller skate race in the film, and I told him I could do flips while skating to make the scene more visually appealing. Yet he would not bend on being in total control. It's a pity. I thought with all my fight experience and choreography that he might have listened to me, even a little."

Chan's second main American film, The Protector (1985), directed by Jim Glickenhaus, was also a creative and financial failure. Chan made cameo appearances in Hal Needham's The Cannonball Run (1981) and Cannonball Run II (1984). Once again, he was not allowed to fully display his phenomenal abilities. But Jackie, who began directing his own pictures, took note of the outtakes at the end of the Cannonball films, and decided to include scenes of often near-fatal mishaps at the end of his subsequent productions.

Jackie has always been known for his dangerous stunts, the most celebratedand craziestin the industry. In the highly successful Dragon Lord (1982), a soccer-style melee shows Chan and others falling from high balconies, landing onto the ground headfirst, without the use of safety equipment, wires, harnesses or mats. In Project A (1984) he dangles precariously from the top of a clock tower; his fall to the ground is interrupted only by two flimsy window awnings. Landing on his head, he staggers to his feet and walks away in pain. At the end of Project A II (1987), Jackie stands atop a 50-foot billboard-like wall. As it leans to the right and eventually topples, he runs down the side of the wall opposite to the direction of the fall.

So many stunt people were hurt during the making of Police Story (1985) that no one, regardless of money, wanted to work with Chan again. Undaunted, Jackie organized his own fight group. "If it takes me months just to get a few minutes of great fights, that's okay," he remarks. "People say I'm crazy, taking so much time, but I'm also the best and everyone always anxiously awaits the release of the next Jackie Chan film."

However, in Armour of God (1986) he gave too much for his audience. While sliding down a steep hill on a wicker basket, he crashed headfirst into a tree. Bleeding profusely, he was hospitalized for three weeks and was close to death. Since then, Jackie has calmed down, reluctantly, and will use one of his two doubles if a stunt is too dangerous. Plus, there's the unavoidable and irreversible affects of age. How long can this grueling stunt work go on?

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