Hong Kong and global film icon Jackie Chan received a Profession Leopard award on Saturday night and an enthusiastic welcome on the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. And on Sunday morning, the legendary multi-hyphenate shared insights into his profession during a chat on the festival that drew a big crowd that began lining up outside the cinema well ahead of time.
Chan recalled working as a young stunt guy with Bruce Lee on Fist of Fury. “Bruce Lee tapped my shoulder [and said] ‘great’,” after several takes of a scene filled with pain, he told the audience.
Chan also shared how he earned much respect from people at a bowling alley when he brought Bruce Lee there, adding that he himself was a very good bowler.
After Lee’s death, Chan was asked to remake Fist of Fury, but it surely was the “fallacious script, fallacious character,” he felt. “The film just didn’t make any box office.” The filmmakers wanted him to change into the brand new Lee, with the poster even saying “the brand new Bruce Lee [in big letter] Jackie Chan [in very small print,” the star said. “The directed wanted me [to do] all the pieces like Bruce Lee. I’m not Bruce Lee.”
One in all Chan’s suggestions for industry longevity: At all times be open to and look to vary and evolve. For instance, he said he learned to sing because every time he showed up for TV interviews, hosts would ask him to do a fight sequence with them. “Singing is simpler,” Chan said to laughs.
Later in his profession, “I desired to be an Asian Robert De Niro,” the star shared, explaining that TV and other hosts would all the time introduce him while making a martial arts gesture. “No person introduces Robert De Niro” with a martial arts gesture, Chan said, earning laughs.
So he desired to became appreciated as “an actor who can fight,” not simply an motion star known for his stunts. “Only now they are saying: ‘Jackie is a superb actor’,” Chan offered. “And that’s why you gave me this award.”
Will Smith and the Karate Kid remake gave Chan that likelihood to depart the fighting to the following generation. “I had change into a master,” Chan said about his role.
Chan has all the time made motion scenes look easy, but he all the time had respect for the danger. “I’m not a Superman. I’m scared each time I do a stunt,” he shared.
Chan on Sunday also discussed how studios today are focused on business and money greater than the art of film, saying he hopes his profession saw him make something greater than money. “Straight away, plenty of big studios usually are not filmmaker, they’re business guys,” he said. “Today, it’s very difficult to make a superb movie.”
While he has been known for his discipline, Chan shared that he was “lazy and naughty” and “I liked fighting once I was young.”
Fighting was also a theme the day before. ”I’m 71. I still can fight,” the star had said in his Saturday awards acceptance speech to the delight of the gang. “Also, this yr I’m within the film industry for 64 years.”
As a part of a tribute to his profession, Chan also got here to Locarno to introduce his movies Project A (1983) and Police Story (1985), on each of which he worked as star and director.
“As a Hong Kong cinema fan — I’ve written three books on Hong Kong — Jackie Chan is a dream come true,” Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro recently told THR.
After they first unveiled Chan as this yr’s Profession Leopard honoree, Locarno organizers lauded him as an “Asian megastar, master filmmaker, and Hollywood mainstay beloved for motion movies that bridged the gap between East and West.”
Added Nazzaro: “Director, producer, actor, screenwriter, choreographer, singer, athlete, and daredevil stuntman, Jackie Chan is each a key figure in contemporary Asian cinema and one whose influence has rewritten the principles of Hollywood cinema. From his years on the China Drama Academy under Master Yu Jim-Yuen, working at a really young age as a stuntman in King Hu’s masterpiece A Touch of Zen, Chan has continually reinvented martial arts cinema and far beyond it.”