Jackie Chan

Biography

Jackie Chan was born April 7, 1954 during the Year of the Horse. His parents were Charles and Lee-Lee Chan. The Chan’s were extremely poor, having recently fled mainland China for Hong Kong (Poolos 8). In his autobiography, Chan claims he was born by cesarean section at twelve months gestation. A large baby, Chan weighed twelve pounds at birth, causing his mother to nickname him Pao-Pao, which means “cannonball” in Chinese. His parents were so poor that the doctor offered to adopt/buy him for $26 US (Chan 5). His parents declined and brought him home to the French ambassador’s house, where Charles worked as a cook and Lee-Lee worked as a housekeeper.

Chan’s father believed that “pain gives you discipline. Discipline is at the root of manhood. And so, to be a real man, one must suffer as much as possible” (Chan 10). Charles Chan also believed that “learning kung fu was the same as learning how to be a man” (Chan 12). Therefore, from the age of four, Chan was awakened by his father each morning around five. They would run for miles, then strength train, then Charles would teach Jackie principles and moves of kung fu (Chan 11). Because he knew how to fight, Chan got in a lot of fights as a child. Most of them evolved as Chan defended friends being picked on. Chan didn’t mind being bullied himself, but when they turned on his friends Chan would defend them (Chan 13).

When Chan was seven, his parents moved to Australia to work in the Hong Kong embassy there. They wanted him to get a good education, so they indentured him for ten years to the Peking Opera Research Institute. To American sensibilities, the Peking Opera Research Institute was a cross between the circus and the army. J. Poolos’ biography on Chan describes the daily routine:


“Every morning, he would awaken at five and start training immediately. He worked his voice; ran; practiced stick fighting; worked on kicks; and practiced jumping, hapkido, judo, karate, and boxing. Often, he’d repeat more of the same training before the day was through. The rigorous schedule was nonstop. To bed at midnight and up again at five...Each session would last two hours, and then he’d have to run to the next instructor for a different type of training. He didn’t have time for anything but training. Anyone who got tired from the day-to-day grind was punished in any number of ways that are considered abusive by today’s standards. The boys were routinely threatened with physical punishment, starvation, and the withholding of privileges. Canings with bamboo sticks were a daily routine for most of the students. Land short on a jump or miss a dance step, and out came the stick. Students were also subjected to cruel endurance tests, including headstands for up to eight hours. Sometimes the teachers required students to assume the horse stance (where the legs are wide apart with the feet facing forward) while holding a bowl of water. If a student spilled even a drop, he or she was brutally beaten” (Poolos 19).


As tough as it was, as an adult, Chan has spoken at length about how grateful he was to his master there for the rigorous training he received there. His successful career has been a direct result of his training at the Peking Opera Research Institute. It was also where he met his best friends Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, who he would successfully work with throughout his career (Poolos 22).

Chan finished school at age 17 and tried to find work in the film industry. He quickly made friends with a tenacious bunch of stunt men. They called their philosophy of living lung fu mo shi, which translated to English means “dragon tiger.” Chan has described their philosophy as “Power on top of power, strength on top of strength, bravery on top of bravery. If you were lung fu mo shi, you laughed at life before swallowing it whole” (Poolos 31).

One of Chan’s first film roles was a bit part as one of the many fighters Bruce Lee defeats in Fist of Fury. It was on the set of Fist of Fury that Chan met Willy Chan, who would have an enormous impact on Chan’s career (Poolos 36). He kept only finding small roles and bit parts and quickly ran out of money. Broke, Chan moved to Australia to live with his parents (Poolos 39). It was there, while working on a construction site, that he received his US screen name: Jackie Chan. A friend of Chan’s parents took Chan to work with him at a construction site. Believing the other men wouldn’t be able to pronounce Chan’s name, the friend called him by his own name: Jack. Because Chan was smaller than the “original” Jack, he quickly became Jackie and the name stuck (Poolos 44). Chan felt unhappy and unfulfilled in Australia and was thrilled when Willie Chan called to cast him in director Lo Wei’s remake of Bruce Lee’s hit Fist of Fury.

Chan quickly flew back to Hong Kong to begin filming Fist of Fury. Before filming began, director Lo Wei paid to have Chan’s appearance surgically “Westernized,” including straightening his teeth and surgically widening his eyes. Lo Wei also gave Chan his Chinese screen name: Sing Lung, which translated to English means “already a dragon” (Poolos 45). The stunt coordinator was injured while filming Fist of Fury, so Chan stepped in. He was surprised that his salary as stunt coordinator was exponentially higher as stunt coordinator than his salary as star of the film, but Willie Chan explained that he was being paid as an experienced stunt coordinator and a novice actor (Poolos 50). While Chan was grateful to work on the film, Lo Wei forced him to fight and act as Bruce Lee had done, both of which were far from Chan’s style. “On camera, Lee was dark, grim, and intense. It just wasn’t Chan’s—or any other actor’s—style. Chan was more comfortable with humor, the sillier the better. By then he had become a huge fan of Buster Keaton’s silent movies and the Marx Brothers’ comedies, and his instinct was to affect a style of hyper-animated fighting moves and to work slapstick comedy into his fight scenes from time to time” (Poolos 51). Perhaps because he was forced to act and fight in Lee’s style, Fist of Fury was the dawn of Chan’s style: Perpetual Motion Technique. “Its premise is the maintenance of continuous body motion throughout the entire fight sequence to give the impression of non-stop action. Fight sequences in his films typically occur amid elaborate sets, and combat covers a great deal of space, the result of Chan’s traversal of horizontal and vertical distances. Chan’s stuntwork directs viewers’ attention to his physical interaction with surrounding architecture...Such interaction makes viewers aware of the real spatial relationships and structural properties of the objects displayed” (Willis 125).

After Fist of Fury, Chan moved on to do other movies with other directors. These did a lot better at the box office because he was allowed to do what he did best: be Jackie Chan. Lo Wei was angry that his investment—Chan—was making money (and lots of it) for other directors. He sent the Chinese mafia, the Triads, to “convince” Chan to come back. Instead, Chan escaped to the US. While in the US, Chan had a minor role in the movies Battle Creek Brawl and Cannonball Run (Poolos 69). Chan was unimpressed by both the non-contact fighting style found in American films and the casual filmmaking style of US directors and it turned him into a perfectionist. Upon his return to Hong Kong, he advocated for a return to authenticity: real blows that could be shot using multiple cameras simultaneously as there would no longer be “misses” from fake hits (Little). His first film upon his return to Hong Kong was directing Dragon Lord. While filming Dragon Lord, Chan broke the world record for amount of takes on a single scene by shooting a particular scene 2,900 times. After Dragon Lord flopped at the box office, Chan realized he was unhappy with the way his career was turning out. He reunited with his friends from The Peking Opera Institute, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, and made a string of extremely successful films (Poolos 76). By staying true to his own film style and roots, Chan has had incredible success worldwide. Chan is Hong Kong’s, and all of East Asia’s, largest box-office draw; he has been so since the mid-80s (Willis 119). His films distributed in Western markets have been identified as the most accessible Asian films to non-Asian audiences, especially those with conventional action or spy plots. Those set in China or Hong Kong or with traditional martial art plots haven’t been re-released in the US because cultural specificity prevents Western audiences from connecting with the plot or characters (Willis 122).

Qualities Found in Jackie Chan Films

I. Comedy A Jackie Chan action film consists of a mix of wild physical comedy with spectacular stunts (Little 25). Chan’s characters “function as both the source and target of physical comedy” (Willis 114). From Chan’s perspective, comedy provides male heroes with a source of power and independence and also prompts audiences to identify with the protagonist’s “vulnerability and self-effacement” (Willis 118). His comedic characters illustrate how serious and dour opponents are ineffectual (Willis 124).

II. Stunts & Fights Chan has said, “I’m always trying to imagine funny and dangerous stunts. I always think of the stunts first and of how many I’ll be able to put in the film” (Little 25). Ironically, Chan hates violence, though he loves action. He prides himself on choreographing exciting and realistic fight scenes, but they are never graphically violent. There is no swearing, not a lot of blood. Chan has compared a good film fight to a tap dance (Little 132). He also says that while anyone can do stunts, the real skill is in planning and choreographing the stunts. Chan says, “I don’t think the stunts are anything special. What I’m proud of is my choreography technique. My technique is more difficult than doing the stunt. You’re talking about my jumping over a helicopter, hanging onto objects that are very high up—anybody can do that. I’m just being honest. But if you’re talking about my technique, like doing a turning kick, coming down, throwing punches—boom! boom! boom!—and blending that with acting and comedy, that’s more difficult than doing the stunt” (Little 137).

III. Outtakes The outtakes during the credits of Cannonball Run so impressed Chan that he has incorporated them into his movies ever since (Little 33). As Chan himself has said, “Everybody knows Jackie Chan is crazy” and the outtakes have proven this repeatedly (Willis 132).

Quotes

On what makes his movie fights so good: “Choreography! Action or martial arts choreography is so important. The camera angles, the editing, the tempo of the fight, all of these things are very important. In real life you can be the greatest martial artist or greatest street fighter of all time, but if you have poor choreography, editing - or if you don’t understand how to put together a cinematic fight scene - you aren’t going to look that good” (Little 118).

On doing his own stunts: “I knew I had to be different. I always wanted to do something nobody else can do. With special effects, anybody can be Superman. But nobody else can be Jackie Chan” (Little 26).

On Bruce Lee style vs. Jackie Chan style: “Bruce Lee was the best at what he did. No one can do it better. So why try? People want to see living ideas, not dead bones. Bruce was a success because he was doing things no one else was doing. Now everyone is doing Bruce. If we want to be successful, we need to do the opposite. Bruce kicked very high. I say we should kick as low to the ground as possible. Bruce screamed when he hit someone to show his strength and anger. I say we should scream to show how much hitting someone hurts your hand. Bruce was Superman, but I think audiences want to see someone who is just a man, like them. Someone who wins only after making a lot of mistakes, who has a sense of humor. Someone who’s not afraid to be a coward” (Poolos 59).

Sources

Chan, Jackie. I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998. Print.

Little, John, and Curtis Wong, ed. Jackie Chan. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1999. Print.

Poolos, J. Jackie Chan. 1st ed. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 2002. Print.

Willis, Andy, ed. Film Stars. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Print.