Original subtitles

The motorbike was staged and done and figured out by U.

S. stuntmen, not by Jackie's guys.

I think if Jackie's guys had done it, it would have

been a disaster and someone would have been killed.

Golden Harvest, you know, I talked to them for a while about it and I said,

look, I really like Bruce Lee and his movies, but so far what I've seen from Jackie

has been a lot more comedic and a lot less serious martial arts and action.

And they said, no, he wants to become more

American, more like the kind of films you do.

We really like the Exterminator. We want that kind of edge to it.

And they said...

They said they were willing to finance the film and that I could write it.

And they wanted initially to film it all in Hong Kong.

You know, I think that from their point of view,

they were humoring Jackie a little bit and saying,

oh, yeah, we'll make you a big American star.

But he was a cash cow for them in their local films they were making.

And I think they didn't want to really spend the

effort or the time to shoot in the United States

and they were sort of humoring him.

Oh, yeah, we'll put you up with an American director who's been successful.

But they were much more interested in his Chinese martial arts films.

I pointed that out to them and they agreed.

They said, OK, you can have some of it take place in the United States

and here's the budget we're willing to spend

and give us an outline of what you want to do.

So I outlined The Protector.

And I included a big action set piece in New York that started it off.

And I also said, look, Jackie, if he's going to make it in America,

he's going to have to work with real American actors.

You know, people like Danny Aiello isn't just

someone who shows up and reads the script.

I mean, Danny gets into the character.

He needs an actor who he can relate to and can ad lib a little bit.

One of the problems was they represented.

They represented that Jackie could speak English.

He really couldn't.

He could parrot English.

And he was studying and trying to learn English.

But they also had him doing everything 24 hours a day.

You know, they had him trying to make him a singing star in Japan.

They had his Chinese movies, which were very lucrative.

And they sort of, once again, I think, were humoring Jackie and saying,

yeah, you know, you'll learn English and we'll get you.

Someone to work with.

And Jackie said, I'm going to make the commitment to learning English.

I think Jackie understood English.

When I spoke to him, he understood what I was saying.

But he could not free think in English and he could not ad lib or whatnot.

So his acting was really learning the lines by road and parroting them back.

I'm going to hit the can.

Another round for my two friends.

Got it.

I met Jackie, as I remember it, in Cannes shortly thereafter.

We made a deal to make The Protector.

He was very friendly, very personable.

He obviously had a lot of talent as a comedian and

as a comedic actor with his facial expressions.

And I had seen some of his films and I thought they were interesting.

But personally, I really prefer to.

A little harder edge action.

He said, look, I saw the success you had with The Exterminator.

And interestingly enough, The Exterminator opened

the same week that his film, The Big Brawl, opened.

And we did a lot better than The Big Brawl did.

And he said he wanted to be number one and he

understood that I might know how to do that.

And he didn't in the U.S.

And however, that's what he told me, what he really thought.

And after the film.

Was over and in subsequent years, you know, he said

a lot of stuff that I never understood who he was.

And he never wanted to be Bruce Lee or Clint Eastwood.

But.

Whether or not that was true, he never said it to me.

So and he never complained about the direction of the script or anything like that.

Oh, man, you shouldn't have done that.

My conversations with Golden Harvest was they hope Jackie could be a U.S. star.

But I never got the feeling they cared if he was a U.S. star.

I almost got the feeling that they would have been just as happy if he wasn't a U.S.

star and just kept on in China making these churning out these money making films.

You know, in Cannonball Run, it was a cameo role.

I mean, he he wasn't a central actor in that.

And I think that they threw this to him as a bone.

And I think he said, hey, I'm an actor.

I have talent.

I want to go on.

I want to go on to America.

But if you look at his career in American films, frankly, I

don't know of one that was successful just on its own with him.

You know, he was he was a successful actor.

He was a successful sidekick to other people.

And he did find a little bit of a wider audience

eventually, but he wasn't an he wasn't an American star.

And unless he learned English, could work with actors and understood what, frankly, American

audiences in the world audiences wanted, I think his success would be always in a box.

I don't think he would have broken out from that.

Very difficult.

I do think Jackie tried very hard.

I think he wanted to do a good job.

You know, I think he respected Danny Aiello, who is a great actor.

And while he's certain, while Danny never became a single movie star, like, let's say, Clint Eastwood

or a lead, he certainly did a lot of amazing performances and was considered an actor, a real actor.

And I think Jackie wanted to work with that, try

to make that happen, but he was very distracted.

I mean, there was a section that we shot where we had to

shoot at night for scenes that were allegedly during the day.

I've never done this before.

This is like shooting night for day, not day for night.

And the reason that was is, is because he had to go.

He had to go to Japan and do singing concerts and things like that.

I mean, it was just stupid.

They were using him just to wring money out of him, frankly.

Now, he was obviously a part of that.

This is what he thought.

He thought he would be a singing star and a movie star and everything.

But, you know, I don't want to make it sound like

on the set that we had arguments or problems.

We really didn't.

He was extremely friendly.

And I think it was only afterwards.

When people saw The Protector and realized that his performance

in it was, frankly, just another Jackie Chan performance.

It wasn't anything different.

And I think he became defensive about that and,

you know, threw some shade on the film and on me.

But I never cared or took it seriously.

We're turning south at the Brooklyn Bridge, heading down the river.

Golden Harvest.

No restrictions on me.

They accepted that I would write a big action set piece for New York.

They accepted that I would make it more hard-edged than a normal Jackie Chan film.

And they had some comments on it.

And they asked that I come to Hong Kong to rewrite

certain sections of it based around real locations,

which was the way I like to make films.

I like to go to different locations.

And they encouraged me.

They inspired the writing.

I like the fantastic scene in the Aberdeen Harbor with the Hacklow boat people.

But there was never any massive back and forth with Jackie.

They had a producer who worked for Golden Harvest, David Chan.

No relation to Jackie.

Very nice guy who worked with me on the script.

And there was back and forth.

But there were no real arguments about it.

They asked me if I would make it more comedic.

And I sort of...

Said I really wasn't interested in that.

But they didn't push back on it.

I remember it being a very smooth and enjoyable process.

I like Golden Harvest.

I like working with them.

They were very fair.

They lived up to all their obligations.

They promoted the film a lot.

They were very kind to me.

When the film was done, I mean, Raymond Chow

actually sent me a large financial bonus, something I never expected or asked for.

So he must have...

I think that was sort of saying, look,

I know you put up with a lot of stuff.

And here you go.

Yeah, Raymond was an amazing talent.

He pulled himself up from being a runner to

a messenger to having an empire over there.

I think Raymond loved film.

I mean, Raymond and I talked about a lot of different films and movies.

And he was...

He'd become very educated and was a very smart guy.

But I think he looked at...

You know, a little unfairly,

the American producer who was involved in the film, Boyce Harmon,

who had been involved with some of my other films, who has subsequently passed away,

you know, kind of made remarks along the lines

that Jackie was just a trained circus performer for them

and they didn't care as long as he brought in money.

I think Raymond liked Jackie.

I don't think that that was... That's completely true.

But he didn't protect him in this way.

He didn't say to Jackie, look, if you want to become a real American star

who can be a lead in a film and stand on your own,

you really should put aside this Japanese concert singer stuff

for the time being.

Learn English and learn how to work with actors like Danny.

I mean, he was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

He was a great actor.

But Raymond never said that.

He just wrote the checks and moved on.

Yes, it was a factory.

And I think that's an important thing to say.

They had a factory.

They had a whole back lot.

They wanted to keep it churning.

I mean, I remember Jackie's wife at the time,

even though officially he wasn't married, he was married.

The kid told me that she was an actress

and, you know, working for Golden Harvest was

she would get in one costume and stand there and say,

oh, our love is doomed because you're going off to war.

And then she would do a costume change

and go to the next set and say,

oh, our love is doomed because it turns out you're my cousin.

And then she would do, you know, another wardrobe change.

And this was like what making films were.

They were made.

They were made four at a time.

They shot films simultaneously.

And she, when she came to the set,

she said it was really interesting to her

to see only one film being made at a time in the way we made it.

And, you know, she allowed that she would like to work with it.

That guy's crazy.

I think it was different times.

You know, there was the MTV, which was the music and television division

and video division of the police force.

And basically, if you could tell them

how you would do things safely, they would enable you to do it.

I think they still perhaps will let you do big stunts

in New York City, but I think it's getting harder.

One is, I think the city's more crowded.

It's just, there are more tourists on the sidewalk.

Manhattan makes so much money from this constant flow of tourists in and out.

That they're much, perhaps less interested in getting revenue from filmmaking.

I mean, when we made films in the city, we brought a lot of money to the city

and they cared about it.

I think they care about it less.

I think they also feel that, oh, you can use CGI

and, you know, you don't need to shut Times Square down.

First of all, there were some very good crews there

that had worked with Golden Harvest.

We brought a lot of Americans who worked well with them.

There were a few incidents.

There was an incident with the art department

where the art director really had trouble

getting the sets that he saw and Wanda designed.

And to be honest with you, we sent him home and we found a solution for that.

But that was really the only hiccup in that.

And they really would let us do anything.

You know, the chase in Aberdeen Harbor, the scenes out.

In the shipping container port on the crane and stuff like that.

But yeah, they were very open to filmmaking.

But, you know, what was strange is I don't think that

people had quite shot American-type films in Hong Kong.

And even if you look at the Bruce Lee films,

they were really period martial arts films, you know.

They weren't big action set pieces.

And there were some logistic issues in that.

I don't think you could have done a huge car chase there.

It would have been a nightmare

because the traffic was so crowded and to control that.

But I never found a location I wanted to use

that they weren't able to wrangle for me.

His guys were very talented.

There was good choreography.

You know, I think when we had the climatic battle at the end,

I was less interested in it.

I was less interested in Jackie's opinion as to how that should be.

And I wanted to make it more hard-edged and brutal.

You know, he eventually looked at that and said,

you know, I mean, I don't know cool stuff or flips or backflip or whatever.

And Raymond came to me and said, look, Jackie would really like to have you come

and redo that and put more stuff in for the Asian market.

I said, that's not going to play in the rest of the world.

He said, no, no, no, I know that.

But would you come and redo that?

And I said, Raymond, I really have no interest

in coming back, but I will let you have Jackie.

I said, let Jackie direct the scene the way he, you know,

adds some of that stuff for the Asian market.

But you can't show it anywhere except, I think it was Hong Kong

and Japan or something.

And I said, if you do, you've got to take my name off the film.

And he said, no, no, no, no, we don't want to do that.

Please, please.

I saw it.

They had it.

They had to send it to me by contract, and I did.

I thought it was silly and laughable, to be honest with you.

It was just a redoing of the last fight.

It was stupid.

I mean, he was doing flips and dips and, you know, it was a comedic whatever.

Fearless implies that you're doing stunts where someone's in danger of getting hurt.

I think in Chinese films, they did that every day.

I never did anything like that.

I never staged a stunt where I thought there was any chance of anyone getting hurt.

I mean, people did get hurt because things went wrong or things were misjudged.

But I never set out to do a stunt where I thought

there was any chance of anybody being hurt.

I mean, it's a movie.

It's not real life.

You know, Jackie would decide how far someone could jump

by he would line up one guy and the guy would jump

and he would not make it from one boat to another.

And then he'd move him an inch closer and he'd try another guy.

And finally, once one of the guys broke his arm

because he almost reached the boat he reached out for it.

He didn't get a good grasp when it broke his arm.

And I said, Jackie, no more.

I said, I want you to stage stuff that's not going to hurt people.

And he was almost like proud of, oh, it's a badge of honor when someone gets hurt.

And I said, you know, not for me and not on my film.

So I stopped that.

I think after the fact, I'm going to stop that.

In fact, you know, Jackie was kind of looking for reasons

that the film did not turn him into a big American star.

And he, you know, he made stupid remarks like, I didn't understand who he was.

I tried to change him.

I didn't understand, you know, my film was too hard edged, the nudity and whatnot.

I mean, that was all based on reality.

I mean, Nicky Barnes and those drug guys used to make people both men and women.

And by the way, there were naked men and women in the film

who worked in their drug labs, worked naked, so they couldn't steal drugs.

And that's just what they did.

They were strip searched both in and out.

They were paid a lot of money.

And, you know, in real life, they were given no protection.

They weren't given masks or HEPA filters or anything.

In the film, I put that in.

And it wasn't like we were using real drugs.

We were using talcum powder.

I tried to make it realistic.

I mean, I thought that my audiences expected realism from me,

certainly in The Exterminator and The Soldier.

And I also had, you know, I wanted to make sure that audiences saw

that there was nothing really great about violence.

I mean, violence was very ugly and violent.

I mean, I think if you watch some of the great gory movies,

I'm not talking about Gore Fest.

I'm talking about, like, Taxi Driver.

I'm talking about The Deer Hunter.

The gore in those films made you come to grips

with the emotional state of the actors and of the story.

They had a real reason to be.

I think The Godfather did, too.

But, and I tried to stay true to that.

But it was a hard, nasty edge.

But it wasn't to be nasty for the sake of being nasty.

The guy at Warner's who picked up the,

"Protector and Khan," Jack Freedman, understood the film.

But I think that it was a time of change at Warner Brothers.

And I think that they had had a big success

with the first Raymond Chow cannonball films.

I think they did actually have a gigantic failure with Megaforce.

Yeah. I mean, that was a monumental disaster.

It was an awful freaking film.

And I think that that made, I think Warner Brothers took Megaforce

based on the, you know, the success of Cannonball Run.

After the mega bomb, I think that Warner's wasn't all that,

I mean, Warner's didn't even go national with the film.

And they didn't spend a lot of money.

They just opened it in New York City and saw what would happen.

And the film did okay, not great.

And they walked away from it and sent it straight to video.

And everybody made money.

I mean, you know, the thing from Raymond is he put up three and a half,

he got five and a half up front, and then he got video and whatnot.

And the film made money.

I'm quite honestly shocked that people still watch my films after 30 or 40 years.

I mean, it's a long time.

There are a lot of films made 40 years ago or 30 years ago.

That people don't talk about, that aren't on video, that aren't on TV,

that people don't, I mean, I get emails all the time from people asking questions.

I mean, there are fan groups, there are Facebook groups.

I mean, I think some of these films will stand the test of time.

I don't know about The Protector, but I think The

Exterminator is going to be shown for many, many years.

I mean, I think that film for several reasons really worked.

If my passion and hobby of cars hadn't quite grown into a business,

which it now looks like it is, and, you know, we're designing, building, racing,

and engineering our own cars and actually selling cars.

I mean, next year we're going to build 50 cars and sell them of our own design.

And the year after that, maybe 100 or 200.

So it's turning into a real business.

The good news is my son, Jesse, is working with me full time.

I think he's doing a great job.

So had that not grown quite as quickly and successfully

as it seems to be, I definitely would make another film.

I still think someday I may.

But if I do make another film, I'd like to make

a film like people used to make in the 60s.

So, yeah, I think that someday I very well may make another film.

I think I would do it on a very reasonable budget.

I think that's what I'm going to do.

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