by Katharine Schroeder
Situated on 215 acres on the southern side of Hong Kong Island, Ocean Park is an educational theme park featuring thrill rides and aquatic shows alongside some great informational programs. On any given day Ocean Park is crowded with thousands of the more than 3 million people who visit each year. But late one Friday night, it was deserted save for the cast and crew of Rob-B-Hood.
When I arrived on the set, Jackie gave every indication of being asleep in a chair that was leaning up against one of the pillars supporting the roller coaster. However, it seems that even when Jackie is asleep, on some level he is aware of what is going on around him and I wasn’t surprised when he mumbled a comment about the conversation that Fibe and I were having some distance away from him as we set up my tripod so I could attempt to take a few photos. It was very dark at the set, so conditions were difficult for photography.
Jackie wasn’t involved in the scenes they were filming when I arrived, so there was plenty of time to talk, tell stories and jokes, and have a look around the area. We were settled on a very steep hillside; the monitors and equipment were at the top of the hill in the shadow of a large roller coaster appropriately named The Dragon. It was quite late at night and the only illumination in the area came from Ocean Park’s security lights and the lighting set up by the film crew. The cameras were pointing at the scene taking place far above us; over and over again, take after take they filmed this sequence. So while one of the stuntmen spent several hours alternately being suspended upside down, dropped, and hoisted back up, I got to enjoy Jackie’s company and to learn some more interesting things about him to share with you.
As you might imagine, Jackie is endlessly curious; most intelligent people are. He is like a sponge soaking up information, and he remembers much of what he’s seen or heard (although he will confess to memory lapses in certain areas – he has a really hard time remembering people’s names, for instance, and has to work hard at that). We talked about everything from American history to filmmaking, to childbirth. I was surprised by Jackie’s knowledge of birth statistics (natural childbirth vs. Caesarean section) and wondered if he'd seen the same program on The Discovery Channel that I’d watched. He asked some challenging questions about history; I felt relieved that I have taught American history and was able to have an intelligent discussion on the subject. Later, I brought up filmmaking, commenting on the amount of time spent waiting on a film set.
“This is not what most people would think making a movie would be like,” I began.
“What isn’t?” asked Jackie.
“All the preparation. All the waiting.”
“Well that’s really what making a film is,” Jackie replied. “I spend most of my time sitting around on my butt.”
Of course he was kidding; Jackie is rarely sitting still. Even if he’s not directly involved in a scene he will usually be busy anyway, holding up a reflector, aiming a camera, pulling a rope.
He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then told me about the previous night’s filming, when nearly the entire stunt team was involved in a shot.
“You should have seen it,” said Jackie. “It was a beautiful thing.”
Jackie had lots of stories to share and as I sat on the steep hillside, he bounced back and forth downhill in front of me, telling story after story. At one point he became serious and told me about a bad scare he’d had during a recent shoot. He’d arrived at the set to find that the stuntmen had prepared a scene involving a fall. They asked him if he wanted to rehearse first, but Jackie declined since he knew (or thought he knew) what the stunt involved. It involved a fall from a good distance, and Jackie was under the impression that the stuntmen were going to stop him before he hit the ground (he was wearing a safety wire). The scene started and Jackie fell, but he just kept going after he thought he should have stopped. Luckily he landed on his backside, but he said that he was badly scared.
“I felt like I was back in Yugoslavia,” he said, referring to his near-fatal fall while filming Armour of God. “Very scary.”
After getting over the initial scare, he’d become very angry at the stuntmen and gave them quite a verbal lashing. Jackie said that the guys just stood there, silently staring at him as he demanded to know who did what wrong on the stunt. No one would answer, and an angry and badly shaken Jackie stormed away. A while later, some brave soul brought it to Jackie’s attention that no mistake was made in the execution of the stunt. The guys had done exactly what they were supposed to do; they let Jackie fall. Jackie admitted that during their planning of the stunt, he had been daydreaming and not paying attention.
“It was me. I made the mistake,” Jackie said sheepishly. “I felt like an idiot.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I went over to them and told them I was sorry,” he replied. But he added with a twinkle in his eye, “And then I yelled at them for not having the mattresses in the right place to cushion my butt!”
Jackie really does have a lot of love and respect for his stuntmen.
After he stopped talking, he looked contemplative again and then he said that unexpected things always happen while filming action and those were the most frightening. To illustrate his point, he hoisted his foot up nearly into my face and said, “See this shoe? I wear these shoes all the time! But filming one scene, I had on different shoes. Shoes with plastic across the bottom, like a… like a… MR. LEE!!! COME HERE!!!!!”
One of the stuntmen came over and at Jackie’s request, showed us his shoe. In order to appreciate the humor in this situation, you have to remember that we were on a steep hillside. Jackie was standing, I was sitting a little uphill from him, and now we were joined by Mr. Lee, uphill from me. Mr. Lee thrust his foot up for Jackie to see and was hopping around trying to keep his balance while Jackie was showing me the sole of the sneaker and the plastic piece that ran across the bottom arch area. Jackie began describing how the plastic piece caused his foot to slip when it normally would have stopped and how the unexpectedness of it was startling. In order to show me more clearly, he ended up just pulling the shoe right off of Mr. Lee. As he talked, I nodded and sympathized the best I could, not having experience in climbing roller coaster pillars or whatever Jackie was climbing when he slipped. As Jackie went on, I tried to contain my laughter because just behind me, Mr. Lee continued to try to keep his balance on one foot. I finally just reached up and lent a hand to steady him until Jackie gave him his shoe back. When Jackie was done with his story he handed the shoe back to Mr. Lee, who put it back on his foot and walked away.
Jackie went up to the monitors to have a look and I wandered around a bit. The whole area smelled of smoke; they were burning leaves and branches in order to create a foggy atmosphere for the scene. As I stood looking up at the scene taking place above, Jackie approached and said, “Come with me.” I followed him over to the rails of The Dragon roller coaster and watched him climb up and settle himself down into a chair that someone handed up to him. “Good idea,” I said. “I can get some nice shots here.” Easier said than done. I took out my camera and began framing a shot when Jackie interrupted, “No no – you come up here.”
“Up there?” I asked warily. Surely he wasn’t suggesting that I climb up onto the roller coaster rails with him.
“Yes. Up here on the rails. With me.”
“Uh oh,” I thought. Every clumsy move I’d ever made in my life flashed through my mind as I surveyed the area trying to figure out just how I was supposed to do this.
“Use the rock over there,” Jackie suggested. “No problem.”
“Okay,” I replied, and began hoisting myself and my equipment up onto the rock and over onto the rails. The Dragon’s rails are about three feet apart running parallel to each other in a series of sharp turns, 360 degree loops, and spine-chilling drops. I knew that the roller coaster was shut down for the night, but there was still something frightening about being on the rails right in the path of the coaster should it spontaneously turn itself on. I climbed up to get close to Jackie, then knelt down, wobbling back and forth, and framed the shot. Unfortunately, it was nighttime and I was having a heck of a time trying to focus. Ronald, Jackie’s hair stylist, came to the rescue and shined a light onto an amused Jackie so that I could get something that approached a focused shot. After taking several photos, I climbed up even closer, took a few more shots, and then decided I’d had enough. Jackie hopped down from his perch while I carefully made my way back down the railings, praying that if I fell everyone would at least be looking in another direction so they wouldn’t find out that I’m secretly a clumsy bumbling fool. Incredibly, I got down without incident and added “Climbs roller coaster railings at midnight at an abandoned theme park in Hong Kong to take photos of Jackie Chan” to my mental resume.
When I recovered from my climb (somehow it didn’t look nearly as high from where I was standing as it did when I was up there), I went to find Jackie. He was having make-up applied for a scene. I'm always intrigued by the blue clip that Maggie uses to hold Jackie’s hair back while she applies makeup to his face, and I managed to get a shot to show you what it looks like. Not very manly, but functional. As usual, Jackie couldn’t care less that I was taking his photo while he sat there with his hair held back by a sparkly blue clip.
We walked over to another area of the park for a dramatic scene. Again I was frustrated by the lack of enough light to get a decent photo. As you may know, using flash on a movie set is risky. If you fire your flash while they are filming, it will ruin the shot. So I snapped a few attempts and then just stood and watched as Jackie very convincingly did his dramatic scene.
It was getting very late, but I moved with the crew over to another area to watch one more scene being filmed. Afterwards, we went up to a picnic area and talked a bit more. Jackie proudly showed me a monstrous mosquito bite he had on the back of his leg. He had a collection of oils and creams that he kept rubbing on it to relieve the itching. He was in a fine mood and joked around with the baby (not Matthew; he was on break) as he prepared for the next scene. After they were finished shooting, we decided that it was a good time to say so long and after waving goodbye to the crew and saying goodnight to Jackie, Fibe and I made our way up the quiet paths to where we had parked her car.
And just to let you know, I asked Jackie if it would be all right with him if I wrote about the incident where he unjustly accused his stuntmen of messing up. “Absolutely,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation. Chalk another one up for Jackie Chan. He’s not interested in having himself be portrayed as a perfect person. He has faults just like everyone else, and he’s not ashamed of letting his fans know that. Jackie is everything you imagine him to be. He’s a gifted actor and athlete, a laugh-a-minute, and an emotional man who can easily be brought to tears. But he can also be impatient, forgetful, and demanding. However, he never asks anything of his staff that he wouldn’t do himself, and for that he deserves a big thumbs up.