Hong Kong and global film icon Jackie Chan received a Career Leopard award on Saturday night and an enthusiastic welcome at the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. And on Sunday morning, the legendary multi-hyphenate shared insights into his career during a talk at the festival that drew a large crowd that started 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 full of 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 really good bowler.
After Lee’s death, Chan was asked to remake Fist of Fury, but it was the “wrong script, wrong character,” he felt. “The film just didn’t make any box office.” The filmmakers wanted him to become the new Lee, with the poster even saying “the new Bruce Lee [in big letter] Jackie Chan [in very small print,” the star said. “The directed wanted me [to do] everything like Bruce Lee. I am not Bruce Lee.”
One of Chan’s tips for industry longevity: Always be open to and look to change and evolve. For example, he said he learned to sing because whenever he showed up for TV interviews, hosts would ask him to do a fight sequence with them. “Singing is easier,” Chan said to laughs.
Later in his career, “I wanted to be an Asian Robert De Niro,” the star shared, explaining that TV and other hosts would always introduce him while making a martial arts gesture. “Nobody introduces Robert De Niro” with a martial arts gesture, Chan said, earning laughs.
So he wanted to became appreciated as “an actor who can fight,” not simply an action star known for his stunts. “Only now they say: ‘Jackie is a good actor’,” Chan offered. “And that’s why you gave me this award.”
Will Smith and the Karate Kid remake gave Chan that chance to leave the fighting to the next generation. “I had become a master,” Chan said about his role.
Chan has always made action scenes look easy, but he always had respect for the risk. “I’m not a Superman. I am scared every time I do a stunt,” he shared.
Chan on Sunday also discussed how studios today are focused on business and money more than the art of film, saying he hopes his career saw him make something more than money. “Right now, a lot of big studios are not filmmaker, they are business guys,” he said. “Today, it’s very difficult to make a good movie.”
While he has been known for his discipline, Chan shared that he was “lazy and naughty” and “I liked fighting when I was young.”
Fighting was also a theme the day before. ”I am 71. I still can fight,” the star had said in his Saturday awards acceptance speech to the delight of the crowd. “Also, this year I’m in the film industry for 64 years.”
As part of a tribute to his career, Chan also came to Locarno to introduce his films Project A (1983) and Police Story (1985), on both 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.
When they first unveiled Chan as this year’s Career Leopard honoree, Locarno organizers lauded him as an “Asian megastar, master filmmaker, and Hollywood mainstay beloved for action films that bridged the gap between East and West.”
Added Nazzaro: “Director, producer, actor, screenwriter, choreographer, singer, athlete, and daredevil stuntman, Jackie Chan is both a key figure in contemporary Asian cinema and one whose influence has rewritten the rules of Hollywood cinema. From his years at the China Drama Academy under Master Yu Jim-Yuen, working at a very young age as a stuntman in King Hu’s masterpiece A Touch of Zen, Chan has continually reinvented martial arts cinema and much beyond it.”