 |
From a Rapunzel-like turret window at Casa Loma, Jackie Chan is doing something he's rarely done in 80-plus movies -- nothing. No kicks, no leaps, no coco-bonking villains for laughs. He simply peers out the window with a goofy grin, admiring another man's grace and prowess as cameras roll.
Ostensibly, he's the clumsy chauffeur for a Bond-like spy, played by Jason Isaacs (best known as the evil Brit colonel in The Patriot). And he's gazing at his boss, who is -- says the script -- turning heads at a party dancing a sizzling tango.
What he doesn't know is that his boss's dancing ability -- along with his prowess in martial arts -- are artificial, the product of hi-tech formal wear. When the agent is put in a coma, the chauffeur finds the titular tuxedo and becomes ... Jackie Chan! Cue the aerobatics.
"I feel like a little kid who got a gold star in class," Isaacs says with a chuckle. He had actually danced his tango the night before. "There were stunts involved, and for Jackie to come over and say, 'I'm really impressed.' That's really something special. This is a man who's trained from five or six or something -- dance and martial arts and gymnastics. He has to match the dance I did when he puts on the suit, and I tried to set the bar as high as I could."
It is, sadly for him, his only "action" scene with Chan. "Although people tell me my coma acting is my best work."
After several rounds of high-altitude admiration, Jackie Chan has some literal downtime and is explaining why, in this movie, he likes doing nothing best. Fish want to fly, birds want to swim, and Chan wants us to know that he's not just a pair of flying feet. He dreams of a movie where he kicks absolutely zero butt, a fantasy that has at times put him at odds with Golden Harvest, the Hong Kong film company that has overseen his career as the world's most popular action star.
"I want to let audience know, I am not always action star," he says in his game, heavily accented English. "Whenever the script coming, always action. I have been waiting so many years for the perfect script."
He thought he had it when he was offered a lead role in Farewell My Concubine, Kaige Chen's 1993 classic about the lifelong relationship between two men in the Peking Opera. "Golden Harvest, they say, 'No, you cannot do it, that's too drama.' And all these years I try to find different ways to do movies. But the script (is) always like police officer, FBI, all those kinds of things. So when I find a script like The Tuxedo where I (for part of the movie) am not always action star, I say, 'I gotta do this movie.' "
Action star or no, the production -- and indeed the entire city -- found out that when you get Jackie Chan, you get the full Jackie. The set was often visited by kids -- from Make A Wish Foundation recipients to the children of crew -- all of whom were treated warmly by the movie idol, whose constituency is so young he even stars in a Saturday morning cartoon. He hosted a charity night at the SkyDome for the Sick Kids Foundation and received the key to the city from Mayor Mel.
Clearly this was not Tom Cruise slipping in and out of the city. Chan also got out on the town.
"We did a lot of after hours, going to restaurants -- Japanese or Italian are his favourites -- Jackie likes big dinners," said leading lady Jennifer Love Hewitt, who plays a fellow spy who suffers having to tutor this "amateur" in the rules of the espionage game. (Chan names the Dynasty restaurant downtown and Bistro 990 as his two favourites).
"He's got a great sense of humour. Jackie's such a wonderful man. We're both really just perky, nice people," Hewitt says, adding, "I've been dying to get him into a karaoke bar."
Adds Isaacs: "Jackie is one of the few superstars I've met who exceeds your expectations. He is a god, he's the most extraordinary person I've met in my whole life. He can do things in a movie you'd think you'd need CGI to do.
"He wants every stunt to be funnier, faster, quicker, tighter. And he's got people around him who move like clockwork. You watch the choreography and wit in his films, a film like (The Legend Of) Drunken Master, there's a level of genius in it. Watching it close up you see the truth in that saying about genius being 99% perspiration.
"He's endlessly patient for the people who want to talk to him. He knows exactly why people go to see Jackie Chan films, people who won't allow their kids to see other types of violent movies, action-based kung-fu films."
The difference between "action" and "violence" is a subject that always gets Jackie started. "If you look at my history, even Rush Hour 2, you never see the blood from the nose and the mouth. All you see is the comedy action. I hate violence, but people always think action is violence. Americans always think Chinese drug dealers and triads. I try to change the way people think. Action is not violence.
"I do care about children," he says. For the past dozen years or so, he says he has run scenes past his son Chan Cho Ming, now 18 and an aspiring singer (from his 19-year marriage to wife Feng-Jiao Lin). "If he say, 'Ooh, that too violent,' I change it. He (was) always my audience.
"These past 20 years in Asia, they let their children, young boys, five years old, go to see Jackie Chan movies. Even now, I am exploding in American market, I can see all the young kids that watch my movies."
That explosion consists of the Rush Hour franchise with Chris Tucker (Chan got a reported $15 million for Rush Hour 2, and will probably boost that to $20 when Rush Hour 3 gets under way next year) and Shanghai Noon with Owen Wilson and its upcoming sequel Shanghai Knights (in which Jackie and Owen go to London and hunt Jack the Ripper). It's been a long haul to make it on Hollywood's turf, dating back to a regrettable part in The Cannonball Run with Burt Reynolds.
The formula as always is fight scenes plus laughs. And if he made no headway in Asia with his dream of becoming a serious actor, Chan is under no illusions about his chances here. "I cannot do a Kramer Vs. Kramer. My English is not very good. The only thing I can do here is action."
The language barrier is problematic for Chan in more ways than one. "I always hate subtitles because all my Chinese movies, I really create very good dialogue, educated. Then someone translate, and even though I don't know English I can tell they do not translate well. Slowly, my old movies come to North American video market and that makes me worried. They think my movies are full of bad dialogue."
Conversely, he finds Chinese audiences are often puzzled by the films that have made him a Hollywood box office star. "When go to Hong Kong the movies translate badly to Chinese.
"Like Rush Hour, 'What's up nigga?' " he says cheerily. "How you translate? Even when you translate, not funny."