An update about the previous post about Ron Smoorenburg, in his forum he also had this to say on the topic of Jackie Chan:

It was hard indeed to get Jackies Rhytm, but Sam WOng told me after working 15 years with him, he'ss stil nervous when he has to fight Jackie because he's very demanding.

But professioal of coarse. I dont like the way Jackie treats people as a person. As an artist he's good.

(his spelling, not mine)

Maybe he's right, maybe he just holds a grudge. But it Jackie always seems like the nicest guy in the world.

Jackie is currently running a little competition to guess the prop on his website, well, on Jackie's Kid's Corner really, so maybe it's just for children, but I want to play too.

I think I know which film it comes from. I want to get a note with "SMART!" written on it by Jackie Chan!

I never quite realized the extent to which Jackie has experimented with other businesses, he can just afford to start something that looks fun, and not care whether it make a profit or a loss. As well as the recent launch of his organic skin care line, he's also dabbled in: restaurants, night clubs, sports car tuning, wine and is of course heavily involved in charity work.

The most interesting of his "hobbies" as he describes them, is that he is currently in the process of designing a car called J-Power, of which 50 will be produced. I'm saving up already.

Jackie updated his website with a couple more messages recentley and announced that, "The Myth has been purchased by an American distributor and will be released theatrically sometime in 2007."


The Myth looks like an amazing film, though quite a depature from the usual Jackie Chan style. It recieved nominations in the 25th Annual Hong Kong film awards for: best picture, best action design, best original song and best visual effects, though unfortuanately it didn't win any of them.

In his diary he also mentions how slowly the filming of Rush Hour 3 is going at the moment as everyone apart from Jackie seems to be ill.

In my dictionary, there are only two words that exist, “die” or “work.” The former word doesn’t apply to my life, so I only do the latter. If I didn’t work, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

Just a brief excerpt from a really interesting article on Jackie from the Bright Lights Film Journal.

I am most impressed with Jackie's patience. His perfection requires patience and his patience yields perfection. Jackie and Ken spent almost two hours and did twenty-one takes to get one sequence of fight movements. Ken would usually make a minor error, forcing another take, but not once throughout the rigorous twelve-hour shooting schedule did Jackie swear, get upset, or place blame. Instead, he explained the error to Ken and then showed him how to remedy it. He'd smile, pat Ken's shoulder, and shoot the sequence over. If Jackie noticed the crew getting frustrated, he would tell jokes or even break into song to help alleviate the tension.

Although even Jackie's patience wears thin in the filming of Who Am I? Where Ron Smoorenburg just can't accomplish what Jackie wants. I don't understand how I never noticed that they replaced the excessively tall Smoorenburg with the tiny Brad Allan in some scenes.



UPDATE: I just found a small section on Ron Smoorenburg's website about what it was like to work with Jackie, it seems he wasn't too pleased with how he was portrayed in the My Stunts clip above.

For my stunts, it was a setup to make me look bad because they knew the documentary was about how good Jackie's stuntteam is and how difficult it is to work with other actors.

And probably got quite irate about it because he later edited the article.

( Out of respect for Jackie I decided to delete some personal parts of this article )

Rush Hour is one of the true classics of Jackie's modern films. Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker make the perfect buddies for a buddy comedy. One of the best scenes is Jackie singing War, nothing makes me happier than seeing Jackie and Chris dancing down the street together.



Rush hour 3 is still filming and is set to come out on the 10th of August. Apparently there were rumours that Jean Claude Van Damme was to play the bad guy, but it turns out that the rumours were started by Van Damme himself, haha, I suppose you've got to do anything you can to try and kick start your career again.

A little bit of news from the set of Rush Hour 3 accompanied by a couple of pearls of wisdom from Mr Chan.

"The good news is…Chris Tucker is sick, which means we all have a day off. Last night, he told me he wasn’t feeling well. I noticed that several times he put his hands to his throat. He also seemed more quiet than usual.

We have been filming in a hospital for the last two days. Although it no longer is a working hospital, it’s still a small and enclosed environment. There isn’t any fresh air and when people start coughing, germs start traveling. This is why we should all cover our mouths when we cough and we should wash our hands before we eat. Sometimes on the set, we don’t have time to use the bathroom, so we often eat without washing our hands. Germs can be really contagious.

I think my immune system is really strong. Whenever I get sick, I recover quickly. When I work with American or European cast and crew in Asia, they always get sick the minute they arrive. Crew members from “Rush Hour”, “Rush Hour 2”, “Shanghai Noon“, and “Around the World in 80 Days“ have all gotten food poisoning or stomach flu when they come to Asia. I think their immune systems are weaker than mine because they have not been exposed to as many germs as me. Since I was born, I’ve been surrounded by dirt and germs. I rarely get sick.

The bad news is that we have lost a day in filming and we have now gone over budget. I think I need to send some flowers to Chris and wish him a speedy recovery. (Actually, my fans know that I don’t believe in sending flowers, so the money that I would have spent on flowers will be spent on a donation to my charity.)

...

I want to remind all my fans, that it’s really important to wash your hands before you eat. Try not to touch your eyes, nose and mouth because that’s how germs can enter your body. If you sneeze or cough, try to cover your mouth with a napkin or cough into the crook of your arm. If you go into a hospital, be extra careful because there are even more germs there."

So remember kids, wash your hands before eating, and give the money you would spend on flowers to charity.

Jackie also re-injured his chest recently on the set of Rush Hour,

"Sometimes I hate myself. I was doing a special bit with a table during a fight sequence. It was the fourth take and I already got the shots I wanted. I decided to change it a little bit and get one more shot. I suddenly got hit in the chest by this wooden table, reinforced with steel.

I was in a lot of pain because it was in the same spot where I had gotten hurt during the filming of Rob B Hood. For three months, whenever I coughed or sneezed, I was in pain."

Though he's no stranger to injuries.