The Art of Action - Richard Norton - Episode 11

[Music] richard norton thanks for joining me on the art of action how are you i'm very well thank you scott it's uh i'm thrilled to to be doing this with you i mean i i admire you greatly my friend because you know even though i know you've been at it a long time but not probably as long as i have and i love to see people that are carrying the torch you know forward the the action genre and taking it to places that we never got to take it in the 80s and 90s so it's great well doing my part trying my best you know they keep giving me less and less time so you know what that equates to most of the time but anyway it's a pleasure to talk to you because we've never met we're meeting for the first time no you know what and i was i was thinking i uh i was doing a first time i sort of came across you i was doing second unit directing and stunt coordinating on this warner brothers show and i'm in lithuania and i had a bunch of stunt guys you know half a lithuania half rush and anyway one of them vladiki's name was ended up going and doing a show with you and he was an amazingly good physical specimen you know a good martial artist but i remember him coming back and i said how did it go he said he said i can't believe he because he's he he was pretty confident in his own abilities this is the guy that i fight at the end of special forces for people he was blown away with how fast you were i think i think he thought he was going to go there and be very impressive himself and he came away very impressed with you so that's that's when i first got an inkling of you being around my friend well why i wanted to talk to you richard um apart from the fact that i greatly respect you and i've seen you in many many movies and many hong kong movies many films with cynthia rothrock back in the day in the 90s i remember watching all those but you've got extensive experience in the hong kong film industry and that's what i'd like to mostly talk about today because that's you know that old school stuff really just i revere it and i still watch it to this day just like wow this was the golden era of martial arts film making so i definitely want to talk in depth about that but i know you've had a a huge career you've done many films you've been a fight coordinator on big hollywood productions i know like mad max and uh i know you did some stuff was it on um the superman movie the justice league film that never happened is that right we did three months of that um that was when dr george who for those you know directed mad max he was about to do the justice league movie we had actors there we started training them and suddenly it all went away as so often these productions do so i almost got to do justice league but not quite so you were choreographing fights for superman and batman and all the rest of it yes it was a great cast and army hammer was i think playing batman in that one megan gale was you know he was a you know very uh famous like supermodel here in australia was going to play wonder woman yeah i mean it was it was an interesting start and it all sounded all very good but you know the reasons why these things fall apart are out of my around my scope and out of my hands but yeah but the last one i just did actually fight coordinating was uh suicide squad with james gunn we did seven months in atlanta we did a month in um panama city and that that was fantastic i mean i really really enjoyed that experience we only got back to australia early march just got in before you know the [ __ ] hit the fan as it were and everything went down to lockdown but i really very much enjoyed that experience on suicide squad so yeah it's not it's nice to still be working scott you know because the older you get you know the less roles there are for obvious reasons yeah but i'm okay with that because luckily i learned a lot behind the camera and and as long as i'm still in the injury and still working and it still involves martial arts then i'm a happy man well what is your martial arts background then just briefly because i'm sure it's a lot but just so people understand how you got into martial arts what you did and how that led to getting into the film business yeah well uh my first uh martial arts foray was with judo when i was 11 years of age i started judo at 10 so similar how did you okay probably the reason was judo was because there was a kid uh moved into a house opposite to where i lived in croydon which is a suburb of melbourne and he was disappearing two nights a week and i remember saying hey morris where are you going you know and he said oh i'm going to judo classes and i was really oh my god i want to go so his dad would drive us to these classes and um and considering of course that judo was probably the only martial art that we're aware of because i'm talking about 1961 you know when i was 11. so judo was one of the few outs i think there were some karate schools but i certainly didn't know about them and above and said i was even my introduction to judo was on the back of comic books you know defeat five attackers with you know one finger and all this sort of stuff of course i i found that that was farcical because i was so skinny and little as an 11 year old i was like cannon fighter for all the older teenage sort of uh judo players you know brown bots and everything they used to chuck me from one end of the dojo to the other but there you go and then it was a few years later that a friend that i went to judo and high school with said there was a karate school opening up so that was goju gojukai gojukai meaning was more the you know japanese version on the goku yamaguchi as opposed to okinawan and uh so i started that love that and moved to the states in 1979 started training with chuck norris every morning and uh you know that was through my partner and i bringing chuck out to australia in 1978 and we formed a good friendship truck then introduced me to so many amazing people i started training with benny the jet or kids in late uh probably early 80s and uh and that was before the jet center even existed so i did a lot of kickboxing pete cunningham who was a canadian born in trinidad he became my coach for the last 30 years amazing amazing yeah that's him it was like the sugar ray landed of kickboxing yeah so i i trained with petey and now so added that to the repertoire in the last um well god it's been over 30 years now i've been also uh heavily involved in brazilian jiu-jitsu so it's been a it's been a journey and it's still going on lifelong martial artist love it so did you get into the film industry through your relationship with chuck norris or how did it happen i had a partner bob jones and i who uh started a style in 1970 we called zendokai and one of their students got involved in stunt work and through whatever reason i even forget now he wanted me to ask me if i was interested in doubling an actor in a movie called last of the knucklemen and it was an aussie movie it was shot in outback australia so i ended up doubling this actor and doing the fight scene with a wwf at the time now wwe wrestler so that was my intro uh it was after that that bob brought chuck norris out to australia and as i said i was doing demonstrations on the same card i was demonstrating okinawan weapons and whatever and chuck was demonstrating and he was also promoting good guys wear black one of these very early movies so we just got on so so well and he said look rich if you ever get to california give me a call and we can do some training which was an amazing invitation and it's in 79 that i went to california to work full-time with a rock and roller named linda ronstadt a lot of the younger ones wouldn't know linda but linda was his biggest beyonce in her day she said country west and all that she wanted me to go and work for her full time as a personal bodyguard because i'd been doing bodyguard work since 73 starting with the rolling stones joe cocker fleetwood mac worked with david bowie for eight years and ended up working with linda and james taylor for 14 years anyway when i got to california the first person i called was chuck and went to his house started training every morning with him and he was in the very early pre-production stages for the octagon one of his very early ninja theme movies and he knew i could handle weapons so he asked me if i would play his nemesis in the movie which was a carrot called keo who you know i had a crimson mask my face was covered the reason being that technically i was supposed to be asian so this is you in the uh in the costume here yeah that was me in the costume this was the first thing you did apart from the doubling that was it that was the start of the whole career with uh chuck he he gave me the opportunity and and up until then uh i had no aspirations of doing movies you know i was there i was loving training the martial arts and i was of course doing the bodyguard work and it was just it's something that just happened along and i remember thinking wow how good is this i mean i i met tadashi you know yamashita on the shark and simon and philip reed were working on this movie gerald akamura there was a whole slew of great martial artists and i thought this is not a bad way to make a living you know i can get paid and still be using martial arts so that that started that started a whole different sort of career path for me and where did your weapons training come from from the karate yeah from karate because my my original instructor was hawaiian filipino tino seberano was his name and he had a um a partner you know that came out a little later from hawaii called sal ebeneze and sal was the first one i saw using psy and i went wow what what is that i was fascinated with the with the weapon and he was also tina would introduce this to beau you know the long staff and everything so i i just developed a bit of an interest in the uh in those okinawan weapons is it true that the origin of these okinawan weapons were from farmers they would use it to to farm is that true that the psi was to pick up bales of hay and the nunchucks were to flail the hay and things like that have i got that completely wrong no no that's correct i mean even the psy as you know it's it's looks like a pitchfork yeah as you say for hay and everything and as you know um you know the japanese invaders sort of banned different weapons as as they knew it so that was how the locals or the farmers and everything started to adapt to farm implements as weapons of self-defense so the bow of course is just a wooden long staff and size what it was i used to be wooden of course you know but turned into being a metal weapon um and it was really as a side because of the way it was shaped was actually a quite a good defensive weapon against uh katana you know the japanese long sword yeah i've seen you use the sight quite a bit in in your movies you know why i enjoyed it scottish because you know a lot of people especially you know after bruce lee were playing around with nunchaku to me it became a little bit of a gimmick it's not i'm in the hands of a of an expert don't get me wrong but there are a lot of kids playing so i i was attracted to sai because i immediately thought well i can't carry it around with me there's nothing else i can do with it except use it as an extension of my empty hand art you know and so it became a very personal thing for me to just practice carter and practice forms and everything with the psy almost as a meditative type thing you know jim casa was an early movie for you that was after the octagon was that yeah well yeah that was uh i think in 1984 and that was with kurt thomas um who was an olympic gymnast he was slated to win all sorts of gold before us boycott of the russian olympics as you know and for those who don't know was directed by bob klaus who directed into i didn't know that did not end up produced by freddie weintraub who produced the enter the dragon so that was uh that was a great um opportunity for me to play um zamier you know this this futile sort of baddie and it was great working and i was very sad to hear i mean this is just a little bit of info that kurt passed away just a couple of weeks ago yeah i saw that yeah that's uh i remember that movie being something that i would watch a lot as a kid interesting you know idea for a movie jim carter that's very fred weintraub you know freddie freddie's idea with that was to basically create an american jackie chan in using kurt thomas because he's a gymnast the problem was bless kurt's heart is he you know you you would know having worked there that scott that these these hong kong studies they can do this stuff on any surface anywhere under any conditions for kurt it had to be almost perfect condition so it's kind of funny when you look at the courtyard and you'll see it contraption is used for tying up goats or horses and it's it's obviously a pommel horse the ground is very flat so everything had to almost be like a gymnasium you know and because that's the only way kirk could really do his gymnastics because he just wasn't used to doing it not on a matted area and everything but but it was it's pretty funny i i you know i had a fantastic experience we shot in what was then yugoslavia and uh i you know listen got to ride horses all around the countryside and see a new part of the world so it was uh it was a good memory for me well that's the best part about the job right is all these places you get to go to i mean one minute you're at home and then the next thing you know you got a phone call and they say oh we're going to do a movie in whatever country and before you know it you're over there making it it's crazy business isn't it but a lot of hotel rooms as well four walls and a ceiling so what's your downside scott if you want to find it how did the hong kong movies come about for you you know it was through pat johnson do you know pat johnson this is the guy who choreographed karate kid and um many other movies american movies pat was uh the fight coordinator on this uh very early jackie movie did one of the first ones he shot in the states and he was a good friend and i trained with pat a lot because he used to be partners with chuck so we you know obviously around each other a lot he had recommended jackie that i might be a good one for him to look at using and i remember i was on tour and again with linda in japan i was in a little hotel outside osaka and i remember getting a phone call and i hear this voice you know this asian lady saying oh hi you know i'm whatever i work for jackie chan jackie wants you to come and work with him in the hong kong movie what's your price what you know and i said well you know with a bit of conversation when does he want me there and she said oh it'd have to be in three days time what's your price so it doesn't really matter my price is because i'm i'm obligated i was doing this personal bodyguard sort of tour i had another three months to go so i had to let it go and as it turns out that was uh meals on wheels that uh keith vitale ended up playing the role that they had wanted me to play so i thought okay that's that and then whatever amount of time later i got another call and they wanted me again jackie wanted me to go and work in a film called twinkle twinkle lucky stars which sam hong directed and that was one of the first ones i think andy lau was in and of course jackie chan and nian bill and uh so so that's how it started and off i went being very green and very non-knowing about what i was getting into because i remember on the way over in the plane i'm thinking i'll be able to do this and do that of course no i've worked with chuck norris it's going to be fine i can throw a few crescent kicks and i'll i'll be good so i get there and of course you know there was a few weeks of doing nothing has usually happened you have a bit of dialogue and everything and then the fight stuff starts and my first fight of course is with sama hong who i didn't know well what a what an introduction to the action genre that was because i you know three three days into this i remember going back to my hotel room and i set out a lot geez if i can get through this i can get through anything you know it was it was so different in timing and all of that sort of stuff is that slow down a little bit scott you're making it look a little bit slow i don't know maybe it's is it is it staggered because you're in australia is it can you see me maybe yeah i look like i was going in slow motion well it's all right when i edit it it'll be the proper speed how long did this fight take then well here we go as you would probably know back then i don't know whether it's changed but that one fight took three and a half weeks to shoot three and a half weeks and it's about three minutes long or less yeah yeah and and i'm you know basically we were on the set 18 hours a day seven days a week and to educate those who don't know as i've often said that the issue is that there's no there's no no the fighting isn't really figured out it's figured out as they go it might be the first three or four or half a dozen moves and then everybody will pull out of stunt matches and think up the next few moves and off they go and with the hour or two when they're not on set there'll be a quick edit that samuel would do and he would decide then which direction he wanted the fight to go and that was the way it went and um so so you couldn't really rehearse at anything everything was rehearsed on camera and this is before digital so it was actually film so that wouldn't have been cheap but it was just an interesting process so all i could do was really imitate whatever samoa in this case wanted me to do and then do it as many times as it took to get a a take that he was happy with which could be 30 takes or it could be 10 you know it just varied the contact was almost full contact i mean i've got footage of him sidekicking me up against this wall and he must have done it 20 times why twenty what was wrong with take one two three four five not hard enough even though you might have gotten in the first one two three or four or five it was just an amazing process and it was exhausting i you know i know back then i was probably i reckon i weighed 175 pounds you know i was a lot lighter than i am now and i lost 16 pound in weight over two and a half weeks doing that because we're inside no air conditioning and just fighting the whole time so uh it's very stressful isn't it doing a hong kong movie there's so much expectation and it's very they're very hard men and there's never a pat on the back from my experience never a pat on the back oh you're doing well are you okay do you need anything it's like this is what it is do it and and we do it until we get it right and even when you get it right it's like okay next it's not like oh well done that was great it's tough isn't it we we'd like a little pat on the back every now and again wouldn't it be nice now it's in and once you know what in in this shoji karate he was a japanese gentleman that was famous for in hong kong he did something like 30 40 movies there he was such a gentleman and i ended up he ended up doing a fight scene later in the movie when i was fighting uh samuel he uh fought jackie and he saw me getting very frustrated this is very early on the fights when we started to fight stuff and i remember him saying to me he said richard you said if you want to work in these movies he said just don't say anything he said they don't care what you want to do they literally believe they're god's gifts to martial arts it's their set and it's their movie and you know what i just took that advice i thought you know what i'm just going to do it as many times as i want i'm not going to complain or or whatever and that's kind of the tact i took and it paid off in a way that's that's why i got to do quite a few movies in hong kong it certainly wasn't because i had any better abilities than anyone else around the day i think it was literally because i would shut up i would do what they wanted to do i fortunately had the timing that worked for jackie and samuel which wasn't by design it just happened to be that way through whatever course of training i'd had over the years so everything just worked for them and they just knew that i understood how they made movies i you know because jackie even said he got a little tired of westerners coming in either trying to show him how tough they were or wanting to do everything they wanted to do and he said that's not the way we work so i think that was very instrumental in me getting future work in hong kong you know but like you said i i know i know no tougher film schedule than what it was like back then with the hours with the contact with learning choreography in front of camera and not getting a chance to rehearse but there you go you're working with samuel hung and he's the star the director um and like when when he decides that he's going to smash himself through this this glass i mean you know what you're thinking well you know it it's it's crazy i mean the guy i've always said and i still mean it that sama hong is the most amazing action director choreographer i've ever worked with but you have a look at him and jackie jackie even said to me and by the way for people that understand you know um like asian respect and everything jackie said to me said samo looks like an elephant but moves like a monkey and it wasn't as a total total compliment because you'll see coming up not that there but there was a scene where i had to swing a chair at semo's legs and i don't know what order we did it in and he said okay i'm going to jump off this table and do a half flip and land on my feet and i i literally looked around behind him and i'm looking for the stunt double because i'm thinking there's no way this guy's going to be able to do that but sure enough what 15 20 times he did it and he did it perfectly here it is here this move here i mean that's samo and i'm like my god and that just immediately gave me incredible respect for the gentleman and he can also punch and kick really damn hard you would know when you face somebody in a movie you get a feeling of whether they're just good at the choreography or whether they've really got power but summer can punch like a mule he's got an amazing spinning back kick and uh this shot you're looking at here i mean he we did that probably 30 times where he hit we bare fisted uppercut because they wanted to see my face contorting in slow motion and i found a little bit of cotton wool to put in my teeth because i didn't want to chip my teeth and there you go you have to put your face in front of camera and get whacked by the great sama hong so so how many times did they punch you in the face i'd forget exactly but it's over 20 times this was your first one and you came back and did many more what is wrong with you you know what it i um i gotta tell you i i i really was in good shape back then not now but back then i trained really hard i did a lot of contact training so the idea of contact didn't really concern me you know i i almost enjoyed it so it was okay and that it was another reason why semi liked me because i could see that he could kick me as hard as he wanted or whatever and i'd be okay with it you know i completely ripped you off in a movie that i made called accident man because uh your i mean your catchphrase became painful right painful i had my character say painful painful so a little honest to you there richard don't know whether you knew that or not no i didn't where's my residual check um it's in the post have you not got it yet it came about two because as you know you know all those films back then were dubbed nobody actually heard ever heard jackie's real voice there was a team that were going in dub and they just asked me to just say something in english was kind of the length that they figured the cantonese or mandarin sort of dubbing would be and i i think i'm almost certain that was a again a line that came from the great summer home and it did become a catchphrase i used that a number of times painful no i'll be okay yeah but samuel when he when i say painful i say you've got to be hurt now and he's got no he basically says i can't feel anything because my body's all numb that's good stuff doesn't hurt at all my whole damn body is numb and what really makes me laugh is when he puts the blood on your fist and you go you son of a bear and then you get punched that's a very funny moment again you son of a fan i don't remember if i watched chyna or o'brien first but there was a video that came out in england and it was called the best of martial arts films and it's basically like they've got the rights to a bunch of golden harvest movies and they did a collection of fight sequences together and i would watch it over and over and over again and i think this might be the first time i ever saw you in this fight scene here [Music] that's karate even when they gave me the advice about working in hong kong you know and lovely lovely man and so talented we went to thailand to do some of this shoot and uh you know he's incredible i don't know whether you saw that that leap that he just did that was actually a double and that was also when i found out about the peking opera school because the gentleman that did that came from that and they told me this is funny little stories i mean there's a little titbits that they said that he he was trained in things like that he'd have to do a handstand on a board that long that's on a roller like this and he said literally he was expected to be able to stay in a handstand balancing this board for up to an hour and every time you fell off earlier than that he was literally beaten and he said it was literally a case of beating no out of them so you got certain stunt people like him that no wasn't in their vocabulary and uh again it was just a very enlightening time for me finding out about you know how they worked in hong kong and i had been in in the philippines doing a movie did a lead in a small action movie and unbeknownst to me i developed a staph infection and so i go to hong kong and in the three weeks before we started these fights my legs started to swell up and you can see i'm in cavalry boots i mean go figure out an australian in u.s cavalry outfit in asia but there you go and i kicked him and my knee had swollen up so big and i remember thinking i said oh god i can't tell samuel i can't do this because i've been here three weeks the first kick i threw kalata blocked with his forearms and i literally i nearly passed out and i'm on the ground and they pulled my boot off and my boot was full of pus and blood because of the infection so i go to hospital have that lanced out they quickly stitch me up and when you're back on set and away you go again yeah the train doesn't stop rolling it's left the station the film's not gonna wait for you you just gotta get back there i know because you know and you know i would i realized that i would complain about the hours and work and i thought shut up norton they're doing this month after month year and year out sometimes two movies at a time so i sort of thought don't stop complaining your big baby you know had you want to be in this shoes one of the stunties that do these movies the whole time and it was a ridiculous work race that they had you've always been able to deliver a line convincingly and one of the better actors i would say now why is this did you have any acting training or are you just a natural it just happens stuff you can't eat that [ __ ] mate no you know what i did do acting training i did a lot of acting classes in la because and that that came about from octagon because you know i played keo with the main sort of baddie but i also played a character called long legs which is pretty funny because my heights are my upper body my legs are quite short but anyway i i played this character and so the first line i had as this terrorist in this training camp that chuck turns up in i had to say sit down so in my head i'm going oh [ __ ] this is academy award time you know what i mean it just is easy and i remember getting up there and suddenly it occurred to me there's like 10 different ways i could say sit down sit down sit down sit down yeah i sort of went oh there's a lot more to this than meets the eye and that prompted me and actually it was a an acting coach that chuck was going to called xena province she used to be mgm's chief acting coach so i spent quite a few years with her just trying to at least get my head around drama and all of that and listen i'm i'm mediocre at best and that's okay with me because i realized later on looking back at my career that i obviously didn't love acting enough or as much as i loved martial arts otherwise i would have spent as much time in an acting class as i did in a martial arts school so the first time you worked with cynthia was millionaires express shanghai express and was this the second time yeah so this um listen again i'll tell you a little see that costume i'm wearing the the suit we were shooting we went to taiwan to do a certain amount and we shot in a studio in hong kong for some of it it was it was i've never been in such a hot environment and they only had one suit so every time i'd sort of get sweaty and everything after 10 minutes they'd take it off and iron it dry and then put it back on again how's that i bet it stunk no no come on well but uh but but again you know i'm supposed to be this russian guy who knows all these different martial arts which is pretty funny had you done kung fu did you know all this kung fu stuff that you're doing it looks pretty convincing thank you again just copying what they gave me to do it listen i think what helped me even with that is goju gojiru you know gochukai you know this particular brand of karate you know go means hard you mean soft to hard soft style so there's a lot of linear type motion but also a lot of circular type of motion so it was very it had a very much obviously they all did a chinese influence white korean kung fu was where gojo originally came from so i think having training goju helped me to able to be able to adapt to a lot of the moves that they wanted me to do in a film like magic crystal you know a funny story too cynthia i had to punch cynthia and again as you know there's still contact even with this eye that one that she just dropped to their knees on i was supposed to hit her like i'm hitting andy like in the ribs so cynthia suddenly says to me oh no you're gonna hit exactly you know here with the sigh you know with the end of the side the pommel in i said well sort of why so she'd taken this pad that was on here and cut it down to like the size of the postage stamp because she didn't want it to make her look bulked out and i said oh my god i said well maybe i'll hit that maybe not i said i don't know we often laugh about that that was very funny crazy death scene here richard i forget how i die oh we we still laugh when we first saw the alien that this is all about you know this thing i mean we were like oh my god you can't be serious it looked like it looked like a two-year-old and made a little paper mache sort of thing you know it was like a crumpled thing with a couple of eyes and her mouth was still after this day it reminds me of a death scene that i had in the second uh hong kong movie that i did black mass ii and i'm playing this guy who's got the powers of an electric eel and i go to punch the star black mask and he moves and because i'm electric i melt into the back of this statue and then the last shot of me after i've died is basically me hanging out the back of this statue's arse that was an interesting one i think a little less there's more attention than my death that you just played it's all about the death scene beat that one well cynthia rothrock i've always been a huge fan of her i mean i can't think of another female martial arts film actor the the moves like she does i mean she's absolutely phenomenal yeah well she was a world forms champion for a number of years um when i first met cynthia uh in the states you know i trained with her and her boyfriend george chong george chung was also a world forms champion and when you look at what they did back in those days it was just just such part excellence you know with the way they would kick and their technique and everything else so she was very skilled she could place a kick exactly where you wanted it to go she was a very strong very powerful you know with with a technique and you're i don't know anybody else that's come close to to her you know you don't get many girls that can kick with the power that she kicks with you know what i mean that's force you can see the speed and the power behind the way she does it so how did chyna o'brien come about that again came about through freddie is this robert robert klaus again director into the dragon and fred weintraub produced it and that was that was fun that was you know there again as you know um scott that there's not much money to play with you know the low budget movies but they suited you know the the sort of style of action movies or martial art action movies for back then and i gotta tell you you know having worked on some really really big movies more as a fight corner i just i look back and i love the experience of working on those lower budget movies because you know i have a saying that you know how you get treated on the big budgets sort of is depends on where your name appears on a call sheet but with those lower budget movies like everybody just kicks in and does whatever they need to do to get the job done and it was just a far more collaborative sort of process that i enjoyed was it just the nice of doing this or maybe no no just tonight you know you just put it together and you got it done which you know which you could do because that's all i really knew had to do was just quickly you know figure out the choreography and then get it over with because that was as you know again it was a very typical western movie they would put their time into the so-called drama and very little time into the action you know the difference being in hong kong jackie you know way back said he said people don't want to see me talking they don't want to see drama they're interested in the fight scenes so they would just put all the emphasis on the fight nice to have birth yeah no absolutely but it was just very typical of a western movie to just not put the amount of time necessary to really make a good fight center i mean that's the reason that the hong kong movies fights look so good is again because they prioritize them on the schedule and they'll do it until it's it's it's correct i mean even bob klaus you know when he did into the dragon he he it was a funny story when he was shooting with bruce that they did a particular day shooting they went in to watch uh some of the takes at night and bob said he was sitting there next to bruce and bruce says oh you know basically we're going to go back in again tomorrow and we're going to reshoot this and bob used to doing and again end of the dragon was a western movie you know as a warner brothers movie and not having as much time or budget he said he said no no no we don't have time to reshoot it he said bruce reached across grab him by the throat like this and basically they went back the next day and they re-shot what we wanted that's amazing yeah i know i grabbed him by the throat and it was like don't blame bruce one little bit he made the right decision grabbing his throat well let's see that says i'd love to hear if you know anything more about the shooting events of the dragon because obviously you look at bruce lee's films and they're all shot in a different way enter the dragon has that very specific american style of he's in the center of the frame and all the guys in the cave are running in from angles and sometimes he's hitting one guy who's out of shot and then he falls through the frame and you know it's very different to his other movies but it works incredibly well and i don't know if it's just by accident or not i think it's you know as you know it's very hard when you shoot us fights in with multiple opponents because the problem is if you pull back wide you need to you get to see what all of them are doing while they're waiting for their turn to go in and kind of get smacked you know and that was that was i noticed even to a certain degree in hong kong they'd do that a bit though not to the same degree but what you said they would have your main star like bruce and they would just feed people in and when you did cut away to a wide shot what they would do is basically people would stay up but they would run side to side and the illusion was that they were all very actively involved in the food but they wouldn't move forward until it was their time to run in and get kicked or punched you know so hence you'd see a lot of bruce in the middle and just feed people in and bang out they'd go you do a cut of where somebody landed or whatever so it became quite an efficient way of shooting for instance and into the dragon when again you didn't have time to justify what are eight people doing whilst bruce is fighting this one person if that makes sense but there's very they're very long takes aren't they in all from the same sort of angle but there's like there's no misses in there he always looks like he hits i mean okay some guys are off screen but then there's guys that are on screen and i mean he's just the best isn't he bruce it's incredible so he would go back and reshoot it if he wasn't happy with it that's why yeah well yeah i don't know how much but i remember bob uh bob telling me that story and then oh man that's pretty funny at least he can say he actually got grabbed by the throat by the legendary bruce lee it was a movie that was actually meant to appeal probably to a younger audience than jackie would normally appeal to a little more comedic than a lot of others even he said it was a bit of a risk for him to do the main fight that i did with jackie and city hunter took six and a half weeks we we needed to shoot whole movies in six and a half weeks and it was long i mean it was i think nine minutes in length when you got through it all and of course they're doing other bits and pieces all over the shop while we're doing it but yeah it was uh that was an incredibly long fight scene but you know i had to even there's a part where i'm sort of beating jackie all my sleep with carly sticks and you know they didn't want it to have any technique they wanted me to almost look like the mad professor you know when i'm doing it so and and and i also realized very early in the game that to be in a movie like this with jackie you have to just throw caution in the wind you have to realize that you are more of a caricature than anything else and if you didn't jump on board with that you just didn't fit in that type of movie so you just really have to have fun with i mean look at the looks you know the eyes look at jackie's like tears coming down like this and then he starts running you know and often you go yeah so it's it's it's just a very interesting experience but again you know phenomenal experience that's for sure yeah crazy crazy fights look at this it's like it's funny memories i'm just beating the dialects out of him well here's your chance show me what you got mr nice guy was a big uh jack chan film so that was shot in australia was it yes it was man look at that have a look at the outfit in the hair i remember samuel deciding he said oh you know we slick your hair back and i'll give you a cigar and i said semi why can't i just be an ordinary looking bad guy why why are you no no no we're gonna stick your hair back and even the suit you know with the jacket it's like this pinstripe suit one day jackie comes up to me and he looks at me and says oh horrible suit i said you're the producer on this do something about it you know it was again very funny you're always a good actor richard you would always put in a good performance very believable it was great stuff thank you mate yeah well it again it was it was fun and again as i said even in this you have to just go along with the comedic sort of influence of the movie you know otherwise because you know i would tend to one down play everything looks and you go no that's not going to work in this you know you just go for the ride you know and have fun so who's hitting you the hardest uh definitely samurai and was that too unclear the sidekick or the punch well the punch in also that he had a sidekick where he drives me up against the wall yeah he as a city again he he's actually very very powerful like you know you know this guy can really punch and really kick yeah regardless of the physicality and uh well and and the other thing is there they it was all about contact you know what you saw happening in the way of contact was actually happening um you know you know as you know people like tony jar sort of took a leaf out of the hong kong book booklet he's renowned for making a lot of contact in his fights and that it was as a result of being influenced by people like semo and jackie and yin bill and that in hong kong well i learnt in hong kong really in hong kong movies that my first experience of martial arts film was was with those guys and i think that did a lot of good for me to be honest because i immediately was working with the best people and immediately understood oh this is the way it's supposed to be shot if you want it to look as good as what these guys are doing well then this is the way they do it and this is how i should try and continue to do it so i certainly took that influence when i went to the west and started doing american movies but there was um also i have been accused of of hitting a little bit too hard at times but you know always trying to be very safe and very respectful to the people that you're working with and and if i i would never kick someone hard without asking permission to do it first you know what i mean but then of course some accidents do happen but i think if you're going to like front kick someone to the body or sidekick you know it's nice to get a bit of impact there but of course you know you're going to have that conversation to say put a pad on let's try and make have this look impactful and you know if i'm lucky enough to have an american stuntman allow me to kick him in the head but i will take that opportunity because i personally think it looks fantastic no no question about that and i i'm i'm the same with you it just depends on who you happen to be working with but i also you know i remember you know again as i said i took so many lessons back to me and i would go back and shoot a western movie and it was like a walk in the park yeah because you've got 10 or 12 hour days you've got all these mod cons and everything else which you never had in hong kong so it really kind of hardened me up to the two different styles of filmmaking um and i i know for me even today if if i'm gonna do a fight tonight i really want contact i want a kick coming at me where i know i can't just put my hand up that i've got to actually block properly or it's really going to hurt me and i believe that brings out a better performance you know it makes it look a lot more real because you're actually anticipating a bit of power from the person you're fighting with as opposed to kind of doing a dance routine but now this looks like a brutal bit of a brutal day he was a thai fighter he did compete professionally and see this move right here this is a move that i got from benny okidis you know where you go and it's almost like a scarf hold in jujitsu yeah and i remember i wanted to put that in there and there was a couple there was three or four guys friends you know standing over there uh filipinos and they're kind of going sort of laughing a little bit you know um and i said oh to the idea said some paul what are they saying said oh no nothing oh no come on what are they saying oh they said if you held him really like that he would just spin and elbow you and of course you and i are probably the same i said oh really come here and i grab one of them and hold it on really tight he nearly passed out and i finally let him go and he walked away i saw him walk away the others he's going oh yeah like this but i've got to make believers out of them you know that explains the intensity of this fight sequence then because it looks like you're properly hitting each other for some of it yeah now we were on that one he was great to work with and you know it again it wasn't supposed to be flashy it was just supposed to be kind of a bit ugly and rough and down and dirty and so that was a lot of fun working with him what i loved about kurosawa is like the element of character that was brought in i thought toshita mufuni was just amazing on screen and the fact that there was the attention it for me that a lot of these fights weren't as much about the actual moves as i often say that a fight scene is about is as much about what you're not doing as what you are doing and the the character and the look on the phony's face when he's approaching his level of confidence and everything else already you know when i watch as i was drawn into this as a dramatic piece because fights they're not just action they're actually a continuation of drama you know and the little quirky things mufouni would do with his his shoulder as this character he had this little kind of thing he'd lift his shoulder up and down and look at the confidence see him just drop that right shoulder up and down and he just starts moving this guy's got a gun i love that they used what would be a legitimate combat move to move side to side when somebody's shooting at you not just run straight forward and then just the sheer ferocity and when he finishes it's the way he just reshees the katana he's sword and just walks off you watch here it's just fantastic tarantino steal this bit when he had um a thumb and say go home to your mother yeah why not and also you know that uh fistful of dollars you know this was uh sergio leone did an almost a copy of this movie in the western form and i love this fight because again this this is this reminds me the old western gun fights where there was so much stillness you notice here there's a bit of dialogue it's almost like the cowboys you'd see the fingers twitch and you'd almost be on the edge of your seat waiting for one of them to make a draw and this is the equivalent of that so again it wasn't it was almost all this tension is built up you're waiting waiting waiting until suddenly you know our opponent here does a draw in the funny just does this reverse draw and cuts them across the stomach and the blood spurts out so the actual cut is almost anticlimactic it's almost like you go oh thank god because of the tension that curacao would build up leading to the actual physical move so you're almost holding your breath and again this is one wide shot and they haven't cut into this at all which is also a fantastic part of it it builds the tension doesn't it doesn't it though and and look at this bomb and suddenly it's all over and it was almost just a matic thing where you know a bit of a cut away to the reactions which curacao always did there were fantastic reactions from bystanders and there's almost a stillness after the cut and i enjoyed this because in the end of it these guys are more or less saying oh what a great job and he gets really angry you know because he realizes he's killed a person and he's not happy about it at all in other words it's just so many wonderful character elements come in that make it a dramatic scene not just a fight scene yes it works brilliantly the tension builds the the shot holes you don't need to edit this i mean sometimes obviously but if you can do it in one it's always better it's always better you know what you realize it's like you know and it's explained to me once if you go to theater it's like watching theater if you go to theater and sitting live play you only have a wide shot yeah i mean you can choose to focus your eyes on one aspect but pretty much a white shirt there's no darling in or anything so looking at that scene you just showed for me is like looking in live theater where it's just the people you're not cutting away from everything you're seeing everything in its entirety and it still works beautifully of course they they cut to a few reactions and everything else but i just think it's an interesting uh way of filming and i also feel that a lot of action is kind of getting back to that again i think even bruce in his early days you know you would often see bruce in a wide shot you'd see where the kick started from where it landed and you've got to see the ballet the poetry if somebody was that good at what they do and not blowing smoke but you're capable of doing exactly the same thing with your technique that you can pull the camera back and it's just beautiful to see an entire kick whether it's spinning kick a round kick or whatever it is it's your entirety for me i just get to appreciate the sort of magnificence in that type of movement you know as opposed to shaky camera and going in tight all the time and leaving the audience almost confused as to what they're watching at i always said that you know when i shot a lot of the films i did in the 80s which you know god i love them you know i wouldn't want to see them again but you know you used to have drama drama drama and then the drama it stopped you'd have a fight scene and then the drama would continue well that doesn't sort of work anymore now the action needs to be a part of storytelling which is why it's often referred to as non-verbal dialogue where you're just telling a story of the physicality and again i i keep saying i i love seeing that almost the thought process of the fighters or the actors playing whatever they're playing that goes along with whatever it happens in their mind before they straw strike and particularly afterwards too as you know if you actually get hit in the head you're going to have an emotional response it might be oh that hurt it might make you angry it might make you fearful but there's going to be an emotional response and i think for the camera to capture that part of the interaction is a huge part of the storytelling well richard thanks for spending some time doing this with me you've given us many great things over the years and uh really appreciate talking to you mate it's been great thank you scott and i you know and i appreciate guys like you as i said i mean that you're just carrying the torch in that in the most honorable way possible i mean the expertise of guys like you is just far and beyond what i was ever capable of and that's a great thing because we're doing this you know everything's going in a good direction and i i'm just blown away with the expertise of some of the people out there so i would couldn't be happier you know and i must say also that it's talking to you and when you bring back memories of hong kong and everything like that it's you you tend to go you know what they were really good times i remember talking to a stunt you know friend of mine in uh on suicide squad in atlanta georgia and he he asked me about it and i could see his eyes just doing this he was amazingly good stunt guy and he said rich he said you're part of history to work with jackie chan and samahong and it's only then that you kind of go wow you know what that is special you know because at the time it's just a job you don't you don't think in 20 years what that's going to mean either in your career or the effect it's going to have on anybody else even like yourself and you know i think that that's fun when you get a reaction you're able to tell stories and realize you know what it's been an amazing journey the journey is still continuing on and you know i just feel very very fortunate yeah you're one of the the main white faces from from hong kong movies you know you've you've done so so much of that stuff and as i said you know i'm ripping you off uh stealing your lines so you've inspired many of us richard and he's still doing it today so we're done mailbox for their residual check scott you said your mail yeah i'm telling you it's in the post it's australia it takes a while probably could have covered 19 right it's got delayed it's probably gonna it's probably a ship on the way over some great ocean maybe they've lost it i'll [Music] pop another one yeah but thank you scott i really enjoyed talking with you my friend and i wish you of course all the very best because i know your career is far from over and who knows maybe i'll get to play an aging gangster in one of your movies very welcome i'd be happy to have you give me a good kick in richard i'll give it a shot but you're not allowed to kick me back scott you've got respect for your elders you know how that works yes i'm very respectful and i don't kick as hard as samo anyway you'll be fine with that all right thank you scott very much mate again i really enjoyed it [Music] you

Channel: Scott Adkins

Views: 108,598

Rating: 4.9791903 out of 5

Keywords: Sammo Hung, Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars, Jackie Chan, Cynthia Rothrock, Martial Arts, movies, kung fu, fight scenes, action movie

Id: fODw921IOHc

Length: 59min 25sec (3565 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020