How I Met My Childhood Idol: On Working with Jackie Chan
I had a dream 3 weeks ago that I would be working with Jackie Chan – my childhood idol and a source of inspiration to learn martial arts. 15 years later that hazy mist of a dream clears and seconds count down in my heart. I see a light green dressed figure in the distance. With each footstep that dream grows clearer and clearer until finally that dream becomes a reality. Before me is JACKIE CHAN – the man who made me want to crash through windows after watching Police Story – the man who fell from a 60 foot tall clock tower in Project A – the man who fell onto burning coals in Drunken Master II – the man who has so much balls that just by WATCHING him, your balls grow – This MAN is standing right in front of me. He has his hands in his pocket, well postured, attentive, and ready to watch us demo. He is in LA to promote his latest movie “The Spy Next Door”.
I have performed countless times in any makeshift demo setting you can imagine; I’ve even competed at the largest world wushu tournament and won, but today seconds before my turn… I thought of a million moves I should do / could do – which would be the best to show the man that I’ve wanted to meet for so long?
There is not enough space to do everything I want and there are too many people around to wield weapons… I decide on a short section of longfist. As I finish up the last part of my form I do a butterfly twist which happens to be only a few feet short of Jackie Chan. He doesn’t flinch. I cleanly land on my knees with one hand touching the ground. The moment is over. I stand up and salute indicating to the crowd the completion of our group’s demo. Jackie comes over and shakes all our hands. He is pretty much how I expect him to be – jovial, good humored, and great presence.
Everything happens so fast at this point. He came in to greet us, shake our hands, and take some photos to promote the movie. There really wasn’t a moment to chit chat. I had so many things in my head I wanted to say. I wanted to sit down and have even 5 minutes to say “thank you for pushing yourself to the limits to inspire me to want to learn martial arts and action choreography. Thank you for giving me that passion to do martial arts which led me to wushu and ultimately many huge accomplishments in my life.” Instead between the camera flashes, cheese smiles, and waving I squeeze in the first thing I can think of “Hey, I just came back from Hong Kong and Taiwan…” There are so many other things I would rather have said, but the situation we were in was not really suitable for the kind of conversation I was looking for. I didn’t even get to tell him the stories of my 3 close encounters with him. Anyways it was a great first experience and I am hopeful that I will meet him again.
Here is the video of us demoing as Jackie Chan watches a few feet away:
