Duane's Jackie Chan Stunt Report

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DUANE'S JACKIE CHAN
STUNT REPORT
He does his own stunts. He has the X-rays to prove it.

WORK ORDER No. 0407-54
CUSTOMER: Chan, Jackie
VEHICLE: human body, 1954 model, Hong Kong build
MILEAGE: very high
COMPLAINT: owner keeps jumping off of things
TECH: Duane O.

My name is Duane Oakley. I'm 18. I graduated high school in Arkansas this May and I work at a tire shop, mounting and balancing and plugging flats and listening to the radio all day. Mr. Gregorio, who owns the shop, says I'm the only guy he ever hired who reads the tread wear chart for fun. Two nights a week I take Tang Soo Do. I'm a green belt.

I found Jackie Chan the way a lot of people in America did. In 1996 when I was fifteen, my buddy Matt and I went to see Rumble in the Bronx because the poster looked cool, and partway through, Jackie jumps off one roof onto the fire escape across the alley and Matt grabbed my arm and said did he just DO that? He did. Every time. That's the whole point of this page.

SERVICE HISTORY

Jackie Chan was born in Hong Kong on April 7, 1954. His family was poor, and when he was about seven they put him in a Peking Opera school, where kids lived and trained all day, every day, for about ten years: acrobatics, singing, kung fu, tumbling, and getting hit with a stick when they messed up. Some of the boys he trained with, like Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, ended up making movies with him later. The school is where all the flips come from.

When he got out he worked as a stuntman, and he was in Bruce Lee's movies Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon, getting beat up mostly. After Bruce Lee died, everybody wanted the next Bruce Lee, and they tried to make Jackie into one, and it didn't work. He wasn't Bruce Lee. He was funny.

So he did it his way. Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master (both 1978) made him a star with kung fu that was half fighting and half comedy. Then he started directing his own movies and doing bigger and crazier stunts: Project A (1983), Police Story (1985), Armour of God (1986) and on and on. He has his own stunt team. He uses whatever is lying around in a fight, chairs, ladders, a coat rack, a refrigerator. Mr. Johansen, my Tang Soo Do instructor, says that's actually the most realistic thing about his movies.

THE AMERICAN MOVIES

He tried America a couple times before. The Big Brawl (1980), The Cannonball Run (1981), and The Protector (1985). None of them really let him be Jackie. Then:

U.S. RELEASE	MOVIE
February 1996	Rumble in the Bronx. The one that did it. Number one movie in the country its first weekend. Filmed in Vancouver, so the Bronx has mountains. Nobody cares.
Summer 1996	Supercop. Really Police Story 3. With Michelle Yeoh, who is as crazy as he is.
January 1997	Jackie Chan's First Strike. Police Story 4. The ladder fight.
Summer 1997	Operation Condor. Armour of God II, from 1991. Desert, Nazis' gold, wind tunnel.
March 1998	Mr. Nice Guy. He's a TV chef in Australia. It's dumb and I love it.
September 1998	Rush Hour. With Chris Tucker. Huge hit, made in Hollywood. Good movie, but the American studios won't let him do as much, and you can tell.

A lot of the American versions are dubbed and cut down from the Hong Kong ones, sometimes with different music. That's why I hunt for the originals. See my want list.

STAY FOR THE CREDITS

Rule one of a Jackie Chan movie: do not leave when the credits start. Over the end credits they show the outtakes, the stunts that went wrong. Jackie missing the jump. Jackie falling off the thing. Jackie getting carried off on a stretcher, and then the next shot he's back up doing it again. The first time I saw that, at Rumble in the Bronx, the whole theater sat back down. The ushers were mad. Since then I've made everybody I know stay through the credits on every movie, and I've seen a lot of key grips' names for nothing.

INJURY CHART
(Vehicle inspection sheet. Only the famous ones, and only the ones I've read in more than one place. There are way more.)

PART	MOVIE	CONDITION
HEAD	Armour of God (1986)	Fell out of a tree in Yugoslavia when a branch broke and hit his head on a rock. Fractured skull, emergency brain surgery. He's got a permanent plug in his skull from it, and his hearing on that side was never the same. WORST ONE.
NECK	Project A (1983)	The clock tower fall, through two awnings and onto the ground. Landed on his head and neck more than once. He did it three times anyway.
HANDS	Police Story (1985)	Sliding down a pole covered in electric lights. The bulbs got so hot they burned his hands bad.
BACK	Police Story (1985)	Same pole, same landing. Hurt his back and pelvis too.
ANKLE	Rumble in the Bronx (1995)	Broke it jumping onto the hovercraft. Finished the movie in a cast, with a sock over it painted to look like his sneaker. Look for it in the end.
NOSE	More than one	Broken more than once. Look at it.
INSPECTION RESULT: PASSED. Somehow. Tech recommends customer stop jumping off of things. Customer will not.

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Last updated Saturday, September 18, 1999