From Library Journal
Fans of action cinema will be thrilled with this autobiography. The star of films like Drunken Master (1978), Police Story (1985), and Supercop (1992) recounts his life in short, machine-gun-burst chapters. Beginning with his formative days as the acolyte of an opera master at the Chinese Drama Academy, Chan dives into his Hong Kong stuntman apprenticeship and career as a worldwide kung fu, shoot-'em-up idol. The staccato narrative ends with his U.S. breakthrough, Rumble in the Bronx (1994). Chan afterward divulges his "top ten stunts," "top ten fights," and his accrued bodily "aches and pains" in separate appendixes. A section called "Jackie's Films" affords a whirlwind survey of Chan's oeuvre. Written with noted Asian American journalist Yang, this volume makes for thorough, two-fisted coverage and should be read in tandem with Jeff Rovin's The Essential Jackie Chan Sourcebook (Pocket, 1997). Recommended for public libraries.?Neal Baker, Earlham Coll., Richmond, IN
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Hong Kong superstar Chan has long been Asia's top box-office attraction. Now that his films are being released stateside, he is acquiring the trappings of Hollywood celebrity--this slickly packaged autobiography, for instance. The presence of the ghostwriter is more evident here than in similar works, and fans familiar with Chan's modest English won't much detect his voice. But they may overlook that gap in verisimilitude in view of Chan's harrowing, genuine rags-to-riches life story. His father turned him, then only 7, over to a Chinese opera-school master whose brutal but effective training gave Chan the basic skills for becoming a world-class martial artist and, eventually, the greatest stunt performer the movies have ever seen. Chan tells how he resisted studio efforts to turn him into "the next Bruce Lee" and instead developed the self-effacing screen persona and the combination of thrills and comedy that make his movies recall those of Keaton and Lloyd as much as those of Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Nothing here much soils Chan's squeaky-clean image, although the beans are spilled about some long-past romances (including one with the late pop-singer Teresa Teng, who was as famous in Asia as Chan), and Chan finally admits to having been secretly married for 15 years. Chan's fans will demand this memoir, but even the uninitiated will enjoy his compelling account of an astonishing career. Gordon Flagg
From Kirkus Reviews
Hong Kong action star Chan tells his story to journalist Yang (Eastern Standard Time, not reviewed), and a colorful rags-to-riches tale it is. Chan is best-known as a man who does all his own stunts, no matter how insanely dangerous or harrowing, a genuinely likeable Everyman figure who is summed up by the title of his most recent American release: Mr. Nice Guy. Although he is a master of kung fu, his film persona is that of the ordinary guy who feels pain, who loses fights occasionally, and who survives by his wits and agility rather than superhuman strength. Delightfully enough, that is the same personality that emerges from this surprisingly artful as-told-to. Chan focuses on his childhood and early career struggles for most of the book, only reaching his present level of stardom (hes the biggest box-office draw in Asia, and rapidly approaching similar status everywhere else) in the last 75 pages. His childhood story is offbeat, perhaps well known to his fans but a glimpse into a very different world for everyone else. When he was seven, his parents handed him over to the China Drama Academy, where he ate, slept, and lived for ten years, studying the arts of the Chinese opera under Dickensian conditions. Chan recounts this story of 12-hour days, beatings, and other punishments with a finely judged sense of right and wrong, without a grandstanding sense of outrage, and with considerable humor. The rest of his story is told with appealing modesty as well. The book concludes with a very detailed filmography and lists of his ten most dangerous stunts and favorite fight scenes. An entertaining tale, well enough told that it should be of interest even to those who have never seen a Jackie Chan film, if any such people still exist. (8 pages color, 16 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"IN THE PANTHEON OF MOVIE ACTION HEROES, THERE IS ONLY ONE TRUE GOD, AND HIS NAME IS JACKIE CHAN."
--The Washington Post
"JACKIE CHAN'S LIFE STORY READS LIKE A JACKIE CHAN MOVIE: LOTS OF ACTION."
--Entertainment Weekly
"Chan is the most inventively kinetic movie star since Fred Astaire--his martial arts/acrobatic/stunt riding virtuosity is matched only by a comic ability to convert anything into a weapon."
--The Village Voice
From the Paperback edition.
From the Publisher
My husband's a huge Bruce Lee fan and when he heard we were doing a Jackie Chan
book he got very excited. He mentioned also that his fellow coworkers (in the transit
industry) keep asking when this book will be in the stores. Chan has a huge following
and they will not be disappointed in his incredibly life story.
From the Inside Flap
tanding in the sky on the roof of a glass and steel office tower in Rotterdam, Holland. There are twenty-one floors of air between me and the concrete pavement below. I am about to do what I do best. I am about to jump."
If you're a fan of action-adventure movies--with the accent on action--then you no doubt love watching Jackie Chan risk his life to create sensational cinema. As one of the biggest stars to burst into U.S. theaters, Jackie has put America's hottest heroes to shame, wowing audiences with the breathless, death-defying stunts that are the highlight of such movies as Rumble in the Bronx, Supercop, Operation: Condor, and his newest blockbuster Rush Hour. But who really is this boyishly handsome, lightning-fast Charlie Chaplin of martial arts movie-making? And what possessed him to make a career out of putting his life on the line to keep us on the edge of our seats?
"I remember a frightened seven-year-old walking into the dim and musty halls of the China
About the Author
Jackie has written this book with Jeff Yang, the founder and publisher of A. Magazine and the coauthor of Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian Influence in American Culture.
From the Paperback edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"Shantytown Stakeout," Police Story
As far as action is concerned, Police Story is my favorite movie I've ever made, a real whirlwind of slam-bang stunts and wild fights from beginning to end. To start things off right--that is to say, in an insanely exciting and dangerous way--Edward Tang King-sang and I scripted this opening sequence. My character and my fellow cops have been assigned to an undercover stakeout in an attempt to nab a notorious mobster. We set our trap along a winding mountain highway, taking up hidden positions throughout a rickety village of old tin and wood shacks. When our trap is sprung too soon, the dragnet turns into a disaster, as the gangsters try to escape by driving through the mountain village. Not "through" as in "zigzagging around the buildings," but through as in smashing into, over, and through the buildings. I quickly commandeer a car and begin a crazed chase down the slope after them. The car is smashed (as is the village), so I chase the crooks on foot. When they hijack a double-decker bus, I grab an umbrella, take a running leap, and hook its handle onto the rim of
an open window! Hanging desperately onto the umbrella, I try to pull myself into the bus, but am eventually thrown clear. Scrambling down to a lower part of the highway, I draw my pistol, order the speeding bus to stop...and it does, just inches away from my body.
"The Great Glass Slide," Police Story
This is where I finally put the drop on the gangsters once and for all. Of
course, I had to put the drop on myself in order to do it--literally.
After a glass-shattering fight inside a shopping mall, I spot my target
several floors below, on the ground level of an open atrium. The only way
to get down from my perch in time to do my policeman's duty is to take a
flying leap into the air, grab ahold of a pole wrapped in twinkling
Christmas lights, and slide a hundred feet to the ground--through a
glass-and-wood partition, onto the hard marble tile. We had to do this in
one take, so I crossed my fingers and prayed that I'd hit the stunt the
first time (and that I'd hit the ground softly). I made my jump, grabbed
the pole, and watched the twinkling lights crack and pop all the way down,
in an explosion of shattering glass and electrical sparks. Then I hit the
glass. And then I hit the floor. Somehow I managed to survive with a
collection of ugly bruises ... and second-degree burns on the skin of my
fingers and palms.
"Clock Tower Tumble," Project A
After a wild bicycle chase through Hong Kong's back alleys, I find myself
high in the air, dangling from the hands of a giant clock face. With no
other way to get down than fall, I let go--and crash through a series of
cloth canopies before smashing into the ground. I had to do this one three
times before I was satisfied with the way it looked. Trust me, I wouldn't
want to do it a fourth time.
"An Aerial Tour of Kuala Lumpur," Police Story III: Supercop
By this time, all of you probably know Michelle Yeoh from Tomorrow
Never Dies, the James Bond film. She resurrected her action career by
costarring with me in Supercop, my first film with Stanley Tong.
Michelle isn't a fighter; she never formally trained in martial arts,
beginning her career as a ballet dancer. But one thing you can say for her
is that she has the heart of a lionness. She did all of her own stunts in
Supercop, because she threatened to beat me up if I wouldn't let
her! Her most dangerous sequence in the movie was a scene in which she
rides a motorcycle up a ramp, into the air, and onto the roof of a moving
train. I have to admit that after I saw her do that stunt, I felt like I
had something to prove. That's why we added this sequence, in which I jump
from the roof of a building to a rope ladder swinging from the bottom of a
hovering helicopter. The crooks flying the chopper try to knock me off the
ladder by swinging me back and forth through the air and into buildings,
moving at high speed above the streets of Malaysia's capital. They don't
succeed--lucky for me. And the stunt looks almost as dangerous as it
really was--lucky for all you action fans out there.
"Going Down ..." Who Am I?
This scene was billed by my producers as the "world's most dangerous
stunt." They were probably telling the truth--although just about any
stunt is dangerous, if you do it wrong. (The stunt that nearly killed me
took place less than fifteen feet off the ground, after all.) Luckily, I
did it right. Eventually. Even though one of my stuntmen proved it could
be done (from a lower level, of course), it took me two weeks to get up
the nerve to try it myself. The sequence begins with me fighting it out
with some thugs on the top of a very tall building in Rotterdam, Holland.
After battling with them around the roof, and nearly falling off once or
twice, I finally take the quickest possible trip to the sidewalk
below--sliding down the side of the building, which is slanted nearly
forty-five degrees, all the way to the ground. Twenty-one stories. If I
ever have an amusement park, I'll be sure to turn this stunt into a ride.
"The Walls Come Tumblin' Down," Project A II
I saw Buster Keaton do this in Steamboat Bill, Jr., so of course I
had to do it too. After running down the face of a ceremonial facade
that's in the process of falling over, I narrowly escape being crushed by
standing in the right place at the right time--with my body going through
an opening in the facade as it crashes down right over me. It's all in the
timing.
"No Way to Ride a Bus," Police Story II
Another chase sequence--this time running along the tops of moving buses,
while narrowly dodging signs and billboards that pass overhead and around
me. At the end of the chase, I leap through a glass window....
Unfortunately, I chose the wrong window as my target, and instead of
hitting prop glass, I smashed through a real pane. Which left me in real
pain.
"Down, Down, and Away," Armour of God
I did this stunt just weeks after recovering from my near-fatal fall and
serious brain surgery. The show must go on. My character, Asian Hawk, is
racing to get away from angry natives (I've just stolen a priceless
religious artifact from them, so they have good reason to be angry). Over
a cliff I go ... landing on top of a huge hot air balloon, safe and sound.
I did this stunt by parachuting from a plane. Which didn't make it any
safer.
"Roller Boogie," Winners and Sinners
I'm not really the star of the "Lucky Stars" movies--I did the films
mostly because of Samo. (Well, it helped that the movies were box office
hits.) As a result, I don't get much screen time, which is fine, because
the rest of the cast is talented and hilarious. This scene gave me a
chance to shine, though--using the roller-skating skill I learned for
The Big Brawl in a chase sequence on a crowded highway. The wildest
part of the sequence has me rolling over a Volkswagen Beetle, and then
under an eighteen-wheeler truck rig. That's one way of beating rush hour
traffic.
"Cycle Thriller," Armour of God II: Operation Condor
We intended Operation Condor to be epic in every way: big fights,
big budget, and, of course, big stunts. There's a chase sequence toward
the beginning of the movie that stands as one of my best ever. After
racing through the streets of Madrid on the back of a motorcycle, I find
myself headed for the waterfront with nowhere to go but into the sea.
Luckily, I spot a cargo net hanging from a crane at the edge of the
docks--so I gun the engines and head full-speed toward the end of the pier
in a deadly game of chicken with my pursuers. They're forced to veer off
and crash into stacked piles of crates, while I ride my cycle off the pier
and into the air, leaping up to grab hold of the net at the very last
minute. What a waste of a good bike.
![The Jackie Chan Collection: Volume 1 (1976 - 1982) [Blu-ray]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/917YX4Hnq9L._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
![The Jackie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 (1983 - 1993) [Blu-ray]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81BjJEaWmzL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
