Jackie Chan: My Stunts

In a follow-up to my piece on What writers can learn from Jackie Chan from last week, I hunted down a copy of the documentary Jackie Chan: My Stunts from 1999. In a lot of ways, this documentary is the 90 minute version of Tony Zhou’s 14 minute analysis, with Jackie revealing all the old-school techniques they use to do stunts in his films.

I have to say that seeing him show off his approach to producing stunt-driven action films is really inspiring. It really shows you how much thought and detail go into what seem like the simplest stunts, and how the movies he does are more vehicles for the Chinese-opera type sequences than they are movies in the traditional sense. I love how much emphasis he also places on the human element, which is something Hollywood has a pretty spotty track record on.

Now I really want to sit down and watch a bunch of Chan’s older films that I haven’t seen yet! Luckily, YouTube has a pretty good selection of them.

 

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