THE TIME I ALMOST KICKED JACKIE CHAN'S LITTLE ASS.

A story about Jackie Chan, independent filmmaking, and me being a clueless jerk.

JACKIE CHAN WAS REALLY CLOSE TO BEING IN ONE OF MY FIRST MOVIES (He just didn't know it.) I didn’t really almost kick his ass. That’s just me trying to be all clickbaity. I’m a big Jackie Chan fan. He’s the best. He’s Bruce Lee with the comedy lights on. He was a giant in China, maybe the biggest action guy in the world. He finally broke through here big time in the late ’90s in a movie which was like the third sequel in his SuperCop series, and then he exploded here crazy huge when he partnered up with Chris Tucker in Rush Hour.

The point is he’s a movie, God. He does his own stunts, he’s got fans all over the world, and he’s already at the top when this story happens.

This isn’t truly a ’stand-up’ tale, it was at the time I was still trying to do my act and make movies and have a family and somehow keep the wheels from coming off of the bus, but I love the story, so I’m putting it in here.

One bright shiny, sunny day in 1999, I’m shooting one of my first movies. A film called ‘The Sex Monster’ that we made on a super low budget starring myself and, Mariel Hemingway, as a young married couple.

Mariel was a great sport. She’s wonderful in the film. As I said the production was done on a shoe-string budget and we were out of shoes and short on string.

We needed a shot for this montage scene of Mariel and my character getting along for a change, going out for lunch, and having a nice meal. Now, we had no more cash to pay for another location. So I drag Mariel and my brother Jack, who was the producer, and by the way, another good sport, mid- day at lunch to this outdoor eatery on Sunset blvd right at the bottom of Sunset Plaza. It’s a hot spot now; back then it was just getting going.

The idea is, Mariel and I will grab a table, and Jack will set up this giant Panavision camera on wooden legs that I’ve had him lug across town, on the other side of the street with a Zoom lens that goes all the way to 300 millimeters or something and we’ll steal a bunch of shots across Sunset of us laughing and having a great time. No permits. No licenses. No cops to help out. No permission from the restaurant. Nothing.

Mariel and I sit down, and Jack tells us over the walkie-talkie it’s a great shot.He’s ready to roll the camera but he thinks I should come to look. through the lens. That means I need to head across the street and see the shot. So I dart through traffic, look into the lens, noticing that in every shot but the widest angle, it feels like Mariel and I are alone in the place. We got nothing. No shot.

Now the biggest part of the problem is a large empty table just to the west of us in the place is empty making it look barren, and it’s really the only thing you see other than Mariel and I in most of the angles on the variable lens.

The next table over, just after the empty one, happens to be full. It’s got a party of like ten very happy-looking Chinese folks. They’re animated and look like they’re having a ball. I can’t move my position because there’s a tree in the view of the middle of the next table, but I bet myself I can move them.

They’re tourists. What the hell? They may as well be extras. It’s an affliction of having been making movies too long. You tend to start to see everyone in the general public as background extras. My son Burt, who grew up on movie sets his whole life was a true victim of this mindset. We were in the Daily Grill one night and he wanted to make a point about a baby seated a table or two over to ours. Burt was about six or so at the time. ‘Hey, Dad?’ he said. ‘You see that baby over there, at that table?’ I said ‘Which table? ‘He pointed, ‘That table of extra’s over there behind us.’

Anyway, back to my Sex Monster stolen shot story; Seeing that I had no good shot, I dash back across Sunset blvd, determined to fix it. I almost get hit by a car I’m so excited to rearrange shit and get on with it.

I climb back over the median, tumble into the restaurant; my adrenalin so high, I stumble over to the people in the group of Chinese diners closest to the long table between our two tables and explain to them nicely that I need to move them to the empty table between us. The problem is, by and large, they don’t speak English.

In fact, they seem truly confused. They just stare at me. Nodding politely and smiling at everything I say. This is half of their group. The other group members are still laughing at something someone at the head of their table is saying.

Now, the people on my end are trying to tell me something in response to me explaining to them I’m making a movie and pointing to the camera way, way, across the street, showing them how I’m going to move them all to the next table.

They’re talking Chinese. I don’t speak Chinese, but I do need to point out here that I was being nice as I picked up their plates and moved them one at a time over to the next table. I really was. I was sweet. Gentle and gracious as I took full plates of food and moved them, so gingerly, over. I carefully helped an older lady move, telling her how I was making a movie and that she’s was going to be in it.

‘Hollywood. Yes. Hollywood. This is good. You come. You end up in a movie. Yes?’

There’s no way in hell I wasn’t talking with a goofy accent. Like you sometimes do when you talk to foreigners. I was out of control. A train wreck. I know it now, I freely admit it.

I was in a hurry. This has been a problem my whole life. I start down a road and can’t stop, can’t turn back, slow the gas, hit the brake. This table full of tourists here was moving. They were gonna be in the movie. It was just going to happen. It was pre-ordained from the Lord and no, I had never been in a church, yet I somehow knew this to be his wishes.

Then, finally, the guy at the end of the table. The little Chinese fellow. The one that had the other half of the table enthralled during all of this. The great storyteller. The one whose plate I now came over and picked up. The one who grabbed my arm as I lifted his risotto as he was in the middle of speed telling some funny tale to the others.

(When you listen to Chinese people talk you don’t know if they’re talking super fast because it’s at a point in their story that it’s all just coming out fast, or if the speaker is just a super fast talker, but I do remember thinking, wow, these people are laughing like crazy at this guy, and, he’s the fastest talker I’ve ever heard.)

He grabbed my arm. He turned to me and he immediately spoke in English. Perfect English. Slow. Very slow.

‘Can I help you? What are you doing? Why are you taking my food? What is happening? Why are you moving my aunts and my uncles and cousins to another table?’

It took him seven minutes to ask me all this.

‘I’m moving them,’ I told him, ‘Because I’m going to put them and you in my movie. I’m making a movie. With Mariel Heming- way. The granddaughter of Ernest Heming-way. Do you know who that is?’

He nodded to me. Yes. He knew who she was. Again, very slowly. He was a nice-looking guy. Confident. In control. A family man. I liked him. I tried to assure him.

‘This is going to be good. Your family and you, you’re going to have a good story when you get home to your village. Your city. Wherever? You went to Hollywood, and you were in a MOV-IE.’

I made another attempt at his plate of risotto. He squeezed my arm so hard that I can still make it hurt. It’s still tender. Twenty-five years later. I set his plate down carefully. Then he smiled. When he smiled, I finally realized what a dolt I was.

‘Oh, shit. ..You’re, Jackie Chan. You’re Jackie Chan?’

He nodded. I got it. I said, ‘You have no interest in being an extra in my movie?’’ He nodded again. He waved to the rest of his family to bring their food back to their table. He looked at me, smiled again, and said, very slowly.

‘No. I’m sorry, but I do not I do not want to be in your movie.’ (That took him a minute to say.) He turned to the others he was sitting with and began speaking Chinese instantly ramping up to a hundred and ten miles an hour. They all busted out laughing.

I walked away backward. Slowly plunking down next to Mariel. I hit the walkie-talkie, Let my brother know to start rolling. I quietly told Mariel that was Jackie Chan at the next table. She looked back. Saw that it was.

‘Wow. How come they’re not moving over to this table? It seemed like they were gonna?’

‘Yeah, turns out, Jackie’s not that big of a fan of your’s Mariel.’

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