When you think of Dodgers and "Jackie" only one name comes to mind.Jackie Chan.
Recently Jackie Chan threw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium. Beforehand I interviewed him briefly. It was supposed to be an intimate one-on-one. Instead it became a rather crazed sixty-on-one. A hundred Asian media people surrounded us with microphones and TV cameras. I was probably on Beijing Eyewitness News. Except, now that I think about it, my questions were rather bizarre. I imagine these reporters listening back to the interview going "Huh???" This was recorded down on the field and at one point security people moved us all, adding yet another element of goofiness.
This aired on our KABC Sunday night show followed by a brief discussion imaging how Jackie might fit into a baseball-themed movie. I came up with four possible titles.
FISTS OF FURY IN THE OUTFIELD
FIELD OF NINJAS
BULL DRAGON
PRIDE OF THE FEARLESS HYENA
He's a good guy. A real good sport (considering my questions). And I could easily see him as Lou Gehrig.
Wow....how many takes? 2900?!
ReplyDeleteGreat interview, Ken.
(off-topic, what are your thoughts on Roberto Clemente? thanks!)
I was going to say something witty here... but I just sneezed twice in a row ALL OVER my keyboard. EW! Yucky! BLECK!!! I have to go clean my keyboard now... bye.
ReplyDeleteLeft of field question... playing trivia tonight, and the question comes up - what is the name of Big Bird's teddybear? I, of course, know the answer - Radar.
ReplyDeleteWas there any difficulties met when they decided to name that bear? Did the CTW need permission from any of the MASH writers/producers/whoever?
I'm not sure how this would work via the television media, or any other media come to think of it, which is why I ask.
Is this Jackie Chan - Baseball Movie thing another contest?
ReplyDeleteOH GOODY!
"Eight Mandarins Out"
"Bang Your Head Many Times On The Fire Escape As You Fall Off The Building Slowly"
"Crouching Catcher, Hidden Spitter"
Me stop now.
Enter The Dugout
ReplyDeleteor
The No-MSG Natural
-J.
wf - I was going the same way - damn the torpedos/prizes, full speed ahead to a kontest -
ReplyDelete"Crouching (Detroit) Tigers, Hidden Curve Ball"
(in keeping with this theme, my word verification was 'ixhjzou', Chinese for "Canseco needs steroids for his brain."
A pet peeve of mine is when people confuse different Asian cultures.
ReplyDeleteNinjas are Japanese. Jackie Chan is from Hong Kong. Having him star in a ninja movie would be as ridiculous as having a Chinese actress play a geisha. :)
...and of course, no actor has never played a character from another country!
ReplyDeleteWhat about that Jewish actress from Sayonara, Moishe Yamulke? Sorry, just got home from work. But not soon enough to get into the Crouchapalooza.
ReplyDeleteKen, you probably would have enjoyed the doc. “The Fort Worth Cats, Through a Cat’s Eye” that aired here last night as the lead-in to the PBS Roberto Clemente bio. They were the Dodger’s AA Texas League Team,and just recently got ressurected. There were some nice reminiscences by Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, Sparky Anderson, Maury Wills and others who played here. I don’t know when this was filmed, couldn’t have been too long ago, but half of the interviewees looked older than Bobby Bragan. But Snider looked like your totally relaxed, Perry Comoish, middle aged neighbor just about to light up the grill and asking if you wanted to go out in the boat with him for a few hours. Must be all that California clean living.
Incidentally, I don’t know if your read about it in the regular sports media, but a couple of years ago, Bragan came out and managed the Cats for one game, becoming the oldest guy ever to manage a pro team. He got thrown out in the 3rd, thereby becoming the oldest person period ever to be ejected from a professional baseball game. The smart money said he just had to find away not to sit 6 more innings on that hard bench.
te, i think you may have missed anonymous' little dig at "Memoirs of a Geisha," which featured HK actresses in the leading roles. Personally, I think it all comes down to the actor. Great actors are often cast against type to great effect. But as much as I love Jackie Chan, I can't imagine him being even remotely convincing as a Japanese, except to those who make no distinction between the various Asian peoples.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure my agent would've caught a mistake like that. If I could find my agent. *eyeroll*
ReplyDeleteI've had the crappiest luck with agents. I got an LA agent in the early 90s, when I was still in film school in Illinois, after one of my screenplays was a semi-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship competition. The guy sent it around to a few places, but by the time I moved here few months later, he had quit the agency and moved to NY, where he became producer of the Howard Stern Show.
ReplyDeleteThen a guy at the once-fabled H. N. Swanson Agency was gonna sign me. Before we could do the paperwork, new management swooped in and canned him. Naturally, I couldn't get anyone else there to even look at my stuff.
I managed to get a couple of things produced with no representation, but this didn't seem to impress any agents. No one would look at anything. When I started writing some stuff with a partner, he sent one of our sitcom specs, unsolicited, to a story editor at "Everybody Loves Raymond." That guy, who had moved up to producer by the time he got back to us, loved our script. He bought us breakfast, invited us to the taping of the 100th episode, and gave the script to his agent at CAA with a strong recommendation. The agent wouldn't even look at it. We had no track record, no buzz. Of course, if we'd been represented, he might have been interested in poaching us. But the recommendation of one of his highly successful clients wasn't sufficient. Strange business.
Um, obviously I intended the above rant for the thread about agents. Never mind.
ReplyDeleteHey Ken,
ReplyDeleteGave you some linky love at LA Metblogs!
http://la.metblogs.com/2008/04/23/wednesday-bullets-a-shot-at-big-tortas-jackie-chan-and-a-200000-home/
Great interview!!!
-Joz
te said...
ReplyDelete...and of course, no actor has never played a character from another country!
Had that actually been the case, Myrna Loy, of all people (she was a native of Helena, Mont.), would have had very little work from 1928 to 1933. She had so many Asian roles during that time she probably was handed chopsticks as utensils even when she ate in non-Chinese restaurants.
Thankfully, she eventually teamed up with William Powell...
BTW, Jackie Chan is great. Love his acrobatics and his humor.
A League of Their Fists.
ReplyDelete