050: Bey Logan (Part 1)

Bey Logan is an English film producer who’s been making films out of Hong Kong for the past 30 years. Bey first got started as a martial arts journalist, which paved his way into the film industry, where he produced and wrote numerous films, starting with the chaotic 'Guns N Roses' and later 'White Tiger.' Known for his work with iconic figures like Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen, Bey shares his extraordinary experiences, including working with Maggie Q, Paul Rudd, and enduring the grueling 16-hour workdays of Hong Kong cinema. He recounts his adventures on the films 'Gen Y Cops,' 'The Medallion, and ‘Dragon Squad’ which Michael Biehn starred in

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Time Zone Challenges
01:03 Early Fascination with Martial Arts
04:32 From Magazine Writer to Martial Arts Filmmaker
08:27 Navigating the Hong Kong Film Industry
18:36 Working with Jackie Chan and Hollywood Actors
32:06 The Medallion and Filmmaking Philosophy
36:34 Stunt Stories and Hong Kong Cinema
41:50 Meeting Daniel Lee and Filming Dragon Squad
53:55 Challenges of Filmmaking in Hong Kong
59:04 Memorable Moments with Maggie Q

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
I have declared war against my brain in order to
that one don't seem to so long as I only
will you watime stop them.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Days, I don't have to. Yeah, yeah, I just wanted
to thank you because I know it's like really late
there and no.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
No, no, no, I'm happy to do it. And it was
by the way I'm used to it, because I mean,
I've worked with a lot of American companies in recent years,
and the time difference is a pain, I have to say.
But yeah, as much as I love visiting La or
New York, I never I never feel that tempted to
leave Hong Kong. I must say, yeah, it's still still
my favorite place. Well, I'm used to.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Why don't we start bay just because I'm like, not
only badly introductions, but why can you just spend a
few minutes basically talking about where you were born, where
you grew up, your family, where you went to school,
and when you made that and how you got involved

(01:09):
with with Asian movies and when you made that decision that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Sure, well, but I was actually adopted as a baby
and raised by very kind of square English parents in
a very quiet city in England or Peterborough. And my
dad was an accountant, my mom was a nurse, and
from when I was really, very very young, I was
fascinated by the moving image in all its manifestation television

(01:38):
and film and comic books and anything this moving image
is telling a story, and fascinated with martial arts, Asian
martial arts. And I would say, even before people knew
who Bruce Lee was, or there was David Carodine doing
kung fu, was I wanted to do judo. I'd seen
like Captain America doing fighting, somebody using savat. So I

(02:01):
was fascinated. When I found some years later that the
moving image and martial arts could be brought together in
this incredibly dynamic genre, which was martial arts movies, I
just had this innate sense that this is something I
wanted to do. I wanted to practice martial arts. I
wanted to be involved. It was I would say, I

(02:21):
mean just in a very in a vague way, from
as far back as as far back as I knew
that there were martial arts movies and martial arts TV shows,
I wanted to be involved. And of course my dad,
as an accountant, was you know, overjoyed at this, you know,
like he was like, you know, you don't You're not Chinese,
you don't know Chinese. We don't know anybody in the
Kung through world, and what are you going to do?

(02:43):
Seem you know. I don't say that in any way
critical of him. I mean, you know, I'm probably very
liberal with my kids. There's not much they could say
they wanted to be. Actually, if one of my kids
said they wanted to be an accountant, I might want
that side. But I'll tell you something interesting, And I
haven't talked about this too much on interviews, but in

(03:06):
terms of my fascination with martial arts and the moving image,
I think there's a kind of magic involved. Because my
biological mother who gave birth to me and she was fifteen,
she was Australian, is Australian and she came to give
birth to me in England and I was adopted by

(03:26):
these English parents, and she flew back from England to
Australia and met the man who is now my beloved stepfather,
Tino Seberano, who was the founder of karate in Australia.
So she started training in karate in Australia. So she's
on one side of the planet doing karate and I'm
this little kid on the other side and I'm going
I want to do martial arts. So there's a kind

(03:50):
of magic there of what was it. I was somehow
communicating and she was into movies and music and martial arts,
and my adoptive parents were not. So I didn't find
that out till you later. I didn't meet my mom
until I was in my mid twenties, but in the meantime,
I'd been living a life more in sync with my
Australian family than my British was Genes. Yeah, there was

(04:15):
some there was some connection. And you know, if you believe,
I believe that we in this lifetime are you know,
spiritual beings having a human experience rather than human beings
having a spiritual experience. So if you buy into that,
all manner of communication and all manner of manifestation makes sense.
If you just believe that we're like these human machines,

(04:36):
then I guess a lot of stuff is more harder
to accept. So I never really had a problem with
the idea that somehow this communication was happening, and so
I was kind of looking for a way in to
this business. And you know, it's like Joseph Campbell talks
about the path of life finding you, And one thing
I realized was that I became a magazine writer and

(05:01):
an editor within the field of martial arts and action films,
and in that regard, I was rather like what Frank
Zappa said about Rolling Stone. He said, it was people
that can't talk, interviewed by people that can't write, for
people that can't read. And that was that was martial
arts journalism when I came into it. So it was

(05:22):
a field day for me just to be remotely literate
and articulate. And so the people who were doing martial
arts and the people doing martial arts movies were like,
this guy's kind of smart, well read educated. I'd been
to schools, the best schools in England. I'd dropped out
from a highly prestigious university, so I had something a

(05:43):
little bit more education, perhaps than the average guy that
was into kung fu movies. So I parlayed that in
kind of an education because I think, if this is
in the years before podcasts, if you called somebody up
and said I want to come sit and talk with
you for two hours, and I just want you to
tell me everything about how to be in movies and

(06:04):
how to do this stuff. You might be hesitant, but
when you say I want to come and talk to
you for two hours about you and I'm going to
put you on the cover of my magazine, everybody said yes.
So I had this great education and I was. I
had that hut spa that at the end of the
interviews I would say, hey, by the way, I've got
the script here that you might consider. I mean, now,

(06:28):
I shudder, you know, I think, what was I thinking?
But you know, it's like.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
You're talking about You're still in England at this point, correct,
And you know.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
I like the bumblebee. If you actually, you know, explain
why the bumblebee can't fly, it would probably fall out
of the sky. But you know, you just go on faith.
So I was still living in England and my very
first film experience, I'd had a friend moved to Hong Kong,
and bless him, he spoke to a gentleman in Hong Kong.
It was a director and a producer called Philip co

(06:58):
and he said, I want to do a movie in England.
Do you know anybody who's a producer. And I've always
been a bit like Jim Carrey, and the yes man
I was. I always said yes to stuff. So I
was just like somebody called me, you want to be
a producer, Yes, can you find the location? Yes? Can
you do the casting? Just yes? And you know you
act as if you have faith, and faith has given

(07:18):
unto you. So I just fell into my first movie,
Guns and Roses. And do you remember Simon.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yam Simon who worked on our on our.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Chinese actor you Fight at the end of Blood Bond.
He was the star of my first film.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
A lovely guy, lovely guy.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Man, wonderful. What about he's like l Michael Caine. I
think he's been in many many movies on his day.
One of the finest actors you could hope to find.
But was he?

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Was he in that first movie that you went? Did
you you went to Hong Kong to he came? He
came to English go ahead.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Producer and director in Hong Kong asked a friend of mine,
do you do you know anybody in England who could
produce this movie with me? And the guy said, well,
there's this guy Bay, you could try him. And I
had no experience. I hadn't been to film school in
a conventional sense, so Phillips. People called me. I didn't
speak Chinese at the time, and one of his guys

(08:16):
called me and said, Hey, we're coming to this movie.
It's called Guns and Roses. Would you like to be
the producer? And I was like sure, and I just
now I look back, I think what was I thinking?
Because I just knew nothing, but I figured I could
kind of learn, and so Simon flew in, the director
flew in, and we shot in Birmingham, we shot in Paris,
we shot in London, and then we came back and

(08:36):
shot in Hong Kong and that finished and that was
my first movie, and I went back to England. I thought, gee,
maybe the way I fit into this puzzle is I'm
going to live in England and people will come to
Hong Kong from Hong Kong to England to make movies,
and I'll just produce in Europe. But there was no
other follow on film. And then some friends of mine
in Hong Kong said, hey, do you want to come

(08:58):
and write and produce a movie. We've got some money,
come and help us out. And that was it. So
I flew over.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Thinking how old were you at that time that you.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Said I alady had one career. I started editing magazines
and writing them when I was twenty one and then,
which now I look back on, it was really extraordinary
young age to take on that responsibility of a monthly publication.
And then I was probably pushing thirty when I began
my second career, which was being a screenwriter and producer

(09:31):
in Hong Kong, and I did the first The first
movie was utterly chaotic. It was there's a movie called
Living in Oblivion with Steve Ashemi and I think this
was the Hong Kong version of Living in Oblivion. It
was just really chaotic and about I don't know. Before
they even started production, I decided that the egos were

(09:54):
out of control. The whole thing was just haywire and
I just quit.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
I left and I did Did it get made?

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah? Well, I'll just tell you briefly what happened. I mean,
so I had written the script, tried to try. I
think I was in the land of the blind. I
was the one i'd met. I knew something how you
produce and sell a film. But the other guys involved,
their egos were like running around like crazy, and it
was just every day it was this clash and I

(10:24):
didn't know. Maybe I still don't always know, but I
didn't really know how to handle that. So I was
just like, will you guys do it? I'm out of here.
And the only other friend I had in Hong Kong, luckily,
was a guy called Donnie Yen, who you make. I
remember you saw some of Yip Man and he was
in the new the recent John Wick as the Blind Assassin.

(10:44):
He was in Rogue one, but at that time Donnie
was kind of just a bit of a lull in
his career. Donnie Yen in Hong Kong, but he and
I were really good friends. But I'd interviewed him with
the magazine and that had turned into a friendship. And
I said, I don't know what to do, this whole
thing falling apart the Nightmare. I'm either going to go
back to England or whatever. And he said, look, I'm
doing a movie in China. I need to go to fight.

(11:06):
Why do you come and fight me in China for
you know, six weeks? So I had such a beating
behind the scenes on this first film, but being physically
beaten up by Donnie felt like a good option. So
I flew to China to do that. And I always remember,
I mean, there's a big difference, and you can relate

(11:27):
to this because I always I was always admired your
coordination and physicality from not from training in martial arts,
but doing a lot of action scenes for movies. You know,
you had this great physicality. I felt I was pretty
competent in like Chinese traditional martial art, but when you
started doing the movies and these kind of like kind

(11:48):
of pre rehearsed sequences, I found it really hard work.
And that's why I haven't done it that often. But
this movie I did, and just my luck, I'm fighting
the fastest man alive, which was Donnie Yen. There was
a funny scene he said to me. He said, okay, babe,
I am going to kick you three times, one tool
three and you use your hand to block one tool
three and most people's feet are slower than their hands.

(12:11):
He's not done it, so he was doing this and
by the time he done his third kick, I'll just
moved my hand once once once like this, and then
he leans and he says, could you speed up? And
I'm like, could you slow down? And then finally we
got into sync and we sat down and afterwards, like
and he goes to me, Man, he said, I said

(12:31):
something funny, and he goes, man, if only your body
was as fast as your brain? And I said, if
only your brain as fast as your body.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
So this was.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
But meanwhile I'm hearing these stories from from the movie
was called the movie The Game Came to Be was
being shot under the title Tiger Storm, and I kept
hearing these horror stories and it started. A British actor
who was based in la for a long time. I
think he still is. His name is Gary Daniels, and
he did a lot of of b movies in the

(13:01):
eighties and the nineties and they're still around now. But
Gary starred in this movie. I'd introduced him to be
in this film. And what I heard was that they
ran out of money. It was all chaotic and they
got a third of the way through shooting and it
just fell apart and Gary had flown back to make
another movie in America. And the short story long, another

(13:25):
company bought all the rights to this footage to finish
the film. A distribution company. They bought the footage from
this unfinished movie because Gary had some kind of some
kind of market some value in the marketplace, and they
cut a trailer together, and they raised so much money
from the trailer that they didn't need to use any

(13:46):
of the existing Hong Kong footage. They started from scratch
and they shot the whole film in Canada, and they
only had two people come back from the original shoot,
Gary Daniels and me, which was kind of like, kind
of like my introduction to quality filmmaking. That movie actually
is pretty good. It's called White Tiger. They shot it
under the title of White Tiger.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
It had Gary, are you talking about the original movie
that you left?

Speaker 1 (14:11):
The original movie the first movie that I was hired
or brought on, and then.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
That what you're talking about is that what they shot
like a third of it, Okay, got.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Sold that third They sold the footage to sales and
production company and those guys cut a trailer from that
third of foot went around all the markets at that time,
like American Film market can. Raised so much money on
Gary's name that they decided to dump all the Hong

(14:43):
Kong footage and just start over with the money they'd raised.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Okay, so they shopped you from the beginning and they
kept you.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Does that mean?

Speaker 1 (14:52):
And I just got a question because Donnie and he's
a fantastic martial artist and I love him a lot.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Does that mean that he so he was kind of
cut out of the movies.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
What you're saying, No, no, Donny, Sorry, these are two
different movies. But only I shot with Monny in China
as a fighting guy. It was called Circus Kids. It
was a pure Hong Kong film and my only involvement
with that was as a bad guy as an actor,
though with Michael in the room to describe as they
lead in fighting. So that was one movie. And the
movie that I'd come to Hong Kong to do, Tiger Storm,

(15:20):
was reborn as White Tiger, and it was shot in
Canada and it was with Gary Julia Nixon, Soul carry
Hruki to Gowa, an act called Matt Craven and he
turned out pretty good. You know Matt right, Yeah, he
was in it. He was great. He played the partner
who gets killed and sets the whole thing in motion. Anyway,

(15:41):
it was really good. It was a great experience, and
I came back to Hong Kong and I was like, well,
am I going to kind of decide this has been
my Hong Kong adventure that I've been in a movie
I fought Donnie Y and I, you know, had this
catastrophic experience. I've had this good experience with White Tiger.
Do I go back to to England now and just
do other things, or do I make a go of

(16:05):
it in Hong Kong. And what happened was I met
one of the people who'd been peripherally involved with the
original Tiger Storm. He's I can't believe you're here. I said,
what do you mean? This is what one of the
other guys. And I don't want to give him, don't
want to give him a credit. But anyway, there's a guy,
it's quite a high profile guy in that martial arts scene,

(16:26):
who was a producer on the movie. And he said,
because of whateverything happened, that they'd only hired me, they
hadn't hired anybody else. He was mad, and if you
stay in Hong Kong, he's going to kill you. And
I said, really, I said, well, you've made my mind
up for me. He said, so you're going to leave
And I said, of course, not definitely going to stay.
I mean, if if it has said I'll kill you

(16:46):
if you leave, I would have gone if he and
then now it's been like thirty years or so, so get.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
On with it. Still hasn't got around to it.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
I guess he's been busy, but i't that kind of
like a kind of like in a contrary personality, if
somebody says, if you do this, I'll kill you, I'm
more likely to do it. So then that was it,
and then I kind of like drifted around doing whatever
jobs I could find in the industry. And then one
day I was at a company called Media Asia, and

(17:18):
I realized the mistake I was making is I would
always go in to these meetings. You just talk about me.
I'm so smart, I speak some Chinese, I do come
for I've seen every movie known to man, I thought
Donnie Yen, and I would just they probably just say
at the time, oh, cute young British guy, and that's nice,
and then I'd go away and then forget about me
and this company. I went in and they had all

(17:40):
the English language materials for their movies in the lobby
and I started reading them cop killing, wife, assassination, revenge, Wanting,
and it was just terrible. So I went in to
see the boss and I said, you know, by the way,
before we talk about me. Those English language materials are
just great. You should get somebody to rewrite them. And

(18:02):
the boss says, well, who do you know? Who's available
and you know, affordable, and would come in twice a
week to do that. I was like yeah, So that
got me in. So I was sitting in the corner
as like the token white guy, and other Chinese people
working at the film company would go who's and they said, well,
that's our white guy And I said, okay, do they
come over? And they say, can you help out with this?

(18:24):
You know, script subtitles. Can you come and be in
the movie. Hey, we need a guy to play a
cop tomorrow. Can you come? So I started picking up
just by being there. And this is what I always
say to my kids, say to younger people, there's this
kind of firewall, and you're here and you've got to
get there by any means necessary. And my big break

(18:44):
came because I'd interviewed. This is where the journalism really
came in. I'd interviewed Jackie Chan, the come from movie actor,
many times and developed something of a sympathic over him.
And I knew they were doing a Jackie Chan document
entry at this company, and I desperately wanted to be involved,
but it was very much that section of the company.

(19:06):
They were doing their own thing and they didn't want
me involved, and they just wanted to do it themselves.
And what the mistake they were making was they were
just filming Jackie. They were following Jackie around, and it's
like Michael if I did the Michael Bean story and
I just followed you around. What are you doing your
groceries or what are you're buying a shirt? You know
it's it's missing something. So they had all this footage.

(19:27):
It was just terrible. And I happened to be in
the office and Jackie watched what they'd cut and thought
it was awful and stormed out and seized me across
the crowded room, and he goes him, he knows more
about me than me. Why isn't he making the documentary?
So that was it. I was it after no, because
the Jackie said yes. No, one's going to say no,

(19:49):
of course. And I worked with and for Jackie for
about four years and we did two documentaries and then
he did three, three or four We did before films
at this company where he wasn't starring in them, but
he was producing them, and his action team was doing
them and I was writing them and helping to produce them.

(20:11):
One of them Jen Y Cops. It was a similar
situation to Dragon Squad where we had a partner company
in America call Regent Films, and they had an oscoot
success with Gods and Monsters with Brendan Fraser and Ian McCallen,
and for some reason they wanted to come in and
do a Hong Kong action film with Jackie Chan even
though he was only producing. But one of the conditions

(20:33):
was you had to have an American actor, and we
ended up with Paul Rudd.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
And it was Paul Rudd's first action film, and I
first experienced working with someone the way I worked with you,
Michael of Hollywood. Guy coming to Hong Kong. It was
Paul Rudd, which was before he'd done I mean, he
done quite a bit of work side of house rules
clueless after.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Said yep, Wow's what happened.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Basically, we had a list of actors and if we
could land any one of them, Regency would come in. Regency,
I think, with the name of the company, would come
in and finance co finance the film. The first guy
on the list was David Borianas, who had been an angel,
and he turned us down flat, which you know, as
it turned out, I think he needed the gig more

(21:23):
than Paul Rudd. Paul was making a film called Long,
Hot Wet Summer about a summer camp. I think Bradley
Cooper's in it and Jennifer Aniston and him. It's like
one of those youth comedies, Hot Wet Summer, and he
was stuck. They were filming at a real one of
those camps, the real one, and we sent him our

(21:45):
movie was a sequel. There was gen X Cops and
jen Y Cops and gen X Cops was We sent
him the first film and he was stuck of this camp.
And he's watched it again and again and again, and
it is very entertaining movie, and I I guess it
just kind of somehow hypnotized him into thinking it would
be fun to do a movie in Hong Kong. Yeah,

(22:06):
and so he indeed fluent and he there's another mirror
to this as well. That was the first movie I
did with Maggie Q. And part of why Paul enjoyed
the experience was Maggie is such a trip, as you
found out. Yea so fun to be around. It makes
the whole thing, yes, so much better. So that was

(22:28):
really good. But there was one funny incident. Paul had
already signed to do a play for Paul Newman, the
late Paul Newman and Joan Woodward at their playhouse, which
I think was is it? I think it was on
the East.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Coast in Connecticut, in Connecticut.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Right, so he had already arranged we would range our schedule.
He would fly back for a week or ten days,
do the play, and then come back to Hong Kong.
I had a fear that he'd be all these East
Coast you know, kind of actor types, lovey types, would
make fun of him doing a Hang Kong action film,
and maybe he wouldn't come back. But he came back
on schedule, and I said, how was it? He says, well,

(23:05):
the first night we were there, we had dinner at
the Newman Woodward farmhouse and we're seeing this long table
getting to know you dinner with all the actors, and
Paul to introduce. Everybody says, so what are you doing?
And one guy says, well, I'm doing Death of a
Salesman in Chicago, And another guy, what are you doing, Oh,
I'm going, you know, to kill a mockingbird. Then they
get to Paul, what are you doing? And Paul's that

(23:26):
takes a gulp. He goes, well, I'm doing this action
film in Hong Kong with kung fu and a big
robot and all these girls in leather kicking each other.
And there's a beat, and Paul Newman takes a long
drink of his beer and he goes, that must be
an absolute blast. And so Paul said after all of
the other actors were jealous and all Paul Newman wanted

(23:48):
to do was talk about ask him questions about filming
in Hong Kong and what it was like. Yeah, And
so all the other actors were jealous, like, you know,
why is he And he couldn't wait to get back
because he'd got that Paul new Because Paul, when I
think it, was kind of an adrenaline guy. He was
a car racer and you know, cool, one of those
guys another that was the fun thing. So if only

(24:09):
started that movie.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
And then.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Michelle Yo, who caused later won the Oscar for Everything
Ever all at once, who I would later work with
on Crouching Tiger Hindragon too. She came to join the company.
I was at Media Asia, so there was kind of
a parting of the ways that you're either going to
do films with Michelle Jackie left. At this point, Jackie
chan I had done my run of films with him
at Media Asia, and he said, I'm going with another company, Emperor.

(24:35):
I'm back through International Film there. If you want to
come and write and produce that with me, you can
come with me. And it was a glory time for
my career because Michelle was saying kind of the same
thing about a movie she was going to do called
The Touch, and I don't know, it's just there was
some there were some issues. I think I remember very
clearly at Media Asia, the head of the company saying

(24:56):
to me, you had so much fun on jen Y Cops.
No more fun for you, which is not how you
inspire your staff to stay on, you know, no more fun. Well,
that with jack would be fun. So I went and
did The Medallion, which was this action picture which Emperor did,
and we shot it in Ireland. We shot it in

(25:19):
Hong Kong and Thailand with Jackie and Claire Fulani. Do
you know Claire, She was wonderful in the movie. Yes,
so great, very good action.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Beija black Babe. Let me ask you, yeah, were you
on that movie as a producer both writer or producer writer? Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
It's an odd combination. And I but you know what's
funny about Hong Kong is you get people in Hong
Kong movies who are like writing the music that they
are doing the production design, and they're acting in the
film on the same movie or different films. You don't
have that kind of church and state that I feel
in Hollywood it would be thought odd, you know. And
there's people who are really successful producers who also have

(26:04):
they're consistently playing in movies as a certain character, but
they're very serious producers as well. So it's almost like
whatever you can do, they allow you to do. There's
no unions, there's no The restriction is basically down to
I like that. I mean, I think the idea of like, okay,
if I can do it, they let me do it. Yes,

(26:25):
so I would. I wanted you to see an example
like when we were doing Dragon Squad. After Dragon Squad,
Daniel was going to go up to China to do
a film based on a very famous In fact, I
think you you narrated the trailer for this. It was
called Three Kingdoms Resurrection of the Dragon. Yes, and you

(26:46):
narrated the first trailer. Do you remember that?

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yes? I do.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
And so that was the then because he was saying
to me, I want Maggie. It was going to be
with a very famous Hong Kong act called Andy Lao,
another guy called Samohan, who you remember was also.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Samra he has the big series over in America.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Correct, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
And he wanted Maggie to come and play this kind
of warrior princess and so and me to come on
and help. And I was just like, he says, what
I said, what is exactly? It's going to be in
a Mandarin, It's going to be in China, It's going
to be in the Gobi desert for like four months.
And I was like, nah, I just if if it

(27:36):
had been in English, and if it had been an
international cast, if it had been something where I could
see I could make a contribution. But I think Daniel
just wanted company and he wanted somebody to help take
care of Maggie. I did fly out and spend quite
a bit of time there, I'll tell you one art
experience I had. We were staying in this remote desert

(27:57):
town and I was got the desert, the big desert
in China's big expanse of nothing, nothing, nothing. There's some
very famous caves called the dun Huang Caves, which have
these amazing Buddhist paintings, but otherwise it's just you know,
the loan level, the loaner level sands far away. I

(28:18):
was in one of in the town. I'm going back
to the hotel and suddenly everything went black and I thought,
oh my god, I've gone blind. This is, you know,
a what a weird phenomenon. Why would this suddenly happen?
And what happened was nothing ever happened in that town
after nine o'clock at night, so that's when they turned
the lights off. So after a moment, my eyes adjusted

(28:41):
to the fact that all the lights had gone off
at one time, right, and I kind of made my
way along the wall, and then there was the guy
in the hotel lobby, you know, the light underneath his
face like a horror movie.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, So I was so glad I wasn't in Apart
from my visiting Maggie, I was not at the Gobi
des So. Movies that I did, I would say, almost
with that exception, were films where, you know, I felt
I could make a significant contribution. If it was the
script was going to be in English or partly in English,
as was the case with Dragon Squad, then I could

(29:15):
be involved with all of that, and on the producing side,
the casting, and then also figuring out how the film
would be marketable and acceptable to a broader audience. When
I came into the industry, China really hadn't opened up
completely to Hong Kong filmmakers, strangely enough, so the foreign

(29:37):
market was really important. So when we did when we
did jen Y Cops, having you know, Paul Ruddin there
was important. When we did Dragon Squad, having you in
there was important. When we did Medallion, you know, we
had Lee Evans. It was actually was meant to be
Rowan Atkinson, so I say, we have mister Dean and
mister Beanco. But Rowan just in a movie called Johnny

(30:01):
English and he just didn't want to do another action
picture right after that. So we got Lee Evans and
Lee was loved. Lee was do you know Lee? He
was in mouse Hunt for gor Vivinski and something about
Mary he's the guy on crutches. He was a hugely
successful British stand up comedian. He's retired now, but he

(30:23):
was a guy and it was so unfortunate off camera
he had me and Jackie in stitches. He is the
funniest guy you could imagine. The camera's a role and
it just wasn't there. I can't explain. It just didn't
catch the way you want to. So yeah, that was unfortunate,

(30:44):
But I mean we sold it on and we did
the best that we could do. I'll tell you a
funny story from Medallion. In one scene, Lee Evans, this
white British comedian, was made up to look like an
old man. So we took him into Jackie's trailer and
said that this was Lee's father and he's visiting Lee

(31:04):
on the set that Lee affected this very thick in
all that accent, and he goes, aye aye. My son
is a great young lad. You know. I'm so happy
he's doing film with you, Jackie. It's fantastic because, oh
he's a very funny guy. Often I'm laugh so hard
I kind of acting. He's so funny. You must be
proud of a son. He's wonderful man and he goes,
all right, well I'll see you, Jackie, and he walks out.

(31:26):
So as far as Jackie is concerned, he thinks that
he's met Lee's father. And then Jackie's real father came
to visit the set. So I tooks saying that we
had put makeup on Jackie.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
To make him, but it was actually Jackie's father who
did look like Jackie as an old man. And my god,
this is incredible. You really can't see the joint and
he's got like this and you know, pulling at the
eyes and everything like that. And while you've got the
first like this.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Jackie walks in. I fell and Jackie looks at us
all and he goes, Papa, no good, and then he
pulls his dad away out of the room. No more
was heard of it. I'm glad. That's probably probably why
I still have a career. But yeah, that was on
the medallion, which was you know, this is something it's funny.

(32:24):
I don't know if you agree with us, Michael, but
it's something that Gary Daniels actually said, which I think
is true. He said, you know, it takes maybe three
months to make a movie and nineteen minutes to watch one,
so for me, I want the three months to be amazing,
and if the nineteen minutes are good too, that's great. But
you know, I don't want to suffer for three months

(32:44):
for nineteen minutes brilliance necessarily. And I'm not sure it's
one hundred percent right, but I have learned that. I
think The Medallion was about three years of my life,
and Crouching Tiger Hindragon two was about two years of
my life and the experience so incredible. Yes, I wouldn't
undo it for anything. There's things are disappointing about the finished.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Film, yes, yes, but you know it's always you know, philosophically,
it's all about the journey. They always talk about the journey,
not getting to the end, and yeah, yeah, yeah, And
I find the same thing any any movie I work on,
anything i'm working on, it's the most fun really is

(33:28):
working on the movie. You know, when it comes out,
you know, if it's a big hit, I guess that's
wonderful too. But uh, you know, you may being able
to do your work as a producer and or as
an actor, as a writer, there's something about that creative

(33:51):
a bond that you have with the other people that
are all doing it. It's like a team. There's like
a team effort, you know. You know, I'm going I'll
give you this, and I'll give you that, I'll give
you the best of this that I possibly have. And
I've always found it to be that collaboration of people
that are all working for the same thing, to be bonding.

(34:13):
It's always so bonding, you know.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
I even remember I had like a physical realization of
that moment. Actually was the second movie after Blood Bond,
the next movie I did at the same studio in China,
which was called the film was called Borderland aka COVID Operation.
There was a moment when everybody had to lift a roof,
lift what was going to be the roof of a set,

(34:38):
and it felt like it just wasn't going to work.
We weren't going to get it high enough to go
on these supports. And everybody appeared out of nowhere, the actors,
the crew, the you know, the camera, everybody, and I
just felt this wonderful feeling that this physical action happened
with this kind of collective good energy. Yes, and it

(35:00):
was just wonderful. In caps exactly what you're what you're
talking about, John Borman said a wonderful. The director John
Borman said, a wonderful thing. He's that filmmaking is the
magic of turning money into light and back into money.
I love that idea of like that kind of almost
like when you see, you know, these kind of particles

(35:23):
in physics that you somehow make them real.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
You know Theman movie Jim where Patricia our cat and
somebody else are like traveling across soon did get shot
in the stomach and they proceed to you know, climb
mountains and uh, is it beyond Rangoon? Yes?

Speaker 1 (35:49):
John Borman was the opposite of me. He would have
gone to the Gobi Desert. He did a movie with
his son Charlie called The Emerald Forest, which took him
out into the wild. And I still I still watch excalibution.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Is that he did Deliverance? Right? Is that deliver the
movie to really put him on the mouth.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
That was another one. It was funny because I just
saw an interview with I think it was Burt Reynolds.
It was with Burt Reynolds and then talking about the
fact that he was kind of like talking at that time.
He was very gum ho and he has to go
over the rapids and over this kind of waterfall, and
they wanted to use a dummy, and you know, he
said no, and he did it. He got banged up
as he went over all the rocks hitting him and

(36:28):
his kind of wet suit was all torn open and
he hurt his leg and he's in hospital and then
John Borman comes to see him, and and and Burt
Reynolds says to John Borman, so how did it look
and says it looked like a dummy.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, it was like, you know, that happens to me.
That happened to me, and the terminated it happened to
be on Alien. Alien is a perfect example of like
when Sigourney Weavers got the thing wrapped around her neck
or her nudea running away from the thing and I
come crashing through the window. It's just like a stunt like, okay,
well I can do that. You know, I want to

(37:01):
do that. And that stunt another stunt that I did
on the terminator, which you know is a little bit
a little bit painful. It happens so quick you can't
even tell it to me. I mean, you have no.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
Interesting thing, I'll tell you. That's one of the attributes
of Hong Kong cinema. That is one reason the film's
looks special is that everybody is trained towards action, including
the cameramen, and that would never happen on a Hong
Kong movie because you'd get the footage. The guy would
make sure that when you land, he'd angle the camera

(37:35):
so he would see your face. And they do that
if they know how to hide it, if it's not you,
if it's a stunt man, and if it is you
Hong Kong in Hong Kong, because that's such a part
of the brand, they'll make sure they angle it around.
And in fact, Jackie had his worst injury Jackie Chan
when he jumped off a castle wall in Yugoslavia. Yes,

(37:56):
and he kind of had a serious he had as
he fell off the castle wall and he had to
have surgery and he's got like a hole in his
head now like many people in Hollywood. But he admits
to it and he kind of like was landed on
this thing. But he would have been completely uninjured had
the cameraman not been Yugoslavian. And this isn't trashing Yugoslavians,

(38:18):
particularly because a Hong Kong cameraman would have used the
camera as a human shield to help Jackie when he
fell and to protect him. But the Yugoslavian cameraman whipped
away with the camera. You know, Jackie hit the rocks.
But even that, the cameramen, if you look at the
ways to stuff is shot, they are actually very nimble
and agile. And I think we had some pretty good

(38:40):
guys on Dragon Squad who were very They're using steady
cam there, They're very there's an agility to the way
they were shooting stuff. And I think that's part of
what makes Hong Kong cinema so kinetic. Is it's not
just the director, not just the action director, not just
the actors, but everybody. Everybody on the production is kind
of of action train.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
We had an actor on here who was talking about
working with Jackie, and years ago I started sort of
watching Jackie chan stuff and that like there's like that
his stunts and what he is able to do, the
way that he can just climb a wall that is inhuman.

(39:27):
It is I've never ever I mean, I don't know,
maybe Buster Keaton, you know, I mean, there's certain his
stunts and are just phenomenal. I mean, we talk about
Tom Cruise doing his own stunts, and yes he is,
but you know, he's all gagged up and stuff, and
he's got like wires all over him and he and

(39:47):
it's wonderful and he does a stunt and it helps
sell the movie. But Jackie is just like, I mean,
I've just seen if you do see a documentary on him,
he's just see stunt after stunt after stunt, just stunned what.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
I do Coventry. I think it's on YouTube called Jackie
chan My Stunts, which was basically it's him showing how
he does the stunts, and then he was showing but
he's he's what's amazing about Jackie. It's a bit like
Ali saying I'm the greatest. And there's a scene he
did this incredible cop movie called Police Story where at
the beginning he's in a car and they toboggan down

(40:24):
through the shanty town on the side of a hill
in Hong Kong, and it's just this incredible sequence and
we're showing it in the documentary. He's looking at it
on like a screen on a steambeck or something, and
afterwards he turns to the camera and he goes up
for twenty years, still the best, And because Jackie, you
just go when we did. When we did Medallion, I

(40:46):
got from him advice That was like my Halleluljah moment
when I could have got an idea about his filmmaking,
and also I think about filmmaking in general. We were
shooting a scene we were shooting in Ireland and we
were in a I think we were shooting men to
be in a hospital and it was really an old
hospital building in Ireland. And Jackie has got this habit
and also Gordon Chan, the director, had this habit which

(41:08):
drove me crazy. Is the beginning of every day or
even the beginning of every scene, they would start rewriting everything.
So it was like chasing mercury to kind of try
to make it make sense. Like I'm thinking, you know,
in three months time, we get to edit this thing
and it has to make sense and not only makes
sense for Hong Kong, but for America, for Hollywood, because
that film came out was a wide theatrical release in America,

(41:29):
so it had to make sense. So I said to Jackie, no, no, no,
this is funny, but if you do this what we
shot last week, it's not going to make sense. It
looks at me like I'm more and he goes, Babe,
this is very important. Doesn't matter, makes sense, not makes sense?
What matter? Audience they happy. I was like, there you go.

(41:50):
If you get that. Firstly you understand every Jackie Chan
film because they don't really make sense, but scene by
scene they're a phasing.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
But also, yeah, I was just gonna, I was gonna
just ask you when whata what year did we make
Dragons Squad? And what was Daniels Daniel was? Is it
Daniel Duly?

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, he's great, it's funny. His Chinese name is Leng.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
But oh, by the way, but by the way, let
me stop for a second. Ringo whatever his name is,
His real name is not Yeah, he's the names not Ringo,
is it? Didn't he make that?

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Was he?

Speaker 2 (42:35):
He didn't make that up to be part of it?
Like part of the American scene is real. Real first
name is Ringo?

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yep? Really same as you, Johnny Ringo. He did ring
a bunch of Van Dam films, the best of which
was called Replicant, which they shot in I think they
shot it in Canada. But he did a bunch of those,
and he did some amazing films in he did like

(43:02):
a version you know, the Peter whir film Witness with
Harrison Ford. He did a version of That Good Wild
Search with Dragonfat, which is really good, and he did
a run of movies. Sadly passed away quite young. But
his name is Ringo Lamb. His Chinese name is lum
Ling Dom and Daniel is in Chinese Ley and Gong,
but his nickname is lay and Gong because Ley and

(43:25):
Gong sounds like let somebody speak, but lay and Gong
is don't let somebody speak. And that's his nickname because.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
He's very perfect director.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Right. The only person, well one of the few people
I saw who had him wrap around the little finger
was you, Michael, because he would just basically.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Talk about talk about do you remember the first time?
Do you remember the first time we met? Did you
pick me up at the airport? Did you meet me? Yeah? Okay,
I mean I don't remember you picking me up.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
I remember I remember very distinctly that we and this
isn't at this We had gone through the belly of
the Beast to try to find other actors to be
in the movie, but we'd actually or I had gone
to people.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
They ended up with me.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
It was the opposite from my perspective, because I mean,
you know, one of the guys in contention was Dean Kine,
Ice Ice agent, Dean Kine, but we kind of like
he hadn't worked out with anybody. And then he brought
in the I guess, the DVD of of the Rock

(44:34):
and your famous scene. You know, like, I cannot give
that order, as you said to me, an order you
probably should have given. He showed me this and he
gets you think we can get this guy, and I
was thinking, Man, if we've been turned down by Dean Kine,
I don't think we're gonna get this fella. But I
mean anyway, and my recollection was and I don't know

(44:54):
that I don't know the I can't quite remember how
I got your direct number, but we were talking on
the phone, and my initial reaction was just that I
could answer your questions. And perhaps you felt confident because, well,
at least there's one guy who kind of speaks English
and knows what's going on. So you committed to do
the film. And as you mentioned in your earlier podcast,

(45:15):
I believe we paid you quite well on the movie.
So that was attractive, I guess, and my feeling was
that you were up for the adventure of coming to
Hong Kong. I sent you to train at Benny Benny
the Jets Jets Center, remember yes, and I did, and
Benny Benny told me how good you were. I mean,

(45:35):
you know, I know you are because I mean the
crazy thing was and this is Hong Kong filmmaking. It
it's worst. You had those attributes. And then when we
did when we did Dragon Squad, I said, when did
you get to fight? I said, Shinala the action direct does,
when does Michael get to fight? He Sai, Well, we're thinking,
you know, he's very cool and he's gone and everything.

(45:56):
Never but then later I saw you fighting on Blood Bond.
But but so then Iman picking you up, and then
as you talked about before, we went to this lousy
you know, uh.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, let me let me tell this so anytime, so
Bay Pit Smith of the Airport as a producer. First
of all, By and I have always had so much fun.
He doesn't seem like it now, but he's a very funny.
He's a very funny, very very funny guy. And we

(46:36):
just like bonded your line.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Before you said he's funny for the first week, which
I think probably you know, many people in my circle
believed to be the case, but they didn't say it.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Now but yeah, no, no, no, we got along food right
from the word go. So it's his job as a producer,
you know, to find me a place to live. And
as a producer you try to find a place for
for your your lead actor to live which is comfortable,
which has got the amenities whatever its kind of stuff is,

(47:10):
but doesn't cost a fucking fortune. I mean, that's that's
a producer's job, right, So so Bay they take me.
I don't know, I don't know if it was in
Hong Kong, kind of like on the outskirts of Hong Kong.
It was kind of like an apartment building, and uh,
I don't know, it feels like somebody else.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
The deal break it was when you looked out and
you saw the railroad track. That was the moment you
said to me, they I think I'm staying here. But
then that was funny, A very interesting important event happened
inside that apartment, because I think you did stay. You
stayed there at least long enough for Daniel Lee to
come and visit or whatever. You're right, But daniel came

(47:53):
in and we'd done an approximation. It wasn't. It wasn't
like with there were two versions of the English script.
There was an approximation of the full Chinese script in English,
and then there was the dialogue seen by scene, and
these were two different things, so you had an approximation
of the whole thing. And then we were going to
work on the dialogue scene by scene for the English

(48:15):
language scenes in the movie. And he'd written this monologue
that was meant to play over a bank heist, and
it was Michael talking for probably a page and a
half about three visits in the forest.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
I couldn't make it.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
You know, you know, well I love it. Admira about
you Michael was that, you know, there are guys that
would come in and said I'm not doing this, but
you came in and you're like, I'm going to give
it a shot.

Speaker 4 (48:40):
So we're sitting there Mike and Daniel was like, Okay,
let's look at the script, and Michael, why do you
start with this wonderful speech about the rabbit. So Michael
turns to that page and he starts up.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
There was a white rabbit, a black rabbit, and a
gray rabbit and they were this doing this and it's
going on and on and blessing you're halfway through. He
looked at it, Daniel, he goes to be honest with you,
I don't know, can we swear on this podcast? I
don't know what the fuck this is about. Across tore
the page out of the script and said, no, we're
not going to do it.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
And that was like, that's what That's what I said.
I like this guy. I like this. I wish a
lot of directors that I'd worked with had when I said, like,
I'm having a problem with this, just when that's gone,
don't worry about it. That's gone.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
The other thing with Daniel was like whenever Michael was
on camera, if Michael would say one line of dialogue
or do a Clint Eastwood squint, Daniel Lee would do
a little dance of joy behind the monitors. He just
loved it. And Michael was like, and I don't think
James Cameron is quite as expressive, you know, but the
you know, your other great directing buddy. But Daniel was just, oh,

(49:52):
that was great, Oh that was amazing. And I said
to Michael, I didn't know if it was too much,
but what do I know so much?

Speaker 2 (49:59):
I just kind of so, so I told Bay, you're right,
we didn't have that meeting that I might have stayed
there day. I said, Babe, take me into town. I
want to stay in Hong Kong. And you said fine.
And we're driving around and I look up and I say,
what is that? And you said the Mandarin. I couldn't

(50:21):
get it right, Mandalorian, I got too many of my
life met the Mandarin right. And I looked at it
and I go, the Mandarin, what is that? It's a hotel.
Let's go check that out, right. So he takes me
to the Mandarin, And what a fucking awesome hotel that is.
I mean, it had to cost it had to cost

(50:45):
quite a bit of money compared compared to that apartment.
Compared to the apartment.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Well, you know on college.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
It was it was a it was a beautiful something
about that hotel. And I've been you know, I've stayed
in a lot of hotels. I just dug that hotel.
I thought that was fan and it was more in town.
And you and I were able then to get together
a lot and walk and have coffee and lunch and

(51:18):
and sit around and and uh kind of get to
know each other. And I had a great time tell
that story that you told me about the actor who
turned forty.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Oh, that was a very famous singer from the Mandol from.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
The Man Demand demanderin Yes.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
And he he was a phenomenal actor and it's just
so big star and he just a movie star, and
it's a wonderful actor. And had been in films like
Chinese Ghost Story About It Tomorrow, which was the breakthrough
John Wu Gunplay movie, and it was he And he
was interesting because it was known in the industry that

(52:03):
he was gay, but he played heterosexual roles effortlessly and
there was never an issue. So he was a phenomenal
presence in an interesting figure. And as you say, I
think he turned forty. And he one day was at
that hotel and he went to the gym and he
worked out, and afterwards he asked for a pen and
paper and he wrote like a suicide note and then

(52:25):
jumped off the balcony and died. I was doing a
movie with Jackie at the time called The Twins Effect,
and I remember we were on the set and we
thought he'd just done a movie about He made a
movie about I think he may even directed it. That
was about mental illness and suicide, really standing on a
ledge and everything. So we thought this was some sick

(52:47):
marketing campaign for the film. We didn't believe it, but
sadly it was true. And to this day, taxi drivers
in Hong Kong see his ghost on the corner where
he landed, even when.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
I was there. Maybe not anymore, babe, but it seemed
to me like there was always, like, you know, a
couple of hundred flowers, like people leave like flowers, little cornery.
I'd come out of the out of the hotel, and that,
you know, there's always a big bunch of flowers where
people come by.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
I mean, I think the equivalent would be, you know,
a James Dean or an elvis or somebody who was
so much part of the cultural landscape that to this
day people his nickname was Gogre, which means like elder brother.
And it's I kicked myself now, because you think in
a place the size of Hong Kong you would have

(53:38):
met everybody. I think I only ever walked past him
at a movie premiere, and I could have come out
when he was working on a movie, and for some
stupid reason, I didn't, But I never met him and
you know, I was really I you know, I learned
a lesson from then on. If I had the chance
to meet anybody I admired, I kind of made an
effort to do it because you just don't know. But yeah,

(53:59):
that was the other thing of the Mandarin.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah, I heard Bay talking on the podcast about working
on Dragon Squad, and yeah, he was, here's the thing
about Hong Kong film at that time, and I don't
know if it's changed at all, but there's no unions. Okay,

(54:22):
there's no unions for actors. Okay, so you know there
was you know, you were talking about working I think
like a twelve hour day and me getting like I mean, that.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Was that was probably another thing I greatly admired about
you coming in and.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
They they were in and do they work. They work
sixteen hour days like like nothing, and then fall asleep
where they are and then when the sun comes up,
they start working. Get me sixteen Like.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
I always quote the story, which was like we'd done
a few of those days with you, and you kind
of you know, extraor you know, I think unusually for
a Hollywood actor, you just kind of like manned up
and you know, stood the course.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
I remember I remember we had we had we had
like fourteen hours in the can and then Daniel wanted
to go to another location, should another location, and I
was like, fuck bye, they I can't do it. It's okay,
we'll go, We'll go, We'll go, and then you can
tell the story about the coffee.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Oh this is this is this? Well? I mean before that,
I seem to remember, I think you were on the
verge of is there any way can we not do it?
And Daniel came over because missus great, Michael, We're gonna
shoot here. It's gonna be so good. Oh this is great,
and we go here to it amazing, and you were
like okay, because I mean his enthusiasm was somewhat infectious
and his is kind of like he adored you. And

(55:52):
you were like, oh, this is gonna be so good.
And You're like, okay, we're going to go and do that.
And then you've been doing about forty hours straight and
I said to one of the assistants direct, is can
you not? So the PA is the production assistant, can
you get coffee? And it was like kind of like
so the guy versus the tea lady, and they called
the tea lady because they can't make coffee, and so

(56:14):
she was hovering around Michael. I'm like, no, go away,
go with shoe. We don't need you. I got the
pa back. No, he wants a proper cup of coffee,
hot coffee. So the guy goes away and an not
amount time many comes back to Michael and thrust this
kind of ice cold coffee at Michael, and Michael promptly
hurls it at the guy's head. But it was late
and he missed.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
But a paper cup.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
It was a cand thing. But it was late and
he had'd been working forty hours. Otherwise you'd have been
the guy. I think it was he had one job.
But I blame myself. I should have figured out this
fellow wasn't going to do it. And you know, but
that was the only time I saw you kind of
momentarily lose lose it and with reason. But one of

(57:01):
my badges of pride from Dragon Squad was when you
were interviewed by the local English language newspaper, the South
China Morning Post, and the interviewer says, mister Bean, you
were in the film The Abyss, which is famously the
toughest film shoot in movie history. And you replied, let
me tell you compared to Dragon Squad, the ABYSS was
like Awaian vacation. I was like, yes, yes, I mean

(57:24):
perversely proud of our insane working methods.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yeah, it's really really remarkable. I mean it just seemed
like a sixteen hour let me tell you.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Let me tell you another story. But it goes back
to my first big movie for Jackie, which was called
gen X Cops. It was the one before the one
that Peter Paul Rubb was in, and all the guys
in that movie were At the time, I was older,
but I was also doing my first big movie, so
it was kind of a first movie for a lot
of us. There was a guy called Nicholas's Are who
became a big star, Daniel Wu, who later did the

(57:58):
TV series in America called Into the bad Lands for
AMC and he's done a lot of other Hollywood films.
He's actually from from San Francisco. Daniel was in the
film Stephen Fong, who became a director. A lot of
these guys the first film, but they were very young,
and the director's name was Benny Chan and Benny had
come up working under other great directors like Johnny Toe

(58:20):
and Choy Hark, who's another famous Hong Kong director, so
he knew the ropes, and they were complaining about the
same long hours that you had to tolerate, and Benny said,
this is nothing. When Choi Hart was making a movie
called Shanghai Blues, the production got behind and he locked
the studio doors and no one could come out for
three days and three nights until they got back on schedule,

(58:42):
and that was it. Food was brought in, anybody left
was fired. So you were within the studio for three
days and the three nights filming continuously, and that was
everybody was like wow. So Benny says, you think compared
to that. Subsequently, I had occasion to meet the director
Troy Hark, and I said, hey, you know what, when
we were doing Jen x Cups, Benny told the story
on you that when you were doing Shanghai Blues you

(59:02):
kind of locked the studio doors for three days and
three nights and choices. That wasn't true. I think it
could be choices. It was four days in four nights.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
When he was proud.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
He was like, no, free, it was four one of.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
The one of the one of the good things about
working on that was that I got a chance to
work with Maggie and yeah, and she is, uh, she
was really wonderful and she was so wonderful. We got
along so well and she's so fun and uh, we
got along so well that I I think I was
with c M at the time. I called Ice, I

(59:39):
called it was it was Ed.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
I'm not sure she spoke, but he was kind of
on his last run. I think he was kind of
you know, yeah, but I called Brown, but not like
of old well.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
I called I called Ed or or somebody at ic M,
but it was probably Ed, And I said, listen, I'm
working with this girl. She's absolutely beautiful. I mean, she's
absolutely and she's funny. She's fun I think she's a
really good actress. And I understand she's Asian, but I

(01:00:16):
was like, it's like meeting Marilyn Monroe or something. I
was like, I think that you guys got you guys
have got to check this this person out. And uh,
you know, I he had probably you know, sent somebody
else to you know, whatever, and nothing ever came of it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
And then what well, I had the call. I had
a conversation with one of the underlings at ICM. At
the time, and he was basically, you know, I said,
I she's half American and half Vietnamese. He's like Vietnamese Vietnamese,
you know, like what she done? What can we do
with her? And you know, kind of politely dismissive. And
I went back to Maggie and I said, I think
if you go to la you can get a meeting

(01:00:54):
with these guys. And I admired her. Hootspa. She was
just like, when they invite me to do a big movie,
which in the end and of course his Mission Impossible
three with Tom Cruise, then I'm going to go to
l A. But I'm not going to go and just
you know, go around and and and twinkle people's offices
and do this and do that. Then the day that
Variety had the headline Maggie Hughes signs to Mission Impossible

(01:01:16):
three for you know, Cruz Wagner Productions, as was at
the time, the same schmuck from calls me up and
he goes, hey, you know that the other news girl
you were talking to, the data signer was when I
called you and Michael called you. That's when when she's
on the front page of Variety. My aunt Hill could

(01:01:38):
have signed her. I remember I remember one day particularly
with you and Maggie, which was in this in the movie,
You're on the bad guy team. It was quite a
bad guy team. There was a Korean actor I remember,
mister her you know, Philipp who lady became recently had
a big hit with a movie colon Wall City, Yeamansha,

(01:02:00):
And there was a bunch of them the bad guy team,
multi f bad guy team. And one of their number
has been killed. So Daniel comes up very seriously to
everybody and he says, okay, for this next scene, you know,
this guy's dead, and everybody's going to do like a
little memorial for him, and mister Hurt is going to
sing amazing Grace in Korean. And then Michael goes, so

(01:02:20):
what do we do? And Daniel goes, oh, you sing along,
and so Maggie goes, but we don't know amazing grays
in Korean, and Daniel says, oh, well, you can just
maybe harm or har or something, just just just be
in the moment. So then they're all standing there and
the guy, mister Her, who's a guy he's actually been

(01:02:43):
some good Korean movies, but he kind of like took it,
and he took off and ran with it. He was
this was his big moment, so behind him like the
choir of the bad guy team. And Maggie is in
Michael's ear with the thong song by Ciscoo. If you're
singing that, Michael holding back his laughing take off the

(01:03:07):
take and and Maggie as soon as action. Maggie and
she'd been kind of cutely going into his ear. And
then Daniel came over and I thought we were in trouble.
And Daniel says to Michael, Michael, that was just amazing.
I could just see you holding back the tears and
if you only knew so. But she was a trip.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
She really was. Let's let's let's let's talk about blood fine, okay,
let a.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Strange begin show. Which hand would you choose? The way
someone coming on f