“Box office poison”: the disastrous run that nearly ended Jackie Chan’s career
Of all the actors who have slid down the sides of roofs repeatedly or used ladders to smash bad guys in the face, Jackie Chan has got to be in the top one. He is the very definition of finding something you’re good at and sticking to it; what he’s good at just happens to be putting himself in mortal danger for the sake of making quite entertaining films.
There’s likely nobody else in Hollywood, or Hong Kong for that matter, who has suffered more injuries in the pursuit of their art, in fact the diminutive martial artist has managed to rack up a fractured skull, several broken vertebrae, burns, cuts, a dislocated shoulder, a broken breastbone, a dislocated pelvis and all other manner of ouch-inducing stuff while throwing himself off buildings and fly-kicking henchmen in the groin.
But was it all worth it? According to Chan, it seems it was absolutely so, and one thing you can’t question is the popularity of what he’s put out into the world, with his almost sixty-year career involving action comedy films that have grossed more than $6billion at the box office globally. That’s a lot of people who want to see goons disposed of in increasingly inventive ways.
He started off in movies as early as five years old, but it was in the early 1970s with the advent of Bruce Lee’s films that he began to really get involved in the industry, working as a stunt double and an extra before doing some choreography on an early John Woo movie called The Young Dragons in 1974.
Gradually, his reputation grew around China, and he had his film breakthrough in a 1978 movie called Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, with several other roles following, including Spiritual Kung Fu and Dragon’s Fist, but rather than being excited at the progress and enjoying his newfound fame, Chan instead was struggling with the feedback on his performances from the producers on set.
Chan wrote in his biography, Never Grow Up, “I would sneak into the dubbing booth for each movie to hear what they said about me. Each time, they made biting remarks, and I sat there weeping as I listened, but I understood – dubbing means watching each scene over and over, and if someone already didn’t like me, having to look at my face dozens of times was going to make them even more annoyed.”
Adding, “As time went on, I got used to the criticism… Sometimes, while they were trashing me repeatedly, I fell asleep in the next booth. These movies had some things in common: They all told a story of revenge, and all of them either flopped or were never released. My reputation was, fairly and squarely, box office poison.”
Chan decided to try his luck in the US, earning small roles in films like the Burt Reynolds comedy The Cannonball Run in 1981, which helped his exposure, and his films in his native country began to do better, until he made 1985’s Police Story, which he starred in and directed and which contained stunt scenes which have gone down as some of the most impressive in all of film history.
Ten years later, he had become arguably the most popular action film star in Europe and certainly Asia, finally becoming a big name in the US thanks to a string of comedies, including Rush Hour with Chris Tucker and Shanghai Noon with Owen Wilson.
