Chapter 3 fight for life

After "Master Dragon", the screenwriter and old partner Deng Jingsheng, who I have worked with so far, began to look for inspiration from Hollywood movies.The first thing that inspired him was Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark".He wanted to make a movie full of gunfight action and stunt fighting, and we finally created "Bandits at Sea" together.It was also around that time that I started experimenting with writing as a team, the way Hollywood works today. The background of the story is that at the beginning of the 20th century, a group of pirates destroyed a Hong Kong fleet. Ma Rulong, the captain of the marine police, who I played had to be transferred to the marine police, but he kept trying to find clues about the pirates, and finally wiped them all out.There are also two important characters in the script, a no-nonsense police officer and a local rogue con man, who bring a lot of humor to this tense story.When we were discussing the script, it became clear that there were only two people who could fill the roles, and they were my elder brother Sammo Hung and my younger brother Yuen Biao.This is not only because the three of us have been on the set for a long time and are good at performing stunts, but also because we are very familiar with each other. We can know what the other is thinking with just a glance or a subtle movement. This kind of invincible tacit understanding It will make the shooting of action scenes more effective.You know, the three of us have a friendship where we stand in the same bathtub even when we take a shower.

There's one of the most important stunt scenes in the show, which shows me, after a series of street chases, finally climbing up a flagpole and jumping to the top of a clock tower, then falling straight down to the ground.After much discussion, we decided that this shot could not be done in an alternative way, and if you want this scene, you can only use real people to act it.Of course I'm going to do it myself, no doubt about it. The action group began to think about how to increase the resistance in the middle and reduce the speed of my descent so that I would not fall to my death.In the end, you can see from the finished film that there are only two layers of cloth tents in the middle, and the overall height is about 15 meters.

After confirming the shooting plan, Yuen Biao looked at me with hesitant eyes: "Are you sure this is okay?" I said confidently: "No problem, we can try it first." The crew first made a sandbag of the same weight as mine, and threw it down from the top of the bell tower. After passing through two layers of cloth tents, the sandbag burst when it fell to the ground, and the sand flew all over the ground. I was a little dumbfounded.But I still insisted: "One experiment can't explain anything, let's try to tighten the cloth tent a little more." This time the sandbag was lucky, and it fell on the ground intact.

At that time, when filming in Hong Kong, if it was not in a studio but on location, as long as the set was set up on the street, it would have a great impact on the lives around it.It just so happened that the place where the scene was set up this time was a parking lot. I always work slowly and meticulously when filming. It takes at least a few months to set up the set. Now, many people’s cars cannot be parked normally, and they have to park their cars every day. After a long walk, the traffic nearby was messed up.Fortunately, everyone is very tolerant to us and will not come to complain, but this also caused everyone to come to the scene to watch the excitement.When I was preparing to shoot this scene, I don’t know who leaked the news, saying that I would jump off that clock tower, and I would jump by myself without a double.This is great, every day people from the office building, people who sell things, and people passing by, come to the scene to look around.Especially when it was time to eat, everyone came to the set with a bowl in their hand, looked up while eating, and I would stand on the roof of the building and say "no dancing today" slowly, and everyone would disperse boringly.

In fact, although I have done experiments, when I approached the shooting of this scene, my heart was still getting more and more drummed.Every day I would look down and think in my mind that at such a high distance, there is only a small piece of cloth underneath to catch me. If I fall forward, my head will break; if I fall backward, my feet will break How should I fall?Every time I cheer myself up, I want to grit my teeth and shoot, but when I stand on the edge and think of the broken sandbag, I will unconsciously back away. For the first test shoot, I climbed to the top of the bell tower, and the family members slowly helped me out of the window, dangling on the pointer.Before the camera started to rotate, my whole body was hanging on the metal pointer, and my hand suddenly felt very painful. I yelled for homework, and they rushed over and pulled me back into the house.

In the second test shoot, I just hung up and let the family class pull me back.It just so happened that two big bosses of Golden Harvest, Zou Wenhuai and He Guanchang, came to visit the team on the spot. They went up to the roof and saw the danger. Go ahead." I said, "Stand-ins are human too, and they will be afraid too. Don't worry, I can do it." 6 days have passed in this way, and I find different excuses to avoid shooting every day. Today is the top light is not good, tomorrow is the blue sky is not good, the day after tomorrow is the dusk... Anyway, I am the director, every time I say something , The lighting team and the photography team can only express their approval.Then why not shoot?Let's eat first.For six consecutive days without shooting a single shot, the entire crew was waiting.On the 7th day, the sun was very good that day, and I went up to the top of the building again. When I was struggling in my heart, Sammo Hung passed by below and saw me standing on the top and hesitated again. He couldn't bear it anymore, and stood downstairs and cursed. : "When are you going to wait? I don't have a place to park every day, so I have to walk up. Are you going to shoot or not?!" When I was scolded by him at that time, the feeling came, and I said, "Otherwise, this You help me be the director, you help me shoot." Sammo Hung said: "Okay, I'll shoot!" Then he grabbed the machine and said to the people at the scene: "Get ready!"

At that time filming was still on film, and there was no film as long as it is now. A roll of film will be gone soon, which is very precious.I have to throw myself out before I can turn it on, or there won't be enough negatives.I told the family-making class to leave, don't help me, or I want to ask them for help every time, "No, no, let me go back".This time I decided to hang there alone until I was exhausted.Hearing the four machines start to move at the same time, Sammo Hung asked me loudly: "Are you ready? We are ready here! We are waiting for you!" When it came to "Rolling, action", I waited until my hand was weak and painful, and I couldn't hold the pointer, and then I slowly let go and slid down, saying "forget it" in my heart, and then the whole person fell freely...

First hit the first layer of cloth tent, the cloth tent was torn instantly, followed by the second layer, and then fell to the ground with a "bang".I didn't have time to roll subconsciously to relieve the impact of landing, and fell directly to the ground.If you look at that scene again now, you will find that I waited until I couldn't grasp the pointer before giving up. That scene is not a performance at all, it is real. After this shot, my neck broke hard when I landed, but I didn't die.After icing for a while, I told everyone that I was going to do a reshoot. "What? You are crazy!" Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao both thought I was crazy.I told them that the shot just took 4 seconds, and the impact was not enough. I hope this action can be shown in the movie from different angles in 10 seconds.They couldn't be bothered to convince me any more, so they started arranging reshoots.

The second time, I fell in the same process. The moment I fell to the ground, my head was completely numb. After all, it was two severe injuries not long after each other.I'm just crazy.Yuen Biao was also an actor in that scene, he hurried over to pull me up, and whispered in my ear: "Stand up quickly, speak the dialogue quickly, or you will fall in vain!" I heard his voice, and I I don't know how I struggled to get up, and after I muttered a few words, I was dragged away by Yuen Biao and other actors, and the scene was finally completed. This movie was renamed "Project A" when it was released, and it was a huge success at the time. The brave attempt of my two brothers and I opened up a new creative direction for kung fu movies.And for me, the most special thing about this 1983 film is that it created the most important label of my film career-performing extremely dangerous stunts in person, without a double.In the decades since, my films have continued to provide audiences with a light-hearted and fun viewing experience, while also providing them with high-risk thrills that are definitely worth the price of admission.