Bruce taught me to dissect time into infinite degrees.  It’s what he called ‘playing between the keys of the piano.’  It’s the understanding that you actually have worlds of time within seconds to do something unanticipated when your opponent is already committed to his announced [telegraphed] action.”
Sterling Silliphant, Bruce Lee: FIghting Words

In 1971, a quirky TV movie aired on the ABC Movie of the Week called Longstreet.

The movie was written by Sterling Silliphant, an Oscar winning writer (In the Heat of the Night) and a student of Bruce Lee.  The show was picked up as a series whose debut episode was called “The Way of the Intercepting Fist.”

Silliphant was Bruce’s student in that 3 year “in-between” period (after The Green Hornet and before his first feature film, The Big Boss).

He also got Bruce some Hollywood work, writing him a memorable cameo in the James Garner movie Marlowe,  where Bruce is a Mob enforcer who destroys Marlowe’s office.  He also wrote Bruce a pivotal role for Longstreet.

Longstreet was a detective show about an insurance investigator who, while investigating some jewel thefts, is blinded and widowed by an explosion meant to silence him.   A key character in the early shows was Li Tsung, who helps Longstreet regain his independence, basically by teaching him Wing Chun / Jeet Kune Do.

Duke Paige: What is this thing you do?
Li Tsing: In Catonese, Jeet Kune Do – the way of the intercepting fist.
Duke Paige: Intercepting fist, huh?

Sterling Silliphant and Bruce Lee

One of the things I find most interesting about this show is how much of Bruce’s subsequent media image seems to have been formed by this series.  Whole swaths of the dialog show up in other media, such as Enter the Dragon (“boards don’t hit back”) and in Bruce’s famous interview with Pierre Berton (Be like water, my friend”).

I suspect this is because Silliphant was able to artfully take Bruce’s teachings and style of speaking and turn it into great dialog.  Then Bruce naturally was able to use these well-written versions of his teachings which he had memorized for the show.  Or, Silliphant just put Bruce’s words and metaphors in the screenplay (giving Bruce more credit!).

I saw this show when it aired (I was 9).  I was of course interested in the discussions of how to fight (being a small kid and a wise ass, a bad combination resulting in the occasional beat down).  I was intrigued by the combination of philosophy and violence explored on the show.  Bruce often said very ambiguous things, which drew me in with more force, the mystery something to chew on, like the Japanese kōan.  What does that mean?  Fighting without fighting?  No style?  Even at 9, these words were intriguing and mysterious.

[Read more…]

“Kung fu. It means, “supreme skill from hard work.” A great poet has reached kung fu. The painter, the calligrapher, they can be said to have kung fu. Even the cook, the one who sweeps steps or a masterful servant can have kung fu. Practice. Preparation. Endless repetition. Until your mind is weary, and your bones ache. Until you’re too tired to sweat, too wasted to breathe. That is the way, the only way one acquires kung fu.”
Hundred Eyes in Marco Polo

If you, like me, really enjoyed the character “Hundred Eyes” in the Netflix Marco Polo TV show, you’ll be happy to learn that they have made a half hour short featuring his “origin story.”

Check it out!

“Never be afraid to fail. Failure is only a stepping stone to improvement. Never be overconfident because that will block your improvement.”
Tony Jaa

I’ve been a big Tony Jaa fan ever since I saw Ong-bak in 2003.

Muay Thai had never been so fully represented in martial arts films and in Tony Jaa, the style found a representative who did for Muay Thai what Steven Seagal did for Akido in Above the Law.  He mythologized it and demonstrated its capacity for badassery and injected high levels of showmanship.

Jaa went further through the addition of various strains of showy techniques from other arts (TKD) and even Jacky Chan-style acrobatics and “fun” fighting choreography.

Japanom Yeerum (Tony Jaa) was born in Thailand in 1976 to parents who herded elephants for a living.

He watched martial arts movies as a kid and was a fan of the big three: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li.   He studied martial arts locally and then eventually won a scholarship to a Physical Education College, Thailand where he studied Muay Thai, Wushu, Judo and Tae Kwan Do.

His first film was as a stuntman on a local film in 1994, which led to him getting stunt work on a Western movie filmed in Thailand, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997).

This in turn led to him being seen by director Prachya Pinkaew 9(Chocolate), who used him as a stuntman for many years until finally building the film Ong-bak (2003) around Jaa’s abilities.

‘Ong’ means a Buddha Image. ‘Bak’ (verb) or ‘Roi Bak’ (noun) means a scar or mark from being cut by sharp weapons. There is a big scar on the face of Buddha Image in the movie. So “Ong Bak” means scarred Buddha Image. In the legend of this village in the film, this Buddha Image was stolen by Burmese soldiers in ancient times. I local Thai hero and Muay Thai master fought the Burmese and brought the Buddha Image back to the village. When the Thai hero fought the Burmese, they cut him in the face with a sword, but the wound appeared on the statue’s face and the hero was unharmed.

Tony Jaa, unfortunately, has only made a few movies in the 12 years since Ong-bak.

He did another great action movie with Pinkaew (The Protector) and then convinced his producers to let him direct the next one.

This led to a somewhat legendary meltdown reminiscent of Apocalypse Now, where he disappeared into the jungle for two months.  The movie was way over schedule and way over budget.  The producers interceded, fired him as director and they ended up taking the tons of footage, rewriting it, and splitting it in two, creating Ong-bak 2  and Ong-bak 3 , neither of which did very well at the box office since they basically made very little sense.

There are still some action gems in there, but you have to suffer to find them – better to get the highlights off Youtube.

There are many stories about what happened, from Jaa going megalomaniacal to his family and unscrupulous producers hamstringing him.

Since then, he has been limping his way back into the movie industry with a series of roles in other people’s movies (Skin Trade, Furious 7, and now SPL 2: A Time for Consequences).

PS You really have to say that in the case of movie stars from Hong Kong and Thailand, you need to give a lot of props to their team of stuntmen, who are highly skilled and pretty clearing willing to take a beating for their movies.  For every injury Jackie Chan caught on his movies, you should pencil in 5 stuntmen.  I’m pretty sure the same goes for these crazy Thai movies like Ong Bak and The Raid.

In the US, they have to do those stunts with CGI – in the East, they do them with tough stuntmen who have no medical insurance.

[Read more…]