Hong Kong

Paramount wanted me to be a regular for Longstreet but I refused because I was getting offers from Warner Bros. and MGM. Besides, I still had another commitment with Raymond Chow. We immediately began plans for a second film: Fist of Fury.

In the movie Fist of Fury I am Fok Yuen Gap’s student. Fok Yuen Gap was the best gung fu man among his time. His technique was as legendary as it was true. He was the first in the past four thousand years of gung fu history to establish a gung fu institute where many schools of techniques were taught. The Jing Mo Institutes still flourish all over China. He was famous as a patriot, who was ready to defend his country anytime. Many Japanese martial artists had tangled with him; and he, himself, had crossed over Siberia where he killed the Russian wrestlers with a single blow. He was called by foreigners the “Yellow-Faced Tiger.”

You see I’m actually portraying his student—not Fok Yuen Gap himself. That is more interesting because Fok Yuen Gap is, you know, sort of limited as a character for a film because you’ve got to follow how his history goes, you see. But the film is very interesting because I fought with a Japanese and a Russian and all that—just like Fok Yuen Gap. The Russian fights like karate, boxing, wrestling—everything—all together. And I bite him and everything. Man, all hell breaks loose.

And at the end I died under the gunfire. But it’s a very worthwhile death. I walk out and I say “Screw you, man! Here I come!” Boom! And I leap out and leap up in the air, and then they stop the frame and then “ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bang!”—like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—except they stop the frame so that I’m in the middle of the air, you know?

Fist of Fury cost around eight-hundred-thousand Hong Kong dollars, which is under two-hundred-thousand U.S. dollars [but] it grossed close to one million dollars U.S. in Hong Kong alone and in Thailand and Singapore it did the same.

I insisted that Chen Chen, the role I played in Fist of Fury, should die in the film. It means the glorification of violence is bad. He had killed many people and he had to pay for it.

The fight scenes for Fist of Fury are really tremendous. I mean, I like them myself. So you can imagine if I enjoy them, the regular people should really dig it.

Ultimately, martial art is the expression of oneself.

To me, at least, the way that I teach it, all types of knowledge ultimately mean self-knowledge

So therefore, my students are coming in and asking me to teach them—not so much how to defend themselves or how to do somebody in—rather, they want to learn to express themselves through some movement; be it anger, be it determination, or whatever.

So, in other words, what I’m saying is that the student is paying me to show him, in combative form, the art of expressing the human body.

In The Way of the Dragon, I wrote the script, had the starring role, directed it, and produced it. I worked almost around the clock for days. I did it because it was fun. It was something I haven’t done before but always had an interest in. The climax takes place in the famous Coliseum in Rome, and I have to fight an American, Chuck Norris, who has won the karate championship in the States seven times! The fight scenes between Chuck Norris and me were held in the Coliseum.

The Way of the Dragon was different from the other movies. We went to Europe for location. I also employed a Japanese photographer because I knew the Japanese had more knowhow in that area than those in Hong Kong. This was the first time a Hong Kong filmmaker went to Europe for location shooting.

I wrote it in Chinese and got somebody else to polish it up a bit. I tried writing it in English at first and to have somebody translate it into Chinese, but it didn’t work. The translation inevitably loses some of the original ideas. So I decided to write in Chinese with the help of a dictionary. It is quite, funny really. I bought this English-Chinese dictionary originally to help me find the suitable English words when I first went to the United States when I was 18. Now I find that I have to use it to find the Chinese words which I have in mind!