09/30/2025
Jackie Chan on Bruce Lee and The Big Boss:
Despite the fact that we hadn’t paid to get in, we were prepared to hate the film. We really wanted to. After all, this overseas Chinese guy had come out of nowhere, was making hundreds of times our salaries, and had Hong Kong eating out of his hand.
We wanted to, but we couldn’t. The film was everything the movies we were making weren’t. And even though The Big Boss may not seem very impressive today, for us then, it was a revelation.
“Just what I said,” shouted Sammo on the way out of the theater, pumping his fist in the air. “Real fighting. Real hero. I like it.”
“Ah, he ain’t nothing,” Jackie said. “If you think it’s so real, how come when he fights a whole crowd of people, they only attack him one at a time?”
“Yeah, that doesn’t happen in real life,” chimed in Yuen Biao. We all had bruises to prove it.
Sammo shook his head and waved us away. “You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. I bet this is the beginning of something big, and if I’m wrong, I’ll eat my shoes.”
As it turns out, however, Sammo was right. The Big Boss was a big hit—a blockbuster not just in Hong Kong, but throughout Asia. Its success turned the man called Dragon into Hong Kong’s hottest star, and Golden Harvest from an upstart into a contender.
Source: I Am Jackie Chan My Life In Action
01/23/2024
09/14/2023