Big Trouble in Little China

[GeneChing]

We should all be ashamed that there isn't a thread on this film here.

I'm even more embarrassed to start one now, over a quarter century after BTiLC's release...with this: Lo Pan Style (Gangnam Style Parody) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFrJ1J3VHA8#!) :o

[Featherstone]

ah yeah, that is an awesome parody!! Had that going on a campout just recently before we watched the movie! :D

[GeneChing]

A ‘Little China’ Reunion (http://www.rafu.com/2015/05/a-little-china-reunion/)
Cast members of 1986 film gather at JANM.
Posted On May 7, 2015 Film & TV

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Pictured from left are co-screenwriter Gary Goldman and cast members James Lew, George Cheung, James Hong, Lia Chang, Gerald Okamura, Jeff Imada, Joycelyn Lew and Al Leong. The panelists agreed that the film was a rare opportunity for so many Asian American actors and stuntpeople to work together in Hollywood. (J.K. YAMAMOTO/Rafu Shimpo)

By J.K. YAMAMOTO, Rafu Staff Writer

A sold-out screening of John Carpenter’s 1986 cult classic “Big Trouble in Little China” was held April 8 at the Japanese American National Museum’s Tateuchi Democracy Forum as part of the Big Trouble in Little Tokyo film series, co-presented by Angry Asian Man, First Pond Entertainment and Visual Communications.

The action-adventure film stars Kurt Russell as truck driver Jack Burton, who helps his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) rescue Wang’s green-eyed fiancee (Suzee Pai) from bandits beneath the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The story involves magic, monsters and martial arts. Kim Cattrall, Donald Li, Kate Burton and the late Victor Wong also star.

A panel following the screening featured 10 cast members and one of the screenwriters. Milton Liu of Visual Communications served as moderator.

Peter Kwong played Rain, one of three Storms with supernatural powers (James Pax was Lightning and Carter Wong was Thunder). To show that he hasn’t lost his touch, Kwong recreated a scene from the movie in which he wielded two swords.

Kwong noted that “Big Trouble in Little China” was made around the time that Asian American groups were condemning the 1985 movie “Year of the Dragon” for its negative depictions of Chinese Americans. Community leaders and media were invited to the set during filming to assure them that this was a different kind of movie.

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Peter Kwong as Rain.

“We of the crew and the cast had to do a lot of work on it in order for us to fight the protests that were going on at that time,” Kwong said. “Not only did it represent fun and games, but it represented a critical point of where the community met Hollywood. John Carpenter was really amazing because he really reached out to cast and crew. He really asked for all of us to put in our input.”

Kwong’s other credits include the movies “The Golden Child” and “Gleaming the Cube” and the TV shows “JAG” and “General Hospital.”

Gary Goldman, who co-wrote the original screenplay with David Weinstein, said he was inspired by such films as Tsui Hark’s “The Butterfly Murders,” Jimmy Wang Yu’s “Master of the Flying Guillotine” and the Zatoichi series from Japan. The story was conceived as a western set in a Chinatown in 1899, but the producers decided to change the setting to present-day San Francisco. The main characters, Jack Burton and Wang Chi, were retained.

The adaptation was done by W.D. Richter (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”).

James Lew (Chang Sing #1), whose other movie credits include “Red Sun Rising” and “GI Joe: Retaliation,” created the salute that the good guys used throughout “Big Trouble.” “I was trying to come up with something that would symbolize the respect and brotherhood of the Chang Sings … It actually came from one of my styles,” he explained. ” … People salute to me on the street sometimes.”

He added, “This was my first shot at becoming a martial arts coordinator. It was a great experience for me.”

George Cheung (Chang Sing #6), whose credits include “Rush Hour” and “Lethal Weapon 4,” said that many of his “Big Trouble” castmates have gone on to bigger and better things, including Jeff Imada (Needles), who was the fight/stunt coordinator for “Furious 7,” “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,” and “The Bourne Supremacy,” among other films.

Cheung introduced James Hong, who played the main villain, David Lo Pan, as “my idol … I knew right from the beginning that I could never be James Hong, so I gave it up.”

Hong, 86, has been in show business for 61 years. His credits span the 1950s (he played No. 1 Son in “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan”) to the current “Kung Fu Panda” movies, in which he plays Po’s father.

“There will never be another ‘Big Trouble in Little China,’” he declared. Like East West Players, the Asian American theater company that he co-founded, the movie provided opportunities for a lot of Asian American actors and martial artists, he said. “A few of you here were stunt coordinators, choreographers, and you were promoted to associate producers by the end. That’s how hard they worked … Everybody here put 150 percent of effort into that movie, way beyond what they were paid.”

However, Hong continued, “Big Trouble” did not open the door wide enough and many Asian American actors have only been offered minor, stereotyped roles instead of principal roles. “Now it’s starting to come up. I hope you people will write the studios and speak up and open up the field for more Asian Americans.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

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James Hong as David Lo Pan.

Although some of his films have been less than memorable, such as “R.I.P.D.,” Hong said, “Big Trouble” was among his favorites along with “Blade Runner” and “Chinatown.”

Lia Chang played a Wing Kong guard along with Dian Tanaka, Donna Noguchi and Shinko Isobe. She had previously appeared in another martial arts movie, “The Last Dragon.” Having studied karate and kung fu since the 7th grade, she said, “To be able to come and be part of this was an amazing dream … It was such a role of empowerment for women.”

Now a photographer and journalist as well as an actor, Chang added, “I’ve come across a lot of Asian American men for whom ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ and ‘The Last Dragon’ are their favorite films, because of how Asian American men and Asian Americans were portrayed.”

Gerald Okamura, who played one of the Wing Kong hatchet men, said that when he auditioned for Carpenter, he tried to make a good impression. “I did all my stuff, brought one of my students there. I threw him around, threw him on the ground.” But when he got the call and reported to 20th Century Fox Studios, “They give me two gold-plated six-shooters. What kind of martial arts is that? I couldn’t figure it out. They asked me, ‘Do you know how to use the gun?’ I said, ‘No, I’m a martial artist.’”

On top of that, he was fitted with bandoliers containing bullets that were much too big for the guns. “I’m glad I didn’t run out of bullets … I would have had a hard time trying to get those bullets into the six-shooters,” said Okamura, whose other credits include “Showdown in Little Tokyo” and “GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.”

Imada, who has worked on over 400 films, TV shows, commercials and music videos, and was recently honored by East West Players for his body of work, said it was “a great opportunity” to work with an almost all-Asian cast on a Hollywood film. “And also getting together the greatest martial artists in the area, from Northern California to Southern California … We’d see each other at different events, but to spend a lot of time with everybody on the project, we got to become close, fast friends …

“I feel really fortunate that I’ve been part of the cast and was fortunate to have been beat up by a lot of the people. In the film, I played eight or 12 different characters … At the time, there weren’t a lot of Asian stuntpeople, so a lot of us did double duty and got beat up several times by each other.”

Almost 30 years later, Imada said that in his travels around the world, he is amazed to find that “Big Trouble” continues to have a “huge following.”

Imada is often asked if there will be a sequel to “Big Trouble,” and he mentions this to Carpenter every now and then. He quoted the director as saying, “Fox owns the rights to it, so why don’t you go to Fox and talk to them about it? If you can get them to do it, then I’ll do the project.”

Joycelyn Lew, whose other credits include “Battle Creek Brawl,” said that “Big Trouble” was the film “where I met all of my martial arts buddies” as well as the late Noel Toy, who gained fame in the 1940s as a fan dancer at San Francisco’s Forbidden City nightclub. In the film, Toy played a madam named Mrs. O’Toole.

Al Leong, who played a Wing Kong hatchet man, recalled, “John Carpenter actually hired me for the film because I couldn’t get a job on the film. Nobody wanted me on this film. The stunt coordinator, who is no longer alive, a great guy, didn’t know me very well. He knew my dad well, but he didn’t know who I was. I ended up getting a job through John Carpenter himself, which was great. It was fantastic, working with great people, a great story — that’s what makes a great film.”

Leong has also been seen in such films as “Die Hard” and “The Scorpion King” and such TV shows as “24” and “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.”

Another Wing Kong hatchet man, Eric Lee, said, “Without this great cast, without the writer here, this would not be possible. I hope we can make it again.”

Lee’s other credits include “The Master Demon” and “The Accidental Spy.”

The screening was followed by a Q&A session and an after party around the corner at Far Bar.

Big Trouble in Little Tokyo continues on Wednesday, May 13, at 7 p.m. with Marion Wong’s silent film “The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West” (1916-17). Info: www.janm.org.

TRIVIA CORNER: In addition to “Big Trouble in Little China,” Dennis Dun and Victor Wong both appeared in Michael Cimino’s controversial crime drama “Year of the Dragon,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s historical epic “The Last Emperor,” and John Carpenter’s horror film “Prince of Darkness,” much of which was shot at the old Union Church building in Little Tokyo, now known as Union Center for the Arts and home to East West Players and Visual Communications.

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From left: George Cheung, Milton Liu, Lia Chang, Oliver Ike, Gerald Okamura, Peter Kwong, Eric Lee and Ewart Chin.

But there's more....wait for it...

[GeneChing]

http://s1.evcdn.com/images/edpborder500/I0-001/026/933/124-7.jpeg_/big-trouble-little-china-alive-movie-24.jpeg

Big Trouble in Little China - (A)LIVE - Movie, Mayhem & More in San Francisco - May 19-20 2016 7:00PM

Tickets available here. (http://sanfrancisco.eventful.com/venues/the-great-star-theater-/V0-001-002274363-8)

The Great Star Theater (http://greatstartheater.org)'s website is lacking. :(

I would love to go to this just to see a Kung Fu flick in the Great Star again, but I've got this previous engagement... (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68985-2016-Tiger-Claw-Elite-amp-Kung-Fu-Tai-Chi-Day-May-21-22-San-Jose-CA)

[GeneChing]

....post here? :rolleyes:


Chin Han interview: ‘Some stories are so effective and universal that they lend themselves to adaptation’ (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/chin-han-independence-day-resurgence-interview-sinaporean-actor-a7102266.html)
Hollywood’s first Singaporean star on whitewashing controversies, the growing Asian film market and ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’

Tim Walker Los Angeles @timwalker 6 hours ago

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Chin Han as Commander Jiang in ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ 20th Century Fox

By the end of next year, China is expected to overtake North America as the world’s biggest movie market, marking the end of Hollywood’s historic dominance of the global film industry. And with just 34 annual release slots allotted to western movies by the Chinese censors, US studios have become increasingly desperate to tailor their output to East Asian audiences.

Some fear that effort stifles filmmakers’ creativity, as if the studios haven’t always been motivated by their bottom line. But it has beneficial effects, too, not least bringing greater diversity to the multiplex, by giving screen time to Asian actors such as Chin Han, the first Singaporean star ever to make a splash in Hollywood.

“There are more opportunities now because international markets are becoming more and more of a consideration, especially for the big-budget films,” agrees Han, who got his Hollywood break in blockbuster Batman sequel The Dark Knight and has subsequently appeared in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Netflix series Marco Polo and now Independence Day: Resurgence.

As a teenager in Singapore, says Han, some of the American films that most resonated with him were those that featured Asian characters, even when they were criticised in the US for racial stereotyping. “It’s always fun to see faces that are either familiar or resemble yours,” he says. “I was fascinated by movies like Big Trouble in Little China growing up because there were so many Asian people in it! The same with Year of the Dragon or The Last Emperor. It was just so great to see so many Asian actors working.”

In Independence Day: Resurgence, which opened this weekend, Han plays Commander Jiang, the man in charge of the Moon base that’s the Earth’s first line of defence against alien invasion. Born in Singapore to a Chinese family, the 46-year-old saw the 1996 original at one of Singapore’s first multiplexes. “It blew me and my friends away,” he says. “Even though it has a lot of American references, it has a universal theme, so we found ourselves rooting for Bill Pullman and Will Smith.”

Already a celebrated actor and director in the Singaporean theatre world, Han was surprised when he got the call to come and read for The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan in 2008. “I jumped on a plane and flew to LA and was incredibly jet-lagged when I did the audition,” he says. The jet-lag may have helped him land the role of Lau, the criminal accountant whom Batman kidnaps in Hong Kong and takes to Gotham to be interrogated.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rljtwchMGEs

With his part in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Han joined an elite club of actors who have had speaking roles in both the Marvel and DC movie universes. A comic book fan as a boy, he’s also psyched that his next project is the live-action adaptation of the cyberpunk manga classic, Ghost in the Shell, which is currently shooting in Hong Kong.

The film generated accusations of “whitewashing” after Scarlett Johansson was cast as its protagonist, Japanese cyborg cop Major Kusanagi. A petition to replace the star with a Japanese actress such as Rinko Kikuchi (Pacific Rim, Babel) or Tao Okamoto (Wolverine) has attracted more than 100,000 signatures. But Han is level-headed about the controversy.

“There are some stories that are so effective and universal that they lend themselves to adaptation. Shakespeare has been adapted by Akira Kurosawa, Dangerous Liaisons has been adapted into a Chinese movie. Blood Simple, the Coen brothers movie, was adapted by Zhang Yimou,” he says, suggesting the futuristic Ghost in the Shell falls into the same category.

“Then again, if we’re talking about Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Marlon Brando in The Teahouse of the August Moon – where they’re actually pretending to be Chinese and Japanese respectively – then that is at best misguided and, at worst, offensive. It would be like casting me in a biopic about [black NBA star] Steph Curry.”

[GeneChing]

How ‘Big Trouble In Little China’ Opened Doors For Asian-American Actors In Hollywood (http://uproxx.com/movies/big-trouble-in-little-china-legacy/)
BY: ASHLEY BURNS AND CHLOE SCHILDHAUSE 07.07.16 •

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20TH CENTURY FOX

In his review of the 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China, Roger Ebert wrote that this movie is “straight out of the era of Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu, with no apologies and all of the usual stereotypes.” He compared it to 1985’s Year of the Dragon, which featured Mickey Rourke taking on a seriously violent Chinese Triads leader and sparked outrage and even protests at the time of its release. Ebert ultimately wondered how Asian-Americans would respond to this film, citing it as “one more example of the way every American ethnic group has been fodder for Hollywood’s mill.”

The response, as it turns out, was not positive.

A week after the film debuted in theaters and began its underwhelming box office run, the Los Angeles Times detailed the offenses that some Chinese-American groups had taken with Big Trouble in Little China. Groups like Chinese for Affirmative Action and Chinese Progressive Association were upset that San Francisco’s Chinatown needed to be saved by “a macho, smart-aleck white truck driver,” and they were agitated over 20th Century Fox never giving them an opportunity to review the film’s script. (Perhaps that’s because there were already too many other problems with the script.)

But the film’s marketing coordinator, Daniel Kwan, told the newspaper at the time that he met with protesters from both groups, and while he wouldn’t share the film’s script with them, they still found a copy but failed to present him with “any specifics of what they wanted changed.” In response, one spokesperson cited the “overall impression of the movie” as the problem, and how Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton “still comes off as the hero at the end,” despite Kwan’s and the studio’s insistence that he’s only a “hero” by dumb luck. Dennis Dun’s Wang Chi and Victor Wong’s Egg Shen are the real heroes of the movie — even if Egg says otherwise is the opening scene — and actor Peter Kwong, who played Rain, told the Times that it was “unfair” and “misleading” to call Dun’s character Jack’s “yes man.”

Thirty years later, Kwong remains steadfast in his belief that the outrage was much ado about nothing. “They didn’t read the script, they didn’t consider anything, they didn’t look at anything,” he tells us. “It was just subject matter — Chinatown, gangs — ‘Let’s go get them.’ They didn’t care it was a comedy, so that’s why we added the myth, and the substance, and added the fine-tuning of the martial artists, because there were a lot of things I brought to the table.”

Kwong is highly complimentary of John Carpenter’s work ethic, not just as a director who had a vision for something grand and magical, but because he gave everyone involved with the film the opportunity to contribute and bring things to the table so that Big Trouble in Little China would be more authentic and inoffensive. It may have been a comedy, but it was a special opportunity for Kwong and the other Asian-American actors who contributed to this film. Even if Kwong didn’t even know it was a comedy when he landed the role of Rain.

John Carpenter’s Bag Of Tricks

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20TH CENTURY FOX
Peter Kwong as Rain

When Kwong arrived for his audition, there were more than 100 Asian-American actors on hand, trying to land roles. “It was a huge cattle call of martial artists,” he recalls, and all he knew from word of mouth was that they were looking for authentic martial artists who looked the part and backed it up. The casting call was for extra roles, mostly, as they needed to find the gang members for the airport kidnapping scene, as well as the women for the warehouse fight and members of both the Wing Kong and Chang Sing for the street fight. So, when it came time for him to prove himself to Carpenter, Kwong showed off his martial arts skills and collection of actual weapons. That definitely caught the director’s eye.

“They contacted my agent and said, ‘We don’t want him as a martial artist. We want him in as an actor and to be part of the Storms,’” he says. “The Three Storms, we had Rain, Thunder, and Lightning. Besides our natural superpower godly talents, we also had specialty weapons. I had the extending claws, Thunder had the sickles with the daggers, and Lightning had the spinning swords in his hands, the blades. Everyone had their own specialties. I was fortunate to be able to be one of the Three Storms.”

Even when he accepted the role of Rain, Kwong didn’t have a script. His first day of filming Big Trouble in Little China involved a crucial scene – his one-on-one battle with Wang Chi at Lo Pan’s wedding. He recalls the filming process in great detail, pulling back the curtain to reveal how Carpenter used his own magic to make this battle seem so over-the-top and spectacular. When Rain and Wang are leaping through the air and battling with swords, Kwong and Dun were actually standing still. There were no wires. Instead, Carpenter used some camera trickery to make the background move behind his actors, while the stunt team hopped around and flipped through the air on trampolines. But the greatest trick the director used was not letting his bad guy in on the joke.

“We’re fighting, fighting, fighting and all the sudden we land and Dennis Dun raises his eyebrows,” Kwong says. “I’m looking at him up and down going, ‘What the hell?’ This is a serious drama that’s going on. This is a serious fight. What I didn’t realize, because I didn’t have access to the script at that time, was that it’s a comedy. I had to be the total straight man. So, what’s the best way to be the total straight man? Don’t let them in on it! John Carpenter, that was his little trick. All these little tricks were being pulled, unbeknownst to us.”

But Kwong and his castmates were hardly in the dark in other respects. In fact, he says Carpenter was extremely inclusive from the beginning, because he cared about making sure that his film wasn’t offensive. Even in an era without the internet, the response to Year of the Dragon was still on everyone’s minds, Carpenter included, and Kwong believes that the anger over that film was simply a matter of “enough is enough.”

“I really appreciate John Carpenter’s input in this, in that when we were doing this the timing of it was right after the release of Year of the Dragon with Mickey Rourke,” Kwong explains. “Year of the Dragon was a film that came out about New York street gangs, Chinatown street gangs, and it was protested heavily with the Asian Pacific community because it held the Chinese in such negative light. Not like The Godfather, because The Godfather was all about culture, family — it showed colors, it showed dimension of human feelings, as opposed to stereotypes that all Chinese are involved in gangs and being controlled by gangs. Although certain parts of that are real, a lot of it’s based on fiction and stereotypes. And we don’t need more stereotypes about negative, evil, Chinese people. It’s already bad.”
continued next post

[GeneChing]

Turning A Problem Into Potential

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20TH CENTURY FOX
James Hong and John Carpenter

Kwong’s on-screen rival, Dun, was familiar with the outrage over Year of the Dragon, as he made his big screen debut in that film. After Fox shot down the idea of casting Jackie Chan as Wang, Carpenter chose Dun because of his previous role. But Dun’s wife told him not to take Big Trouble in Little China. Instead, she urged him to accept a role in another project that was more positive for Asian-Americans.

“My wife read it and didn’t really like it,” Dun tells us. “I had an offer to do a TV movie [Blood and Orchid] about a true story in Hawaii, playing a lawyer. My agent wanted me to do that and my wife wasn’t sure because I had just done Year of the Dragon, that was my first film. So, this was only my second film. I didn’t protest it. There were some questions about the script and I saw a lot of possibilities. I was a W.D. Richter fan. I saw Buckaroo Bonzai and liked the way he kind of mixes all these genres and cultures and put them together. Kind of multi-cultural, futuristic. I saw the humor in Big Trouble, it felt like the right thing. It was like a childhood fantasy come true: You get to be a hero, you get be funny and kind of goofy and silly, which I am in real life. It was just fun.”

As Kwong recalls, the outrage over Big Trouble in Little China began as soon as the plot details leaked. The protesting organizations sent letters to Carpenter and 20th Century Fox officials to express their concerns over what they believed to be offensive portrayals of Chinese characters. Once Dun accepted the role of Wang, Carpenter shared one of the letters with him so that he’d be aware of the real troubles facing the film’s production. Dun refers to that period as “an interesting time,” because if not for these controversial roles, he would have never become an actor.

“In the mid-’80s, China was just opening up at the end of the cultural revolution of the late ’70s, and there were these things about China [Americans] were curious about,” Dun says. “That’s why I started getting work. Actually, I was going to quit acting. I was doing theater for nothing in San Francisco for about seven or eight years. I had to make a living so I was going to quit and then I got cast in Dragon. Even then I saw there were a lot of things people were going to protest but I thought, ‘I don’t really know anything about this business. I guess I’ll just go back to retail.’ That’s what I was going to do for work. I was doing marketing.”

Dun was no stranger to racism in the ‘80s, sharing one particular incident that took place around the same time that he was filming Big Trouble in Little China. “Someone would say, ‘Go back to Vietnam,’ and I’m Chinese-American. So I’d say, ‘Well, go back to Chicago!’” he laughs. “There was a big transition starting in the ’80s. People knew there were the Four Asian Tigers, but they didn’t really come on that strong yet. It was a transition for everybody, just awareness of Asia in the presence of America and the world. The ’80s was a time when it was just starting to happen. Japan had come as an economic miracle and I just remember them destroying Japanese cars in Detroit and all that stuff.”

“All the Asian communities were ready to attack, anything down the line,” Kwong says. “Big Trouble in Little China was next, even though it was a comedy, even though it was tongue-in-cheek. They said, ‘No more negative stereotypes,’ and so they were developing on the outside a huge Asian Pacific coalition against Big Trouble in Little China. This was a very politically heavy time, so Big Trouble in Little China was a very pivotal political message besides it becoming a cult film. How did John Carpenter handle this? He had meetings with the cast and crew and he asked us for a lot of input. It affected the script in that now people wanted the real deal. He said, ‘I want you guys to bring what you can to the table,’ and he gave certain people a different title. From stunt coordinator, now he’s an associate producer. Then, us as a group met with the community and we talked things out and watched the community uprise. It wasn’t that Big Trouble in Little China or 20th Century Fox was ignoring the community, we chose to engage them and brought them onto the set. It was diffused because we, as the cast and crew, said, ‘Look, this is our project, we’re making this happen. So, what’s the problem here?’”

From ‘Big Trouble’ To A ‘Golden’ Opportunity

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20TH CENTURY FOX
Dennis Dun and John Carpenter

As far as the doors that Big Trouble in Little China opened for Kwong, Dun, and many of their castmates, the progress was evident almost immediately with the release of The Golden Child in December 1986. One of the problems that dogged Carpenter during the production of Big Trouble in Little China was Fox rushing it to beat The Golden Child to theaters. Carpenter tells us that it was a little odd that two movies that focused on Chinese mysticism were in production at the same time, but the silver lining of his film being fast-tracked was that some of his actors were also cast in the Eddie Murphy vehicle.

“Half our people went from Big Trouble in Little China to The Golden Child,” Kwong recalls. “James Hong, Victor Wong, I was on Golden Child — a lot of people that were from our camp were cast. Again, I had to do the martial arts stuff, so in the audition I’m there with the director and of course, what do I do? I bring my whole bag of weapons. I walk in there and I’m ready for this audition, this verbal part of the audition and they say, ‘What’s that?’ And I throw the bag down and it goes clunk and crash, and I look at them and point them in the face and say, ‘That’s in case I don’t get the job.’”

Unfortunately for fans, the cast, and Carpenter, Big Trouble in Little China being a bomb meant there was no chance there’d ever be a sequel. Even Larry Gordon, the head of motion pictures for 20th Century Fox in 1985, was gone before the film was released. Just as Carpenter remembers, Kwong points the blame for the lack of success squarely on the marketing department, while pondering what could have been.

“I wish there was a sequel,” he says. “I wish that at the beginning that John Carpenter got the kudos he deserved. Because time has proven that it’s a great film. And unfortunately it took all that time to become a great thing. And if they would have marketed it better, history might have been changed, because it was really interesting to follow that. That year was really good for me because I think I did three or four feature films in one year, right after that, almost back to back.”

Box office returns aside, Dun still remembers a different kind of response, perhaps far more important to him than money was to the studio. “When it came out I talked to some people in Hong Kong I had met and they really hated the film. With Richter and Carpenter and actors and everything it became something else. I wonder if they would like it now. I know even some Asian-Americans didn’t like it and they saw it recently and thought, yeah, I like it a lot better now. But I think back then the consciousness is very different and even Asians are very ambivalent about how they thought about themselves because we’re usually gangsters, sex trafficking white women in Asia, or gamblers, pimps, drug dealers. I mean, there is that element in any culture so I think that’s pretty much what the portrayal was before, we were just mysterious people. So the whole ’80s with the films like Big Trouble was a transition of just the world. A continuum of a civilization,” he laughs. “People evolving and learning about themselves. I know it sounds so intellectual but I think that’s really what it is.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

The Real Legacy Feels Kind Of Invincible

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20TH CENTURY FOX
(L-R) Peter Kwong, Suzee Pai, James Hong, and Kim Cattrall

Both Dun and Kwong mention a feeling of family when looking back at the production of Big Trouble in Little China, citing the film’s star, Kurt Russell, as someone who made them all feel like they mattered, like they were equals.

“John Carpenter had that kind of vision because he understood that we were Americans,” Dun says. “I think there was an openness to find out who we were. That really played into the sensibility of what I saw in the script and what he even saw in the script. But you never really talked about it, you could just feel it. And the openness of all the people working together, and even Kurt Russell was amazing. We just loved working together.”

“To be working with Kurt Russell was a treat and why it was a treat, always, was because of his personality,” Kwong adds. “Really nice guy. Really down to Earth. But when you walk onto a set and it carries a really warm, friendly — by this time because of politics — mutual effort, let’s come together to make this film together. Because that’s what made it more of a family. We knew that we had to overcome certain obstacles, the negativity and then making it all, as opposed to just a film for 20th Century Fox. It now became our own personal input, our own personal creation, and it became ours.”

Kwong ran into Russell at the Oscars a few years back, thinking that the huge star wouldn’t remember one of the bad guys from some box office flop. Instead, that moment confirmed what he’d learned about the man who played Jack Burton decades earlier. “The last time I saw Kurt Russell was at the Oscars. I saw him and Goldie [Hawn], and I came up to him and said, ‘I had to say hello, I don’t know if you remember me,’ and he said, ‘Of course I remember you, how have you been?’ It had been 25 years, bless his heart. Even though we’ve aged, we haven’t changed that much. Our bodies, we haven’t gotten fat and lazy. Still looking like he looked back then. Maybe a few years’ difference, but who’s counting?”

Some of the cast of Big Trouble in Little China reunited for the 25th anniversary in 2011, and they met at another event in 2015 to specifically discuss the role that the film played in helping Asian-Americans in Hollywood. One of the film’s original writers, Gary Goldman, joined them to celebrate the impact of the film, despite his contentious past with the studio over writing credits for him and his partner, David Z. Weinstein. To Goldman, the revelation that this film meant so much to the cast helped him appreciate what his original idea has evolved into after 30 years.

“I hadn’t realized what an impact it had had on the actors,” Goldman tells us. “That was actually kind of new to me and made me feel great.” Weinstein agrees, saying that he’s “extremely happy” about this particular aspect of the movie, invoking the recent #OscarsSoWhite controversy as a reminder that there is still progress to be made in “making films reflect more what America actually looks like.”

“There’s always room for improvement but you can see the transition for all people of color, it’s changed quite a bit,” Dun offers. “Some aren’t perfect from when you’re looking at it as a minority, but you can see it’s an amazing thing that’s happened in the 30 years. The whole world’s changed so much. It’s amazing. The presence of Latinos in media, people of color in general, has gotten a lot better. For older Asian characters, we’re still foreign, but that will keep evolving over time. But you see your Hawaii Five-0 and you see they’re part of the mainstream. They’re part of America and not making a big deal out of them being part of being Asian.”

Interestingly, it’s diversity that Dun cites when he talks about why he might be okay with the possible remake of Big Trouble in Little China. Like Carpenter, Dun isn’t even sure that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s remake will ever happen, as he points out that there have been rumors of a remake for 20 years. However, if it is remade, he says, he’d first and foremost like to play the Egg Shen character this time around as a tribute to Victor Wong, who was his mentor (“The Egg Shen to me in real life”) during their time together on Year of the Dragon, Big Trouble in Little China, and The Last Emperor. As for Johnson playing Jack Burton, Dun sees that as a tribute to the inclusiveness that this film promoted 30 years ago.

“Kurt Russell is all-American as can be and he’s great, but you’ve got The Rock now, who’s American, but he’s a person of color who’s half-black, half-Samoan,” Dun says. “It’s kind of a new vision of America that we are part of this culture. That concept excites me because that would never happen 30 years ago. It had to be a white, American, Caucasian actor. So, that itself is a statement that a person like The Rock has become such an international American icon. He’s very entertaining, so I’d be interested to see what he does.”

Nice piece. Good timing.

[GeneChing]

Big Trouble in Little China & Escape from New York crossover comic: Exclusive first look (http://www.ew.com/article/2016/07/11/big-trouble-little-china-crossover-comic)
BY CLARK COLLIS • @CLARKCOLLIS

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/2016/07/11/big-trouble-in-little-china-cover.jpg
Big Trouble in Little China
Posted July 11 2016 — 1:10 PM EDT

Do you believe you can never have too much Kurt Russell? Then, (a) congratulations for having such good taste, and (b) you are going to love the new Big Trouble in Little China/Escape from New York crossover comic from Boom! Studios.

Written by Greg Pak and illustrated by Daniel Bayliss, the title finds big-mouthed truck driver Jack Burton (played by Kurt Russell in 1986’s kung fu extravaganza Big Trouble in Little China) transported to the dystopian future of 1997, where he meets his taciturn, eyepatch-sporting doppelgänger Snake Plissken (also played by Kurt Russell in 1981’s science fiction classic Escape from New York).

Made with the blessing of filmmaker John Carpenter, who directed both Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from New York, the six-part series debuts this October. The announcement about the crossover comic follows the news that Boom! Studios is publishing two non-fiction books this year by Tara Bennett and Paul Terry to mark the 30th anniversary of Big Trouble in Little China. The first, The Official Making of Big Trouble in Lttle China, arrives in stores this August, while the second, The Art of Big Trouble in Little China, is out in November.

You can exclusively see the two connecting covers for issue #1 of Big Trouble in Little China/Escape from New York below and the combined image, above.

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/1468253787/Big-Trouble-in-Little-China-01.jpg
http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/1468253787/Big-Trouble-in-Little-China-02.jpg


Well this sounds fun. Time to plug my Mr. Ping (Lo Pan) interview here from last week (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1300)...

[GeneChing]

There's been some buzz on the BTiLC anniversary, and this popped up in my newsfeed. It's actually better that the Lo Pan Style (Gangnam Style Parody) that started this thread, because it's genuine. :eek:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bR57i3Fkn4

[mickey]

Greetings,

Had I seen the music video before ever seeing the movie. I would have wanted to see it.

I am a little creeped out because I thought Peter Kwong had died many years ago.


mickey

[GeneChing]

I'm delighted to see this come around again. I'll have to re-watch it again soon, in honor of its 30th.


Jack Burton's Adventures Continue in the Big Trouble in Little China Tabletop Game (http://io9.gizmodo.com/jack-burtons-adventures-continue-in-the-big-trouble-in-1783733498)
Cheryl Eddy
Friday 11:25amFiled to: THIS IS AWESOME

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/ji3za6vg8ji1yxlaju2o.JPG

First came news of the Big Trouble in Little China-Escape From New York crossover comic. Now, more excitement for Jack Burton fanatics: Big Trouble in Little China the Game is coming next year. Not a video game, to be clear. This will be an old-school tabletop game with its own miniatures and room for up to six players.

Boom Studios reports that you can “play as Jack Burton or one of his brave friends on the mysterious quest to rescue the green-eyed beauty, defeat Lo Pan’s ancient magic, and save Chinatown from his evil minions. Players will venture through the iconic locations in Chinatown saving the helpless and thwarting evil plans, all the while discovering weapons and rare magics to use to their benefit.” Dibs on Egg Shen!

There are no images of the game, yet. (Look for more info about it to drop in August, at game convention Gen Con.) But here’s the working logo, courtesy of Boom Studios, Everything Epic, Flipside Design Studio, and 20th Century Fox Consumer Products:

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--wTk2yvHs--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/ti05r5uecdcdkzucp49m.jpg

The game is just the latest announcement in a slew of releases marking the 30th anniversary of the cult favorite. On top of the comic, Boom Studios already announced it was planning a pair of books: The Official Making of Big Trouble in Little China and The Art of Big Trouble in Little China. There will also be an “illustrated novel,” Big Trouble in Mother Russia, which will presumably see bungling hero Jack Burton drinking vodka, wearing a fur hat, and having some Cold War-era adventures. How do you say “the check is in the mail” in Russian?

Big Trouble in Mother Russia? Coooooool :cool:

[GeneChing]

RZA to live-score The 36th Chamber of Shaolin at LA’s Beyond Fest (http://www.factmag.com/2016/09/08/rza-to-live-score-the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin-at-las-beyond-fest/)
BY CLAIRE LOBENFELD, SEP 8 2016

https://d235mwrq2dn9n5.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/RZA-9-8-16-616x440.jpg

A dream event for hardcore Wu-Tang fans.

Los Angeles genre film festival Beyond Fest announced their 2016 lineup today, including a huge event for Wu-Tang Clan fans: RZA will live rescore The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, a pivotal movie for both martial arts film and the culture surrounding Wu.

RZA will re-score the entire film “from opening sequence to closing credit” with an emphasis on 20 years of Wu-Tang’s catalogue. According to the festival, the “new score features a vast array of over 40 instrumental tracks, beats and vocals individually crafted and placed to amplify the narrative and electrifying action.”

A dubbed version of the film that RZA saw for the first time when he was a 12-year-old growing up in Staten Island is the version that will screen. It will be presented with all of its original dialog intact.

The screening will take place at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd on October 10 at 7PM PST. Tickets for this and other events – including a screening of John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China with a live Q&A with Kurt Russell – are on sale now.

This event really sounds like a lot of fun. Wish I could make it.

[GeneChing]

Big Trouble in Little China: An oral history (http://www.ew.com/article/2016/07/16/big-trouble-little-china-oral-history)
A look back on John Carpenter's cult favorite with Kurt Russell, 30 years after its release
BY CLARK COLLIS • @CLARKCOLLIS

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/styles/tout_image_612x380/public/i/2015/10/25/kurt-russel.jpg?itok=3qEmFUr5
(20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection)
Posted July 16 2016 — 9:00 AM EDT

A hapless trucker drives a cargo of pigs into San Francisco and is drawn into a supernatural fight with an ancient sorcerer. It’s not the most obvious premise for a potential summer blockbuster, but that’s precisely how 1986’s Big Trouble in Little China was pitched to veteran filmmaker John Carpenter – as a big-budget adventure that could become the next Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Halloween director was just coming off of Starman, the acclaimed sci-fi love story that earned Jeff Bridges an Oscar nomination, and he was attracted to Big Trouble’s oddball mix of martial arts, monsters, and mysticism. Problem was, audiences weren’t, and the film flopped. Spectacularly.

Some members of the Chinese community were upset by what they regarded as the stereotypical depictions in a “white man’s product” and by the fact that hardly any nonwhite female characters talk in the film. Other viewers were confounded by the off-kilter plot and a leading man – Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton – who was more bumbling comic relief than conventional hero. Yet, like James Hong’s villainous sorcerer David Lo Pan, Big Trouble has amassed an army of followers who delight in its sheer, nonsensical weirdness. Among their ranks? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, now set to star in a planned Fox remake. “When people come up [to me] and they say, ‘Big Trouble,’ they have a look in their eye,” Russell says. “It’s like, ‘I know what kind of person you are!’ You know, when something is a cult classic, it’s a cult classic for a reason.”

The script was penned by Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein and subsequently adapted by W.D. Richter, director of another bomb–turned–cult classic, 1984’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Set in – and under – San Francisco’s Chinatown district, the Big Trouble screenplay found Jack Burton teaming with a local restaurant owner to rescue the latter’s fiancée from the evil David Lo Pan.

JOHN CARPENTER (Director): I saw my first kung fu movie in 1973. It was – what the hell was the name of that thing? – Five Fingers of Death! It was truly an astonishing film. There was an innocence to these movies and a joyousness that I loved. I wanted to bring all that to Big Trouble. It had been a Western, originally, but then it was rewritten to be a modern-day movie.

GARY GOLDMAN (Writer): Ours was about a cowboy in Chinatown in 1899. Instead of a truck driver, he worked providing meat to feed the Chinese workers who were building the railroad. Twentieth Century Fox tried to make it as a Western. They sent to Walter Hill [director of The Long Riders and 48 HRS]. He declined to do it. W.D. Richter came up, I presume, with the idea of making it contemporary. I wasn’t privy to that process.

W.D. RICHTER (Screenplay adapter): Buckaroo Banzai mystified people. Nobody was pounding on my door to direct the next thing. I got the Big Trouble script through my agent. It struck me that it might be more vibrant if it were a contemporary movie. That was my pitch.

GOLDMAN: The idea that we would be rewritten was not so unthinkable. Although, in this case, the idea that you would have something so original and not speak to the writers about it did strike us as being bizarre and unfair.

RICHTER: I [understood] Jack Burton from the beginning – kind of a lovable loudmouth. He didn’t talk that away at all [in the original screenplay]. I was thinking the other day that he’s maybe a likable Donald Trump. You know, if Donald Trump weren’t reprehensible, and if he didn’t happen to become a billionaire because of his father, he might be a f—ing truck driver, driving pigs into San Francisco. It’s not beyond my imagination. And he’d be unqualified for every challenge thrown in front of him, but he wouldn’t get that, and he might persevere out of sheer ignorance and sense of “I-can-do-anything.”

CARPENTER: Jack Burton is a guy who is a sidekick but doesn’t know it. He’s an idiot-blowhard. He’s an American fool in a world that he doesn’t understand.

RICHTER: John gave me notes and then he went to Kurt and Kurt said, “Yes,” because he likes to work with John anyway.

Kurt Russell had worked with Carpenter on Escape From New York and The Thing. The director cast Dennis Dun (Year of the Dragon) as restaurateur Wang Chi and model Suzee Pai as his fiancée, Miao Yin. Blade Runner actor James Hong portrayed the wizened Lo Pan – as well as a less ancient, incorporeal version of the character. A young Kim Cattrall landed the role of plucky lawyer (and Jack Burton’s love interest) Gracie Law, while future Scandal star Kate Burton played Gracie’s journalist friend, Margo. Other good guys were played by Donald Li and the late Victor Wong.

KURT RUSSELL (Jack Burton): I thought John cast the movie right. The people fit their roles and they knew what to do. Kim Cattrall was terrific. Kate Burton…

KATE BURTON (Margo): Kurt Russell, and Kim Cattrall, and I were [virtually] the only non-Asian actors in the movie. I was aware at the time that it was pretty extraordinary.

CARPENTER: Dennis Dun was one of the actors from San Francisco, the Bay Area. He and Victor Wong were actors up there.

RUSSELL: The real lead was Wang.

DENNIS DUN (Wang Chi): It was only my second film. I was very nervous taking a part like this. John Carpenter always said, “Don’t worry, you’re fine, just be a hero, don’t worry about it.” [Laughs]

CARPENTER: James Hong was a character actor who we had all seen but hadn’t really thought of too much. He came in and read for me and he was just brilliant.

JAMES HONG (David Lo Pan): Sixty-three years I’ve been in the industry. For the first 50 years, I was averaging 10 feature or TV appearances every year. That schooled me for roles like Lo Pan, where I play multi-characters – the old man Lo Pan, the tall Man*da*rin with the headgear, and the young Lo Pan.

STEVE JOHNSON (Creature creator): James Hong was such a joy, and here was my opportunity to do an amazing old age makeup… My first thought was, this script is loaded with all kinds of animatronics and makeup effects and a smorgasbord of everything that we people, you know, get erections over.

HONG: When Steve Johnson worked on me, he took the upmost care with every hair, because nothing was digitalized in those days. The first day of work, I think it took him nine or ten hours to put that makeup on.

JOHNSON: His character is just so funny. You know that scene where he’s in his electric wheelchair and he comes bursting into the study? “Shut up, Mr Burton!” Every time he would do that, his performance was so silly that I erupted in laughter and ruined the take. John would be like, “Cut! Cut! Cut!” The third time, John literally threw me off-set because I was ruining all these takes [Laughs]. continued next post

[GeneChing]

As Jack and Wang search for Miao Yin, they’re forced to battle foes ranging from wild monsters to Lo Pan’s goons, the Storms (Carter Wong, Peter Kwong, and James Pax) – but the action sequences presented certain challenges. Dun could claim only limited *martial-arts experience; Russell had none. *Burton and Cattrall got to join in the “fun” when they shot scenes set in the waterlogged channels beneath Chinatown. The movie was filmed largely on the Fox lot in Los Angeles on sets designed by the late John J. Lloyd, with whom Carpenter had worked on The Thing.

JOHNSON: Probably the most complicated [thing we did on the film] – and I think it may have been one of the most complicated things ever at that time – was the flying eye. The general idea is that it’s this mythological Chinese creature that is Lo Pan’s way of seeing remotely. So, this flying eye will go out and get information and bring it back to Lo Pan. It was just a huge, surrealistic ball of eyes. The challenge was, How do you make a ball of eyes look realistic and be able to emote? The only way to do it was with a huge animatronic puppet. But imagine how many motors had to go inside of it. The eyes all had to have upper and lower blinks, some of the eyeballs were actually on stalks which could retract into it and poke out, and then of course, he had a face, he had a mouth, he had a tongue. We had so many motors in that.

CARPENTER: I just remember all of it being fun. Fond memories. The John Lloyd sets were incredible.

HONG: I told Carpenter, he should get an Academy Award for the sets. He said, “How ‘bout you? Your acting?” So, I was very flattered by that.

CARPENTER: Dennis could fake martial arts really well.

DUN: I had dabbled in it since I was a kid. [Actor and stuntman] Jeff [Imada], he said, “Well you have to work on some things.”So, the stunt guys would teach me things, and I’d practice between takes. I learned how to use the tachi sword, which is what I use in the film. Even though I didn’t shoot a lot of that stuff until near the end [of production], I worked out every day…. I knew I had to make it seem like I was an expert!

CARPENTER: Rather than try to make it look like our American Caucasian lead knew what he was doing with martial arts, we just went ahead and made him an idiot.

RUSSELL: I couldn’t do the chop-sockey. I had to come up with ways to not be involved. So, I said to John, “How about if we come in here, and I’m all excited, and hit the machine gun, and rocks fall on my face, and I’m out? Jack’s out for the first two minutes of the fight that’s 10 minutes long, whatever. And then he gets into the fray, and sure enough he stabs this big guy, but the guy falls in a way that’s crushing Jack, and he can’t move.” I was just constantly finding things like that… I did learn how to drive an 18-wheeler. I forgot about that. It was pretty easy.

BURTON: We spent a lot of time swimming underground. I spent most of the movie soaking wet. I think I was dry, like, two scenes in the movie. Every day, I would come into work and go into hair and makeup and look absolutely stunning. Then the next thing that would happen is that someone would throw a bucket of water on my head.

RUSSELL: It’s wet – you get wet. That’s what it’s like getting in water. You should try it sometime! [Laughs]

DUN: That’s a Kurt Russell answer… I know some people got sick. There’s water, bacteria, people running through, something came out of their sock. I was so healthy from working out all the time, I didn’t get sick.

RUSSELL: One time, Kim and I kissed…. Then I noticed that the crew was smirking. I had lipstick all over my face. I said, “You know, I’ve always wondered about that. [In kissing scenes] how come that big red lipstick is always magically not there when the guy pulls back?” I looked at John, and I started laughing…. I said, “[Let’s leave the lipstick on] at least for a couple of scenes!” And he said, “All right.” I always admired John for that, because the audience is going to go, “What the f—?”

HONG: The director did not really know exactly how we should portray the battle scene between [Victor] and I. But Victor and I had seen all these old Chinese films, where the two opponents would fight each other with this hand magic, where things would come out of their hands. That’s an old Chinese fable-type of magic-fighting. So, Victor decided to throw balls at me of fire, and I invented that I would cross my little fingers and little rays would come out. And Carpenter put that in the film.

CARPENTER: The soundtrack was a lot of fun to do. And also, my little group at the time, the Coup de Villes, we sang the title song. [Laughs]. Then we did a music video! Unbelievable! It was all unbelievable times.

Despite the casting of Dun, Hong, and Wong in prominent roles, the film became a point of controversy for Asian-American activists concerned the movie was trafficking in racist stereotypes. At one point during production, 25 protesters arrived at one of the movie’s locations to distribute leaflets complaining that film concerned “a macho, smart-aleck truckdriver and his Chinese ‘yes’ man.”

CARPENTER: It was a San Francisco guy who said, “Now, this is a movie for white people.” It was really unpleasant. What are you going to do? You’re right, I am Caucasian! You’re right! And then we were picketed. It was unbelievable. What a world!

DUN: They were already writing letters to Carpenter with concerns about some things in the script even before we started. I knew I had a responsibility, being an Asian-American actor. I talked with John Carpenter, and you could tell that he didn’t want a disparaging image of Asians. I’ve been on sets where you go there and you feel like you’re a second class citizen sometimes. But on that set you felt like you were part of the team.

Big Trouble in Little China received mixed reviews, with Roger Ebert complaining that the characters “often seem to exist only to fill up the foregrounds.” Released on July 2, 1986, the film earned $11.1 million, one eighth of the gross of James Cameron’s Aliens, which opened later that month.

RUSSELL: A lot of the people on the junket said, “How does it feel to be in a movie that you know is going to be a massive hit?” And I would be falsely humble and say, “Well, hey, you never know, you’ve just got to see how it does.” But inside I was going, “Yeah! I’m so happy!” And then it came out.

HONG: The critics didn’t like it. They slashed it to pieces.

RUSSELL: Without opening up old wounds, that picture really suffered a strange [marketing plan]. It was all on Jack Burton. It was all based on trying to theoretically get the audience interested in “Who is this guy?” And the answer was, “I’ve got no f—ing idea!”

GOLDMAN: I have a different view of what happened. We gave them something like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Romancing the Stone and they made the decision to turn it into something like Buckaroo Banzai. Buckaroo Banzai was a really interesting movie and I like it a lot. But it was a bomb.

DUN: I thought it was my big chance – I’m in this big film, and maybe it’ll take off, and my goals will keep expanding, and I’ll keep getting more interesting roles that are beyond the stereotypes of Asians. But it didn’t happen.

RICHTER: Was I disappointed? [With deep sarcasm] No, I always love to have things tank. It’s so satisfying! Who wants to entertain hundreds of millions of people?

CARPENTER: What do you think?

RUSSELL: Fortunately for us, tapes and DVDs were just beginning to come out and Big Trouble in Little China found its life anyway. That one really grabbed a hold of the audience.

Like Carpenter’s The Thing – now regarded as among the greatest horror movies ever made – Big Trouble slowly began to find fans via home video. By 2012 it was a full-fledged cult phenomenon. A “Gangnam Style” parody video called “Lo Pan Style” went viral. In 2015 the company Funko released a line of Big Trouble vinyl figures, and later this year BOOM! Studios will publish two books about the film, The Official Making of “Big Trouble in Little China” and The Official Art of “Big Trouble in Little China.”

BURTON: I teach a lot and I do a lot of masterclasses at my two universities, Brown and Yale. I’m always inundated by kids who go, “Oh my god, you were in Big Trouble in Little China!”

JOHNSON: I think audiences have gotten a little bit more sophisticated since the movie was put out. I think it was difficult for people to categorize it back then. What the hell is this thing? But it’s incredibly unique. Aside from certain Korean or Chinese films, I can’t think of another American film that comes close to touching the unique quality of that film.

HONG: I’ve been to autograph conventions, and this film – let’s just say it this way: The production stills from this film have sold more than all the other ones combined, including Blade Runner, Seinfeld, and Balls of Fury, all those other ones. I just hope they don’t ruin it with this sequel, or prequel, or whatever they’re doing.

CARPENTER: Oh god help us, I don’t know. We’ll see!

RUSSELL: Dwayne Johnson as Jack Burton? Hey, I’m sure he’ll come up with a good take on it. I’ve got no problem with that. Movies are movies. You throw the dice and see what happens… At the end of the day, all that ever matters is you make a movie that holds up. And John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China holds up.


The remake (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69030-Big-Trouble-in-Little-China-remake) is still on track for next year sometime.

[GeneChing]

This is what makes cult films so classic. They are all outside that box where studio execs live.


OCTOBER 06, 2016 12:43pm PT by Nicole Piper
Kurt Russell Looks Back at 'Big Trouble in Little China': Studio Execs "Did Not Get It" (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/kurt-russell-looks-back-at-935806)
The star also weighs in on the Rock's upcoming version: "I don't think there's anything too precious to make a remake of. However, you have to have a pretty good reason for making it."

http://cdn3.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/scale_crop_768_433/2016/10/james_gunn_kurt_russell_-_beyond_fest__-_twitter_-_h_-_2016.jpg
@BeyondFest/Twitter
James Gunn and Kurt Russell

The star also weighs in on the Rock's upcoming version: "I don't think there's anything too precious to make a remake of. However, you have to have a pretty good reason for making it."
Kurt Russell spent Wednesday evening looking back at one of his all-time classics.

Director John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China has become a cult classic in the 30 years since its original theatrical release. Hollywood festival BeyondFest screened the movie Wednesday night to an audience that knew the film by heart, cheering and laughing the whole way through. Russell, who played bumbling hero Jack Burton in the film, said reactions were different when studio executives watched the film for the first time in 1986.

“It was just too cool for school. It was literally terminally hip,” said Russell in a Q&A after the screening, moderated by James Gunn, who directed the actor in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. “It’s just great to see it, because, man, they did not get it.”

In the film, Russell’s macho truck driver Burton arrives in San Francisco’s Chinatown and gets involved in a mythical battle between ancient spirits after his friend Wang Chi’s wife is mysteriously kidnapped. Burton and Wang, played by Dennis Dun, set out to save her and battle monsters, Chinese street gangs and sorcerers along the way.

Gunn and Russell credited the movie with introducing Hong Kong cinema to American audiences. Russell was one of the few white actors in the film, alongside Kim Cattrall and Scandal’s Kate Burton, and he defended early criticism of how the film portrays the racial divide.

“It was a tribute to it! It was John bringing it to America,” he said. “I always saw Wang sort of as the lead. And I thought that could be fun, because then we could have the guy who’s usually the sidekick really doing all the things that the lead does, but what really makes it fun is that the lead doesn’t know that.”

When asked about a potential remake of the film — with his Fast 8 costar Dwayne Johnson in the role of Burton — Russell said they had not discussed the character on set, but predicted a remake could be successful if the director had the right vision.

“I don’t think there’s anything too precious to make a remake of. However, you have to have a pretty good reason for making it,” said Russell. “I think there’s a lot more of a challenge on the director than on the actor. There was a lot of innovation here. There was a lot of firsts, and again, all John Carpenter.”

Russell reminisced about his career working with Carpenter on films like Elvis, Escape From New York and The Thing. He said the director gave him the freedom to create characters that have become classic to audiences like the one at BeyondFest.

“I can’t tell you how much fun it is to watch that movie with this audience! I hope John Carpenter does that sometime because — I haven’t seen John for a while — but it’s just all John,” said Russell. “If you like that movie and if you have as much fun as you did, that’s all John.”

[GeneChing]

Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack Series Launching In September (http://screenrant.com/big-trouble-in-little-china-old-man-jack/)
By Rob Keyes 06.14.2017

http://screenrant1.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Big-Trouble-in-Little-China-Old-Man-Jack-Comic.jpg

Forget the chatter and reports about a Big Trouble in Little China movie remake. We’ve already met Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) in John Carptenter’s 1986 classic and his story ain’t done yet!

Earlier this year we were able to debut pages from the Official Art of Big Trouble in Little China book and today we’re please to exclusively announce a brand new comic series from BOOM! Studios exploring Jack Burton’s final ride in the Pork-Chop Express. Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack is a new series launching in September written by John Carpenter and Anthony Burch (Borderlands 2).

Below is official info on the #1 issue, the main cover art, and some info on the first story arc of Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA: OLD MAN JACK #1

http://screenrant1.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Big-Trouble-in-Little-China-Old-Man-Jack-001-Main-Cover.jpg


Writers: John Carpenter, Anthony Burch

Artist: Jorge Corona

Cover Artists:

Main Cover: Stephane Roux

Movie Poster Intermix Cover: Sam Bosma

Action Figure Subscription Cover: Michael Adams with Marco D’Alfonso

Connecting Variant Cover: Will Robson

Variant Cover: Paul Pope

Publisher: BOOM! Studios

Format: 32 pages, full color

Price: $3.99

Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack Synopsis:

From John Carpenter (director of Big Trouble in Little China, Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York) and Anthony Burch (writer of Borderlands 2) comes the story of old man Jack Burton’s final ride in the Pork-Chop Express.
The year is 2020, and hell is literally on Earth. Ching Dai, sick of relying on screw-ups like Lo Pan to do his bidding, has broken the barriers between Earth and the infinite hells, and declared himself ruler of all.
Sixty-year-old Jack Burton is alone in a tiny corner of Florida with only his broken radio to talk to, until one day it manages to pick up a message. Someone is out there in the hellscape, and they know a way to stop Ching Dai.
We’ve seen Carpenter help out on previous Jack Burton comics with BOOM! including the exciting crossover with other Kurt Russell ’80s action icon Snake Plissken in Big Trouble in Little China/Escape from New York comic. The first story arc of the Old Man Jack series features four issues and introduces an older Jack trying to ignore a certain awfulness around him and he’s unexpected called into action, reuniting with a familiar not-so-friendly face. Hilariously weird foes, strange luck, and unexpected allegiances make this series must-read for fans of the film looking for that sequel.

We can only hope Carpenter’s involvement in the series helps Hollywood decide on a film sequel instead of a film reboot. This story deserves a big screen adaptation!

Sounds funny.

[GeneChing]

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/admin/site_images/KungfuMagazine/upload/4880_2019TCKFMCBanquet.jpg

Remember our tournament? READ 2019 Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship – Here Comes the Rain (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1500) by Gene Ching

THREADS
TCEC 2019 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71001-2019-Tiger-Claw-Elite-Championships-amp-KUNG-FU-TAI-CHI-DAY-May-18-19-San-Jose-CA)
Fall 2019 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71322-Fall-2019)
Big Trouble in Little China (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?64867-Big-Trouble-in-Little-China)

[@PLUGO]

BOOM Studios has been publishing BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (http://www.boom-studios.com/series/bigtrouble/) for a while now; they have a half dozen collections availables (https://shop.boom-studios.com/graphicnovels/index?page=7).

The OLD MAN JACK version is a variation on a growing trend of Old heroes which started with marvel comics' OLD MAN LOGAN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_Logan) which informed the movie Logan (2017). You can find a PDF preview here (http://boom-press.com/media_files/BTLC_OldManJack_001_PREVIEW.pdf).

10722107231072410725 I love that John Carpenter himself is writing this . . . in part.

[GeneChing]

Big Trouble Bar (https://www.blogto.com/bars/big-trouble-bar-toronto/?fbclid=IwAR2lb5ss5e7EPR3_4f-uPbwOANE3vQMfVuUrvSimzXMdwoYwS2YBqCMQCYQ)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/btoimage/prism-thumbnails/listings/20180712-bigtroublebar-14.jpg-resize_then_crop-_frame_bg_color_FFF-h_630-gravity_center-q_70-preserve_ratio_true-w_1200_.jpg

Big Trouble is a bar tucked away above a location of Sichuan Ren, paying homage to its neighbourhood and the heritage of its sibling owners with a creative bilingual menu of baijiu bottles, Tsingtao, and dumplings.

It’s named for the movie Big Trouble in Little China, and doesn’t shy away from typically Chinese elements, reinterpreting them through a modern North American lens.

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This is wholeheartedly embraced in the design of what was once a raw upper floor space. Moody paper lanterns hang in clusters from the ceiling. Movie posters pasted to walls and murals lend a street feel to the bar, laundry strung in the hallway leading to the washrooms.

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Guacamole ($7) is deceptively simple in appearance, the bar classic amped up considerably with the addition of jicama, red pepper, scallion, ginger, lemongrass and sesame soy. The punchy dip gets another twist served with puffy, crispy wonton chips.

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Spicy Coconut Firecracker Shrimp ($9) come in a crispy spring roll wrapper with a chipotle lime aioli, juicy, crunchy, and crushable. Not bad at about a dollar each.

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Bang Bang Shrimp ($7) are just as addictive and quick to disappear, smothered in a sweet and spicy sauce that’s also surprisingly creamy. I could eat these like candy.

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Pidan Tofu ($9) is something I order because I’m curious about some rarer ingredients. Jiggly tofu sits atop a bed of gravy made from century egg white, the yolk crumbled on either side.

This lends a slight fermented taste that contrasts with the clean tofu and tobiko, pork floss bringing in another texture and flavour.

https://media.blogto.com/uploads/2018/07/16/20180712-bigtroublebar-11.jpg?cmd=resize&quality=70&w=1400&height=2500

The BT Dumpling Tower is an order of eight or 16 potstickers ($15/$28) layered up with melted Muenster, salsa and (wait for it) arugula, finished off with house gochujang spicy drizzle.

The concoction reminds me a little of something I’d whip up late at night with whatever’s in the fridge, but that said it’d probably follow up a bottle of baijiu nicely. continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://media.blogto.com/uploads/2018/07/16/20180712-bigtroublebar-12.jpg?cmd=resize&quality=70&w=1400&height=2500

We go with aromatic spicy ginger butternut squash potstickers, the other options being pork and leek or cheeseburger.

https://media.blogto.com/uploads/2018/07/16/20180712-bigtroublebar-03.jpg?cmd=resize&quality=70&w=1400&height=2500

A 10-ounce baijiu bottle mixed with mangosteen and lemon runs for $24. Baijiu is a clear Chinese liquor typically made from grain, “baijiu” translating to “white liquor.”

https://media.blogto.com/uploads/2018/07/16/20180712-bigtroublebar-04.jpg?cmd=resize&quality=70&w=1400&height=2500

“Served in shot glasses to share, strong & dangerous!” reads the menu and it’s not false advertising: just a whiff of it is enough to put a little hair on your chest, and while it has a potent boozy flavour it’s too easy to polish off in those little shots.

I admit I feel a little tingly in the extremities after just a little of the stuff.

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Happy hours are Thursday 5:30 - 8, food served until midnight weekdays and 1 on weekends.

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Photos by Jesse Milns

THREADS
Kung Fu Restaurants & Bars (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?51971-Kung-Fu-Restaurants-amp-Bars)
Big Trouble in Little China (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?64867-Big-Trouble-in-Little-China)

[GeneChing]

'Big Trouble in Little China,' the most San Francisco of the '80s movies, returns (https://www.sfexaminer.com/culture/big-trouble-in-little-china-the-most-san-francisco-of-the-80s-movies-returns/article_b2c27788-1d83-11ed-8b9a-9f1fb7b716c3.html)
By Jeffrey M. Anderson | Special to The Examiner | Aug 16, 2022 Updated Aug 17, 2022

https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/sfexaminer.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/b/76/b763ab50-1d96-11ed-8797-536720db33eb/62fbeb3b34ccd.image.jpg?resize=889%2C500

Of all the movies shot in San Francisco in the 1980s — from “Star Trek IV” to “A View to a Kill,” from “48 Hrs.” to “Innerspace” — none feels quite like they belong to the Bay as much as “Big Trouble in Little China.”

A box office disappointment that amassed a cult following after it was released on video, the weird, wacky film simply isn’t afraid to let its freak flag fly.

The 1986 film, directed by John Carpenter, screens 7 p.m. Saturday at the Castro Theatre. Critic/curator Jesse Hawthorne Ficks hosts a Q&A with actor Peter Kwong, who plays Rain, one of three weather-themed warriors in the film’s standout fight scene.

Whren the film rolls, after a prologue, we are introduced to Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), driving his big rig through the Marin Headlands and across the Golden Gate Bridge, narrating his own life in his John Wayne-like drawl and cramming a giant sandwich down his maw.

He delivers his load in Chinatown and spends the night gambling with the locals, and especially his friend Wang Chi (Stockton-born Dennis Dun, who began acting in San Francisco at the Asian American Theater Company).

In the morning, they head to the airport to pick up Wang’s green-eyed fiancee, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai). There, Jack flirts with lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), just before a band of villains called the Lords of Death storm the airport and kidnap Miao Yin. The heroes jump in Jack’s truck and head to Chinatown to rescue her.

On the freeway, they pass the Mariposa Street exit, although, according to a 2001 DVD audio commentary track by Carpenter and Russell, Carpenter says this was a “process shot” and Russell and Dun weren’t actually there.

Cut to the famous Chinatown Dragon Gate at Bush Street and Grant Avenue, where Egg Shen (Victor Wong) is driving his rattletrap “Egg Foo Yong” tour bus. He motors through the gate and up Grant for a few blocks.

In the background, we can see the Far East Flea Market and the Four Seas Restaurant, both of which survived well past 1986 but closed recently. We also see a sign for the New Hoa Thai Trading Company, which looks to have been merely set design for the movie.

Egg makes a right turn on Commercial Street, a tiny lane situated between Clay and Sacramento, that runs about four blocks. He starts heading downhill, and who should be coming uphill but Jack and his big rig!

We know that Russell did learn to drive the big rig; more likely it’s a stunt driver behind the wheel during this sequence.

After a near-collision, Jack steers off of Commercial, and Wang tells him to “turn into that alley.” From this point on, we’re on a set in Los Angeles, as Jack and Wang descend into a mystical underworld to face the evil sorcerer Lo Pan (James Hong).

The stuff that happens there is exhilarating, strange, mind-blowing and often hilarious, and the mishmash of styles echoes San Francisco itself, with its patchwork neighborhoods changing radically every few blocks.

This dynamic — a jagged, dislocating sense of place — is one of the things that drew Alfred Hitchcock to the Bay Area for several of his films, including “Vertigo” (1958) and “The Birds” (1963).

Carpenter himself, who is a devotee of Hitchcock’s work, returned to The City six years later for “Memoirs of an Invisible Man” (1992).

For its time, “Big Trouble in Little China” was also fairly strong on representation, with its mostly Asian cast.

Of course, the two top-billed actors were white, but as Russell and Carpenter pointed out in their legendary audio commentary track, they both considered Jack the sidekick and Wang the real hero.

Jack is full of swagger but relatively incompetent, at one point spending an entire fight trying to retrieve his lost knife — and even passes an entire scene with Cattrall’s lipstick smeared on his face — while Wang is the one who consistently knows where to go and what to do.

Oddly, the film was originally written as a Western, in which a cowboy rides into old-time San Francisco and spends the story trying to get his horse back.

Screenwriter W.D. Richter, who wrote the San Francisco-set “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978) and directed another cult classic, “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,” was brought in to make changes.

He suggested moving the story to the modern day. This pleased Carpenter, who is a confessed fan of martial arts films and, working with choreographer James Lew, was thrilled to stage some fight scenes of his own. (Apparently, Jackie Chan was briefly considered for a role.)

Carpenter and Russell both reported that the early response to the film was off the charts, and many were expecting it to be a huge hit. But 20th Century Fox did little to promote it — focusing instead on the upcoming “Aliens” — and it earned only $11.1 million (in North America) against an estimated $25 million budget.

But just like the best of San Francisco, the movie was eventually discovered by weirdos and outcasts and finally became the classic it deserved to be.

As Russell says on the commentary track, “People either love it, or they never saw it!”

IF YOU GO:

”Big Trouble in Little China”

Where: Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F.

When: 7-9 p.m. (doors open at 6 p.m.) Saturday

Tickets: $25.00

Contact: apeconcerts.com Sorry I missed this..

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8nduyCkW-U