Chop Socky

As an only child to a single mother, I spent a considerable amount of time with her friends or staying over at her parents’ house. There were drawbacks, like learning to mix drinks by the time I was eight, which would lead to my own battles with drugs and alcohol. Don’t worry, Dad, I am completely clean now and have been for several years. There were advantages, though. A prime example would be the fact that I was allowed to watch anything I wanted. Even though my parents have been divorced since I was three years old, my parents stayed friends and both took a very real interest in my upbringing. They would explain anything I saw in a film logically, my dad more so than my mom.

The first movie I remember seeing in the theatre, technically at the drive-in, is Stripes. The old 101 Drive-In is now, like everything else wonderfully old in this nation, a strip-mall. It was the archetypal drive-in, with double features, Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy cartoons, terrible sound from a speaker that hung from your door, and slightly disturbing food stand selling mysterious hot dogs and overpriced sugar water. I got to see Stripes because, from what I can remember, my mom couldn’t find a babysitter for her date. So I sat quietly in the back seat, five years old, understanding more about this movie than I should for my age. An argument can be made that, at such a formative age, the most influential shapers of my sense of humor were Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and my father.

Around this same time, possibly a bit later, KHJ-TV, channel nine locally, came into my life. Sleep has never come easily to me. I have stayed up all night since birth. My dad likes to tell a story of me as a baby and having to bundle me up, put me in the back seat of his yellow 1974 Volkswagen Beetle, and driving around the block a few times, all at around one or two in the morning, just so I would fall asleep. Being in a car puts me right out to this day. My inner clock functions on a different timetable than most folks. As I grew older, my grandparents gifted me with a small black and white television. During the week, I would go to be, but sleep would never come, so I would stay up watching Johnny Carson doing Carnac, then watch Letterman and Larry “Bud” Melman be incredibly weird. Weekends were a different matter. My mom would usually be at the bar across the street from our house and I would stay over at my grandparents’ house, hanging out with my great-grandmother.

She was an incredible woman. Gram was the person I was closest to in my family and I considered her my dearest friend, as I went to private school until seventh grade and had only one real friend my age. She imbued me with my love of baseball and honesty. She taught me how to be a good dessert cook, giving me recipes for pies with crust made from scratch and iron skillet fudge. Gram was the absolute best. She was so cool that when I would stay over, I could stay up doing whatever I wanted, be it reading or listening to music or, best of all, watching Movie Macabre with Elvira and Star Trek. I fully credit Elvira for my love of horror movies and Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Star Trek is, well, Star Trek. Every self-respecting nerd has a Star Trek phase.

On Saturdays, I would wake up late and have a big, unhealthy, Southern breakfast. My family is originally from Arkansas and, even though my mother and I were both born in California, it is hard to shake the Southern roots. In fact, when either of us drink (she still drinks, although not nearly as much as she used to. I have been sober for about seven or eight years.), we both develop Southern accents. It’s the damnedest thing. Sausage, eggs, biscuits and gravy… all cooked in grease. All very tasty, but not exactly good for the arteries. I would sit down and watch my favorite program on KHJ, Kung Fu Theatre. I would never miss it, unless there was a Dodger game on. There are many things I love in life, but if it is down to baseball and anything else, baseball wins every time. Thankfully, day games on Saturday are a rarity.

There was so much to love about Hong Kong cinema: the exotic costumes, the cartoony storylines, the frenetic fight scenes, the strange weaponry. My favorite was The Flying Guillotine. An army of evil assassins kill good guys. One of their own breaks away from them to fight their tyranny. Decapitations ensue with the use of the titular weapon. It is essentially a metal hat that one throws at their desired target. When it lands one the intended victim’s head, a chainmail “mask”, for lack of a better term, encircles their head, looking like a Chinese interpretation of a beekeeper’s protective headgear. With a pull of the attached chain, blades shoot through the neck, and hat and head return to the assassin. It sounds silly, but at eight years of age, it is amazing.

With that one movie, my life was irrevocably changed. As stated previously, I went to a small private school and, between bouts of G.I.Joe vs. Cobra on the playground, there were faux kung-fu battles. My “weapon” of choice was always the flying guillotine. It was so much more permanent than the usual sword or spear. Between my unstoppable “weapon” and knowledge of how the battles work out, I was a force to be reckoned with, until, invariably, the taunts of “fatso” would force me to slink away and bury my nose in whatever sci-fi novel I was reading that week.

Jackie Chan changed my opinion of Wu Xia, as it is known in China, forever. Sure, Hong Kong cinema can be goofy fun, but Mr. Chan taught me that goofy fun can have a good story. The heroes in his films have weaknesses and are not suicidal martyrs that are so prevalent in other films in the genre. He is known for his incredibly choreographed fight scenes and dangerous stunts. Not everyone knows that he took a big gamble with his style of filmmaking. At the time, the most popular films in China were bloody epics where the hero had to fight impossible odds against thousands of enemies to reach his true target. The hero would kill him and usually lose his own life in the process.

Jackie’s early films are different. His character is most often a buffoon with tons of talent. Conflict will enter his life. He will have to grow up some to seek some sort of vengeance and learn some sort of moral. All the while, there will be fantastic fighting with usually no weapons. If there are weapons, they are improvised, with tables, chairs, sawhorses, or even the environment of the scene coming into play. Jackie’s hero is not any sort of martial arts star, but Buster Keaton, and it shows. The most famous film that uses this formula, and my personal favorite, is the movie that put him on the map, Drunken Master.

In it, he takes the story of Wong Fei-Hung and turns it sideways. Wong Fei Hung has been portrayed as a serious, mythical hero, almost a superhero, since the early days of Hong Kong films, dating back to the 1920’s. Drunken Master has Jackie Chan playing Wong Fei-Hung as a rebellious teen with a quick sense of humor, quite the departure from previous incarnations. His father, Wong Kei-Ying, is actually closer to how Wong Fei-Hung had been seen in filmgoers’ eyes. Drunken Master was different, full of slapstick, brilliant hand-to-hand fights, and silly dialogue, and Hong Kong audiences ate it up. It made a ton of money and Jackie the star we know today.

If anyone is interested in the rich history of Hong Kong cinema, I suggest hunting down an IFC film entitled Chop Socky. At its one hour length, it is surprisingly in-depth, discussing the heritage of the films with stars Jet Li, the aforementioned Jackie Chan, John Woo, and, my favorite martial arts actor, Sammo Hung. Chop Socky goes all the way back to the early days, spotlighting Beijing Opera, the fantastic film The One Armed Swordsman, the Once Upon A Time In China series, which is Jet Li’s more serious take on Wong Fei-Hung, the classic Come Drink With Me, and even The Flying Guillotine.