Directed by Gordon Chan and Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan's vehicle The Medallion has suffered from many production problemes. Bey Logan elaborates on the chaotic production of the movie and try to analyse what made The Medallion the film it is.

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Introduction

Bey Logan is very famous too for his comprehensive and extremely interesting audio commentary tracks in the Hong Kong Legends DVDs. Martial arts trained, he reached HK for movie experiences in the mid nineties and has established himself there ever since. Bey first started in the HK cinema before the camera in various action flicks, and then went behind the camera in order to write and produce. He worked at various film production companies such as Media Asia Group and Emperor Multimedia Group (EMG). He has recently founded his own production company, 'Shankara Productions'. (see his interview)

As a script writer on Jackie Chan's new movie The Medallion, Bey has kindly agreed to answer our questions.

The interview is divided into two parts:
- Part 1: Script and project - Cuts from Columbia Tristar - Original concept - What went wrong
- Part 2: Thunderbolt - Gordon Chan & Sammo Hung - A Positive experience

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Interview

HKCinemagic.com: What were your intentions when you wrote the script of The Medallion, then called Highbinders ?
Bey Logan: I can’t think why anybody would work with a superstar like Jackie Chan, who has made so many, many films, so many great action movies, and nobody working with Jackie Chan would go "Well I want to make a bad film" or "I want to make a copy of what Jackie Chan did before". I think you should want to do the best Jackie Chan film, and if that’s not your intention then you shouldn’t be working with Jackie Chan. When I had the experience of coming on board to work on the film, we had the name, Highbinders, and the concept: Jackie Chan dies and comes back, and that was pretty much it. The first draft script was by an American writer called Bennett Joshua Davlin. It was set in Australia, and Jackie’s partner in the film was kind of a John Goodman character, a big, fat American cop, and when I joined the production they already had that script. And it just didn’t work. I think it was also the case the producers wanted to find a local, Hong Kong-based writer, so I was lucky and Josh was unlucky! His name is on the film but he didn’t actually do any work on the finished movie. I guess he was credited for the concept, but the concept actually came from (producer) Alfred Cheung, who seems to get more credits than anyone!

So Alfred and I worked on the draft of the script that got a green light from Jackie Chan Group, and later from Columbia Tristar. The thing with Jackie is that he will say to a Hong Kong company "I’ll do a film with you if by this day you have the money and you have a script that I accept"! These two things are big issues, so when you promise to do a film with him you have to be ready on his day, because he has a very narrow window of time, and this was especially so on Highbinders. We had to write the script in a limited amount of time and it got greenlit.

HKCinemagic.com: So what were your specific ambitions for Jackie’s character?
Bey Logan: The aim was, from my point of view, to do something different with Jackie’s character. I would say that in every other Jackie Chan film everybody else changes and Jackie’s character stays the same. What I wanted to do with The Medallion, by the nature of the material, was that he was going to die and come back, so, of course, he would be the one to change! So that was the aim. And the first cut of the film, I think, after the whole process of shooting in Ireland, Thailand and Hong Kong, was very English. I wish the DVD would have had the whole ‘British’ rough cut and the whole US theatrical one, but they’ve just gone with these deleted scenes. I think somewhere between the two extremes of the first version and the finished release, there was a middle way and a very good film, which, kind of, slipped away. Having said that I have the worst perspective on the film, having spent almost three whole years of my life on it!

HKCinemagic.com: Can you explain us more precisely what cut Columbia did ? Was it more on the action or on the story?
Bey Logan: There was a considerable work done to the film, mainly regarding the cutting away of a lot of the Ireland scenes. Structurally, it was always difficult because in the beginning in the film, in Hong Kong, you have to establish Jackie Chan’s character, then in Ireland you have the scenario establishing his love affair with Claire Forlani, his best friend is Lee Evans, and then times passes and he dies and its only after he dies, that he comes back with super powers that the film kind of starts! Rather that do one US$40m film, you could actually have done two great US$20m ones. In the first one, establish these amazing characters we had, with Jackie, Lee Evans, Claire, John Rhys-Davies and the quest for Snakehead, played by Julian Sands. At the end of ‘Medallion 1’, Jackie dies, and it’s the ultimate cliff-hanger!

Then, in film two, he comes back as a ‘Highbinder’. This was never even discussed at the time, but, looking back, it was the only way to really make all the material work. So, in terms of the Columbia reshoots, it was always going to be a challenge. The guy that came in, Bill Borden, is a very smart, very nice man. He came into this impossible situation. I don’t agree with everything he did to the film, but what impressed me was how respectful he was of everyone’s feelings, including mine! He could easily have come in and been ‘the ugly American’, and he never was. He just finished producing Stephen Chiau’s new film, Kung Fu Hustle.

HKCinemagic.com: What was your original concept, as compared to the film that was shot, and the film that was re-edited and released?
Bey Logan: My idea was that we start the film with Jackie as this gung ho Hong Kong cop. He’s a guy who has neglected his romance with Nicole James (Claire Forlani) and fallen out with his partner and friend, Arthur Watson (Lee Evans). He doesn’t appreciate anything in his life, except getting the job done. Anyway, he stumbles onto this people smuggling operation, and encounters this strange, golden child, who leaves him with this strange medallion. The original back-story was far more profound.

The idea was that we have this golden child who is like a wild card put into the human race by some superior beings. They are running humanity like an experiment and they throw this cuckoo into the nest, and this is the child who creates the ‘highbinders’. A Highbinder is someone who dies, and then, through the magic of the boy and this special medallion, comes back as an enhanced version of whatever they were in life. In history, we had the heroes of mythology, the Greeks, the Norse gods... They were all really ‘highbinders’. And the boy got bored with us, and he’s been living in seclusion. However, back in the 1800s, he gets caught up in the Tai Ping Rebellion in China, and accidentally turned this British army officer in a highbinder, and this is our villain, ‘Snakehead’. He’s become this super-villain, and he’s looking for the child so he can create an army of highbinders, and, of course!, rule the world, so the stakes are a lot higher than they normally are for a Jackie Chan film.

The boy sees Jackie as a potential champion, someone who can be turned into a hero who can defeat Snakehead, and restore the balance. Anyway, Jackie knows nothing of this, and he goes to Ireland to find Snakehead. There, he’s reunited with Nicole and Lee, and they join forces on the investigation. Jackie gets killed while trying to protect the boy, and comes back as a ‘highbinder’. We never thought he should be Superman. He should have been as agile as Jet Li was in Romeo Must Die, but with a reason! Also, when he was injured, he felt pain, but he didn’t bleed. Instead, this white ‘Highbinder light’ would emit from the wound. While he’s learning how to use his new powers, he realises how much he hasn’t appreciated his own life. Finally, he encounters Snakehead, who has been a Highbinder for so much longer than him. They have this big fight in the woods, and Snakehead basically kicks the *&^% out of him. This relationship between the villain and the hero was originally interesting to me. Rather than to just kill Jackie, Snakehead’s saying, "You don’t know what’s happening to you, be my first knight, join me!"

Watson rescues him, and drags Jackie back to the house, where he’s in a coma. In his mind, he fights this ‘dark Jackie’, the evil side of himself, and he’s saved by his love for, and from, Claire. I thought it was important for Jackie, at this stage of his career, to have a really mature love story, building up to this big scene where wakes up and says "I love you", and really means it. The boy has been captured, so our heroes go to his castle and fight their way through his henchmen. Finally, Jackie has his second duel with Snakehead. Again, the villain’s getting the better of him, and throwing all these spears and things that stab into Jackie, and all this ‘Highbinder’ light is spilling out of him. The child sends him this telepathic message, "All the light you need, you have inside you", and Jackie channels all the love he has in his life, and uses the ‘Highbinder’ light as a weapon to destroy Snakehead. And that was the story. That’s a mix of my concept, and what we shot and there’s a lot I haven’t mentioned…

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HKCinemagic.com: So what went wrong?
Bey Logan: In hindsight, we were always going to have problems. We had the same team, Jackie, director Gordon Chan, action director Sammo Hung, that Golden Harvest had on Thunderbolt, and, from what I can gather, we had all the same problems, only moreso, and more expensively! No-one can say that Gordon Chan, who made such classics as Beast Cops, King Of Beggars and Fist Of Legend, is a bad director! If anything, as a person, he’s actually too damn nice! I have the same problem. In the Kung Fu style I study, Hung Gar, we say you should be "Hard like iron, soft like thread". In most of my career I was too much soft like thread and not enough hard like iron! On this film, I think the same could have been said of Gordon. He was bullied by Jackie and Sammo. The difference was that they had good ideas on a scene by scene basis, whereas Gordon, and I, had a better grasp of the film as a whole. It’s the director’s job to say "no" to actors, and action directors, who come up with good ideas that just don’t work for the film as a whole!

HKCinemagic.com: Did this make your life difficult?
Bey Logan: Of course, and I had my own problems on the set, because there was this woman named Diana Weng. Now Diana is Jackie’s dialogue coach, and, usually, she’s very nice, but, on Medallion, she was an awful pain! I think because, as the film progressed, there were different voices who really expressed their opinions quite strongly, there was Gordon, Jackie, Sammo, me, the producers, Alfred Cheung and Tim Kwok, and Jo Nemec, who was the production designer, but who became very outspoken on some plot points... It made things very chaotic and Diana became one more voice that was really not needed, because she undercut Jackie’s confidence. She’s the one who teaches him English, who was telling him what she thought was good or not good.

For example, she didn’t want him to say, "I love you." And I was like "What?". From the very outset, Gordon and I were determined to have this scene. We ended up having this long and very unnecessary argument with Diana about this, and by the time we were supposed to shoot the scene, all the energy was gone. It taught me a good lesson. What I should have done on the first day would be to say to her "Please just shut up and do your job!" but I was trying to be nice and accommodate her opinions. However, in reality if the director and the star are happy with the dialogue, that’s enough! If everyone is happy, great, but the two costume ladies, the continuity girl, and the dialogue coach or even, bless him, the production designer don’t need to be happy with it. The more people you let into that creative huddle, the more you diffuse the energy. And I think that is one of the things that went wrong with The Medallion.

In the beginning, when we started in Ireland, Gordon was directing, everybody was following his lead. The Ireland stuff, to me, features some of the best stuff in the movie. I was gratified to read some fans felt the same way after they saw some of that footage on the DVD. Then when we get to Hong Kong, it starts having problems, and then, in Thailand, it becomes diffuse. I think it also shows that there is a kind of life cycle to a film production and you disturb it at your peril. We did like one-month pre production, one month shooting in Ireland, then we broke and Jackie went to do a whole other film, The Tuxedo. Then he comes back to Hong Kong, we all get back together and shoot things in Hong Kong and stop again. Then we go to Thailand and we stop again, then we come back to Hong Kong, there is a long gap and finally the film comes out. I think this isn’t the best way to make a film.

HKCinemagic.com: What should have happened instead?
Bey Logan: I think what we should have done is to shoot things in Ireland, finish the location work and then finish the film in Ardmore studios. I don’t think it would have been a masterpiece but I think it would have been a more interesting, challenging film... Anyway, to work with somebody who is a genius like Jackie is such a great privilege. I’d not have missed this experience for any money! If people look at The Medallion and say "It sucks!" then I’m sorry. I needed those three years in my life and I promise you that I did my best, every day, every hour, to make the film as good as it could be. It came out as it came out, despite my best efforts. But you know if there are some Internet guys who say "We hate you because you made The Medallion !" I’d say "Go ahead, hate me, because I still had a great time". The period in Thailand was uproar, but in general it was a fantastic experience. It was great to have a collaboration with my heroes Gordon, Jackie, Sammo and to make a new best friend in Julian Sands!

To be continued...
>> Part 2

Many thanks to Bey Logan for his help and kindness.
Interview made by Arnaud Lanuque in Hong Kong at "Shankara Productions" office in October 2003, subsequently edited for accuracy and content by Bey Logan.

Interview (c) HKCinemagic.com.
Pictures courtesy EMG & Columbia Tristar.

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