History
The group originated from the relationships Chan formed in his early starring roles in Hong Kong action movies. Several of his co-stars and stuntmen hired by the film studios began working together regularly. This engendered a familiarity of one other's skills and abilities and it made sense for them to become a working team. Some of the members had received training at the Peking Opera schools, similar to Chan.
By 1983, and the release of the film Project A, the stunt team had become an official organisation of 6 members. The organisation meant that the stuntmen not only received insurance coverage, but also a monthly salary and higher pay. By the time of Police Story 2 in 1988, the team had expanded to around 20 members. This incarnation of the team was disbanded in 1990 and thereafter, individual members were contracted and used on a film by film basis rather than all members remaining on the payroll. This allowed for some new faces, and the return of former members.
The formation of Chan's team influenced others in the business to follow suit, particularly his former co-stars and "brothers" Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao (their stunt teams known as "Hung Ga Ban" and "Yuen Ga Ban" respectively). Other actors to form their own stunt teams include Lau Kar-leung, Philip Ko, Stanley Tong and Bruce Law. Chan's stunt team has worked in collaboration with Sammo Hung's team on films including Thunderbolt and Around the World in 80 Days. A small number of films that Chan produced but did not appear in, or was not involved in at all, have utilised his stunt team. These include The Gold Hunters (1981), Rouge (1988), The Inspector Wears Skirts 2 (1989), Stage Door Johnny (1990) and Angry Ranger (1991).
Read more about this topic: Jackie Chan Stunt Team
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)