My afternoon with Jet Li and Jackie Chan

Mark Moran called me at the crack of noon and asked if I was available for a photo shoot.  The gig was not necessarily my niche.  Long ago, I left portrait work and weddings behind for a more meandering style of shooting.  However, since it was to shoot Jet Li and Jackie Chan for their new film, The Forbidden Kingdom, I quickly determined it would be foolish for me to turn it down.  Basically, I figured if the legion of Jet Li fans ever found out I had declined, they would tar and feather me; to say nothing of the multitude of Jackie Chan followers.  So I packed my kit, left Shenzhen in the wee hours on shoot day and headed for Hong Kong.

The gig was at a modestly swanky hotel in TST and ran something like this: every thirty minutes, a different reporter would interview Jet and Jackie and their photographer would shoot some pics for whatever magazine they represented. This went on, almost non-stop, for seven hours.  My job was to capture the overall feel of the press junket and get some nice candid shots, which, based on the comments of Jet and Jackie’s fans, I accomplished.  Whew.  Imagine if I had done a poor job what kind of beating I would have received?  Essentially, I had to do the gig and do it well to save my own life.  Not a situation a travel photographer often finds himself in.

“Excuse me sir, but may I photograph you as you harvest the rice?”

“Certainly!  But if you make me look fat, I’ll beat you with this thrasher.”

“Gulp!”

To be fair, I only covered three of the seven hours of interviews before packing my bag and heading back to Shenzhen.  Seven hours!  That’s not an interview, that’s an inquisition.  Unfortunately, I could not understand any of the interviews as they were conducted in Cantonese and Mandarin.  I gathered that had I understood one interview, I would have gotten the gist of all of them.  Acting may seem all glitz and glamor, but there is plenty of work and I suspect by that last interview, the questions were getting tedious. Jet and Jackie were cool and between interviews it was clear they really do get along well.  Although I could tell they wanted to get to know me (ha) I did my best to blend in with the wallpaper and stay out of the way.  This harbors back to my work experience as a bellman in a small boutique hotel that catered to business executives and the famous.  I “met” quite a few athletes, musicians, actors and politicians, but essentially just did my job as best I could without ever going, “Oh my gawd!  You’re David Hasselhoff!”  Although, when I delivered a burger and fries to the then 19-year-old Shaquille O’Neil, I did do a double take.  He is still the “biggest” star I’ve ever seen.

I’ve taken some of my favorite shoots from the photo shoot and placed them in an album which you can take a gander at by clicking the following link: ohmygodicannotbelievetheyletmephotographjetliandjackiechan

Cheers