“Are you from England?”
“Australia,”
“Oh cool! What part? Sydney?”
“Melbin,”
“Oh,” I’d never heard of Melbin and I had no idea where it was, “is that near Sydney?”
“It’s about a three hour flight.” I later discovered that it wasn’t Melbin he was saying but Melbourne – I just wasn’t used to Brad’s Australian accent.
“So how long have you been working with Jackie?”
“Since Mr. Nice Guy.” I didn’t know if Brad was annoyed with me or whether he was just one of those people who spoke very little, but I was so curious about everything so I continued to bombard him with questions.
“Wow! That was a great movie! That’s so cool!” he didn’t say anything.
“Where are we going now?”
“To eat.”
“Finally! I’m starving!” Exy exclaimed.
“Me too!” I agreed. “What was all that business in the office?”
“I had to get reimbursed for my flight here,”
“Oh, when’d you get in?”
“Yesterday,”
“What do you mean by ‘reimbursed’? Doesn’t the movie handle everything?”
“I booked my own flight here when they called me,”
“Oh…so is that how it always works? Jackie just calls you for a movie and you just fly there?”
“Pretty much,”
A few minutes passed in silence, and to my surprise Brad broke the silence by asking, “So how did you meet Jackie?”
“It’s actually a long story…” I recounted to Brad everything that had happened in the last…wow, I just realized, in the last three days! It already seemed like a whole lifetime had passed since I first auditioned for Master Chang. When I was done all he said was,
“Interesting,”
“How about you? How did you get involved with (it felt weird referring to him as) ‘Jackie’?”
“Actually, my story’s a lot like yours,” Brad proceeded to tell me the incredible story of how Jackie was in Australia filming Mr. Nice Guy and Brad saw him walking down the street one day and chased after him yelling his name in Mandarin! Well that obviously stuck out because here was this random Australian yelling at the top of his lungs in Mandarin! Jackie took notice of him and talked to him for a bit. Brad told him how he was trained in boxing, Wushu, and gymnastics and Jackie invited Brad to come on set. The next day Brad went on set and showed Jackie his stuff. Jackie was impressed. He actually said that most of the Australian stunt guys that they got couldn’t do the intricate timing that’s required of a Jackie Chan fight scene, so Jackie and his people were worried about what to do. When they saw what Brad could do they asked if there was anyone else who could do the fight choreography like he could, and Brad brought in Paul Androvski, one of the other people he trained with. They ended up getting the job and were in the feature fight of Mr. Nice Guy! From that day on the two of them were the first and only Caucasian members on the Jackie Chan Stunt Team!
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