Donnie Yen in Ballistic Kiss

Twin Effect

Anyway, anything which is a good and interesting project with nice people. Right now I'm into a different vision. When you make the film it takes 4 months, 6 months, whatever, and to watch a film takes 90 minutes or so, so what should be the better experience? You just don't know what the film will turn out, all you can do is you best work to make it good and have a good experience every day. When I look back at my life, what I appreciate is probably the friendships and the experiences. I remember when we were doing The Medallion I was filming in Dublin, in a middle of a field, a beautiful Irish green field in the countryside, just me and Jackie Chan. Jackie was wearing like an old English tweedy suit and there was a dog and we were throwing the ball for the dog. Just being there with Jackie Chan in this moment thinking, “Wow, when I was nineteen I was so into his films and Jackie was my idol”. And here I am working with Jackie! And I remember on Jackie Chan My Stunts there was, a lot of times, some political stuff going on and at the end of the shoot there was a party. I came in, I was the producer, and there was Jackie's table, but I didn't get to sit there. And when we did Highbinders 3 or 4 years later, we were in Dublin , and there was a big party at a restaurant and I came and was wondering where to sit and Jackie goes: “Hey, Bey, what are you doing? Come on over here! Sit at my table!”. So it's a progression. That's what I mean by tolerance through talent. If I was at the first dinner like “Hey, you fucking asshole, you don't want to let me sit with you?”. I would be out of the business by now, but, no, I tried to earn respect, so that when I do work with Jackie, he will say “come and sit here!” So you feel like you're somebody who earned this respect. To me that progression in my own life, it's more important than whether this film was a huge hit, or this film a masterpiece. Of course I would like to work on a masterpiece, but film is like a temporary phenomena. The most important thing is that you live your life every day the best you can.

Bey Logan : You know there are two things on my shoulders, and because of them I will never be alone : On one shoulder is Jackie Chan, on the other is The Game of Deathfootage! People will always ask me about both of them, as long as I live.

So I was in the back lot of Golden Harvest digging through the chicken shit... No, that's not what happened, but I'm sure that, however many times I tell this story, people will continue to write in the Internet that I was digging through chicken shit and other things. The only chicken shit on the Internet is this guy, Darryl Pestilance, AKA Darryl Unger, who wrote all this crap about Donnie and me. There is no other chicken shit involved in this story! I joined Media Asia and had access to the library of films that Media Asia handled at that time. All of them were transferred from Golden Harvest to Media Asia. As an executive of Media Asia, I went to their warehouse, with that kind of power that you have to have. You have to be an executive to get in there, a fan could not. As an executive, I asked to see all the Bruce Lee, footage, so they had to show them to me. I didn't join the company for that reason, but I said to my Media Asia boss “I think I can find some more old Bruce Lee footage. It could be worth a lot of money” and he said “Go ahead”. So I went down and a guy said to me “oh it's funny you should ask, we transferred everything, but we still have some betacam tapes, some of them we don't know what it is, but you can take a look”. I was like “wow!”. I went in, in the air conditioned comfort of their archive, got a betacam tape, put it in the machine and watched. It was all old cuts from the 1978 Game of Death , credits and stuff like that. ( Bey makes the sound of fast forward ). Finally I wasn't sure where I was, so I played it, and I'm not one of those guys who know every shot from Bruce Lee's movies, but I thought “I don't think I've seen that before…” Then, suddenly, there is a scene with James Tien twirling a stick at Dan Inosanto. I thought : “Wait a minute ! These are the rushes from ‘ Game Of Death '!”. So I watched the whole thing and I timed it, there was about ninety minutes of footage. So I went back and said to my boss, I was super happy, you know, “You won't believe what I found!” and he was like “What?” “The rushes of Bruce Lee's unfinished masterpiece!” But it took a long time to make them understand the value of what I found. What changed was that Artport, a Japanese company, came in and spent huge amount of money to acquire the rights. And I'm famous at being bad with numbers, so, when their offer came in, my Media Asia boss of that time said to me “Oh you idiot! You put the zero in the wrong place!” and I said “No, that's their offer”. It was the first time, in my experience of dealing with Hong Kong film companies that a foreign company came in with an offer and they accepted it, without any negotiations! It was so far above their expectations for this footage. A huge amount of money. I won't say how much, but it's a lot of money. So we did that, then the deal with John Little. John Little, we had some kind of bad feeling between us because of a very bad book he wrote. He has written some very good books, but he wrote a very bad one, kind of “Bruce Lee's Method Of New Age Hippie Awareness” and I wrote that I thought it was crap and, understandably, he was upset with that. Then he started ringing my boss and saying that I, Bey Logan, shouldn't be allowed to use the footage.“You must not let Bey do it! You must not let Bey do it!”. Finally my boss said “I'm fed up hearing from this guy, Bey. What do you wanna do?” In fact, I hadn't found another way to use the lost footage. I didn't want another documentary, because no-one watches them and they don't make any money. I was looking at it the same way the guys looked at the ‘Game Of Death' footage in 1978 : “What to do with it ?”. It's basically Bruce Lee in an orangey- yellow costume fighting a bunch of guys who are now either dead or old, or both. So why don't we just make some money with it and move on to other things? I called John myself and I said “John, this is Bey Logan. Cut the crap, and don't keep calling my boss. Talk to me, I think it's a good idea to sell the footage to you. Let me negotiate the deal”. And that was it for me. I kind of felt I'd done that and I was out of the Bruce Lee business. Also, the best part, John and I became friends again, which was great!

Game of the Death

Like Ahna Capri with her behind the scenes of Enter the Dragon. Why does she never release it? Because if she releases it she's not special anymore! As long as she never releases it, and she's like an old sweet lady now, people will still keep coming to see her. When she sells it no one will call her again, cause then she's not special. [Since this interview was conducted, Ahna has apparently sold the footage, but we're sure she is still special!] See, my attitude is different. I could have been that way with the Game of Death “I've got it and you haven't!”, but my attitude as I said is to communicate. My only small point of contention with John is that he does reference me having found the footage, but it's always kind of sounds like it should have been him! Anyway John is John, a smart guy, he got screwed by the Lee estate, but he's a good man and deserves to be better treated by the Bruce Lee fans.