Jason Scott Lee: Natural Wonder

"Have you been recognized on the street a lot since Dragon?"

"In the States, sometimes. But basically, I can do whatever I want."

"Do you read a lot?"

"Not really," he says. "I'm reading something very interesting now. The Art of Dreaming, by Carlos Castaneda. I'm just a quarter of the way through, and I've been trying all the exercises, but it's really, really difficult."

I nod and say, "I do a lot of dream work, and it takes a lot of patience and practice to remember your dreams. And then, when you do, and you get up in the morning and write them down, it takes, like, a half hour because you remember so much, and then you wish you didn't remember them."

"Jesus, Martha, thanks for the encouragement."

"What kinds of music do you like?"

"I've been listening to a lot of Carlos Nakai lately. Have you heard of him?"

"No."

"He's an American-Indian flute player. I have a friend from the Seneca Nation, and he turned me on to this music."

"What about the movies? Do you go to them a lot?"

"Not really. I enjoy them a lot, but I don't get to too many. I enjoy Vincent Ward's films..."

"Who's Vincent Ward?"

Lee laughs and slaps my shoulder. Hard.

"Hey," I yell, "watch it. I have a bad neck."

He gets a worried look. "Let me see," he says, and runs a hand along my shoulders.

"God, they're tight."

"All right, who's Vincent Ward?"

"I thought you said earlier that you loved Map of the Human Heart. He directed that and The Navigator."

"Oh, him. I forgot his name."

"You should have someone look at that neck."

"Believe me, Jason, everyone in the world has had a crack at this thing. And nothing has worked." We turn another corner and we're at my hotel, The Groucho Club.

"I love it here," Jason says. "I stayed here once and it's a lot of fun. Let's go in." We get settled at the bar, and then Jason heads for the men's room.

"Hey, Jason..." I say, and he turns around. "Turn the tape recorder off."

He laughs. "You don't want this on the tape?"

"Suit yourself," I tell him.

We realize quickly that the din at The Groucho Club is louder than we can deal with, so we head out into London's Chinatown. Suddenly we're face-to-face with two guys who have tattoos on their faces.

Jason steers me around them. "The youth of today," he says.

"What do you think?" I ask.

"Pretty scrambled."

"You don't think of yourself as one of them?"

"Oh, sure, I am. Young at heart, always will be. But everybody's following some kind of trend. And believe me, I've explored a lot of that chaos."

"Anything you'd like to share with me?" I ask.

He laughs. "And a thousand other people? I think I'll pass."

"You've traveled quite a bit since you started working, huh?"

"I've been to a lot of places in the few years I've been in the business, yes."

"Is that what you thought would happen?"

"Well, not exactly. But once I did Map, I thought, hey, this is the only way to do it. Make epics and go travel the world. These films have taken such a long, long time to do. And I like that, I like the slow process."

"So, what's next for you?"

"Nothing for a while. I think I'm going to take a vacation. I'm thinking about doing something else."

"Let me guess ... you want to direct?"

He laughs. "Not exactly. I'm thinking about getting involved with a Hawaiian herbalist--"

"You're giving up acting?"

"I don't know. It's running me down. I'm interested in the healing arts, massage therapy. I'm not giving up acting, but maybe doing one film a year..."

"It doesn't work that way," I say, leaving no room for argument.

"Who says? It's the exception that makes the rule. People say that it doesn't work that way, but people said I couldn't do what I've done so far. The basic thing is that I want to do the best work possible, and I can only do that if I'm relaxed and have a lot of energy. And that can only come from taking time off. It's because people think acting is everything. But there are other arts that can produce the same amounts of awareness and more sensitivity, and you can carry that knowledge into your other roles and develop even greater characters because you're doing something else, learning something else. Doing Dragon opened up all this information about health and fitness. It brought me into more awareness about herbs and made me want to be of more help to people. Sometimes when I'm acting, I feel like I'm not contributing. A lot of times when you're acting, you're no longer talking and listening, you're going at it for your own self. When you do other things that involve a more calm atmosphere, you're really learning. You think I'm crazy?"

"No, sane. I think that's the smartest thing I ever heard an actor say."

"I'm living back in Hawaii, now."

"You spent all that time trying to get out of there only to go back?"

"Oh yeah, and what a blessing it is. Hawaii is a very healing place. It has a really heavy vibe. It's very sensual in a lot of ways and the spirituality of Polynesia is finally being resurrected. There are some people there who could teach me quite a bit about what we call lomi-lomi, or healing hands, loving hands... which is massage and the like."

"Do you do good massage?"

"Me?" he asks. "I think so. I just need a little more practice."

"Hey, my neck is willing..."

"Okay. I have a friend who's also an actor and he's into body working and the healing arts--a Japanese fellow--and I've been working with him quite a bit. We have a lot of plans for what we want to do in Hawaii. We've been working on the sand, and in the water, doing a lot of hydro-workouts. There's also a possibility to do acting workshops there. And I think the combination would really tune people in. I mean, granted, I love to act, but it is such a big hassle. You have to fight for this, and fight for that, and I'm getting tired of fighting. And I just started! It's like they're making me weak, they're taking away my life. And I'm not even sure I'll do this, but if I don't put it out, it'll never happen."

Just then, two young black guys walk past us and do a double take. One of them comes running over.

"Excuse me," he says in a heavy cockney accent. "My friend is blind, and he doesn't recognize you. But you were in that movie, right?"

"What movie?" Lee asks.

"The Bruce Lee movie," the guy says. His friend, who outweighs any of us by a hundred pounds, ambles over.

"Yeah, that was me." Lee admits. "Where'd you see it?"

"In Holland," they say simultaneously. "You captured him very well," the big one says. "You know that move, did you do that at proper speed, or is that speeded up?" Hands are flying through the air.

"Watch it," I say, walking between them. Am I out of my fucking mind?

"This is my bodyguard," he tells them. They look suspicious.

"So you can do kung fu now?" they want to know.

Jason nods.

"And you couldn't do none before then?"

"No, I couldn't."

"Oh, so you think you're Bruce Lee now?" They're laughing.

"Have you studied martial arts?" Lee asks the big one.

"When I was little, we all took it in school. Now we're interested in boxing..."

"Well, I could show you a little move," Lee tells him.

"No, it's okay," the little guy says, trying to direct his friend around the corner.

But the big guy is not about to miss this opportunity.

"This is for her," Lee says, nodding in my direction. "Okay, you have to find your reference point, because anything you throw out, you're going to be trying to block it. It's from a point of stillness that you work, into an explosive move. . . [Hits the air in front of the guy's face]. Can you feel the energy?"

Believe me, only a dead man wouldn't have felt that energy.

"Yes, all right then, thanks very much..." they say, and scurry away.

We laugh all the way back to the hotel. Lee invites me up to his room so he can give me a neck massage. The boy has the hands of a true healer. When he's finished he goes to clean up and then he comes out with what looks like a huge bud of marijuana.

"It's sage," he tells me. "Very cleansing. If you put it into tobacco, it cleanses the tobacco."

He lights the sage and then begins to hit my body with a feather. Just a regular feather. A little bit here, a little bit there. I don't know whether to giggle or swoon.

"Just a little picker-upper," he says.

The next day, I go with Lee to photographer Brian Aris's studio. He looks subdued and sleepy on the way there, even when we pass Abbey Road studios. But when the camera starts clicking, he comes to life. He puts on a variety of outfits--leather jacket, vest, Hawaiian material wrapped around his lower half--but after I say, "Take the shirt off for the fifteenth time, he finally does. Nobody suggests that he put it back on after that.

At one point, I look up and see that all the life is gone from Jason's face. "Want to get some air?" I ask. Outside, he walks around in circles and talks about feeling as if he weren't really in his body. He smokes a sage cigarette and then goes back in for another round of photos. He's asleep as soon as the car pulls away from the curb.

That night, he doesn't show up for the screening of Dragon. When I get back to my hotel, there's a message saying that he's at his hotel, running a high fever. The next morning, I pack up all my herbs and head over there.

"Take these," I tell him, handing him liver boosters and immune replenishers. He wants to talk about herbs and healers, but he's so weak that he just stops mid-sentence. I make him drink lots of bottled water. His eyes are red, his skin is burning. I rub his hands and tell him to go back to bed. Later I talk to Jason on the phone and he tells me he's leaving London. "I'd rather be on a plane headed for where people can take care of me," he says. Needless to say, he isn't headed to Hollywood.

__________________

Martha Frankel interviewed Christopher Walken for the December '93 Movieline.

Pages: 1 2