Jean-Claude Van Damme: The 8 Million Dollar Man

His voice impassioned, he continues, "That upsets me so much. It's like if I invited you to my room at four or five in the morning and you came to my room. I never pulled your hair. I take you, then, the next day, you wake up and say, 'You raped me.' In Europe, that would never work. It's a bunch of baloney. It would be like, 'Are you crazy? Do you want us to swallow that?' For such a great country like America to have those problems is so sad. The laws are fucked up. I'm a little confused. I love justice, but to let people judge you from a story--because this guy's lawyer speaks so well and tells a good story and this other guy speaks less well and tells a less good story--and the first lawyer wins?" He shakes his head in disbelief and says, quietly, "Justice is great. Truth. I really love truth."

Okay, then, here's an inescapable truth: if Van Damme is to last in the business, at least in front of the cameras, he needs a breakout movie. No one is more aware of this than he. "For all the silly movies I've done, people have treated me very well," he says. "I could not do better with what I was handed. When I came in this country, they signed me for independent, low-budget movies with small companies like Cannon. Dumb stories, I mean very simple stories: the brother dies, I come for revenge, win, people love it, it makes lots of money. These are movies made for $1 million, $4 million--that's the salary of some actors. But now, I have to come out of that cocoon. I really believe I can act. I have to search for good stories, good directors who can really put a plot together. Domestic, I just need one of my movies to break $40 million and have a $15 million opening weekend."

Any plans for such a film? You bet. He enthuses over a yet-to-be-made project, The Royal Way, which is to be directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, who is better remembered for Runaway Train than for Tango & Cash, one of Stallone's abortive breakout movies. Suddenly, Van Damme's enacting the character he would play in this project, to show "how sensitive, passionate and romantic I am." First, he's drunk in dive bars, a physical wreck, a cat's sneeze away from Skid Row; finally, nearly bonkers in the urban jungle, he flees, don't ask how, to the real jungle, where he becomes a king among tribal people. He punctuates his oratory--and me--with pats to my shoulder and knee, almost making me forget how the story sounds like leftovers from Apocalypse Now, Farewell to the King and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.

So far, nobody at Universal or Columbia, to which he owes two more movies each, has proposed that he do anything remotely resembling the Konchalovsky project. He philosophizes, sighing, "As an audience [member], I love what guys like Sean Penn and Robert Downey Jr. do. But, talking studio talk, maybe they should do something more commercial to make sure they have a rich history at the box office. Then go do what they want to do. You have to be careful in this business. And smart."

While waiting for the beckoning call he hopes will soon come from the likes of Oliver Stone, James Cameron or Adrian Lyne--"It's got to happen," he says, like a mantra, "it will happen"--Van Damme expects Time Cop, directed by Peter Hyams, to at least nudge him up on the industry food chain. "With the pride and money we put into the project, I believe we'll succeed," says Van Damme, "because this time I'm not just 'Van Damme' with big ass, big abs, big muscle. I'm not a thing. The part I play would have been good for many different actors, different kinds of actors, than me. It's the first time I know I have a hit story. Of the nine, 10 movies I've done, it's the first time I feel good about one of them." Suddenly, he grows quiet, adding, "Now, a lot depends upon how the studio will push it. Will they put on all those TV ads every 15 seconds all over the country for Time Cop like Warner Bros, did for Under Siege?"

Sure, some are saying that this will be Van Damme's big breakthrough movie, but haven't we heard this song before? Most notably sung for Hard Target, which arrived with an avalanche of John Woo hype that said Van Damme had arrived. "Good director, bad script," Van Damme snorts when I bring up that movie. "That whole thing was a deal. In it, I'm a thing. [Producers and studio executives] know I will open a movie with a $10 million weekend. So, they figure, whatever happens, it's okay, they'll make their money back. They made huge money, but I'm sorry, because it was my name and face on that screen. John Woo is such a nice guy and, absolutely, I'd work with him again. But he has a lot to learn."

Learn? The funky maestro of such frenetically balletic action movies as A Better Tomorrow and The Killer, which got him lauded internationally as a sort of reborn in Hong Kong Sam Peckinpah? "I felt there were problems going in," he explains. "It's like when you're going into a marriage as a couple. You feel something is not there, but you're going toward it, working toward something. But the story--a guy getting hunted by people? Nothing profound. Then, too, in Hong Kong, you can shoot a movie for two weeks, then tell the crew, 'Go home, we'll call you back in two weeks to do another sequence.' In America, that's impossible. The action in the opening sequence was great, but the action at the end of the movie is exactly the same. You have to escalate action through the movie. So many bullets, so many blood bags popping. Anyway, that's his show. I'm out of it."

So, his Woo debut didn't quite cut it, but what if Van Damme's audiences don't care to follow down the roads he plans to head? "Fine," he shoots back. "I'll catch another audience. And then, that audience that was disappointed will catch up with me in the second or third different kind of movie that I do. I have to enlarge the circle. Put me in a love story, maybe with some action, and we will go through the roof because I've got so much attraction with the ladies. Dress me well, of course, put me with a strong lead actress, a musical score like by Morricone, fast-paced directing, lots of steam, lots of smoke, and we'll kick ass."

Wherever Van Damme is bound, bet that he won't go quietly. "When you're very smart," he says, "you don't believe in luck, you believe in logic." Luck and logic played a hand in his landing Streetfighter, a gladiator-type movie he is now shooting, for which he is being paid $8 million because kids surveyed all over Europe and Asia named him the guy they'd most like to see in a live-action version of a top-selling computer game. His salary, he says, has prompted big-name directors to finally give him a tumble. Though he's mum on the subject, one hears that he met with Oliver Stone, for instance, about the now-defunct Al Pacino project, Noriega. But he swears that the big money, the chance that his dreams of real stardom may finally be realized, won't rock his world.

Van Damme says, "They're all big babies in Hollywood--huge, complicated babies with lots of money. So many guys my age in this business have so much money, but so much pressure they're doing coke, doing all kinds of drugs. They don't seem to know something simple: no matter how much money you're making, you only need one car, one house, one shirt at a time."

________________

Stephen Rebello interviewed Marisa Tomei for the July Movieline.

Pages: 1 2 3