Back in the 90s there was a persistent (and very silly) rumor that Jet Li secretly had a ton of triad tattoos on his arms and chest, which is why he never took off his shirt on camera. Dumb, yes, but stuff like that made the Hong Kong movie biz seem so much more dangerous than ours. Now Jackie Chan has done his part by claiming in an interview with a Chinese publication that he once carried a huge arsenal for protection from organized criminals.
While sharing stories about Triad hoods who bullied actors during productions, he revealed “They opened fire at me once I got off the airplane. From that moment on, I needed to carry a gun every day when I went out.” Chan also claimed that in one incident, he confronted a group of men armed with knives “with two guns and six grenades.” Proving once and for all you should never bring a knife to a Rambo fight.
He is now under investigation by HKPD for violating that city's strict gun and weapons control laws, and has since claimed in a blog post that “I told the media about my unruly behavior to express that I had the thought of resorting to violence because of my lack of education. I cannot express myself properly sometimes, I only want to say that people need discipline, and our government should manage the public and resources in a fair way.”
Translation: He was probably talking shit the first time. But even if these claims are true, hopefully HKPD understands that Chan had to carry so many weapons because if he tried to fight mobsters off, he would have accidentally convinced his long-suffering girlfriend that he was cheating on her.
[Source: South China Morning Post via Kotaku]
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