The Rush Hour franchise has been one of the most popular comedy movie series starring action-comedy legend Jackie Chan and Friday star Chris Tucker. Rush Hour has certainly left a mark in Hollywood with the franchise’s hilarious comedy blended with action sequences.
But the Rush Hour director was new when he set his course for directing the first movie of the franchise. However, casting Chan and Tucker to meet his cinematic vision was not a piece of cake rather he had an interesting story about it.
Rush Hour Director On Meeting With Jackie Chan
Brett Ratner, the director of Rush Hour was new to the industry. At the time, the director was only 27 years old and had directed only one movie, Money Talks after coming from the background of music video direction. But Ratner’s vision was quite clear, he wanted Jackie Chan in a buddy-cop movie in a lead role. When Ratner found out Jackie was filming for a movie in South Africa, he immediately went to meet with the action legend. “I got on a plane,” Ratner told GQ. “and flew 22 hours to have lunch with him. We get to the restaurant. It’s a Chinese restaurant in South Africa. So weird. And he feeds me abalone. It was like a piece of rubber. And I’m chewing it and spitting it in my napkin,” he said of meeting with Chan.
“Then he gives me a glass of wine and I have to pretend like I’m drinking it. Then he’s like, Let’s smoke a cigar, and I’m like, Is this guy testing me? What the hell? All the things I don’t do,” Ratner said.
The director then pitched the movie to Chan, and the Police Story actor carefully listened without saying yes or no to the movie immediately. Then he drove the director back to the airport.
Casting Jackie Chan in Rush Hour
Casting Chan also has an interesting back story. After their first meet, Chan came to Los Angeles to meet with his Rush Hour co-star Chris Tucker. “They had a conversation for 30 minutes,” Ratner told GQ of Chan meeting Tucker. But “halfway through, Chris says, Brett, can we talk outside for a minute? and I go, Yeah.”
“And we go outside, and Chris says, Brett, Jackie Chan don’t speak English! How we gon’ do a movie when he don’t speak English? I said, Oh, it’ll be fine. Anyway. We go back in. Chris leaves. I said, Jackie, how did you like Chris? And Jackie says, I like Chris, but I don’t understand how he talks. I said to myself, This is going to be f*cking genius.”
Certainly, Ratner saw the chemistry of the actors ahead of the movie and went ahead despite Chan’s relatively poor English. The 1998 movie made $244.4 million worldwide and cleared the path for the franchise that followed. The franchise grossed over $850 million at the global box office.
Source: GQ.
