Against All Odds: My Story (18 page)

My reputation as a world karate champion opened many doors, but it also caused many doors to slam in my face just as easily. “Karate movies are over,” I heard again and again. I met with producer after producer, but they all had preconceptions about me. They thought of me as an athletic star who couldn't do anything but fight. Because I had few acting credentials, I was unable to convince them that I could offer more to a movie than my karate skills. I'd had a lot of experience selling karate lessons to prospective students, but I'd had little experience selling myself as an actor, and what little I'd had was far from impressive. At the end of each meeting, the producers inevitably asked, “Why do you think this movie will make money?”

I'd stammer around, trying to persuade the producers, but I never had an adequate answer to their bottom-line question. I had visualized some but not all of the obstacles that I might face. Although I received one rejection after another, I was not discouraged, but I was disheartened. And I was nearing a desperation point.

Like any other profession there are many good ways of getting started in the film industry—studying theater in college, going to acting school, doing internships with reputable filmmakers, working in the industry and watching for a break—but taking any acting job that comes along can be counterproductive and possibly even dangerous. For me it nearly stalled my career before it got started.

When Lo Wei, a Chinese director, asked me to play a role in a low-budget karate movie called
Yellow-Faced Tiger
that he was making in San Francisco, I said, “Sure, why not?” Lo Wei said the movie would be shown only in Asia. I didn't care; I needed the money. Dan Ivan, a friend of mine, told me he had a role in it as well, so Dan and I drove to San Francisco together.

When we showed up on the set, Lo Wei told me I was to play the Mafia boss of San Francisco and wear a hat and smoke a cigar. I told him I didn't smoke. That didn't matter to him. They bought me a cheap suit and a stogie that was about a foot long. My big scene called for me to fight and get beaten up by the star of the movie. Oh, well! I did the movie, got a little more acting experience, and collected my check.

One night while we were in San Francisco, Dianne and I decided to take the kids out to a movie. While looking at the film listings in the paper, I noticed an ad for a film called
The Student Teachers
. I remembered that a couple of years earlier I had received a call from an independent film company producing a film with that title. They wanted me to bring some of my students to a park in Inglewood, California, where I would conduct a karate class with two of the stars.

The producers told me that the movie was about a couple of teachers who were unhappy with the teaching methods in public schools, so they broke off with the system and created a different learning environment. It all sounded innocent enough, so I brought my two young sons, my brother Aaron, and about twenty other students to Inglewood. We spent a balmy afternoon shooting a scene in which I taught the two stars and my students karate moves on the grass. That was it. I never heard anything else about it. But now the movie was playing in San Francisco.

I suggested to Dianne that we all go see the movie because Mike and Eric might enjoy seeing themselves on the screen, and I, too, was curious as to how the movie had turned out. The theater was in a rundown, tough section of the city. When we arrived, Dianne said, “I'm not going to a movie here.”

“Oh, Dianne, don't worry,” I said. “Let's just go in and watch our part, and then we'll leave.” Dianne reluctantly agreed.

The inside of the theater was worse than the outside. Drab and dreary looking, with worn, tattered, sticky seats, one could easily imagine all sorts of sleaze and evil going on within these walls. Only a handful of people were in the audience when we took our seats. We sat back and waited for the start of the feature. The title credits had barely rolled, when we sat back up straight in our seats. The opening scene of the film was of a naked woman lying on a bed!

Dianne and I covered the boys' eyes. “Let's get out of here,” Dianne said.

By then the naked woman was off the screen, so I said, “Let's wait a few minutes longer. It can't get any worse.”

But it did! The movie was replete with sex scenes, most of which were a hard “R,” and we were constantly hiding the kids' eyes. Finally our scene came on. There I was filling the screen in a gigantic close-up.
Oh no
, I thought,
the one time I don't want to be on screen, and here I am, bigger than life!

In 1976, I was asked by another small independent production company to star in
Breaker! Breaker!
, a movie about a trucker who uses his citizen's band radio and the help of other truckers to thwart a corrupt judge who controls a town with an unfair speed trap. The title comes from the phrase used by truckers when they called for help on their CB radios.

I thought
Breaker! Breaker!
might be a good breakout role for me as an actor. Equally important, I was to be paid $10,000 for the role, and I needed the money. Dianne and I were just barely meeting our monthly bills with my income from teaching private students and seminars. Although I was the star of the film, the promotional material didn't even mention me, and it never played in Los Angeles. In order to see it, Dianne and I had to fly to San Francisco with my friend, Larry Morales, who was also in the film. There were only two other people in the audience that Monday night. Somehow the lack of response from the public took the excitement out of our movie debut. The first week the film didn't do much business. But when word got out about the great karate fight scenes in the flick, attendance increased. The picture eventually did fairly well at the box office, but because my name was hardly mentioned in the advertising, it did nothing for my acting career.

For three years I knocked on doors all over Hollywood, carrying the script of
Good Guys Wear Black.
One day I told my accountant about the problems I was having getting the script made into a movie. He said he had a client named Alan Bodoh who was a producer and might be interested. He gave me Alan's phone number. I was all set to call, but when I found out that Alan was just a young man in his twenties, I lost my enthusiasm. What could a young kid like that know about raising money and producing films?

Months later, while visiting Larry Morales in his machine shop, I told him that I was at my wit's end. I had pitched the project to every producer who would see me. Then I remembered Alan Bodoh and told Larry about him. “I'll call him for you,” Larry said. He got Alan's secretary on the telephone and told her he had a friend with a script that he wanted her boss to read.

“Send it in,” the secretary said.

“No way,” countered Larry. “I know how that works. I want your boss to have dinner with my friend, and then he can have the script.”

“That won't be possible,” the secretary said.

Larry persisted. “Ask your boss if he knows anything about Chuck Norris, the world karate champion.”

The secretary buzzed Alan, who had heard of me. He arranged to meet me for dinner that following evening at a Mexican restaurant in Hollywood. Larry, Dianne, and I went to dinner with Alan and his wife. Alan looked even younger than he was, but he was a very down-to-earth fellow. We all hit it off immediately. Alan had already produced two successful, relatively low-budget films including
The Great Smokey Roadblock
with Henry Fonda, and he had lots of great stories.

When the dinner check came, I picked it up. I looked at the total and gulped hard. I suddenly realized that I didn't have enough cash to pay the bill, and I didn't have a credit card. I motioned to Larry to join me in the restroom. “Larry, I don't have enough money to cover the bill!” I said frantically. “We're trying to impress this guy! We can't stick him with the check. How much money do you have on you?” Larry pulled out his wallet and dumped the contents in my hands. Together we had just enough to cover the bill and even a small tip.

Alan dropped Larry, Dianne, and me off at my home around midnight. We had enjoyed such a great evening with Alan and his wife that I had almost forgotten about the script. I got out of the car and began saying good-bye. “It was a pleasure meeting you,” I said.

“Well, thanks, but what about the script?” Alan asked.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The script!” I hurried into the house and retrieved a copy of
Good Guys Wear Black
for Alan. I handed it to him. “Read it when you get the chance,” I said, “and let me know what you think.”

“I will,” Alan assured me. “Thanks again for dinner.”

Four hours later, in the middle of the night, my telephone rang. It was Alan Bodoh calling. “I've read the script, and I love it!” he said. “I'm going to try to produce it for you. I want to present it to my investors who are businessmen in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.” I was so excited I couldn't get back to sleep the rest of the night!

Despite his enthusiasm Alan found it impossible to convince his investors to finance the film. They were mostly local lawyers, doctors, and other professional business types, and none of them had ever heard of me. “No, we can't see gambling a million dollars on someone we don't even know.”

Alan called me to say he was sorry.

“Alan, do you think you could get the investors together one more time so I could talk to them?” I asked.

Alan promised he would try to set up a meeting, which he did, following the screening of another movie in which the businessmen had invested large amounts of money.

The night before the meeting, I sat in bed wondering what I would say to the potential investors. I went to sleep with that thought in my mind. A few hours later I woke up with the answer.

The next evening I walked into Alan's office and found about a dozen of his investors waiting. They had just screened their new movie, but I couldn't tell if they were pleased or worried. I started off by presenting a brief synopsis of my story and then told them about my background in karate. When I was certain I had their interest, I pressed in, saying, “I understand your trepidation about putting up the money for this movie. I know you don't know who I am, but there are four million karate practitioners in America who do. I was the undefeated world karate champion for six years. Since I don't fight anymore, the only way my fans can see me perform is on the movie screen. If only half of them come to see the film, that's a six-million dollar gross on a one-million dollar investment. You're going to make a lot of money!”

That's what the investors wanted to hear. They were convinced and agreed to put up the money to finance the production of the film.

A few days later I met with Alan and his partner, Michael Leone, who offered me forty thousand dollars to star in the film. I gulped and said, “That will be fine.”

“And if the film does well, we'd probably be interested in doing at least two more movies with you.”

“Great!”

When I told Dianne how much they were going to pay me, she said, “You're kidding me!”

“Nope,” I said. “We're in the big time!” We were flat broke, but with forty thousand dollars on the way, Dianne and I went out that night and celebrated.

CHAPTER 15

THE FIRST STEP IS THE TOUGHEST

T
ed Post, who had directed Clint Eastwood in
Magnum Force
, was signed to direct
Good Guys Wear Black.
He decided that since I wasn't an experienced actor, I should be surrounded by professionals, including James Franciscus, Dana Andrews, Jim Backus, Lloyd Haynes, and Anne Archer. I was excited to have such a great cast, but at the same time I was more than a little intimidated.