Film Interview: TRUE LEGEND's Cung Le
Tuesday, 17 May 2011 18:21
Film Interview: TRUE LEGEND's Cung Le
Former Strikeforce middleweight champion and MMA star Cung Le discusses his role in legendary fight choreographer Yuen Woo Ping's directorial return, True Legend
Vegas Outsider: Could you briefly touch on the plot itself & your role specifically within it?
Cung Le: My part in the film involves me involved in the big action sequence at the beginning of the movie with this massive battle in which I’ve captured the main character Su’s general and he’s been sent along with an elite force to rescue him. After that, basically (Su’s) brother betrays him and his dad and all hell breaks loose.
VO: What about the film made you want to do it? Story? Crew?
CL: Actually Master Woo Ping is the most renowned action director there is; I met with Bill Kong on a meeting that I was taken out to in LA and he happened to be in town. My manager Scott Karp was able to set up a meeting between us while we were out there. After that meeting, he said that he wanted to cast me to try and introduce me to the movie fans in China. Two weeks after that I got an offer. Knowing that I would get to work with Master Woo Ping as well as an Academy Award winning producer in Bill Kong, it was something that I probably would have done for free.
VO: How was it working on a Yuen Woo Ping set doing martial arts given his reputation within the film industry?
CL: The funny thing is I totally had the wrong idea about Master Woo Ping going in because I had taken another meeting out in LA with a producer named Andrew Gunn who was looking to hire Master Woo Ping for one of his projects. He told me that he had had a conversation with Keanu Reeves after he did The Matrix and Keanu told him that Master Woo Ping doesn’t speak a lick of English and that he’s really a quiet, cool guy. So I came on set expecting him to be quiet and the next thing I see is him goofing around, cracking jokes, and just having a good time on set. It was a total surprise for me since he was totally outgoing and very fun to work for. He’s a brilliant action director.
VO: How was the actual experience of working the fight choreography itself? Did your previous training prepare you enough for what you faced on this particular project?
CL: Well you know luckily I’d come off of three movies before this one, the biggest one out of all three being Pandorum, alongside Fighting with Channing Tatum and Terrence Howard, where I portrayed an underground fighter and then in Tekken they cast me as Marshall Law, who is one of the most popular characters in the Tekken universe. From working on Pandorum I was used to being on a massive set (in that case, a ship where massive hallways were built for the movie) so when I arrived in China for True Legend and arrived on set, I was faced with this massive soundstage, with massive bamboo sticks in the back and then at the front looking and feeling like you’re standing there in the Himalayas. It was an amazing sight to behold and they told us that that set had cost them $2 million dollars to build. For a Chinese film, $2 million would be like $10 million in America. So just being there it was very easy to get into character. On all the other studio films I’ve done, you come out around two weeks early to rehearse the fight you’re going to do.
Master Woo Ping had enough trust in me though that I came out and just had gotten my costume done when he wanted to see the final touches. He came in to see me as I was getting my makeup on, saw the beard and hairdo and liked it. But then he wanted to see me in full costume. I then walked out onto the set and saw about three hundred extras just sitting there. He looked at my costume, liked it, pulled out a broadsword, quickly mapped out a sequence and said “you try”. So I took the broadsword from him, went through the sequence about five times, at which time he then said “very good, very good. You ready”? I said “huh?”
He then replied “we shoot” to which I thought “holy smokes” (laughs). I said “we’re going to shoot right now?” and he said “we’re going to shoot it right now, let’s do it”. So it was definitely a different experience for me, in terms of how the Eastern way of shooting is different from the Western way of doing things. But luckily for me, besides being in MMA as the former Strikeforce middleweight champion, I also have a sense and background in traditional martial arts where I knew how to wield a staff as well as a sword. My character has a big broadsword and looking back, I am grateful that my mom put me in traditional martial arts when I was young.
VO: Over the course of filming, how close were you able to work with Yuen himself? Did he have any particular thoughts or tips on the choreography itself that you picked up?
CL: Well I think for one, looking at my costume and resembling Genghis Khan, the style and flow of each technique had to be authentic. It couldn’t be stiff, it had to flow because being the leader of this tribe I had to be someone with a high-level martial arts background and have a lot of battle notches on my belt. So each movement had to show power as well as flow with the strikes and blocks and when there was impact or when my opponent would hit me I wouldn’t be fearful because my character is so fierce that pain meant nothing. The goal was to simply conquer my opponent.
So with Master Woo Ping, every time I was there for my scene, I would just sit and watch him direct. He would sit down and think about what he wanted next. It wasn’t preplanned at all, he would sit down, grab the sword when he was ready, grab his right hand man, speak to him in Chinese, and then his guy would throw a strike at him. He would then block in a certain way and return that strike back. The next thing I know I’m doing the same sequence and they’re shooting. So everything again was in his head, the script and choreography, all that. It was an amazing experience and I normally don’t get nervous before a fight, I was more excited.
VO: Given your filmography thus far, how would you rate your overall experience working on this film?
CL: Well, again it was my first chance to work with Master Woo Ping and when I got on set I was just really excited that I was going to work with the best. Having that opportunity to work and learn from him forced me to absorb as much as I could and deliver at the same time. It became where what I learned from him became a part of me, but again people sometimes don’t pay attention to the small details. I paid attention to every single thing he did, I asked a lot of questions, and when he didn’t understand my English there was a translator there. I basically picked his brain, which he was open to and he explained to me what he wanted from me, what he expected, and ultimately was teaching me. There is one scene involving Vincent (Zhao) where I was doing a move where I was to strike down and stab at him, and he was supposed to lean back and block my strike. The hit was designed to come very close to his face. However, I wasn’t really extending my arm out because he wasn’t leaning back, just blocking.
We shot it a few times and Master Woo Ping stopped and told me to extend, and I said “Vincent’s not leaning back, if I extend I’m going to stab him in the chin or throat”. He replied back “well if you extend, then he will move out of the way”. I looked back at Vincent, who didn’t speak much English, and said to him “I’m going to extend my arm so you better lean back”. Vincent said “don’t worry, I’ll get it right”. We went again and once again I didn’t extend my arm because Vincent was not leaning back from the move, so Master Woo Ping was calling out “extend your strike! Extend your strike! Make it flow!” I looked back again at Vincent and asked if he was ready, he replied but didn’t move back so I ended up stabbing him in the chin. I extended my strike as I was told and Master Woo Ping didn’t get upset with me, he said to Vincent “go get bandaged up” and brought in Vincent’s double.
His double and I did the same exchange again but shot it from a different angle. Again, I was amazed at watching him work and it allowed me to see action in a new way. It helped me as well on my next project Bodyguard and Assassins, where Donnie Yen wanted me to be involved with it, and I was able to include my input after having learned from Master Woo Ping and how the Chinese/Hong Kong film industry shoots in a certain way. We ended up reshooting my scene on that film in order to incorporate my input and after that I worked on the film Dragon Eyes, in which I was able to choreograph all my own fights. I have to credit all of that to what I learned from Master Woo Ping.
VO: Finally, on an MMA-related question, at this point in your career, how keen are you to return to active competition? Do you want to focus more on film work? Or are you trying to find balance between both worlds?
CL: It’s really hard to find balance when you really want to be great at something; my wrestling coach once asked me at football practice “do you want to be good or do you want to be great?” I said I wanted to be great of course, to which he replied “you can be good at two sports but only great at one”. At the time that made sense because I then quit football, devoted myself completely to wrestling, and became an All-American in high school and then went on to college and became a college All-American. I pursued martial arts after that and became great at that too. I felt like if I got small parts in the movies I’ve been doing, three weeks here or two weeks there, then I’d be able to juggle between fighting and doing film. But soon my on-set reputation began getting me more work and my jobs got bigger and now I have two starring roles, and in Dragon Eyes I choreographed my own fights; so it’s a little hard right now to focus on fighting at a high level alongside movies because anything I do, I want to do at a high level.
Right now, I’m focused on movies but since the UFC just bought Strikeforce, I just came back the other day from the UFC Summit where they bring in all the fighters and discuss how the company is moving forward, how to effectively market yourself. I had a chance to talk to Dana White and Lorenzo Fertita and if I am going to fight again, I want to do it soon and definitely in the UFC and after these next couple of projects I have coming up I need to sit down and see if I can fit a fight or two in. I can’t fight forever because I’m 38 now and it’s now or never. I have two projects t I’m working on first but after that, we’ll see what happens. I don’t feel done yet and think I have a couple good fights left in me. Right now, I’m taking it one day at a time. But I’m nowhere near done at the moment.
To learn more about Cung Le, go to www.cungle.com; to get more information about True Legend, head over to http://truelegend.indomina.com
