Not much time for posting today, so I thought I might link to another cool parkour video.
And then I thought, hey, why not link to the the guy who really invented this stuff? Doing not only le parkour, but kung fu.
Co-starring Brigitte Lin as the Woman Treated Like a Sack of Potatoes, and Maggie Cheung as the Woman Kicked in the Butt.
An excellent illustration of why
a)extreme athletes are cripples by their 40’s, and
b) extreme kung-fu should only be done in a suitably padded dojo.
Jackie Chan is the best.
I was watching the commentary on my Shanghai Noon DVD and whoever it was was talking about how surprised he was that Jackie Chan could *act*.
Well, DUH!
LOL.
So… a somewhat writerish question for you writer type guys…
It seems to me that characters who can do stuff like this must be able to train nearly full time. Certainly Jackie Chan lived kung-fu, particularly when he was in top form (and young), but the freerunning (does parkour mean something different?) guys are presumably part-timers… maybe with a wee bit of gymnastics in their past but as likely not.
I don’t know if readers would accept ninja-like abilities from a gang of adolescents living on the streets. Or would they?
Steve, pretty much =any= athletes are wrecks by their forties. Unless they play golf or something, and even then they can’t compete with the younger guys.
=Everybody’s= a wreck by their forties.
Yeah, Jackie can really act. Occasionally he’ll do a movie, like “Crime Story,” where he’ll play it straight, and people are surprised.
I don’t think free runners earn much of a living. (Neither do most kung fu guys, come to that.) The guy who invented le parkour does the sport full-time, but then I think he lived with his family until he started earning money as a film actor and stuntman.
Or, to answer synova’s question more directly:
It’s all in how you write it.
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