So I watched that happen and then I watched Victor Moore fight Chuck Norris.Blake Harris: Moore fought Bruce Lee and then Chuck Norris? This thingwhatever it was calledit was really cool and it would be a cool way to meet chicks.Blake Harris: And how did you go from passively enjoying these things to actual participating and learning how to fight?Frank Dux: I guess one of the things that helped push me in that direction was that I befriended a kid named Grant who had it far worse than myself. And he showed up and said, "I see he didn't show up." He was good at stiff karate moves, but that was it. Please note as always his opinions, recollections and claims are his own, and not necessarily fact. Menahem started to realize what he had with Jean-Claudeand remember, he had two more movies with himso he called us into his office and said, "We need to find our next movie for Jean-Claude." At that point, it was to their advantage. So those are the three elements. I wrote the script, got paid a small fee and I can't remember how much time passedprobably less than a yearand via another guy named Lou Horwitza financer who, I believe, did gap-financing at the timeLou took it to Cannon. A lot of those shots came from the camera angles I had been directing. It's hard to call the young Van Damme's performance "good" in any traditional sense of the word, but . Nowadays it's all kind of clich. I mean, the guy announced his malice. He had a karate background. He's got a lot of abilities. What I had done was I had the fight, like in Bloodsport, but there was one little caveat difference: In between doing these fights, he was also doing stuff to help people on the street. So he still didn't' have a lot of faith in Jean-Claude's acting abilities and decided not to make it. Menahem had also seen the little 16mm movie [Firefight] I directed and was going to give me my first directing deal.Blake Harris: For you to direct a Lone Wolf McQuade sequel starring Leon Isaac Kennedy and Chuck Norris?Sheldon Lettich: Yes, except that Chuck didn't want to do it. He was very stiff. Unlike so many of the testosterone-fueled films of the '80s, Bloodsport holds the rare distinction of being based on a true story. He's been carrying on like that for years and years. I don't know if they ever approached Chuck Norris, but Chuck didn't seem right. That movie's terrible; I'm putting it straight to video. And the one twinning shot would sell it and it worked surprisingly well.Blake Harris: The next movie you worked on with Jean-Claude was his directorial debut, The Quest [1996], but only in the capacity of script polishing. I thought it was Pasadena, but everyone's told me it was Long Beach. I met Gladys, the woman of my dreams, I had a baby, and I'm miserable. And that's why I kept it kind of fictional. U.S. soldier Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) has come to Hong Kong to be accepted into the Kumite, a highly secret and extremely violent martial-arts competition. I remember paying for the uniforms. So Frank put me on the phone with Jean-Claude and that was the first time I ever spoke to him. So Frank and I go to a theater and we were both blown away by Jean-Claude. I mean, he couldn't do a throw. And I actually helped John do the casting. "But Sly," I said, "it really wouldn't work that way because one thing that's been established with Rambo is that he's the baddest motherf***er in the world, but he doesn't want to fight. But I didn't sleep with a reporter beforehand and I certainly didn't break into my instructor's house and steal a sword. He said, "Movies often come in cycles and there hasn't been a martial arts film in a while; I think that cycle is going to come back soon." Blake Harris: That story in the L.A. Times was pretty brutal. However, speaking of the UFC, Frank Dux does have a tangential connection to the UFC. We needed at least $20 million to do this thing right and it looked like it might happen, but it didn't. Nobody clapped or wanted to have their picture taken with you. Took me a long, long time to write that script. It was very time-consuming and it was not easy to match things up with the optical printer, but I thought we did a pretty good job of that. And there'd be a bunch of people there with phones to record it, so we don't want this to happen.Blake Harris: Speaking of that screening, Frank had mentioned that you were crushed. So we had a number of people come to my apartment; John would test them out for their acting abilities and we would also try to determine if they were for real.Blake Harris: In what sense?Sheldon Lettich: Oh, I just meant we'd try to determine if they were really Vietnam veterans. Kurt had played football at Prairie View College in the 60's. "Bloodsport" follows Frank Dux, an American martial artist serving in the military, who decides to leave the army to compete in a martial arts tournament in Hong Kong where fights to the death can occur. You can't just go in there and get it. If it's Stallone: no problem, he can kill me on screen at the end.Blake Harris: The ultimate complimentSheldon Lettich: Ha, yes.Blake Harris: Speaking of Jean-Claude, I imagine that you first met him around this time. Everything you've just been telling me about this Kumite, that's a great idea for a movie. Because you didn't do it in Hong Kong." But the only guy in the world who could kill Jean-Claude with his permission is Sylvester Stallone. Plus, we hear LL Cool J's hip-hop prayer and the best . In the end, his psyche was broken when Jimmy Olsen brought his brother onto the scene. You can listen to theBloodsportedition of the HDTGM podcasthere. He frickin' landed on his head, in front of all my students. Like with Legionnaire. What was all this camaraderie about? And apparently it did huge business. But Michael Dudikoff is like 6'2," and the problem was they wanted to film in Asia. Live from Largo in L.A. they get into Samuel L. Jackson's infamous death scene, LL Cool J's relationship with his bird, Stellan Skarsgrd's new name, and how Saffron Burrows is the film's true villain. I remember there was a stack of scripts lining the walltitles written on the spineand I notice one script in particular. Leon hired me to write a script, which Menahem ended up liking. I showed him some video footage, and that's how the project started.Blake Harris: Before talking about next steps, I'm curious to hear more about your initial script. He tells one where he says he met Menahem Golan [a producer on Bloodsport] at a restaurant and [Van Damme] threw out his legs and blah blah blah. Joseph Papp heard about it, so he brought the show to the Public Theatre in New York. And it was painful. And everybody had their picture taken with me, and I don't recall anyone having their picture taken with Sheldon, outside of his friends. And he just laughed and said, "Come on, let me show you this house. DuBois' Bloodsport first appeared in Superman Vol 2 #4 by John Byrne back in 1987. And if Jean-Claude had found out that I really was theat that time, the real force, if you wouldthat was giving him all these elements, Sheldon's usefulness would have been short-lived. And Menahem was dead set against it.Blake Harris: Why?Sheldon Lettich: [Laughing at the memory] His word for Jean-Claude was "poison." What is he, a walking dictionary of a secret society? KUMITE! So it should be a total of six blows, except this turned out to be a total of eight because of those two to Vic's head. So Grant's dad, he basically saw that I was struggling to make money so our family could eat and I could buy myself shoes. The Corsican Brothers. I don't remember in detail what our first interaction was like, but we just kind of hit it off.Blake Harris: Was it weird for you at all, as a Vietnam veteran, to be working on a book about the war that was written by someone who hadn't been there?Sheldon Lettich: Well, I didn't know that at the time. They were both pregnant at the same time. And Jean-Claude's phone began ringing off the hook. And then he said, "What the hell are we doing out here?" Brought his wife with him and we just hit it off, right from the getgo. Or was the movie developed in a totally different way?Frank Dux: Well I'll tell you what happened. He knew enough buzzwords to make me think he's the real deal, he's probably been over there. How did that happen? Double Impact was financed, mostly, through pre-sales and, as it was structured, each of those companies also own a piece of the movie. And Leon was going to star in the movie, which we called The White House All Stars with the "White House" being a frat house at this college where all the football players lived. So the play was groundbreaking in some ways. I was not an actor, so it was decided that I would be the writer member of this group. In Enter the Ninja, I didn't use my real name. I was just at his house for New Year's Eve. I made a joke and it just took him out of it, snapped him out of it.Blake Harris: Laughter is the best medicine, right?Frank Dux: I took him out of it. And he was friendly to me. So you have to get everyone on the same page and agree to make this movie. And that's what I found out later in life. He's also said it under oath by the way and identified me. We'd shoot one side of the screen with one of the brothers and then Jean-Claude would have to change his hair, make-up, wardrobe and we'd have a double standing in for another brother. And I said, "To be the best you've gotta fight the best. And I think it's because he felt very insecure. KUMITE! howdidthisgetmade@earwolf.com Episodes The Specialist LIVE! With Jean-Claude Van Damme, Donald Gibb, Leah Ayres, Norman Burton. And he said yeah. Give me a shot with him." I walked over there and he threw a playful kick at my head. And so he says yeah, sure, give it a shot. Enjoy, and please share and subscribe! "Blake Harris: [laughter]Sheldon Lettich: I tried to make my case. How blindsided were you when the piece came out?Frank Dux: Well, there was nothing I could do. We just became friends almost immediately. None of that is reported. And of course he says he did (but he didn't). Let's meet face to face. Ian Fleming based his characters on real people. So I have all these memories of falling down stairs and crawling on my knees. How Did This Get Made is a companion to the podcastHow Did This Get MadewithPaul Scheer, Jason MantzoukasandJuneDiane Raphaelwhich focuses on movies. He was born with all sorts of birth defectshe had one leg shorter than the other, he didn't have a jawboneand because of my own, I don't know, "disability," we became friends. So I just started calling it Bloodsport, and that was useful because this type of fighting, it had a different name depending on where you were. And he did. It's a tale so amazing that two months after the film's release, it was dismissed by the L.A. Times as nothing but a fabricated "macho fantasy." Released in 1988, Bloodsport tells the story of Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a captain in the U.S. Army and an experienced martial artist, who ignores his superiors and competes in an illegal martial arts tournament in Hong Kong. He had an answering machine at the time that had a limit of, like, 50 messages. In fact, Midway Games attempted to license Van Damme's image for the game. We're not friends [anymore] and he does everything in his power to try and paint me as being a nutball or a kook because of it.Blake Harris: That's why I wanted to focus this piece on you, so you can tell the story in your own words.Frank Dux: So now you're starting to hear the real truth of the matter, you know what I mean? And so the ink was barely dry when I drove right over to Moshe's house and we signed a deal to do what became Double Impact.Blake Harris: From a technological standpoint, what were some of the biggest challenges with shooting two Jean-Claudes?Sheldon Lettich: The biggest challenges were that we were still using old technology. I thought: Oh shit, I'm going to get my ass handed to me. I said, "But I can see your view from here and how the world could look bleak." I said, "Real Kumite fighters, we fight here. And then they had me give up my net points on the film.Blake Harris: Really?Frank Dux: Yeah, for Jean-Claude to have his career, I gave up my net points. Because we don't want our readers to be misinformed, Black Belt has a policy of strict verification of all facts pertaining to any article. Dux believes this article was part of a smear campaign orchestrated by business competitors. 4. He used Mike's own movements against him and dropped him. Bloodsport is the name of several supervillains appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics.All of these versions exist in DC's main shared universe, known as the DC Universe.. So any time you want to know who an agent is you can just go down there and file a request? So he goes there on his own to rescue Troutman, and that pretty much became the movie.Blake Harris: That's a good point. "This guy's never gonna make it," Menahem said. So Leon and I go and pitch this to Menahem. Except the version that Stallone had in mind was for a present day French Foreign Legion movie about two American buddies who enlist. 5 years ago. Plus, Bloodsport's connection with Flagg made the dynamic even better. He's in a documentary saying this. I also remember seeing something on Mayberry R.F.D. Like M was Admiral Menzies. Over the centuries, however, these . And the two of them, they didn't talk about it, but they'd basically bicker through their agents because neither one wanted to be the criminal who gets killed at the end. Then all of the sudden I got hit in the face with a Black Dragon shirt, and that's how I became the youngest Black Dragon in the history of the Black Dragons.Blake Harris: That's unbelievable. You see my point? I imagine it's hard to write a personal, firsthand account like that.Frank Dux: Here's the thing. When I heard that name, it was like bells started ringing. He had a chance to read them. But instead, he went back on his word and he did everything in his power to hold me down. "Below are some of the key points and accusations made in the piece: Frank Dux: By the way, the L.A. Times won't even defend the article anymore. Now, Frank did contribute a number of ideas to the Bloodsport script, but he claimed these were "life events" that actually happened to him, not fiction. To turn it into a TV series. I used my Hebrew name: Benjamin Wolf. He felt bad for him. So he brought Tracers to the Steppenwolf Theatre and he directed it. And it's kind of funny because those are superfluous elements to the film. His contract was not for writing, it was for use of his name and a portion of his "real-life story." And at the Invitationals, there's Bruce Lee. And then the fight was on. And a lot of pain, I guess, made me fight. And they wouldn't show it to me. And here it is, years later, I got to go with her and take it to the movies. You gotta admire the fact that he wanted to get a real Vietnam vet working on the script with him. That's what they always show on the history channel, those two to the head. It was a no-budget. And it was a Xeroxed copy of a receipt, a copy that anyone could fabricate on a home copy machine. But here's a photo from the screening, so I guess at least one person wanted to have their photo taken with me. By their own photographer. Sheldon tells everybody that I told him a story of how I fought these events and he thought that would make a great movie and all this kind of stuff. A secret martial arts contest? How else could you get a hold of this? We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. I said, "You're trying to prove to yourself that you could do it. I felt bad for him.Blake Harris: Actually, if you don't mind, I have one more question for you.Frank Dux: Sure.Blake Harris: We've spent all of this time talking about your life as a fighter and portrayals of your life as a fighter. And I said, "Okay, after dailies, I'll meet you up there." But then Menahem decided he didn't want to make the movie.Blake Harris: Why?Sheldon Lettich: In his words, I'm quoting, "Jean-Claude can't even play one character, how do you expect him to play two?" "But I will say this," Lettich continued. But, I mean, he couldn't do a forward roll when I first got him. Dux said the military ordered his record sabotaged to discredit him. Blake Harris: The Black Belt article got a lot of attention and certainly must have piqued the interest of some folks in Hollywood. With Bloodsport and Deadshot picking up each other weapons in battle. I never accused the military of doing it. Jean-Claude?Frank Dux: When we started? You can listen to theBloodsportedition of the HDTGM podcasthere. There's a birth certificate and a death certificate for him. How conscious were youand I don't mean with that movie, but in generalabout that kind of formula. They didn't know what to do, but they thought they'd give me a call. You wanted to help him be successful. 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