Jean-Claude Van Johnson Interviews

www.vulture.com/2017/12/jean-claude-van-damme-is-ready-to-get-serious.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s3&utm_campaign=sharebutton-t

Jean-Claude Van Damme Is Ready to Get Serious

By Amy Nicholson
December 14, 2017 

You once said that when you finish a film, if you believed in the character, you feel empty inside.

The first time it happened to me, I was in the movie In Hell. The director said something that shocked me in a good way. He said, “You have to play a guy who’s more honest than in your real life.” How can I be more honest than myself? So I start to sit differently, talk to people more straight in the eyes. I came into the feelings of being a simple guy who worked in a factory, married. He goes through lots of suffering. But when the movie was finished, I feel strange to go back to the Van Damme with the convertible car.



Is that feeling the same when you’re playing a character called Van Damme?

When I play this, you come home, you’re dead tired. You have no time to know which one you play. I mean, you know which one you play, but you don’t know which one you love. I love all of them. I love the blond one, I love Filip, and I love Van Damme, JCVD, JCVJ, JCVV — that’s the real him, but it’s all good.



Does saying lines that someone else wrote for a guy named Jean-Claude Van Damme give you a different perspective on who you are?

The Filip character, those are my fans. Lots of my fans are simple people, blue collar, go to the factory, they’re waiting for the next Van Damme movie, and they go and they have a beer. That’s my audience, and those people are great. You have your conscious and you have your subconscious. You can be very stupid by knocking this cup of coffee on your pants, or you can do it another way, but it’s the same event: The coffee will touch your pant. So in this movie, we’re pushing the strange a little too much, like “Wow, fresh idea!” But the acting is very serious. I didn’t care about what they made fun of. I wanted to play as neutral as possible. I gave my best to them and they took the best and put this together. It happens like that every 20 years, great movies.



Filip Van Damme signed his own contract. Does he have your same signature?

Actually, I signed a different one. You know contracts. It’s the lawyer, you know the rules.



Did he get paid the same?

No. Scale. Filip is not difficult.



In the first scene, this Van Damme can’t do the splits. If you do the splits every day, will you be able to do them when you’re 100?

Every day, no good. Three times a week. Every day will inflame you. You have to be careful. Also, some people are lucky. They have different types of hips. They have closed hips, open hips.



Spiral hips?

Yes, yes, yes, it’s true. I was not very flexible when I joined karate. But I was 9 years old, so we start young.



Early on, the show also shoots a close-up of your character’s pot belly. Have you ever really been out of shape?

It happened before on that movie, Derailed. I was out of shape. It was winter and I was upset. It was 9/11, all this CNN and the War in Iraq. I’d close the curtains and watch TV. I didn’t pay attention to much of the movie. I was eating in my room ice cream, meat — in Bulgaria. You stop training, that’s when you want to eat more. I wanted to get out of there, but I was signed to do this movie. Play or pay, I cannot go back.



How many times have you been to Bulgaria?

Oh, eight, nine, ten, twelve times. Many times.



This is set in Bulgaria, but for once, you got to stay home and shoot in L.A.

Can you believe that? I go, “We’re gonna shoot in Romania or Bulgaria?” They go, “No, no, no, we’re going to make Bulgaria here.” Here I am trying to escape and shoot in Los Angeles, L.A. studio, and then I see Bulgaria around me.



You choreographed several of the fights.

The old-fashioned way. You get those guys, they’re very good-looking, big muscles, but they cannot project a belief into one punch or one kick. In my school, Shotokan way, you have to be ready to go “Pop! Pop!” and that’s it.



What do you think of the John Wick, new James Bond fighting style?

They have big tools to play with, acrobatic, big money. But just two guys, if it’s well-choreographed with pushing and dialogue — “Are you gonna kick my ass?” “Oh yeah, you’re gonna kick my ass” — and then we have a fight, it doesn’t need a big crane. Two or three close-ups to where it hurts [punches palm of hand] Ooooaaaah! It can be expensive in terms of emotion. When you see those mafia movies, they bring so much danger to the scene and the eyes. We’re scared more of that presence than the actual action. To build something and explode. Cause all those guys, John Wick, I love it — pah, pah, shing, shang, whoop! — but it doesn’t go like this in real life.



Does anyone dare to try to fight you in real life anymore?

No, no. I’m who’s very difficult to fight with because I’m very simpatico. If a guy is pushing me around, I’m relaxed. Until it’s red alarm.



What physical comedians do you like? Buster Keaton? Charlie Chaplin?

People who don’t talk? Chaplin was amazing. Also, guys like McQueen that didn’t talk much, or Bronson. Also Bruce Lee. For comedy, Robin Williams. I loved Jerry Lewis when I was young. Even Jerry Lewis in that movie King of the Comedy when he’s not being funny. And the telephone — how do you say, telethon? — for the handicapped children he did.



Your charity is for endangered animals in Australia. Why Australia?

They have lots of space. And they have lots of animals there.



And they have emus, which here remind the fictional Van Damme of his childhood.

And they have horses. You know all the racehorses for Dubai? They’re all in Australia. They have many things in Australia. They have animals who doesn’t exist anywhere else, but also they’ve lost lots of species. Thousands.



How can we get people to fight for the environment?

Education. And also, people are weak. The best way for the earth, but it’s against logic, is if we can adopt instead of making children. But go tell that to two people who love each other, or some Catholic. That would be the only solution: less people, less disaster, less pollution, less food to consume. That will not happen. And then we have Mother Nature’s solution, which is water going up and up and up.



What about seeing movies in theaters? Is that going extinct?

Yes. But today, you have those flatscreen TVs, double-sized, you can stick them on the wall in two seconds. Stuff like that, I’m not afraid anymore. This was an expensive show. The first episode cost a fortune. I’ve got my CPA next to me and I go, “Look, so beautiful, so rich.” “Yeah, all this for a portable phone.” It hurt me because the lighting and all this for a portable phone.



How do you describe your career so far?

Right now, I’m doing well and things are going up. I don’t know if the show’s gonna be successful, but it will not hurt. The film business is one of the most beautiful businesses in the world — entertainment, Hollywood — but it’s not everything. The more you grow older, 55, 56, you start to understand that life is becoming short. You know the number 1-100, right? So one-quarter, half, two-thirds — when you’re close to two-thirds, does the one-third go like the normal database, or shorter? So we have to do more. I’m happy that I did go to the Amazon field. Why? It’s more big as a communicator. Like, if I was the messiah, I’ll come down on a website. So I can reach everybody: phone, TV, PC.



Between JCVD and JCVJ, you let a camera crew follow you for five months for the documentary Jean Claude Van Damme: Behind Closed Doors. Are there parts of your life that aren’t for entertainment?

I’ve got private time at the gym. And in my car. I love to go to the gym cause I have my silence. I like to drive my car. I have lots of dogs. I love my dogs, I love my friends, everything is beautiful.



How many dogs do you have?

Eight dogs. All different sizes. The smallest is like this [shrinks hands to the size of a basketball]. I’ve got chihuahua and Akita, Japanese something. The biggest is Harley. He’s like a lab. He’s goofy, but he’s such a good dog.



You’ve been wanting to work with Ridley Scott for a long time. What did you talk about when you finally met?

About signs and the Sumerian empire.



The Sumerian empire?

We talk about because he made that movie Prometheus — I say Propheseus, and he goes Prometheus, ah it’s the same. Ridley knows about everything. You can talk to him about here and there. He knows everything. Smart guy.



I heard your mom is coming to the Van Johnson premiere in Paris.

Can you believe? I told her a story in the course of my career, “Mom, one day I’ll go back to the big theater, like in Time Cop time, and it’s going to be in Paris.” Now we have the premiere in Paris, Ridley Scott and Peter and Amazon — it’s like big, right? So everything happened.



Do you like the movie Synecdoche, New York?

Which one? I didn’t see it.



PETER ATENCIO: There’s a lot of that in this.

Oh yeah? The Nut King? You’re gonna write it to me.

www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/the-reinvention-of-jean-claude-van-damme-w513789

The Reinvention of Jean-Claude Van Damme
By Kory Grow December 14, 2017

'Jean-Claude Van Johnson' finds the action star playing a more self-aware version of himself – here's how JCVD did it, in his own words


Jean-Claude Van Damme – the kickboxing King of the Splits, the street-fighting inspiration for the game Mortal Kombat, the fabled flexing "Muscles From Brussels" – can get seriously silly.

"I like to make voices with my kids," he says nonchalantly. "You see a cartoon and you do one." Then Van Damme asks, "Can you make a voice for me? Make a voice for me." After a few increasingly goofy back-and-forths, the star of Bloodsport comes back with a non-sequitur that sounds like a cross between Kermit the Frog and Ray Romano: "I'm sorry about your shoelace." He lets out a big laugh.


Long one of Hollywood's hardest men, Van Damme, now 57, shows a somewhat softer side in the new TV series, Jean-Claude Van Johnson, which premieres in full on Amazon on December 15th. The martial artist plays a fictionalized version of himself – a down-on-his-luck Van Damme (his preferred third-person way of referring to himself) who turns to covert, black-ops assignments as a means of reviving his career. Going undercover will also, he hopes, help him win back the woman he loves, a makeup artist (and special agent) named Vanessa, played by Kat Foster. By day, he acts in a ridiculous action-movie adaptation of Huckleberry Finn; by night he becomes alter ego "Jean-Claude Van Johnson," windmill-kicking his way through Europe's seedy drug underground in the name of justice. It's got enough action and plot twists, including plenty of references to his film oeuvre, to satiate the actor's core audience. But it's also tongue-in-cheek enough to show that everyone involved is in on the joke.

After all, Van Damme's manner in conversation is not brusque, like the tough guys he plays in films like Kickboxer, Timecop and Universal Soldier. Nor is he the depressed, fictionalized version of himself he played in JCVD, a role that earned him praise for his acting rather than his ass-kicking. Instead, he's earnest, easily prone to laughter and self-aware. At one point, he professes his love for Rolling Stone ("I was in Rolling Stone, like, 22 years ago ... I hope [you] like 'JCVJ'") and is pleasantly surprised when told we wanted to talk to him about the project. "Oh, I see, so you are choosing us?" he says. "That is an honor."


In some ways, Jean-Claude Van Johnson mirrors the Muscles From Brussels' real life. While his career is far from shambolic, this was his first production to film in the United States in more than a decade by his account. "The people in Los Angeles are very professional," he says, adding that he liked getting more time to develop his character than usual. And he's also played his share of wacky roles. Once a major box office draw, many of his films since 2001 have come out direct-to-video. And, like Van Johnson's Huck (and pitches for "action re-imaginings" of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Anne of Green Gables), he's gotten more than his fair share of oddball pitches.

"There was a movie in France called Dog [Chien]," Van Damme says. "It's about a guy who loses his dog, and he has a coupon left to train his dog, so he comes to me. I say, 'I can train you to be a dog.' So he's becoming my dog with a leash, and he runs for the ball. The man's wife left him and makes him believe he has the 'anti-Van Damme' disease." He laughs. "It's a great, cynical movie. It's like a Depardieu-type of film."

Van Damme chose to work on Van Johnson because it was an opportunity to show off different sides of his personality. "It's kind of a complicated show, but it makes sense at the end," he says. Comedy, he says, comes easy to him as long as he can get the timing right. He didn't worry about the more personal aspects of the script because he has known creator Dave Callaham for years ("I've known him since he was in China with his mother; she's into martial arts") and never felt uncomfortable with the show's jokes, such as people mistaking him for both Nicolas Cage and Val Kilmer.

His only reservation was working on something that wasn't a motion picture. "I was scared because TV is different," he says. "TV is a lot of dialogue and it's a different type of business. It's three months, 8 to 10 or 11 o'clock at night every day."

The star eventually fell into the groove, even though he lives a generally more relaxed life off camera. Usually, a day in the life of Van Damme starts at around 10 in the morning: "I get my little coffee, then I kiss all my dogs. I have lots of dogs, like eight dogs, so I play with them for 10 to 20 minutes. I say hello to my wife before the dogs, of course, but if I don't see her in the house, I say hello to the dogs first." He rides a hover-board around his home ("It's a big house," he says) before he settles down to look at YouTube and read articles. "Then I go to the gym, ride my car – it's a convertible car," says the actor. "And I come home slowly at night with my dog – I bring my dog to the gym.

[..]

Discipline, which for him comes from martial arts ("My real love," he says, "it's the art of perfection"), is his guiding light. And he gives a lot of credit to the amount of time he spends training. A few years ago, Van Damme enjoyed 15 minutes of viral fame when a Volvo ad, which showed him calmly doing a very wide split with his feet resting on two moving 10-wheel trucks, became a hit. His ability to stretch his legs is a major part of Jean-Claude Van Johnson, in fact; still, he demurs when the subject comes up in an interview. "Everyone is asking me if it's gotten harder to do the splits," he says. "I can, but it's going to get tough later. You have to keep stretching. That's the secret. Just don't stretch too much. Only do it three times a week; if not, you can inflame your tendons."

His M.O. is to move his body up and down "like an octopus moving in the water, trying to get away from a plexi box" but he won't do it without a spotter. On a similar note, he likes to train other people, and there's a scene in Jean-Claude Van Johnson where he trains Foster. The actor says she surprised him. "Not only did she have flexibility but she had power," he says. "She kicked me in the face accidentally. But believe me, behind that foot was pure horse power."

Van Damme also credits training with helping him handle depression in real life. After he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in in the late Nineties, he took the time to study himself. "I train differently, I eat differently, I'm trying to talk less fast because I have lots of passion for the project," he says. "I'm better than yesterday."

It's a side of himself that he allowed to show in Jean-Claude Van Johnson. In one scene, he faces what appears to be a clone of himself and asks the alternate Van Damme to tell him something only he would know. "You tried to fill your emptiness with fame, and it didn't work," the Other Van Damme says. "You have a big hole in your heart because you don't think that you will ever be loved." The real-life star says that line struck him on a gut level. "It was good dialogue," he says. "Dave must know me, because it was internal. It was close to home."

The show also afforded Van Damme an opportunity to reflect on his legacy. With some of the plot focusing on an actor relishing past glories – there's even a Blockbuster Video cameo in one episode – he says he was able to appreciate what he did in the past. "I like Bloodsport, Timecop and Lionheart," he says. "I've done some good classic films with lots of heart and sincerity. I like to mention that, because in the VHS era – with Stallone and Arnold – and in some countries you had to go by bicycle or bus through the snow to return tapes. It was almost like an event. Papa or mama would slide the tape in, nobody talks, you cut the phone. And it was able for families to enjoy being together. The VHS disappeared, so now you can watch 2,000 fresh new Van Dammes and you will forget them. But in that period, I had the chance to have two cycles of audience. Now Amazon is a new audience for me."

[..]

"I have been through so many situations in my life, where I say, 'OK, I am back up,'" he continues, sounding serious this time. "I'm back up again, but we'll see if this it. There could be an earthquake tomorrow. But you never know. It's a great way to come back."

“I trained this morning. I did my bicycle and 40 minutes of weights, kickboxing and stretching," he told Men’s Health. He also works out two muscle groups per day: "Let’s say, when I do my chest, I will do biceps and forearms, and [the next day] triceps and back and calves, and then my legs and abs. One day rest, one day train. And then I also do cardio three times a week."

As fit as Van Damme is, he still allows himself the occasional treat.

“Now I am eating an oatmeal cookie! I do love my cookie and my coffee,” he admitted.

[..]

Oh, and in case you were wondering if he can still do his remarkable signature move, Van Damme wants to put that to rest: “I can still do my splits!” he proudly enthused.

Read more here: www.menshealth.com/fitness/jean-claude-van-damme-workout-routine

Interview: Jean-Claude Van Damme on Amazon’s action comedy Jean-Claude Van Johnson
December 15, 2017 by John 'Spartan' Nguyen

“There was a lot of times where he would have an idea for how to make a character unique like Felipe,” Director Peter Atencio added. “JC came to Dave and pitched that voice. ‘What if he talked like this?’ and did the voice. ‘Great! It’s amazing! Do that!’ There was a lot of collaboration. It’s a lot of fun!”
“It’s kind of cool to be able to throw ideas,” Van Damme added. “And then for them to listen to them and digest them. I tell Dave and Peter, ‘I have this crazy idea.’ I came with a cartoon mind and cartoon thoughts. I was raised with cartoon images. And they took some of them like Felipe and some that don’t belong there. Amazon gave us a lot of freedom because normally the company wouldn’t allow us to touch the story anymore.”

[..]

Since the show does mix fantasy with Van Damme’s history, how much of it is fiction, and how much of it is fact?
“50/50,” Van Damme said.
“You’ll have to guess which 50/50 though,” Callaham added.

Read more at nerdreactor.com/2017/12/15/jean-claude-van-johnson-interview/#EChyWxBGrVTmXQpa.99

www.cbr.com/jean-claude-van-johnson-jean-claude-van-damme-interview/

How Jean-Claude Van Damme Transitioned From Action to Comedy

You have a lot of fun in the show with JC not being prepared to dive back into this lifestyle as an undercover operative. Jean-Claude, were you fully ready to to dive back in to this level of exposure?



Van Damme: Yeah because I know that with a platform I’m going to 248 countries, I’ll go maybe to 52 to 54. Spanish, English, German, French, American. This is my chance now to have my bigger type of Bloodsport, and a different audience — 15 to 25 — and also have their parents. Dave’s mom, she’s Chinese and she watches my movies, Peter’s father loves my movies. He knows my movie by heart because they spend that time together. That generation, they’re going to come back.



It’s a huge thing, so of course this is the best movie for me to do in terms of career move. I was, for 10 years, where? In the gutter — no budget, all that shit, and respect to those because sometimes they come out as a miracle, but today no. Suddenly [executive producer] Ridley Scott and these two guys here equal quality script, good crew, 15 day shoots, lots of money, and now everything’s perfect.



The first six episodes of Jean-Claude Van Johnson are available now on Amazon Video.