Post by Replicant on Nov 30, 2017 16:42:01 GMT
Jean-Claude Van Damme Plays Jean-Claude Van Damme, for Kicks
In the new Amazon show “Jean-Claude Van Johnson,” the seemingly washed-up Muscles from Brussels gleefully sends up his action star image.
By ROBERT ITONOV. 30, 2017
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — On a recent afternoon on his expansive estate here, in a beautifully appointed living room the size of a mead hall, Jean-Claude Van Damme suddenly fired a high kick at my face, stopping short of crunching cartilage and bone. I didn’t ask him to do it, but it was a thrill nonetheless. After all, he’s aimed that very same foot at the heads of action superstars like Dolph Lundgren, Bolo Yeung and Sylvester Stallone.
“I still love martial arts,” he said, breaking into a broad smile. “Martial arts changed my life. If you were born in the dojo, you will die in the dojo.”
It’s hard to picture Mr. Van Damme, famed for his devastating reverse roundhouse and epic splits, not kicking somebody. Even in his lousiest pictures — “I made lots of low-budget movies,” he admitted — he’s a thing of beauty, a graceful, whirling dynamo. He’s Jean-Claude Van Damme, the Muscles from Brussels, in every movie he makes. So it’s perhaps not such a surprise that, in his latest project, he’s playing himself, sort of.
On Dec. 15, Amazon Studios will release the first season of “Jean-Claude Van Johnson.” In the meta-series, part comedy, part drama, he plays a broken-down action star who makes terrible films — like a kung-fu-filled remake of “Huckleberry Finn” — as cover for his real gig as a lethal black-ops agent, code named Jean-Claude Van Johnson.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/arts/jean-claude-van-damme-amazon.html?smid=fb-share
In the new Amazon show “Jean-Claude Van Johnson,” the seemingly washed-up Muscles from Brussels gleefully sends up his action star image.
By ROBERT ITONOV. 30, 2017
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — On a recent afternoon on his expansive estate here, in a beautifully appointed living room the size of a mead hall, Jean-Claude Van Damme suddenly fired a high kick at my face, stopping short of crunching cartilage and bone. I didn’t ask him to do it, but it was a thrill nonetheless. After all, he’s aimed that very same foot at the heads of action superstars like Dolph Lundgren, Bolo Yeung and Sylvester Stallone.
“I still love martial arts,” he said, breaking into a broad smile. “Martial arts changed my life. If you were born in the dojo, you will die in the dojo.”
It’s hard to picture Mr. Van Damme, famed for his devastating reverse roundhouse and epic splits, not kicking somebody. Even in his lousiest pictures — “I made lots of low-budget movies,” he admitted — he’s a thing of beauty, a graceful, whirling dynamo. He’s Jean-Claude Van Damme, the Muscles from Brussels, in every movie he makes. So it’s perhaps not such a surprise that, in his latest project, he’s playing himself, sort of.
On Dec. 15, Amazon Studios will release the first season of “Jean-Claude Van Johnson.” In the meta-series, part comedy, part drama, he plays a broken-down action star who makes terrible films — like a kung-fu-filled remake of “Huckleberry Finn” — as cover for his real gig as a lethal black-ops agent, code named Jean-Claude Van Johnson.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/arts/jean-claude-van-damme-amazon.html?smid=fb-share