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The Love List ‘In the Mood for Love’ (2000) Stream it on HBO Max. Wong Kar-wai’s tale of unrequited passion is a sensual feast. Set in Hong Kong in 1962, it stars Tony Leung as a journalist who moves into an apartment with his wife but falls for his neighbor, a married secretary played by […] More
Yes, the Japanese team was one of cinema’s great collaborations. But Film Forum’s salute to Toshiro Mifune shows that he was a superb actor no matter who was in the director’s chair.Toshiro Mifune once wrote of his collaboration with the director Akira Kurosawa, “I have never as an actor done anything that I am proud of other than with him.”OK. Fine. Those were 16 pretty great movies the two of you made together. But you made roughly 170 movies! Never?We can judge whether Mifune, who died in 1997, was being a little too harsh on himself (and his many other directors) beginning this weekend at Film Forum, where a four-week festival will present 33 of the great Japanese actor’s films, as well as a documentary, “Mifune: The Last Samurai.”It includes all the movies Mifune and Kurosawa made together — certified masterpieces like “Seven Samurai” and “Rashomon,” as well as less well-known but excellent pictures like “High and Low” and “Red Beard.” The chance to see them on a theater screen shouldn’t be missed.But a lot has already been said about those films — I don’t have much new to offer on “Seven Samurai” — and it’s the other half of the Film Forum program where you’re more likely to find some surprises.As a contract player for the Toho studios, Mifune never stopped working — according to “The Last Samurai,” at the peak of his career he appeared in 27 movies in a four-year period. Some of them were filler, no doubt, but the 1950s and ’60s were a great era for Japanese film, and when he wasn’t with Kurosawa, Mifune got to work with other top-flight directors like Hiroshi Inagaki and Masaki Kobayashi.Here, in the order they were made, are some highlights from the series’s non-Kurosawa productions. Mifune might not have been working with his favorite director, but watching these, it’s clear that he still brought his expressive physicality, his quicksilver emotion and his unparalleled charisma to the set every day.Mifune making his film debut as a bank robber on the lam in “Snow Trail.”Janus Films‘Snow Trail’Mifune’s first feature, a tense and bittersweet 1947 thriller filmed in the snowy mountains of Hokkaido, feels as if it could be a Kurosawa film. That’s probably because Kurosawa wrote the screenplay for the director, Senkichi Taniguchi. The 27-year-old Mifune had been discovered in a Toho cattle call for actors, and he’s shockingly handsome, with a wild lock of hair hanging down over his face. He also knew how to command the camera from the very start. As the youngest and most ruthless of a group of bank robbers on the lam, he’s a tight bundle of angry, nervous energy — you spend the picture waiting for him to explode. (As an older and more conscience-stricken crook, Takashi Shimura makes the first of many appearances alongside Mifune.)‘Samurai Saga’Mifune’s Macbeth in “Throne of Blood” is widely celebrated, but fewer people know that he is also an excellent Cyrano in Inagaki’s 1959 adaptation of “Cyrano de Bergerac.” It’s a kick to see Mifune in a role in which his mastery of language is more important than his looks and just as important as his fighting ability (though swordplay is crucial to the story, of course). French 19th-century romance transfers well to the 17th-century Shogunate; Inagaki stages the famous first-act poetry duel on a Kabuki stage, with Mifune dealing sword blows between verses to an entire company of attackers. And Mifune’s ability to play the alpha male with notes of humor and abashment suits him perfectly when it comes to the ultimate rom-com hero.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More
The French director is candid about his fights with Harvey Weinstein and his reasons for working with Netflix. And he can’t hide his joy about a rerelease of “Amélie.”The French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a conjurer of whimsical visions for the big screen, like his most beloved work, “Amélie.” But for his first movie in nearly a decade, “Bigbug,” out Friday, he chose to work with Netflix.This retro-futuristic comedy, which debuted Friday, is set in 2045, when artificial intelligence facilitates most quotidian tasks but also threatens mankind. Featuring Jeunet’s signature irreverence and colorful mise en scène, “Bigbug” follows an ensemble cast of offbeat characters and their domestic robots, confined to a technologically advanced home by the malevolent androids that now rule the world. Together they must find a way out.Jeunet considers it a cynical entry in an oeuvre that includes “Delicatessen” (1991), about a murderous landlord and his tenants in a postapocalyptic reality, and “The City of Lost Children” (1995), a steampunk fantasy centering on a mad scientist who steals children’s dreams.Speaking shortly before the recent Oscar nominations, the director, 68, said that two decades later it still pains him that “Amélie” didn’t win any of the five Academy Awards it was up for in 2002.He said he believed the academy shut out his film over the producer Harvey Weinstein’s awards campaign tactics. “It was a punishment, not for me but for him,” he said. “But this was our year! That is a trophy I would have liked to have.”Jeunet was speaking from his home in Paris. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Claude Perron in a scene from the retro-futuristic “BigBug.”NetflixWere you thinking about the dystopias of your earlier films, like “The City of Lost Children” and “Delicatessen,” when you were writing “Bigbug”?I used to say this was “Delicatessen 2.0.” No, the concept was to make a cheap movie, because all my films are very expensive and I was looking for something with a single set, like “Delicatessen.” It was a concept to write a story with people stuck in a room and it was created before Covid, which is funny. We wrote this story during the shooting of “The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet” [about a boy genius on a cross-country journey]. I’m sure you don’t know about it.I actually have seen it.Oh, you saw it! Cool, because Harvey Weinstein did everything he could to kill that movie. [Laughs] Have you seen it in 3-D?Yes, it played in a couple theaters in 3-D in 2015. I remember it took a long time to be released in the U.S.I know, because he didn’t care. I refused to modify the film. Of course he wanted to re-edit, but now it’s fun to imagine him in jail. [Laughs]Can you elaborate on what happened with Harvey Weinstein on that film?He told me, “We will do something better than with ‘Amélie.’ I promise.” But when after some test screenings he was like a gallery owner saying to the painter, “We’re going to modify the green because in U.S. we don’t like green. I will ask the framer to put some blue instead.” I refused. I said, “I won’t change one frame.” So he punished me like he punished everybody. He wanted to do that with “Amélie” as well, but he couldn’t because it was such a success. He never touched a thing.Your films often feature mechanical gadgets. “Bigbug” has a lot of robots that were physically built.I love to imagine these objects because I get to keep them. I don’t know if it’ll be possible with Netflix. I hope so. Two years ago, a beautiful exhibition of props from our movies in Paris and in Lyon had 180,000 admissions. I was waiting for money for “Bigbug” and nobody wanted to produce it. But yes, it was such a pleasure to imagine the robots, especially Einstein [a mechanical bust resembling the physicist]. He had 82 motors inside to move.Thinking of how “Bigbug” presents technology, are you afraid of the future or what the future may hold for humanity?I am just curious, because I am not young and I would like to live to see what will be the next gadget, the next iPhone, the next GPS. Maybe there will be more drama, maybe nothing. Maybe the earth will disappear like in “Don’t Look Up.” I’m curious more than afraid. If I had kids, maybe I would be more scared about the future.What do you believe it says about the future of our flawed species?I hate messages. But if there is a message in “Bigbug” it is that artificial intelligence will never kill human beings because they will stay stupid. They don’t have a soul. They try to have a sense of humor, but they don’t understand anything. [Laughs]Jeunet working with François Levantal during production of “BigBug.”Bruno Calvo/NetflixWhy do you think it was difficult to find the funds to produce “Bigbug”?Because in France, when you have something original you’re [expletive]. It was the case with “Delicatessen.” The same for “Amélie.” It was too weird, too quirky, as you say in English. With Netflix it was kind of a dream. They wrote me and said, “Do you have something?” And I said, “Yes, I have a film, but in France nobody likes it. You won’t like it.” [Laughs] They told me, “Send it.” Twenty-four hours later it was greenlighted!Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More
As a pop star who weds a math teacher in a stunt wedding, Jennifer Lopez is all business. But the original songs shine.The director Kat Coiro narrates a sequence from her film featuring Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson and Maluma.Universal PicturesRarely are romantic comedies titled more desperately than “Marry Me.” There is something pleasing about the bluntness. And because it’s a command that involves Jennifer Lopez, we’re permitted to skate atop the movie’s despair. But the ice is thin. Lopez has rarely stayed emotionally still long enough to luxuriate in moods less emphatic than “I will” and “I do.” Her comedies argue for restlessness as a quest for true stability: The right man soothes her nerves, dispels her doubts, restores her worth. But none of those movies has been as point-blank as this new one, whose original source is a punky graphic novel.The pop star she’s playing, Kat Valdez, has agreed to a stunt wedding during a live concert (and before a presumed online audience of 20 million) with her pop star boyfriend, Bastian. Within minutes of the ceremony, Kat discovers that he’s been messing around with one of her assistants but she decides to wed someone and picks the divorced dad (Owen Wilson) holding a “marry me” sign in the crowd. Lopez performs this choice so lifelessly yet with such automatic determination that it’s fair to classify the sign as a cue card.This brand-new relationship is Kat’s way of mourning her suddenly old one. Introspection and grief never cross her mind. “Why do I pick the wrong guy?” is as inward as things get. Amazingly, the next day, she endorses sticking with the brand logic of the marriage while doing yoga in her soulless high-rise home. She couldn’t have selected a blander, less objectionable stranger for a husband than Charlie Gilbert. He teaches middle-school math, co-parents one of those only-in-a-movie preteens (she’s spunky yet unsure of herself) and speaks in Wilson’s drawling whine.Jennifer Lopez, left, portrays a pop star who weds a teacher played by Owen Wilson in the romantic comedy “Marry Me.”Universal PicturesCharlie dislikes the demands of Kat’s celebrity. “Her entire life is sponsored,” he cries, upon watching her shoot a post for Vitamix. But he concedes to the arrangement because, it seems, the daughter (Chloe Coleman), a big Kat Valdez fan, will finally believe her dad likes fun. He never sits her down to talk about fun’s downsides. Does she know why he and her mom aren’t together? How aware is she that Kat’s been married three other times and that one of those marriages lasted for two days? It doesn’t matter because this movie vows to satisfy all involved parties.Does “involved” include me? I just kept counting the missed opportunities. Once, at about the halfway point, Charlie bets Kat that she can’t give up her accouterments of affluence and live like, say, Jenny from the block. Yet what Kat requests in exchange is so … puny — for Charlie to open some social media accounts — that I hurt for her imagination. (That’s his daughter’s version of proof of life.) There’s a movie in that premise, nonetheless. Maybe even some stakes: Kat may yet discover where she keeps the wine glasses and how to properly use a Vitamix (they’re called lids, Kat.) And, online, Charlie might meet a woman who dreams of even more for him. And hopefully, Lopez would play her, too.She has her moments as Kat. They’re mostly physical: mincing down a school hallway in formfitting, scarlet couture under a parka; uttering the word “Peoria” then appearing there, as if the mother ship abandoned her. Here is a star who’s been performing for so long that performance is all, as an actor, she knows. If Kat isn’t teaching Charlie’s math students how to dance in order to calm their pre-competition jitters, she’s luring them into singing one of her hits at a school formal. This is Lopez’s best mode, and she’s always known it.But rather than indulge her stardom and its candy shell, the movie, which Kat Coiro directed from a screenplay credited to three writers, seems to apologize for them. Kat wishes for a kind of pedestrian normalcy, a common prayer of princesses in everything from the delight of “Roman Holiday” and “Notting Hill” to the despondence of “Beyond the Lights” and “Spencer.” “Marry Me,” though, has an awkward, translucent ply. Kat’s discography includes a catchy convolution whose chorus is “I am the love of, the love of my life.”So many parallels exist between Lopez’s character and what, in reality, we know Lopez has withstood that the movie all but doubles as one of those brand-burnishing docu-selfies, right down to a crowd-pleasing retreat into the arms of a white suitor after someone charismatic and brown has let her down. The Colombian singer Maluma plays Bastian; he’s a bag of cuddles here, masquerading as a red flag. At some point, Kat even notes that she’s never been nominated for anything. (The happiest we see her in the whole movie is on Grammy nomination day.)The original songs are the best things in the movie. Those, and the two or three scenes in which Sarah Silverman — as Charlie’s sidekick and, somehow, a school guidance counselor — appears to abandon a script that it pained me to watch her obey. The pain extends to Lopez. I spend her movies waiting for the moments in which she seems most relaxed and least forced, when the effort has fallen away and the person she’s playing is free to do and be and feel. “Marry Me” is a sad tale that’s too busy leaping from plot point to plot point for Lopez to express anything close to real. It tells a lot and shows nothing.I keep referring to her and Kat as entertainers, which, of course, they are. But what Lopez performs here — what she’s frequently performing — is the business of entertainment. She’s the star as executive, and all she often lets us see is execution. (Kat’s truest friend is her manager, an efficient Englishman, whom John Bradley plays with persuasive concern.) Kat and Charlie don’t meet much of each other’s families. And the movie denies them any chance to explore the weirdness of this relationship. He’s something Kat must do — although not carnally, never that; we just get a morning after in which she’s long removed herself from his bed and is taking work calls. Which is fine. But don’t call this love when all we see is task management.Marry MeRated PG-13. Kisses, cunning, backup dancers in body suits with nuns’ habits. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters and streaming on Peacock. More
Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More
The director Kat Coiro narrates a sequence from her film featuring the actress and Maluma.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.An outsized pop performance strikes some tender emotions in this scene from “Marry Me.”Jennifer Lopez stars as Kat Valdez, a pop star who had planned to marry another musician, Bastian (Maluma), at a concert before she discovers he’s been cheating on her. She decides to marry a random concertgoer, Charlie (Owen Wilson), instead.This scene comes after Charlie and Kat have been spending time together, getting a feel for each others’ lives, when Bastian asks Kat to perform with him again at Madison Square Garden, doing a ballad version of their hit song “Marry Me.” Charlie doesn’t attend the concert, but watches at home and is struck by the chemistry between Bastian and Kat onstage. Narrating the scene, the director Kat Coiro said she wanted this performance to be the biggest event of the film to contrast Kat’s superstar life with Charlie’s modest teacher life.To pull the sequence off, which involves reactions from a packed audience, Coiro and her team filmed the crowd at one of Maluma’s concerts and paired that with footage of Lopez and Maluma performing in an empty Madison Square Garden.Read the “Marry Me” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More
The new three-part film “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” has been in the works since the early 2000s. In an interview, the directing duo Coodie & Chike discuss its long journey to Netflix.“Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” Netflix’s three-part documentary about the rise of Kanye West, does not dwell, or seek to correct the record, on the most well-known of the rapper’s celebrity blowups. George W. Bush, Taylor Swift, Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian hardly factor. There has never been a shortage of West analyzing his own travails, after all.Instead, relying on casual footage chronicling the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of West’s 2004 debut album, “The College Dropout,” the four-hour-plus film lingers on quieter, pre-fame moments: chats with his mother, Donda, about the difference between confidence and arrogance; the desperation of trying to play his demo CD for disinterested peers; a more respected artist being disgusted by West’s orthodontics retainer.Behind the camera throughout was Clarence Simmons, a stand-up comedian-turned-director known as Coodie, who along with his creative partner, Chike Ozah, has been compiling video of West for more than 20 years. But that wasn’t always the plan.Originally conceived as a “Hoop Dreams”-style feature, the documentary was supposed to end in the early 2000s, with West — who is now legally known by his old nickname, Ye — winning his first Grammy Award. But as West developed from a nerdy Chicago beatmaker for Jay-Z to a polarizing, era-defining artist across music, fashion and more, he grew apart from Coodie, an old neighborhood friend, and changed his mind about the project, leaving hundreds of hours of tape in limbo.Following some false starts and brief reconciliations, the directing duo Coodie & Chike, as they are credited, finally found traction — and more time with West — in recent years, amid another uptick in controversy. West’s mental health struggles, disastrous 2020 presidential run and recent album named for his late mother all get some airtime in the third episode.Yet the core of “Jeen-Yuhs” remains the vérité depiction of West’s chrysalis years, with Coodie filling in the gaps in time by telling his own story of personal metamorphosis and creative ambition. “This is not the definitive story of Kanye West, this is the story told through the most unique perspective,” said Ian Orefice, the president of Time Studios, which co-produced the project.Ahead of its first-episode premiere on Wednesday, Coodie and Chike discussed the long-gestating documentary, the ups and downs of living alongside mega-fame and West’s last-minute demands for final cut of the film. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Chike Ozah, left, and Clarence Simmons, known as Coodie, collected early footage of West’s rise — and then had to wait.Rafael Rios for The New York TimesThe film begins with the premise that you always knew Kanye would make it big. What first convinced you that he was going to be a star?COODIE It started with his production. But then I would just keep running into Kanye, and I remember he was performing with his group, the Go Getters. He just commanded the stage. I was like, “This is the dude! The producer — he’s the one.” Then I saw how he loved the camera. He was loving the camera. He wanted to rap for anybody, and it was just like he was performing for a thousand people, but it’s just one person and he’s rapping to them.What was Kanye’s original reason for not putting a film out back then? In the footage, he’s so excited to tell people you’re making a documentary.COODIE He said, “Man, I don’t want nobody to see my real self.” He said, “I’m acting right now.” It was too intimate. But I feel like the reason why he was loving me filming him at the beginning was just because I was that dude, really. I was popular in Chicago — cool, funny.CHIKE You brought value to his brand in Chicago instantly, just by deciding to have him on Channel Zero [Coodie’s original hip-hop show on public access television].COODIE The greatest ambition was for him to win a Grammy, and I wanted to follow him to see it. But it’s definitely, definitely a blessing that it didn’t come out, because I didn’t know what I was doing at all.What was it like to watch the rest of his rise from more of a distance?COODIE I was so proud to see him accomplishing all the things he was accomplishing. But then I felt left out, too. Like when he went to Oprah, I’m like, “I want to meet Oprah!”CHIKE It’s not all peachy and clean. I think that’s the case with anybody that’s on the rise to stardom like this. Coodie and I definitely felt what it’s like when outsiders come in and start jockeying for position. We had that Bryan Barber and Outkast vibe for a minute — like we’ll rise together and do all these music videos. But as he got bigger, more people started coming into the fold and you just get pushed out. Luckily, Coodie and I had a relationship and a bond together and we were able to find creativity elsewhere.At that point, did you believe the project to be dead or did you always assume you would return to it eventually?COODIE I felt like we would come back to it someday. I used to look at all the mini-DVs, and the bigger he got, I knew how much more valuable my footage would be: One day in God’s time, this is going to happen.He sat us at the table at Kris Jenner’s house, right before “Pablo” [the “Life of Pablo” album in 2016], he was like, “Man, you know, I get misunderstood a lot.” He asked us to be his voice. We thought it was time for the documentary to come out, for people to see the real Kanye. He was working with Scooter Braun at the time and we were at HBO with it. Then all of a sudden, they had other plans for Kanye. We were right there and it just went to nothing.It felt, to me, that Kanye was crying out for help at that moment. Right after, he went on the Saint Pablo tour and that’s when he had the breakdown — he calls it the “breakthrough.” I was really, really worried. I thought we were supposed to help him and we weren’t able to because of the powers around him. Not only did I feel worried, I was extremely mad about it.“I did ask Kanye, ‘Did you watch the film?’” Coodie said. “And he said that’s not his process.”NetflixOn a practical level, how did you keep all those tapes safe?COODIE I really didn’t even. You’d just see it in a duffle bag, shoe boxes.CHIKE But it’s like bricks of gold in there.COODIE It’s in storage now, though!When did you know that you finally had his full buy-in?COODIE When I showed him the sizzle. He called me out of nowhere and said he was working on an album about his mom and he wanted to use some of my footage. He asked for my blessing and I said, “Oh, for sure, but I need your blessing for something. I’ll fly wherever you’re at.” His security called me like, “Can you come to D.R. tomorrow morning?” When I finally showed him the sizzle, he was like, “We’ve got to put this out tomorrow.”There’s a moment in the footage from the Dominican Republic when he goes off on what some might call a classic Kanye rant and you cut the camera. Why?COODIE I felt like I needed to pay attention. I’ve never filmed him like that. When I film him, there’s a certain way that he is with me — he’s himself. At that moment, he was not himself. When you’re taking medication, you’re not supposed to have alcohol. I knew Kanye wasn’t supposed to drink. It just so happened he had a drink in his hand. I wasn’t going to interrupt this business meeting to say something, but I kind of wanted to. It seemed like right after that drink, something happened. I said, “Forget this camera — this is my brother right here.”Once the film was in motion, how involved did he want to be and how involved did you want him to be?COODIE He said, “Let’s me and you do it,” and I told him, “You have to trust me on this.” Meaning no creative control. I said, “It would not be authentic if you have it.” He got all of that. And that was it.Then you get to the 1-yard line, 20-plus years later, and he drops a bomb on Instagram about wanting final cut.COODIE I almost fainted [laughs]. It was on my birthday — Jan. 18. He didn’t post that then, but I’m getting text messages. I’m like, “What? We finished!”On his birthday [in June], I went to L.A. with the rough cuts of the film to show him. I said the only way you can watch this film is with everybody who was there at the beginning who loves you. So we was getting a house, I had everybody ready to go — we’re going to laugh, cry, embrace Ye. But he wound up going to the South of France and it didn’t happen. Then my birthday, I get that text — next thing I know, I look up and here comes everybody with the cake. “Happy birthday to you!”Did he ask again about getting into the editing room?COODIE Nah, his process is to have people look at it, so we showed them the film. I did ask Kanye, “Did you watch the film?” And he said that’s not his process.The movies that we’ve done, nobody had final cut. We did Martin Luther King — the family didn’t have final cut. We did Muhammad Ali — they didn’t. Stephon Marbury didn’t see his documentary until aired it at Tribeca. Our intent is pure and that’s really all that matters.Do you have favorite stuff from the cutting room floor that you just couldn’t squeeze in there, no matter how much you wanted to?CHIKE There’s a scene when Kanye goes back to Chicago to perform at a tribute to people who were lost in the E2 tragedy [a stampede at a Chicago nightclub]. When he gets there, he ends up having to settle up a beef with another rapper. He almost gets a bottle cracked over his head — it gets real ugly. It could’ve gone somewhere worse. And Kanye’s not even that type of artist! But he still can’t escape the street mentality. And it deals with a beat that Jay-Z ended up with that helped propel Kanye’s career.COODIE It was “Never Change” on “The Blueprint.” He sold Jay-Z the track that he sold to [the Chicago rapper] Payroll as well. Payroll wrote the hook — “out hustling, same clothes for days.” Kanye let Payroll know he was about to sell it, but he also did Payroll’s hook. Kanye took care of Payroll after that, but Payroll was like, hold on … He said, “Kanye you’ve got to give me more.” I’m telling them like, nah! But for them to crush the beef was good, too.Kanye is back in the tabloids these days because of his divorce. When you see this celebrity hurricane side of his life, do you worry for him?COODIE I used to worry, but I know that God has his back. He almost died in a car accident a couple of times — he had a car accident in Chicago even before he moved to New York, flipped his truck over. A couple other incidents that I’ve seen — God is really looking out for him, for whatever reason. When I see this now, I’m like, it’s going to pass like everything else did. More
He taught thousands of senseis how to run a dojo, all the while trading kicks onscreen with Lee and Chuck Norris.Bob Wall, a martial arts master who with quick business wits and even fleeter fists propelled disciplines like karate, aikido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu into the American mainstream, along the way making friends and sharing the screen with the likes of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, died on Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. He was 82.His wife, Lillian Wall, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.For the millions of fans devoted to 1970s martial arts movies, Mr. Wall was best known for his role in the 1973 film “Enter the Dragon,” in which, as the thug O’Hara, he torments a vengeful undercover agent named Lee, played by Mr. Lee.At 6 feet 1 inch tall, with a full tuft of hair and a scraggly beard, Mr. Wall towered over the wiry, diminutive Mr. Lee, who, in the film, nevertheless overpowers his adversary by kicking him to the ground and crushing his chest. It’s an indelibly grisly moment, and a sharp contrast to the close bond the two men shared in real life.They had met in 1963, at a kung fu demonstration in Los Angeles’s Chinatown neighborhood, where Mr. Wall had withstood the instructor’s blows without dropping his beer.“At that point reality hit that I’d blown this guy’s demo, so I started walking toward the door,” Mr. Wall recalled in a 2011 interview. “I saw this tough-looking guy walking toward me, so I said, ‘This guy, I’m gonna clock,’ and he walks up close to me and says, ‘Hey that was funny. I’m Bruce Lee!’”They ended up talking in the parking lot for three hours.Mr. Lee was still an unknown martial arts instructor in Oakland who, like Mr. Wall, was drawn to Los Angeles’s budding combat-sports scene. Mr. Wall was a student of another instructor, Mr. Norris, an Air Force veteran and martial arts champion.The three became fast friends, and in 1967 Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris went into business together, running a series of studios in the San Fernando Valley, a part of Los Angeles that two decades later would provide the setting for “The Karate Kid.”Martial arts was an exclusively male domain at the time, fought without padding and producing more than a few broken noses and cracked teeth. But entrepreneurs like Mr. Wall saw an opportunity to make studios more professional and family friendly. Through manuals and seminars that he took around the country, he taught thousands of aspiring senseis how to run a dojo.“There were a lot of people who would open a school and start teaching and it would all fall into place or not,” Roy Kurban, a taekwondo champion who was inspired by Mr. Wall to open his own studio in Fort Worth, Texas, said in a phone interview. “He built a business system.”Mr. Lee, meanwhile, had begun his steady rise to global stardom. An appearance at the 1964 International Karate Championships in Long Beach, where he demonstrated his signature moves like the two-finger push up and the one-inch punch, led him to a role as Kato, the sidekick on the 1960s TV show “The Green Hornet,” and later to a series of movie deals.From left, Chuck Norris, Mr. Lee and Mr. Wall. The three became fast friends and Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris ran a series of martial arts studios together.via Wall familyMartial arts movies were huge in Asia but largely unknown in the United States. Mr. Lee decided to change that, in part by incorporating roles for Black and white actors, including Mr. Wall, who won a part alongside Mr. Norris in Mr. Lee’s first major film released in America, “The Way of the Dragon” (1972).Mr. Wall could take a hit, which put him in good stead with Mr. Lee, who insisted on doing his own stunts and refused to pull punches during fight scenes. Mr. Wall recalled that before they started filming “Enter the Dragon,” Mr. Lee told him, “Bob, I wanna hit you, and I wanna hit you hard.”Even the broken bottles that O’Hara wields against Lee were real — which presented a problem when Mr. Lee, a perfectionist, insisted on shooting that part of the scene nine times, with Mr. Wall repeatedly falling back on shards of glass. At another point Mr. Lee kicked him so hard that he flew back into a row of extras, breaking a man’s arm.“It’s one thing to get hit that hard once or twice, but try it eight times in a row,” Mr. Wall said. “Let me tell you, about the fourth time, you know what’s coming, you’re going to get popped real hard, and you just have to say, ‘Hey, I’m here to do a job. Make it real.’”That commitment to combat vérité paid off. “Enter the Dragon,” made for just $850,000 (about $5.3 million in today’s dollars) grossed $350 million worldwide (about $2.2 billion today), making it one of the most profitable movies of all time. It helped establish martial arts as an indelible part of American pop culture.But Mr. Lee did not get to enjoy the success. He died, at 32, just before the film debuted, of undiagnosed swelling in his brain. By then he had begun filming “Game of Death,” featuring an iconic fight scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (the film, in which Mr. Wall also had a role, was released in 1978). And he was planning even more movies, including at least one with a prominent role for Mr. Wall, who would play a sidekick to Mr. Lee’s hero, a C.I.A. agent.“Hey Bob,” Mr. Wall recalled him saying a few weeks before his death, “you get to be a good guy in the next one!”Mr. Wall in 2008. Later in life, he found a second career in real estate as a residential and commercial developer.AlamyRobert Alan Wall was born on Aug. 22, 1939, in San Jose, Calif. His father, Ray Wall, worked in construction and his mother, Reva (Wingo) Wall, was a nurse.He was drawn to martial arts as a young teenager who had suffered beatings at the hands of his abusive, alcoholic father. He wrestled in high school and at San Jose State University, where he left without graduating to join the Army. After he was discharged, he moved to Los Angeles to begin his martial arts education under Mr. Norris.Mr. Wall held an advanced black belt in several disciplines, and he regularly placed first or second at competitions around the country in the late 1960s and early ’70s.After Mr. Lee’s death, he worked as a fight coordinator on several martial arts movies, including “Black Belt Jones” (1974), starring one of his protégés, Jim Kelly, one of the first Black karate champions. He also gave private lessons to celebrities interested in martial arts, including Steve McQueen and Elvis Presley.By the mid-1970s Mr. Norris had decided to go into acting full time, and he and Mr. Wall sold their business in 1975. Mr. Wall turned his attention to real estate, launching a second career as a residential and commercial developer. He didn’t leave the world of martial arts, though. In addition to writing books and teaching seminars, he had a long-running and very public beef with Steven Seagal, another martial arts expert turned action star.In a series of interviews in the mid-1980s, Mr. Seagal, who had taught aikido in Japan, insulted American martial arts, and Mr. Norris in particular. In response, Mr. Wall challenged him to a fight; they never came to blows, and eventually they worked it out, but Mr. Wall refused to watch any of Mr. Seagal’s movies.Mr. Wall also remained close friends with Mr. Norris. He took small roles in several of his movies and on the series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which starred Mr. Norris and ran from 1993 to 2001.It was just the right amount of fame for Mr. Wall.“I’m famous enough that people who know martial arts or know Bruce Lee films know me,” he said. “But I’m not so famous that I can’t walk down a street. I can go in and out of a restaurant. I don’t lose my privacy.” More
