Off Screen

I MET a movie star this week, which of course is in the nature of the job. Hardened reporters turned to a particularly obsequious flavour of jelly in his presence, all ingratiating smiles and eager handshakes. Women mentally threw themselves at his feet and wept. And Christ, he wasn't even that famous.

What he was was small but perfectly formed. Jason Scott Lee ambled off the silver screen, where we had just been watching him making love to beautiful blondes and kicking the living shit out of a host of villains in his starring role as another movie star, Bruce Lee, in Dragon. He came down amongst the assembled infotainment journalists (an industry term for freeloading sycophants). He was graceful, he was handsome, he was muscular. And he was boring as hell. But what does that matter?

I have just been listening back to my interview tape, trying to find something to write. And I can't. Movie stars seem to have a license to bore. The only way to get a good interview out of most of them would be to get them alone in a darkened cell, with a hot spotlight in their face and work them over with one of those new three-foot police batons.

Then you might really find out what they thought about their co-stars. But put them in a hotel room with a cold buffet, plentiful wine and a pack of hacks and what you will witness is a revolting orgy of back-slapping, brown-nosing and false modesty.

Here, for your edification, are a few highlights from the world according to Jason. "Hello." "Pardon me, I didn't quite get that." I really can't be bothered going on. If I sound bitter it is only because I am. Jason Scott Lee looked like a God.

When he won the part of Bruce Lee (although they share a surname along with God knows how many million other western-Chinese, they are no relation) Jason was just a struggling actor. But in the six months prior to filming he was transformed into a walking, talking love muscle; a lean, mean, fighting machine; a physically perfect human specimen. The kind of guy who, after you've seen him on screen, makes you want to undress in the dark.

And six months is all it took, as my girlfriend keeps reminding me. Ever since we met Jason, domestic pressure has been building for a new physical exercise regime. She leaves comics open on the Charles Atlas ads. You too could have a body like mine! Which is easy for him to say, since he's been dead so long he must have decomposed by now. But this cuts no ice at home. She's even enlisted the kids in her campaign. When we play in the sandbox, they keep kicking the stuff in my face and saying, "Beat it, Mac."

But Jason is an actor. He has nothing better to do than work out. His six-month physical transformation involved a personal trainer, a personal dietician and six hours in the gym every day. It was breakfast, three-hour work out, lunch, three-hour work out. "I didn't really have a fitness awareness for a while," he drawled, "cause it was all focused on acting. Now it's opened up a whole new door, there are all new brands of herbs and special mineral waters that you can take and royal jellies and just a whole wide range of work out supplements."

Now come on, I'm lucky if I catch a cheeseburger between film screenings. Some of us have got better things to do than look after our health.

I knew a man who swore by his liquid diet. He drank beer and spirits. It was high calorie stuff but after the seventh or eighth he usually passed out, which was surprisingly effective way of limiting his intake. He boasted that his muscles never ached after a strenuous work out, although his liver was killing him. Which of course, it did in the end. Still he outlived Bruce Lee and his equally physically fit son Brandon, so it can't have been that bad.

Just to get some peace at home, I've decided to go into film production. I'm gonna make a movie about Sumo wrestling, and get Jason to star. Maybe my girlfriend will shut up after he's put on a couple of hundred pounds in the name of art. Or maybe I'll take up raving. Ecstasy sounds like an ideal drug for weight loss, combining speed and acid. You dance like a fool all night but you're so tripped out of your skull you never get bored. It sure as hell beats watching Cher bend over the sofa.

Jogging looks likely to make a big comeback, judging by the movie posters around town. Has anyone else noticed that the three big thrillers of this year all featured pictures of running men? What happened to guys with guns: are they passé already?

To be fair, Clint Eastwood played a secret agent in In The Line Of Fire, and so could be expected to keep it in some kind of physical shape. He looks like he's about to have a heart attack on the poster, which adds a touch of authenticity. But The Firm is being marketed as a running lawyer film, with a picture of a besuited Tom Cruise dashing elegantly through the portals of justice, perhaps late for a meeting with an important client. And in The Fugitive Harrison Ford stars as a running doctor.

The Fugitive has been giving its makers a few problems. The original TV series ran for four years, but the film wrapped things up neatly in a couple of hours, ensuring all loose ends were tied up and Doctor Ford could pack away his running shoes and return to a sedentary life writing out prescriptions. But the film has gone on to be Warner Brothers third highest grossing movie ever (after The Bodyguard and Batman) and the studio are desperate to find a way to make a sequel.

Producer Andrew Kopelson admitted, "While we were shooting, there was some thought that 'Hey, we can't do this, it could be detrimental to a sequel'. But we decided to make the best movie we could, and that meant locking up the story tightly. I don't know if we can open it again, but it would have to be an intelligent storyline."

If the makers of The Fly III can, as planned, bring back Geena Davis (who died in insect birth at the beginning of The Fly II) I think Warner Brothers will find a way of getting Dr. Ford out of his comfy slippers. My money is on him marrying again and having his wife murdered by another one-armed man. But the twist is: this time it's the other arm! Whatever, this one will run and run.