Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa on The Man In The High Castle, Michael Bay, and Mortal Kombat:I really like Wesley. He definitely has that street side to him, but he’s a serious actor—he’d gone to school for it—and he definitely knew what he was doing. He’d done a film called New Jack City, and I had done Showdown In Little Tokyo, and when I saw him, I said, “New Jack City!” And he said, “Showdown In Little Tokyo!” [Laughs.] So we immediately hit it off, both having played bad guys, and throughout filming we talked. He had been a martial artist for 20 years, so we talked about that.
Showdown In Little Tokyo (1991)—“Funekei Yoshida”
CHT: My major intention for coming to Hollywood—besides the fact that I was just enamored with acting from a very young age—was that I was tired of seeing wimpy Asian actors. Because the power of Hollywood, as we know, is that it can create these images in people’s minds, and they live with those images for their whole life. “Yeah, I saw it in a movie!” And they think that’s the way it is. So I was determined to change that image.
People say, “How come you play bad guys so much?” And I say, “Well, have you seen many Asian good-guy roles?” Especially back in ’86, when I first got to Hollywood. There were just no Asian roles. It was just the beginning of the bad-guy era. There was a movie called Year Of The Dragon, with John Lone, that sort of brought it to prominence, and all of a sudden all the TV shows, everybody had to have an Asian bad guy coming through their revolving door of bad guys. That’s when I came in. But I was clear: “I don’t want to play businessmen with bifocal glasses and cameras, so if you’re going to give me an Asian bad guy to play, then I’m going to give you the baddest Asian bad guy you’ve ever seen, and you’re not going to forget that I was in the film. We know that all the bad guys die in the end, but before I die, I’m going to give you something so scary that you will remember me.” Because that’s the worst thing for an actor: when you say to someone, “Yeah, I was in that movie,” and they say, “You were?” [Laughs.] That’s the worst. So I always made sure that never happened.
Bruce Lee was the first guy to bring film recognition of Asian men not being wimps, so it made me want to be as powerful as he was. So he was an inspiration, as were the Japanese samurai movies of Toshiro Mifune. The power and depth of Japanese acting certainly inspired me, so I was determined that Hollywood was going to get a taste of that, that Americans were going to get a taste of Japanese action. And Showdown In Little Tokyo was my first real chance to do that.
I had a little apprehension in cutting the girl’s head off, though. [Laughs.] I thought, “Why is that really necessary?” I knew what it would do. It’d certainly make you hate the person. But it was a bit radical for Hollywood stuff. But, no, they wanted to keep it in, so I did it.
A distinction of that film, besides being my first big studio film, was that I had a most intricate and elaborate set of tattoos. The guys who did The Illustrated Man had at that point done the most extensive tattoos in a film, but the character for Showdown In Little Tokyo had more. Walking in, they told me it would take 12 hours to do those tattoos. It’s, like, “12 hours? An entire workday to put them on?” It took several people: one to silk-screen them and put the patterns onto my body, two people to paint them… It was an ordeal just holding still.
AVC: How was it working with Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee?
CHT: I don’t know if many people realize that Dolph Lundgren is a chemical engineer. He’s not a dumb blond guy. This guy is smart and he’s a martial artist. He definitely pumped up for the movie, and he was pumping weights in between takes. But there’s one thing about weights with action movies: Once your muscles get that tight, it’s sometimes hard to stop your movement, especially if you’re trying to move with some strength, and with the swords in the film… Granted, they’re not steel swords, they’re aluminum swords, but if you swing them hard enough, they can cut you. And there were a couple of times when he got awfully close. [Laughs.] But he was a good guy. We got along well. And Brandon was one of my heroes by association, because of his dad, so we talked about that. He was just the sweetest guy. He had a really wonderful nature. So did Dolph, for that matter. They were both powerful in their way, but we’re not talking about hardcore menacing guys. So, yeah, it was a great experience. I had a lot of fun with those guys.
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