Start Free Trial. And I walked out on the ledge and I was waiting for him because I knew he wasn't going to come alone. These targets included the planned mining of a Nicaraguan port and the planned sabotage of certain Nicaraguan installations including power stations and weapons depots, codenamed OPERATION CORDOBA HARBOR. And then the fight was on. On this episode of Matinee Monday, Paul Scheer looks back at the "How Did This Get Made?" episode with Nicole Byer on the 1988 cult f. I never accused the military of doing it. Enter the Ninja?Sheldon Lettich: No, there was no script prior to the "Bloodsport" script. So these kids kind of grew up together. Look, I take people at face value because I'm not a bulls***ter. We needed at least $20 million to do this thing right and it looked like it might happen, but it didn't. So we had no budget on that movie and we did a great job. We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. He was crushed. He said, "To be the best, you've gotta fight the best, kid." No, never. In this case several members of the staff have invested considerable amounts of time and energy checking the details of the following article, which was the product of a series of four interviews conducted over a period of three months. Especially when you believe that person is your friend.Frank Dux: Exactly. We encountered a few phonies, but eventually we put together a core group. And if Jean-Claude had found out that I really was theat that time, the real force, if you wouldthat was giving him all these elements, Sheldon's usefulness would have been short-lived. Uh, no. Later on, Lee took Grant and showed him that one of his legs was shorter than the other. And I said, "If you're gonna go, just don't pull me with you." Released in 1988, Bloodsport tells the story of Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a captain in the U.S. Army and an experienced martial artist, who ignores his superiors and competes in an illegal martial arts tournament in Hong Kong. And the story there, which I've told many times, came from Frank telling me about his exploits. People would just assume that this is how it worked on those other two movies.Blake Harris: That makes sense.Sheldon Lettich: So I actually suggested to Jean-Claude that he use Frank Dux to write the script. (w/ Nicole Byer) 4/7/2023 More HDTGM all-star Nicole Byer (Grand Crew, Nailed It!) Blake Harris: That story in the L.A. Times was pretty brutal. So when he heard that there was another movie with Van Dammeand this time Van Damme was starring in itSammy was totally enthusiastic. The Jean-Claude I knew was a person who you wanted to see win. That's just how funny memory can cloud things. And in that way it works, I can see that.With any film that's based on a true story, there are always questions and curiosities about authenticity. In fact, we all went out to celebrate. I used my Hebrew name: Benjamin Wolf. KUMITE! This regular featureis written byBlake J. Harris, who you might know as the writer ofthe bookConsole Wars, soon to be a motion pictureproduced bySeth RogenandEvan Goldberg. "The fact that Frank hasn't been involved with any movie since 1994 says something doesn't it? But the fights in the story were all real. And tears started to form in my eyes. She loved it. Neither of them was about a martial arts tournament, and neither of them was ever produced. So the play was groundbreaking in some ways. The one who's putting up his "dux? He's a producer, he's got like 50 films under his belt. On Bloodsport, we got into it during one of the fight scenes. I was too close to it. 5 years ago. In fact, Midway Games attempted to license Van Damme's image for the game. It's a psychological issue that, believe it or not, happens more than you would think. The one thing that we did that made the film work so well is that we would do one "twinning shot" per scene. I was going to say something like, "By the way, there's actually someone here who worked on the movie and he can maybe answer some of your questions" and he was going to come out and everyone would have went f***ing crazy. You want to fight, let's fight?" And at the Invitationals, there's Bruce Lee. He threw a ridge-hand strike and he swept him at the same time. Very well known. This thing, it had legs, and started traveling around the world (London, Australia, etc. They'll cover Frank Dux being a real man, Van Damme's soft baby b. During that time, he's never felt like he had a platform to defuse those lies and tell his side of the storyuntil now. I'm not talking our toes are over the edge. Oh yeah! Like M was Admiral Menzies. And he ends up doing a test of speed with this guy named Vic Moore. But the truth is, I had already written a script called Enter the Ninja. Please note as always his opinions, recollections and claims are his own, and not necessarily fact. I literally wrote a good majority of that script with Sheldon, but I never got credit for it. He couldn't say anything. Wow. And of course he says he did (but he didn't). "Tagline:The True Story of an American Ninja, "All I request," Lettich started off by saying, "is that we try to keep discussion about Frank Dux to a minimum. Armed with a gun that fires Kryptonite needles, Bloodsport nearly succeeded in his mission to eliminate the Man of Steel, but ultimately failed. And at one of these construction sites, there was a guy doing martial arts. Bloodsport Coming Soon to Fortnite - YouTube 0:00 / 1:00 Bloodsport Coming Soon to Fortnite Fortnite 11.5M subscribers 1.6M views 1 year ago #Bloodsport #Fortnite #FortniteBloodsport. In the end, his psyche was broken when Jimmy Olsen brought his brother onto the scene. Not go into the past. The official budget's $1.2 million but I was told that we did that filmbelow the linefor under half a million bucks. There's an authenticity to it.Blake Harris: Speaking of authenticity, I was wondering how much of the movie is accurate to your own life experiences?Frank Dux: Well the fighting scenes were very accurate. Dux believes this article was part of a smear campaign orchestrated by business competitors. And the two of them wrote this first draft. He was the one who actually introduced me to beef and oyster sauce. So you have to get everyone on the same page and agree to make this movie. So it was lot of college hijinks, trying to get girls and all that stuff. Because you didn't do it in Hong Kong." We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Those were my uniforms. I really screwed up. Also, Idris Elba's voice is just something else. How Did This Get Made is a companion to the podcastHow Did This Get MadewithPaul Scheer, Jason MantzoukasandJuneDiane Raphaelwhich focuses on movies. We pitched it to them and they were kind of interested, but at the end of the day they decided not to do it. And I had read an article, in this magazine called M, about the French Foreign Legion. But Vic explained it to me. You see it all the time. 8. It's incredible." They did sequels and I've never gotten paid for them when I was supposed to. And separates Mike's shoulder. However, speaking of the UFC, Frank Dux does have a tangential connection to the UFC. And I'm talking a six-inch ledge. In downtown L.A. And I go: Well, just do me a favor. I imagine that would be hard for you to prove, no?Frank Dux: Well, that part about me saying that the military ordered my record sabotaged? Actor & comedian Paul Scheer and film critic Amy Nicholson want your advice as they make the ultimate list of the greatest movies . He was good at boxing. It was done on the exact same day that Masaaki Hatsumi, Stephen Hayes and Shoto Tanemurathese are guys who think no one in the world is a ninja but them and everyone else is a fake.Blake Harris: What about some of the specific claims that the piece makes? Millions of Americans were first introduced to Tiger Tanaka in the Ian Fleming novel. And just a few more questions. I had them cut down so it would fit him because I'm a bigger guy. Use promo code BONKERS for a free month. We did not use CGI, that was only just starting to become popular, so we had to do everything optically. ).Blake Harris: That's great. And we did.Blake Harris: Did Mark and the other producers spark to the idea of Jean-Claude?Frank Dux: They wanted to use Michael Dudikoff at first. Well I did, and I landed one right on his nose.Blake Harris: Really?Frank Dux: Yeah, and he was not happy about that. And then Gary Sinese saw the play in New York and he wanted to put it on in Chicago. howdidthisgetmade@earwolf.com Episodes The Specialist LIVE! One of the only places where we initially differed was with the entry point. So we pitched him Legionnaire, gave him the treatment and Ed went for it.Blake Harris: You mentioned that Columbia passed on Legionnaire because it didn't "stick with the Van Damme formula." None of it.Blake Harris: InterestingFrank Dux: And Shoto Tanemura, he says he's never heard of a Dukes or a Tanaka? "Bloodsport" follows Frank Dux, an American martial artist serving in the military, who decides to leave the army to compete in a martial arts tournament in Hong Kong where fights to the death can occur. Fun bit of trivia: Bloodsport is essentially a hoax perpetrated by Frank Dux, who made outrageous claims about this Kumite tournament that were never substantiated and are physically impossible. You see my point? But Michael Dudikoff is like 6'2," and the problem was they wanted to film in Asia. I don't remember in detail what our first interaction was like, but we just kind of hit it off.Blake Harris: Was it weird for you at all, as a Vietnam veteran, to be working on a book about the war that was written by someone who hadn't been there?Sheldon Lettich: Well, I didn't know that at the time. And that relationship led to other things down the road, as you know, but meanwhile my script Firebase was going around. During that time, I gave Jean-Claude some odd jobs. One contribution I made to that script though was suggesting to Jean-Claude that he set the story in the past. Then all of the sudden I got hit in the face with a Black Dragon shirt, and that's how I became the youngest Black Dragon in the history of the Black Dragons.Blake Harris: That's unbelievable. He used Mike's own movements against him and dropped him. JCVD RE-EDITED THE MOVIE HIMSELF TO GET IT . Do you see what I'm saying? And at this point in time I don't think it's going to happen.Blake Harris: Ah, too bad. We were on the set of Lionheart. I remember him saying, "Michael Dudikoff is a movie star! If he had to be the bad guy and killed by the protagonist. I made a joke and it just took him out of it, snapped him out of it.Blake Harris: Laughter is the best medicine, right?Frank Dux: I took him out of it. Plus, Bloodsport's connection with Flagg made the dynamic even better. Let's make a kickass, balls-to-the-wall revenge movie. We expect embellishment, we condone narrative condensation and we celebrate character-driven points of view. In fact, Universal had some problems with what we did there because we did not want it to be a revenge movie. When I heard that name, it was like bells started ringing. It's the amazing tale of Frank Dux, a Caucasian martial artist who fought in (and won) a ruthless secret tournament that's held only once every five years. The 20 episodes of How Did This Get Made listed below offer a taste of the world that the hosts have built. LIVE from Largo in Los Angeles, Nicole Byer of Party Over Here joins Paul and Jason to discuss the cult 1988 Jean-Claude Van Damme martial-arts film Bloodsport. The Corsican Brothers. That was a term, from England, when they used to fight dogs. But what's crazy is almost everything he says in that interview is an outright lie or a distortion.Blake Harris: I've interviewed a lot of people in my timeincluding a lot of people I believe were trying to sell me on liesbut I never got the sense from Frank that he was trying to put one over on me. I remember us going back to his apartment and the thing was entirely full.Blake Harris: Did Menahem change his tune about Jean-Claude?Sheldon Lettich: Well, yes and no. "He's a loser. The Origins of Gladiatorial Games. And as soon as he was back in LA, he gave me a call and came over to my apartment in Park La Brea. How are you going to get enough guys to fight against Michael who are even going to match his size? Do you still believe I that?" And then Moore took me and Grant and started showing us some stuff. Both of them wanted to be the cop.Blake Harris: That's so funny (though it makes sense).Sheldon Lettich: It just couldn't be worked out so the project fell by the wayside until they got Stallone and Wesley Snipes to be in it. Viking Samurai 104K subscribers Subscribe 546 16K views 1 year ago How did the Bloodsport Redux trailer go viral and Why this movie needs to get made! And that's why I kept it kind of fictional. He wanted to teach for me full time, but he ended up driving a limousine.Blake Harris: And then why, after two years, was he allowed to start tinkering?Frank Dux: I don't know, I couldn't tell you on that. He kept saying, "Jean-Claude is poison!" And interestingly enough, it was only after Jean-Claude did that to Sheldon that he testified on my behalf in the case for The Quest.Blake Harris: I understand. He didn't like it. So he was just trying to get me in trouble.Blake Harris: What, in your opinion, was his motive?Frank Dux: Well, the thing is, the article came out on the same day that a few of my business competitors are holding a seminar. One of the key sequences in the film finds Task Force X sent to free Rick Flag from an enemy camp. You're craaaaaaazy." And, at that lunch, Mark agreed and hired me to write the script for Bloodsport.Blake Harris: Frank mentioned he already had a script? And we ran around like kids, just like kids, and he was showing me this beautiful art deco penthouse apartment in downtown L.A.Blake Harris: That's a great image. But when we found out Frank Dux was going to be there, we realized that this could go very, very bad, very quickly. 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