Hey guys, we're counting them down, number 3 now in the top 5 martial arts movie stars
of the 1990s that weren't Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal.
Number 3 is Jeff Speakman.
Jeff Speakman's got some pretty impressive athletic credentials outside of martial arts,
he trained and competed in gymnastics in his high school years.
He was also a springboard diver, in fact, at Johny Hersey High School he was able to
achieve all-American status where he set new records in the conference and district, all
without the assistance of a diving coach no less.
As far as his martial arts history and background goes, he was inspired by the cult tv series
Kung Fu with David Carradine, which really got him interested in training.
During college Jeff began his martial arts career by earning a black belt in Japanese
Goju-Ryu Karatefrom the legendary master Lou Angel in 1980.
Upon graduating from college, Mr. Angel told Jeff to move to CA to study Kenpo Karate from
master Ed Parker if he ever wanted to make martial arts his life.
Lou Angel told Jeff Speakman that Ed Parker was the best martial arts master around and
encouraged him to learn from the best.
Selling his car to pay for a U-Haul truck, Jeff went off to Los Angeles to follow his
dream and fulfill his passion.
He actually had a letter of recommendation from Lou Angel, who'd personally known Ed
Parker from the late 60s and early 70s.
Jeff Speakman found Master Parker in Long Beach, CA.
Speakman recounts this story and says, "Upon finding the master I bowed very deeply to
him to show respect and handed him this letter.
Parker was so pleased that his old friend Lou Angel had thought to send him one of his
own black belt students, that he gave Jeff Speakman his phone number and told him to
call in 2 weeks.
That got Jeff Speakman started in Kenpo Karate; in fact, Jeff was invited by Mr. Parker to
join only 3 other people in Mr. Parker's house in Pasadena, CA to become what would be known
as the last group of 3 proteges.
It was also around this time that Speakman started taking acting classes to hone that
craft as well as he was set out to combine the two.
Although he started acting in the 1980s, he had only a few bit parts to show for it.
It wouldn't be until years later, until 1991 with the release of The Perfect Weapon before
he really got any real audience attention.
The film was pretty successful and a great showcase for his Kenpo skills.
The strong start really got the ball rolling into what could've become a very lucrative
career.So The Perfect Weapon grossed a very respectable 14 Million at the domestic box
office, which was a lot more than many others on this top 5 list.
To put that in perspective, Jean-Claude Van Damme had Double Impact in 1991, one of my
favorite van damme movies, grossing 30 million domestically, so just over double what the
Perfect Weapon grossed, which makes sense mathematically since we had 2 Van Dammes in
the movie.
At the same time Steven Seagal had Out For Justice, which grossed nearly 40 million.
Interesting note, while promoting Out of Justice on the Arsenio Hall show, Jeff Speakman came
up, and here’s what Seagal had to say about him.
Arsenio Hall: How about Jeff Speakman, nice guy, huh?
Seagal:I mean, I was very good friends with his master, Ed Parker, he was a good friend
of mine, and he seems like a real good guy, this kid, I've never met him but he seems
like a good kid.
Jeff says, “As fate would have it, I was studying regularly at an acting workshop in
Burbank called The Creative Actor’s Workshop.
One of the instructors there was also a writer.
We became friends.
It turns out that he wrote Van Damme’s second movie, Kickboxer.
Because we became friends and he wrote a martial arts movie, he wanted to come down and watch
me teach at the West L.A. school one night, which he did, and that was his first time
to see Kenpo.
So, as soon he saw me, he went to the guy who was the director and the producer of 3
of Van Damme’s movies, Bloodsport, Kickboxer, and Death Warrant and said, “You’ve got
to see this guy Speakman and you’ve got to see this Kenpo stuff!
I’ve never seen anything like it!”
After pursuing him and pursuing him and pursuing him, Mark DiSalle finally came to the West
L.A. dojo and watched me and that was it.
When he saw Kenpo, he realized that this was the next big thing for film.
Paramount Pictures wanted a new star, Universal Pictures had Van Damme, Warner Brothers had
Seagal, 2 very bankable action stars.
With Mark Disalle on board, Speakman had signed a 3-picture deal with Paramount and was looking
forward to joining the cinematic ranks of Steven Seagal, and Jean-Claude Van Damme
Now, The Perfect Weapon kind of reminds me of Steven Seagal in Above the Law and Jean-Claude
Van Damme in Bloodsport, as all those film sort of come across semi autobiographical,
a large portion of the film delves into each heroes background, which sort of introduces
the audience to the new martial arts star.
Unfortunately, Speakman’s journey to the upper echelon of action stardom would be stopped
dead in its tracks.
After the Perfect Weapon, Paramount actually lost its CEO, who was the one who made a deal
with Mark Disalle, and an interim CEO came in and that’s usually bad news for everybody
who signed a multi picture deal because the studio doesn’t want to make another movie
star out of somebody that the preceding group tried to make out of because that other group
will always get the credit.
To make matters worse, Speakman got caught in the middle of a dispute between producer
Mark DiSalle (who he was under contract with) and Paramount (who had a distribution deal
with DiSalle through Speakman), Jeff says, the people who came in the interim
were not action movie folks and they didn’t like DiSalle, but in order to get DiSalle
out they had to pay him a lot of money just to walk away.
So instead of doing that – Speakman and DiSalle – actually read a script that Paramount
sent to them, and Speakman says it was a great, great script, and it would have been absolutely
perfect for my 2nd movie Speakman goes on to say, We were engaged in
it – they hired a writer for a lot of money, and he was doing a lot of rewrites to make
it a Speakman movie, and in the middle of that the interim head of the studio put that
script in turnaround, which is when they take scripts and put them out there to other studios
and say, “Hey, look, we’ve put two hundred thousand into this script and we don’t want
it – if you pay two hundred thousand you can have it.”
It sort of becomes available.
The next day after this guy did that, all of us – my legal guys and my agents – jumped
on the phone and called Paramount and said, “What the hell are you doing?!
This is Speakman’s movie.
We picked it!
You picked it!
You gave it to us and you’ve already spent $250,000 hiring a writer to make it a Jeff
Speakman movie!
What the hell are you doing?”
The guy who was temporarily running the studio realized his mistake and called Fox, the studio
that bought it.
However, He could not get it back.
They would not sell it back to him.
This script they tried to get back by the way, ended up being the movie that made Keanu
Reeves a star; it was Speed, a huge box office success.
Mark DiSalle, the businessman he is, continued to hold Jeff Speakmans contract as leverage;
you see, DiSalle had the option to do the Speakman movies with Paramount distributing;
Paramount subsequently passed on doing the second Speakman movie, but they would not
let him out of the contract because if another studio picked him up and paid off DiSalle
and made him a star, then that other studio would get the credit.
So, Paramount just let him sit on the shelf and dwindle.
Since Mark DiSalle had the options for Speakman movies under contract and was not getting
along with Paramount, he waited until the very last minute to exercise that option,
and hastily put, together Speakman’s second movie, Street Knight, which was produced by
Canon Films Speakman recounts, “Cannon was able to come
up with a certain percentage of the budget for the movie and then the worst of all possible
scenarios happened.
You’re two weeks into filming, everything is going great, the scenes look phenomenal,
it’s got a beautiful look to it, and then the suits start showing up on the set and
the rest of the money isn’t coming, so you have to make these slashes to the budget,
and then it was just a nightmare.
For example, A lot of money goes into the fight scenes.
With The Perfect Weapon, in that movie was the Tae Kwon Do fight scene.
They had one full twelve-hour day and another half day.
One and a half day.
We had eighteen hours.
Three cameras, three crews, every length and light that you can imagine for just that fight
scene that turned out to be two minutes of film.
And Speakman had final edit and sound check, which essentially meant he could make sure
he looked good and shined, which I’ll admit, watching that fight scene, her certainly did.
Speakman further recounts, But on a movie like Street Knight, when the money gets yanked,
you have to try for the same thing in six hours instead of eighteen.
With one camera, instead of three.
With very limited lens package and crew.
Everything pays a terrible price.
In the editing room you wind up with less because you had less to work with.
That’s just the way the world works.
Street Knight by the way was the last movie produced by the floundering Cannon Films and
barely seen a theatrical release.
It grossed less than a million domestically and it’s no surprise, this stifled Speakman’s
momentum; in fact, Speakman’s next effort was a straight to video release called The
Expert.
Jeff Speakman had the moves, the charisma, the looks, he had sort of a Kurt Russel thing
going; Unfortunately, his career and early buzz gained from The Perfect Weapon was put
into jeopardy b/c of the rift between Mark Disalle and Paraamount Pictures.
Although his film career had a promising start, it’s not what will cement his legacy; rather,
his martial arts prowess, that afforded him the opportunity to break into film in the
first place, is what we’ll remember most about him.
He’s still currently very active in that world, specifically with his own evolved Kenpo
5.0 Jeff says about Ed Parker, I was so encumbered
by trying to learn from him.
When you get an opportunity to learn from a master instructor, you want to pay attention.
You want to try the best you can.
But I realized that a true martial arts master isn’t someone who teaches, but a master
is more of a guy who helps you to discover the art yourself.
And then you own it.
Ultimately, then you can perhaps contribute to advances in that art, which is exactly
what we feel we have done with Kenpo 5.0.
Citing some of Ed Parker's last statements about American Kenpo, Speakman decided to
make an attempt to integrate ground fighting techniques into Kenpo's self-defense curriculum.
Speakman is adamant that in doing this he is preserving the will of Parker, who always
intended Kenpo to continue evolving, Much the same way Bruce Lee felt towards Jeet-Kune
Do.
So what do you guys think about Jeff Speakman, was it just bad luck how the cards ended up
playing out because of the rift between Mark DiSalle and Paramount Pictures, and then Paramount
Pictures losing the movie Speed to Fox.
Do you feel the audiences, both Domestic and International would've taken to him like they
have Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal?Let me know in the comments section below.