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Features
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From Policeman to Mr. President
Now that Chris Tucker is back in the big screen swing of things, he’s making sure that regardless of what happens with Barack Obama, a black man will get to the White House.
Friday, August 10, 2007 at 3:00 PM
By Brett Buckalew
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Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com
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A red carpet return
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When master illusionists like Harry Houdini and David Copperfield pull a disappearing act, an audience almost always responds with rapturous applause. But when the star of a blockbuster buddy-cop-movie franchise vanishes into thin air without a trace, that’s a whole other story.
Moviegoers tend to get impatient and eventually apathetic when a comedy star steps out of the limelight for an extended period of time - something Chevy Chase would be able to confirm - which makes Chris Tucker’s return to the big screen this weekend in Rush Hour 3 something of a gamble.
Sure, Tucker’s first two outings as streetwise, fast-talking LAPD Detective Carter, playing opposite Jackie Chan’s taciturn Chinese Inspector Lee, have racked up a combined total of nearly $375 million at the domestic box office. But the actor, a former stand-up comedian whose movie career before the Rush Hour series included both mainstream hits (Friday, Money Talks) and film geek favorites (The Fifth Element, Jackie Brown), has made nothing besides the two Rush Hour sequels since the first film’s release in 1998, leaving a three-year fallow period between parts one and two and a whopping six years of inactivity between the second film and the third.
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Tony Barson/WireImage.com
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Sultry co-star Noémie Lenoir
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Addressing his curious absences in an interview with Film Stew, Tucker shrewdly argues that, as a star, leaving fans wanting more of you is more desirable than saying “yes” to every script that comes your way, thus saturating the marketplace in so heavily concentrated a manner that even your most loyal acolytes begin to get sick at the sight of you.
“I was always careful about overexposing myself,” he explains of his post-Rush Hour caution. “If [a project] don’t interest me, then my fans are gonna be like, ‘We don’t wanna see that.’”
Upon further inspection, then, Tucker isn’t acting as unwisely about maintaining career longevity as it may initially appear. After all, if one looks at the films made by the far more prolific Eddie Murphy - who Tucker cites as a major influence at one point in the interview - there’s a Pluto Nash for every Beverly Hills Cop, a Norbit to quash the goodwill built up from Dreamgirls.
Also to Tucker’s credit, not all of his time off was devoted to leisure. In 2002, he traveled with U2 frontman Bono and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill to Africa to investigate how the U.S. could assist the continent in its fight against poverty and widespread AIDS. It was a journey that may not have padded the star’s bank account or increased his visibility, but according to Tucker, it proved that there are more urgent, less trivial matters to worry about than one’s industry standing.
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Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com
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Does he understand the words coming out of her mouth?
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“I’ve seen a lot of stuff that I was like, ‘Whoa!’” he describes of his trip. “You think every place is like where you live, but the world is [more than that]. I’ve been to places in Africa where there’s no clean water because an animal died in the water supply. And that really opened my mind up to a lot of things that I thought [were] more important than making a movie - you know, shining a light on different issues and different things around the world.”
So now that he’s done his part to raise awareness of Africa’s plight, Tucker has reached a place where he’s once again ready to focus on work. He’s planning on doing a stand-up tour this fall, and shortly after that, he’ll co-write and star in Mr. President, in which he’ll play the first African-American elected President of the United States (“It’ll be like Barack Obama’s in office, but of course it’ll be a comedy,” he summarizes).
And for audiences not willing to wait much longer for Tucker’s energetic, in-your-face comic persona, Rush Hour 3 will provide immediate gratification. In the film, for which the actor was paid $25 million, Carter and Lee continue their ongoing battle against shady criminal syndicate the Triads, this time in scenic Paris.
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Seth Browarnik/WireImage.com
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Two directors cineastes love to hate
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Director Brett Ratner and writer Jeff Nathanson, both veterans of the previous two films, return for duty, but the most vital collaborator when it comes to making Tucker look good onscreen is Chan. Fans of the Rush Hour series treasure the duo’s lively East-meets-West interplay, and according to Tucker, Chan is also instrumental in making Detective Carter’s martial arts moves look just as credible as Inspector Lee’s in the elaborate action scenes.
Since the climax of Rush Hour 3 involves Carter kicking bad-guy butt in the bowels of the Eiffel Tower, Chan’s fighting expertise came in especially handy. “That’s the good thing about working with Jackie,” Tucker shares. “Jackie tells me, ‘Go to your trailer. I take care of you, I take care of you.’ So he choreographs all the fight scenes, my part [in them], then brings me back at the end, and then he shows me real quick what to do. And people think I know martial arts for real now!”
However, Chan’s input stops short at offering any kung-fu skills to use in the real world, as Tucker has learned over time. “I always ask Jackie,” Tucker laughs. “I say, ‘Jackie, tell me some ancient Chinese secret!’ He says, ‘What secret?! There’s no secret! What are you talking about?’”
When shooting on location in Paris, Tucker was at least made privy to an ancient French secret: in the City of Lights, alcohol flows just as freely as the waters of the Seine. “We were filming, and then for lunchtime, they gave us wine!” the actor marvels. “It was like, ‘What?!’ ‘Would you like red or white?’ I said, ‘Man, I’m gonna get drunk!’ They don’t do that in America. They think you won’t show back up!”
Shooting the grand finale in the City of Light’s most beloved landmark was intoxicating in its own right, though Tucker feels he could’ve been in better company, considering the surroundings. “We had the Eiffel Tower for, like, seven days to ourselves, nobody but us,” he elaborates. “It’s the most romantic place in the world, but I was all alone with Jackie Chan. I almost fell in love with him up there!”
The (platonic) love affair between Tucker and Chan has a good shot at causing box-office traffic jams yet again, so the inevitable question arises: would Tucker be up for Rush Hour 4? “I don’t know,” he ponders. “These movies just sort of happen, you know, because we never planned on doing a two or three; people demand another one, or ask for another one, or the studio’s gonna do another one because of the money. So if it does good, and the fans like it and keep going to see it, they’ll make us do another one, I guess.”
| But considering Tucker’s track record, don’t be surprised if it’s another half-dozen years before Carter and Lee team up for a fourth adventure. | |
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