Jackie Chan's New "Candid" Memoir

[whitesnake]

According to a Hollywood Reporter article - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bookmark/jackie-chan-release-candid-memoir-november-1120443 -  Jackie Chan's new memoir, Never Grow Up, will be published in November 2018 by Gallery Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint.  It will be a "'candid account of everything from his youth with the China Drama Academy to his 'numerous' near-death experiences on and off camera.  The 64-year-old Chan will also write about making movies in Hong Kong and Hollywood and of his imperfections as a family man."  His previous memoir, I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, was published in 1998.      

[SamSeed]

How many of you guys here have read this? I just finished it. It's a bit all over the place chronologically but candid is certainly right. Jackie makes no bones about his plethora of personal problems and faults, his behaviour after gaining wealth. And yet this endeared him to me even more. Obviously it's going to be biased, it's his book after all, but the fact he was so honest about his failures meant that all the kindness that far outweighed it shone through. Also learned lots of titbits I never knew. He turned down the Michael Douglas film Black Rain for example, would have been very interesting.

[AlbertV]

I read it a few weeks ago. It's more about his career but goes into his personal problems that he had involving his family and even admitted to the infamous affair that resulted in Etta Ng, his daughter. That's a totally whole new family drama of its own with Etta and her mother. But it was how both Joan and Jaycee handled the situation and even talks briefly about Jaycee's 2014 imprisonment in Beijing and how Jackie stepped up to be a real father to him afterwards, in ways blaming himself for not always being there. I did also enjoy some photos in the book, like a visit from Joan and Jaycee on the set of "First Strike" because Jaycee never saw snow. Compared to "Jackie Chan: My Life in Action", this was a much better book IMO

[Cognoscente]

I had mixed feelings about this book. I was initially disappointed because I was expecting a direct continuation from the first book, but instead what I got was sort of like watching Evil Dead 2. That movie starts off as a remake of the first film before we got any sense of a follow-up from the ending.

With Jackie's book, you get an alternate story about his journey from childhood to stardom. As for why this was the case, an Amazon review of the first book explains why: "Jackie himself says he's written his new autobiography (Never Grow Up) partly to correct some of the problems with this book, I'm just wondering which parts needed correction."

Edited May 8, 2021 by Cognoscente