“I might be the one westerner within the cinema, and 90% of the viewers could be like, ‘there’s a white man within the cinema, what’s he doing?’”
When Asian motion cinema professional, producer and casting director Mike Leeder left his job in a Croydon division retailer to go on vacation to Hong Kong, little did he know that – 32 years later – he would nonetheless be there. Earlier than he fell in love with town, he fell in love with its motion pictures; a blossoming romance which began with a Jackie Chan double invoice of Snake within the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Grasp, and has led him to engaged on a lot of Hong Kong’s largest and greatest productions during the last three a long time; from Fist of Legend to Fearless, True Legend to As soon as Upon a Time in China, Man of Tai Chi to the Ip Man sequence. On display screen, he has been on the receiving finish of a headlock from Jean-Claude Van Damme and refereed a kung fu battle with Jet Li, in addition to working with the likes of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Scott Adkins, Mark Dacascos, Donnie Yen, Yuen Woo-ping, and plenty of extra. Through the years, his encyclopaedic information and fervour for Hong Kong motion pictures has seen him contribute many articles and interviews to main magazines and web sites, in addition to offering his voice to audio commentaries for Blu-ray labels throughout the UK, USA and Europe. On this wide-ranging dialog, we talk about his life within the UK earlier than his journey east; that point he went to interview Jackie Chan, and what occurred subsequent; the dearth of movie preservation in Hong Kong; and the way to not get observed within the martial arts film world. Learn extra about Mike Leeder on IMDb and comply with him on Instagram, Twitter and Fb.
Mike Leeder and Jet Li in Fearless (2006).
Mike Leeder will get right into a scuffle with Jean-Claude Van Damme in Pound of Flesh (2015).
Mike Leeder with Sammo Hung.
