J. J. (Jordan) Perry on Haywire, stunt business, and filmmaking

JJ Perry has been all over the stunt industry. From doing stunts as Sub Zero in the Mortal Kombat film to fight choreography in Haywire, his credentials speak for themselves. Here are some interviews where he basically reiterates the Action Kickback Model, that audiences today are smarter about martial arts than just 10 years ago and it’s time to fill the demand.

J.J. on Haywire

How he got into stuntwork

It became less about how how things worked, as far as martial arts go, but more about how they looked. Because in the movies it doesn’t matter how it really works, it only matters how it looks.

And this:

We’re working on something called gun-jitsu, which is like jujitsu but with guns. Because I have a feeling that we have so many sergicemen coming home now, and so many stories of what they’ve done in Afghanistan and Iraq will become declassified and will become movies. … Jujitsu has become so prominent now because MMA is so prominant now, that 20 years ago if you slapped a triangle choke on someone they’d go, “Whoa whoa what’s he doing?” But now everyone watches MMA so they’re familiar with it. … Mixing the guns with jujitsu with the MMA is interesting to me now, it’s that close quarters combat (CQC) which is really interesting.

Kinda makes you wonder about all the 80s and early 90s Delta Force style films. Maybe in 10 years America will have another wave of these.

On low-budget filmmaking, Scott Adkins, Michael Jai White, Undisputed 2 and “action as the star” of a film