Jean-Claude Van Damme: The Muscles from Brussels sprouts anew
By Robert Levin
Special to amNewYork
Unless you’re a big fan of the movie “Replicant” or if just hearing the words “Wake of Death” conjures up rosy memories, you’ve probably spent at least some part of the past nine years wondering what Jean-Claude Van Damme has been doing.
From the mid ’80s through the late ’90s, Van Damme, 48, achieved international stardom with such immortal action fare as “Bloodsport” and “Street Fighter,” and one could reasonably expect that he’d headline at least one or two new theatrically released flicks each year.
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Then, after 1999’s “Inferno,” the Van Damme to the multiplex pipeline dried up. At least in the United States, he’s since been trapped in straight-to-DVD hell. Ironically, the movie that brings JCVD back to the big screen — where he belongs — is also titled “JCVD” and is not an action film at all.
It is, instead, a metaphysical comedy in which the “Muscles From Brussels” plays himself, stuck in a hostage situation in a Belgian post office that the police falsely accuse him of perpetrating.
amNewYork spoke to a garrulous Van Damme about his new film, in theaters Friday.
What was the conceptual origin of this project?
I came to America with a dream. I believed in my dream [and it] became a reality. [I was] a young kid coming from Belgium, not knowing about girls, and not knowing about the beautiful way America functions and everything. I knew that was the place I was supposed to go and succeed. It was fun to succeed and then I got on that rollercoaster of life, up and down and this and that, which became interesting to the audience and some people in the audience called directors.
How did that become “JCVD?”
Mabrouk [El Mechri, the director] wanted to show that type of life — half-real, half-fiction — plus the sensibility behind the warrior. We can be nice, we can be sensitive and the knife will still cut like the razor. You know what I’m saying? I like to show the blade, I like to show in this movie what I did and how people can succeed and the way people can [fulfill] a dream.
At one point in the film you do a very personal eight-minute monologue — how did that come about?
I decided to express myself. How can I describe myself as a human? So I was able then to build a structure [in the monologue] comparing my past history up until the day I shot “JCVD.” And the movie was good for me on a personal level, being able to [show] the world what I believed from the real situation [of my life] and again maybe we’re all going to die, so why not tell the people what you feel about yourself in life? Why not?
