10 Things You Didn’t Know About Lionheart
Lionheart was a monumental film in the career of Jean-Claude Van Damme. Movies like Bloodsport and Kickboxer clearly established JCVD as an action star, but Lionheart was Jean-Claude Van Damme’s first shot at proving he had some acting chops. While Lionheart still had plenty of fighting action, it also had more story than any of the previous Van Damme releases. It was Van Damme’s performance in the film that caught the eye of executives at Universal Studios and that would plant the seeds for what would eventually lead to JCVD’s most lucrative years in Hollywood and his multi-picture deal with Universal.
It seems fitting that such an important piece of JCVD history has received the MVD Rewind Collection treatment. The Special Collector’s Edition Blu-ray of Lionheart has two cuts of the film (theatrical and extended), commentary with Director Sheldon Lettich and Harrison Page (who played Van Damme’s sidekick Joshua in the movie) and several behind the scene features and a documentary that includes interviews with all the key players including the man himself, Jean-Claude Van Damme! I would highly recommend any Van Damme fans pick up this Blu-ray at their earliest convenience.
After partaking in just some of the special features included in the MVD Rewind Collection release, I have compiled…
10 Things You Didn’t Know About Lionheart...
1. The scene where Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character Lyon Gaultier escapes the French Foreign Legion camp was filmed about 30 minutes outside of Las Vegas. The rest of the film was shot in and around the Los Angeles area, including the scenes that took place in New York.
2. The doctor who treats Lyon’s brother was played by Eric Karson. Karson was actually one of the producers of the film and he had worked with Jean-Claude Van Damme previously when he directed him in Black Eagle. Lionheart and Black Eagle made up the two picture deal that Van Damme had with Imperial Entertainment.
3. Harrison Page modeled a lot of the Joshua character after his own father, including the way Joshua talked and the gold tooth. It was noted that nearly 50% of Joshua’s dialogue was improvisation by Page. Sheldon Lettich referred to the character as a “motor mouth”.
4. The hospital scenes were all shot at Queen of Angels hospital in Los Angeles. Prior to his acting career, Harrison Page worked as a nurse at that very hospital.
5. When the casting call went out for fighters for the movie, nearly one thousand guys showed up looking to be a part of the film. The auditions for the fighters took place at Frank Dux’s school in North Hollywood.
6. Director Sheldon Lettich actually gave Brian Thompson, who played Russell the evil henchman in Lionheart, his first acting gig ever in a short film Lettich directed in 1983 called Firefight. Speaking of Firefight, after Van Damme showed the producers Lettich’s short, they agreed to allow Lettich to direct the movie (which would be Lettich’s first feature film).
7. Warner Brothers, who had released a movie titled Lionheart in 1987, gave Universal Pictures permission to use the name Lionheart for the film, once Universal agreed to distribute the movie (which up to that point had the working title Wrong Bet) in the United States. Around the world Lionheart goes by many different names, including Full Contact in France, A.W.O.L: Absent Without Leave in the United Kingdom, Leon in Germany and Wrong Bet in Australia.
8. After the success that the film enjoyed around the world there were talks of doing a sequel. These talks died a quick death after there was no interest from Van Damme in doing a sequel at the time… but Van Damme’s tune has since changed and a Lionheart sequel has been announced.
9. During the fight in the swimming pool, Paco Christian Prieto accidentally kicked Jean-Claude Van Damme in the face. This accidental kick ended up shutting down the movie for around 45 minutes. There were obviously no hard feelings as Prieto would work with Sheldon Lettich again playing the lead villain in the Lettich directed Only the Strong.
10. Jean-Claude Van Damme, who wrote the original story and was a co-writer of the screenplay along with Director Sheldon Lettich, contributed to the creative process throughout the production. Some of Van Damme’s ideas included having his fight in the parking garage end with one punch, having one of the fighters be of Scottish descent and wear a kilt and giving Attila a cat as an homage to Blofeld from the James Bond films. Not surprisingly it was also Van Damme’s idea to bare his ass in the movie… a JCVD trademark.
