short article on the making of the original
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I was a skinny kid and looked young for my age, which was tough. I got a part in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders playing Johnny Cade. The reviews were positive: I was a young actor feeling good, maybe a little cocky. I got a call about a movie called The Karate Kid and thought: “That’s a silly title. Is it a cartoon?” They sent me the script and I met the director, John G Avildsen, at his apartment in New York.
John’s hallway was filled with actors vying to play Daniel LaRusso, the film’s hero. Everyone was making fun of the title. I immediately became defensive – in hindsight, I was already beginning to own the part. John had a camera on me as soon as I sat down. I was from the suburbs of Long Island and emphasised my New York accent. That attitude fed into Daniel’s move from east coast to west coast in the movie. He is new in a town where it seems that everybody has a BMW, cool sunglasses and blond hair – and he wants to defend his roots. There was one big difference between us, though. Daniel has bravado and won’t quit. If I got my arse kicked by five karate experts on motorcycles, I would have probably found a different route to school.
There was an effortless ease from the first reading with Pat Morita, who played Mr Miyagi, Daniel’s mentor. It felt as if we had been kissed by some soulful magic. Mr Miyagi isThe Karate Kid. He’s a human Yoda, a father figure, the secret sauce that makes the film not just another 1980s coming-of-age movie.
Apart from four jiu-jitsu lessons when I was 10, I had no martial arts experience. Before filming, I was trained in Okinawan Gōjū-ryū karate by Pat E Johnson, who coordinated the fight scenes and played the head referee in the tournament at the end of the film.
I saw the movie for the first time at a sneak preview at the Baronet and Coronet theatre in Manhattan. I can still feel that rush, like being on the back row of a rollercoaster when you’re seeing everyone’s heads and shoulders move in concert. The love affair between this kid, his mentor and the audience kept building. During the final fight scene, people jumped out of their seats as if their team had won the World Cup or the Super Bowl. When I left the cinema, everyone was doing the crane kick on Third Avenue.............