From evil gweilo to heart of success
IT is tempting to say Roy Horan's life reads like a script for one of the many schlocky chop-socky flicks which he has acted in, produced or marketed. Except that even the most gullible cinema-goer would find the plot a tad far-fetched.
Imagine trying to pitch this to some studio boss: small-town Rhode Island boy gets religion, joins seminary, decides against priesthood, goes to university. Boy graduates, works as archeologist in Canada, canoes raging river through Canada's wild North-West Territories. Boy prospects for oil, joins wild band of Arctic Indians, goes native.
Boy becomes man, hunts wolves, fights grizzlies, learns the ancient ways, nearly dies of starvation on the grim tundra. Moves to Tokyo to study Zen Buddhism and martial arts, then to outback Australia to work on a railway gang. Man goes to Taiwan. Becomes martial arts adept, gets black belts in karate, kung fu and taekwondo. Delves into the I-Ching, studies Eastern mystics and takes up fung shui. Moves to Hong Kong, accepts challenge for death-match with local fighter. Police move in. Man lives to fight another day.
Man meets girl. Falls in love. Marries girl. Breaks into movies as arch-villain. Beats up Jackie Chan. Helps discover Jean-Claude Van Damme. Yes, grasshopper . . . you get the idea. The peripatetic questings of Mr Horan certainly mark his as a life less ordinary.
It is a kinder, gentler Roy Horan who sits amid the tired trendiness of Post 97 in Lan Kwai Fong. With his piercing, ice-flecked eyes and clipped black beard, you can see why he was a celluloid evil gweilo non pareil. But there are no sneering challenges to a fight to the finish, no handshakes that end in snapped limbs, nary a smashed brick or tile. His roads of excess, it seems, have led him to the palace of wisdom.
Mr Horan says he has taken the knowledge and experience gleaned from his adventures to create a motivational training system he believes will prove a valuable tool for companies trapped in the recession's clammy embrace. Dubbed 'The Heart of Success', it is a curious conflation of Eastern philosophy, boardroom bellicosity and you-fall-and-I'll-catch-you corporate role-playing.