THE hands fly through the air at blurred speed. ''Bah, bah, bah,'' says Jackie Chan to superimpose sound effects for the rapid-fire kung fu blows he's delivering to an opponent. Chan is choreographing the closing and most dramatic fight scene for his latest movie, Drunken Master Two. Jackie Chan, whose name is rarely mentioned without the prefix superstar, wants a big fight scene. He wants something new, something different, especially because this is a sequel to a movie already 10 years old. A typhoon warning and driving rain had forced filming indoors to the Golden Harvest lot in Kowloon. Perched on a wooden box on a raised platform, Jackie took time out to talk about movie-making, his latest action film, and the pressures of being a star. ''It makes me worry. It is very difficult to choreograph and design all the fighting. I'm trying to do something new, but it's difficult, very difficult,'' said Chan shaking his head as he looked towards the two young actors who were standing by. ''I must make this guy very violent, but I don't want it too violent. I must show that this guy is very tough - how good he is; then I can knock him down, which makes me look good. ''But it is very difficult. If you show this guy is too good, like superman, how can I knock him down? That is the problem.'' As director and star, Chan finds the pressure unrelenting - with more than 100 sequences to shoot, he is following a patten of worrying, filming, then worrying again about the next scene. ''There is an audience all over Asia waiting to see what the next Jackie Chan kung fu film is like. It gives me a lot of pressure,'' he fretted. Chan was made director of the film after Drunken Master Two had already been in production for 10 months. Recreating an early success was the idea of the Martial Arts Union, he said. ''They just started the Stuntman Association and they need money to set up a headquarters. I was a stuntman before, so I must help them. But after eight months, they were over budget, on the wrong course. The director didn't know what the audience wants. ''They didn't have the confidence to let the director continue, so now I'm directing.'' His plan is to make the film more Jackie Chan-like. ''I'm injecting more comedy; there is lots of fighting, but no violence.'' Dramatic, if not explosive, fight scenes that are not violent? According to Chan, this is not a contradiction. ''I want to make the fighting scenes like dancing. In this movie you can see Michael Jackson's leg doing this sort of step,'' he said with a wiggle of his right leg and a a flurry of hand movements. ''It's like break dancing - we're not fighting, we're dancing and it makes the audience laugh. The most important thing is fun,'' he said. AWARE of his role-model status, he added: ''My movies are seen by six-year-old children and 50-year-old ladies, but most of the people who go to the theatre are children. I must not let the children see dangerous things. I just show the children what Jackie Chan can do.'' Chan comes across as a naturally generous and good-natured person, but it is a demeanour that is sometimes stretched by the demands of international fame. This month alone he will travel to Paris for the Hong Kong film festival, as well as try to squeeze in promotional work for Supercop, he will be in South Africa as a judge in the Miss World contest, in Macau for the Grand Prix and will also visit Taiwan for the Golden Horse Awards. In between he has a movie deadline looming. His life seems one long, busy schedule with little time out to be just Jackie Chan. After 32 years of making movies - he made his first film appearance at the age of seven - he is most at ease, at his happiest, on set. Chan has a Chinese New Year release deadline for his film and when he thought about that he shook his head and said, ''Wow . . . too busy. And besides this, I must do a lot of charity work. ''I like making a film. I don't like doing promotions and charity work because when get there, so many interviews suddenly happen. Ten interviews, one song, 10 interviews. I get so tired, and then afterwards, I have to come back to the set. ''Of course, when I'm fighting I get tired, but when I'm fighting, nobody bothers me, I'm by myself. It is one day, one shot, no interviews. I'm more happy than when I have to go on a trip,'' he said. ''When I go to Paris, I'm sure as soon as I get there, there will be a schedule. There will be an interview at the airport, back to the hotel and the work will begin. People say: 'Please help us.' I say: 'OK'. That's my life. ''That's why I like making films. On the set, I'm the king, nobody bothers me. I can sit down and watch and I feel good. From eight in the morning until now, we have not filmed one shot. How could you do that in America? No way. ''After this interview, we will just be fooling around with this and that. Here it's my little world, especially in Golden Harvest.'' Chan has the luxury of time few film-makers around the world have, let alone those in the churn-them-out Hong Kong film industry. On average, he will complete only one take in a day. The production time for the film is 10 months, but that is a comparatively short period for a Jackie Chan movie, which can often take 18 months to finish. ''I'm serious about movies,'' he reflected. But after a long pause he added: ''I have no idea why I take so long. Maybe, when I make a movie, it's not for a living, it's a hobby. ''A lot of people making movies are doing it for a living and must complete a movie in two or three months and start a new one. For me it can take years. ''For me, I want to finish one good movie, then start the next one. I don't care about how much money I spend or how long it takes. I want a good movie.'' Chan knows he's in a privileged position, but then he has a special appeal - he is universal. He is a huge star in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, France and a cult hero in many other parts of the world. His movies attract big audiences and big money. He is casting a critical eye over the quality and number of films being produced by the territory he describes as ''Asia's king of the movie country''. ''Last year, in this month almost 100 movies were being made at the same time, but today not even 10 movies are being made. Every movie showing in the theatre was making up to $30 million, but now some are only on for three days, then they're gone and they make only $1 million. It's very bad. ''[Hong Kong] films have been a success because we have worked hard and a lot of people have bought our films. Now, everybody is fooling around and nobody is buying our films. If you have no buyer, how can you have money to make more films for a living? ''It's a factory and they make the movies look like shit. Yes, it's true.'' he said. ''This year, the Western film is the best. That is what everybody is going to see. This is the first year that Western films can beat Chinese films - it has never happened before. Even Star Wars, ET, no matter what sort of film, it can never beat our record; but now, Jurassic Park has made history, breaking all-time records in Hong Kong. ''It is because Chinese audiences don't want to see Chinese films because they are all shit films. With a Western film, at least, they have a guarantee of quality, no matter what the budget. We don't have the quality any more. It is very bad. ''Even a lot of Chinese ghost films and the old-style mo hap pin flying films, you can see the wires everywhere - they don't care. In a pan shot you can see the lights, microphones in the shot. ''They don't care,'' said Chan again in disbelief before he returned to his own little world and was quickly absorbed in the fight scene which was this day's challenge.
