Trivia / Wheels on Meals

• All-Star Cast: In the Spanish side as well. The film features then-star actors Pepe Sancho (Mondale), Miguel Palenzuela (Noah, the butler), Amparo Moreno (Susana) and Lola Forner (Sylvia), the last being also a Miss Spain at the time. There are also Carles Canut making a cameo in the bar and the retroactive example of future Goya Award-winning director Agustí Villaronga in the production team.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Keith Vitali had already made a martial arts film, Force Five, and it didn't take much for him to accept a role on this one. He was absolutely impressed by Jackie Chan's skill when he got to know him, and claimed that Chan would have been one of the best had he chosen a career as a professional fighter rather than an actor (Keith would state "I believed myself to be a top athlete until I met Jackie").
• California Doubling: Averted. Much was shot on location in Barcelona, with one key scene taking place at the distinctive Sagrada Família.
• The Cast Show Off: The scene where Urquídez's missed spinning kick extinguishes some candles without touching them was completely real.
• Cast the Expert:
  • Sylvia's huge, moustached patron was played by one (or, according to rumors, by both) of the González & González brothers, a popular twin duo of strongmen and Taekwondo fighters famous for their appearances in Spanish TV show Si lo sé no vengo.
  • The car chase was choreographed by veteran French driving stuntman Alain Petit. Chan, who loves fast cars, was thrilled to have him in the team.
• Completely Different Title:
  • In Spain, the film was re-titled Los Supercamorristas (roughly "The Super-Hooligans").
  • Titled Spartan-X in Japan.
• Deleted Scene: There was originally a scene in which Sammo Hung's character slept with a Spanish woman, but it was cut.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • The Chinese crew asked for the fights to be choreographed with some real contact in order to increase realism, but the result was a veritable Be Careful What You Wish For, as Benny Urquídez and Keith Vitali didn't have enough training on how to pull their punches at all, and often landed strikes like savages. Furthermore, Vitali didn't like Biao and would pummel him deliberately (Biao's fear while fighting Vitali's character was completely real). In turn, although Chan did get along with Urquíez, he would still absolutely beat up Urquídez whenever his character landed hits on him, to the point the Chinese team was shocked by Benny's ability to take it all.
  • In order to fuel the enmity between their characters, Jackie Chan claimed he wanted to fight Benny Urquídez in an official match. They were friends by this point, so Urquídez became worried that he might hurt Chan if it ended up happening, but the last day of the shootings Chan revealed everything had been a ruse and they had a laugh over it. Urquídez later had his revenge playing the same on Chan in Dragons Forever.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Director Hung allowed Chan and Urquídez to choreograph their fight themselves and had very little control over it. Fortunately, Chan and Urquídez turned out to have a natural chemistry, and actually did several spots in a single take.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Chan and Benny Urquídez had a rough first meeting, as the Chinese wanted him to know what he was capable of. Urquídez did a jumping back kick so hard that the crewman holding the pad fell bakwards, but Chan was unconvinced and asked Urquídez to show his acrobatic skills. Urquídez did around 25 different acrobatics after Chan and Yuen Biao, nailing them all, but getting so dizzy due to his lack of familiarity with the routines that he eventually gave up. Chan then declared he was impressed, and they soon became friends.
  • When it was Keith Vitali's turn, things didn't go so neat. He similarly sent the crewman flying with a side kick, but refused to do acrobatics beyond a brief exhibition, which didn't endear him to the Chinese. He also screamed to them during lunchtime because they were eating noisily, requiring Chan to explain that it was a Chinese custom to show appreciation for the food. Still, Chan and Vitali later became friends too, as Chan was eager to improve his English and would use this to get Vitali to talk about anything in the hope of easing tensions on set.
  • Vitali's biggest beef was with Yuen Biao. Vitali liked to hit him very hard during the scenes, and at one point asked Biao to spar with him and roughed him up. This made Biao and Hung concoct a plan to hit Vitali with a real vase in the scene in which Biao's character breaks a vase on his head.
  • Biao also had heat with the González twins, one of whom played Sylvia's burly patron, who fights Biao's character. According to them, the giant front kick González landed on Biao was full-force due to Sammo Hung's insistence on real contact, and it let the Chinese winded despite all the protective gear he was wearing under his shirt. Biao then got angry with González and retaliated by punching him for real, as well as kicking him too fast for the Spaniard to guard himself (specifically, in the spot where David kicks the patron's arm off the bench, which might have ended with a broken arm had González not been so buff).
  • The producers arranged for Urquídez to train at the dojo of Spanish Karate professor Juan José Albuixech, but Benny quickly drove them nuts by sparring 200% hard against the locals. According to Albuixech, who got a nasty cut in a sparring round, Urquídez "just didn't know what 'control' meant".
  • Sammo Hung, famous for his perfectionist, high-intensity directing style, was also in a perpetually bad mood with virtually everybody.
  • Blackie Ko, who played the biker gang leader, behaved like a prima donna on set and had clashes with Jackie Chan and the Spanish team. Chan came up with the stunt where he dropkicks another biker off his bike in order to show off to Ko.
• On-Set Injury:
  • Jackie Chan got a bloody nose while choreographing the fight with Benny Urquídez. Chan suggested to leave the blood on the scene, which shows in the film, but he reprimanded Urquídez for being careless.
  • Keith Vitali accidentally kicked Jackie Chan in the throat, rather than in the chest, after numerous takes for a particular fight scene. Vitali claims he did perfectly the stunt with his right leg, only that Sammo Hung suddenly ordered him to use the left so it could be caught better on camera. When Keith hit Jackie, Vitali realized the danger of the situation and broke character by concern for Jackie's health, but by doing this, Keith was yelled at by the entire crew as he was supposed to wait for the director to yell "Cut!", no matter what had happened in the scene. In fact, Hung then told him to kick stronger the next time.
  • Vitali later accidentally knocked out Hung himself with another of his kicks, during the scene in which Hung's character fights with a Chinese spear. Learning from his previous lesson with Chan, Keith didn't break character and waited until Sammo recovered and called "Cut!", which, according to Vitali, seemed like an eternity. Hung then hugged Vitali and congratulated him for such an excellent kick.
  • In order to get revenge on Vitali for his other mishaps, Hung warned Keith that his character was going to be knocked out by Biao's character with a vase full of water near the end of the movie - only for Biao to hit him for real with a real vase. Vitali was really knocked in and out of consciousness, though still managed to creep a smile onto his face, as the whole crew were apparently laughing.
  • The biker punk David takes off his bike with a lariat landed on his forearm and elbow, almost breaking his arm.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: It was confirmed that Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung got in a brawl with a gang of Spanish punks while making the film, but there's also a hilarious addendum claiming Spanish police raided the sets next morning and demanded the director to hand over Chan and Hung, only that the producers handed over instead two stuntmen who looked physically like them, hoping that the cops were unfamiliar enough with Asians to be unable to tell one from another. This isn't true, as Chan and Hung apparently went to the police station themselves after the brawl to clarify the incident.
• Referenced by...: A digitized still of Jackie Chan from this movie is used to represent Chin in the intro to Hong Kong '97.
• Romance on the Set: Spanish press reported Chan had a thing with a female extra until the end of the shootings.
• Throw It In!:
  • Benny Urquídez wasn't in anybody's head when he was hired. The producers only contacted him because he was promoting a documentary in Asia at the time and it seemed an interesting chance to have him on the film. Urquídez accepted even he didn't even know who Jackie Chan was.
  • To date, Keith Vitali still doesn't know whether Chan's stunt of climbing the castle's wall with two sticks was pre-planned or something Chan improvised and later worked into the film. Chan apparently first did it in an argument with Vitali to prove he could climb the wall without help.
• Troubled Production:
  • The Spanish producers became worried because Jackie Chan and the rest of the Chinese crew capitalized on their stay in Spain to go partying hard every night, reportedly drinking like fishes and gambling away absolutely gigantic amounts of money (Chan explained that everything in Spain was so cheap and affordable compared to Hong Kong that they could get away with everything, which was part of the reason they made the film there). Chan also featured a minor incident where he left angrily the Hotel Ritz he was sleeping in and moved to an apartment. According to some, it was because Hong Kong press was stalking him in the hotel, while according to others, it was because the hotel staff didn't allow Chan go to his room with two ladies.
  • The team had expected that shooting in Spain, a country where few people at the time were able to recognize Chan, would be way safer than their familiar Hong Kong. The problem is that some of the big locations of Barcelona they chose, like the neighborhood of El Raval, were terribly unsafe zones in which no law-abiding Spaniard dared to step after sunset, and the whole promotion of the film attracted too much attention. Chan and Hung got themselves involved in a brawl after partying in a restaurant, as five punks in a car drove by them and made fun of them (it's unknown whether they had stalked the actors or it was a fortuite encounter). Chan goaded them to stop and fight, and he and Hung together wiped the floor with the entire gang. The punks called the police on them, which got Chan and Hung a one-nighter in the Enrique Granados police station, but they were eventually freed (possibly after the Chinese producers showered the punks in monkey to make them drop the charges).
  • The Mitsubishi van used for the film usually ended up sorely damaged after every stunt, although Mitsubushi Motors had sent a team of tehnicians to fix it every time because they loved the chance to advertise their brand. Rumoredly, they brought three disassembled vans to use their parts.
  • As Benny Urquídez was overenthusiastic yet undertrained to choreograph a fight scene, he had trouble pulling his kicks and many of them landed for real. Chan became frustrated by this, but not as much as the producers, who reportedly considered to fire Urquídez and replace him. The same trouble tormented Vitali, as described above.
• What Could Have Been: Originally, Hung had a long fight scene with Urquídez before Chan's character intervened to take his place, but this was cut from the script.
• Working Title: As said above, the film was iconically retitled Los Supercamorristas in Spain, but up to its release it also went as Los Superchicos ("The Super-Boys") and Dos Supercamorristas ("Two Super-Hooligans").

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