Richard Norton Visits Scone

RICHARD Norton is a martial arts expert who has been a body guard to the Rolling Stones, was introduced to the movie business by Chuck Norris who was the best man at his wedding, has worked on more than 70 movies including playing the lead bad guy in three movies with his friend Jackie Chan and while he has been busy training and choreographing fight scenes for Mad Max, Charlize Theron, Will Smith, Margo Robbie and Scarlett Johansson in the last couple of years he made time yesterday to train students at Scone’s Jiu Jitsu Dynamix.

Richard said while it was a long way to travel he wanted to visit Rod Eadie and spend some time with his students.

“I really like Rod he has good ability, he likes to compete, his son is competing and he’s a good representative,” said Mr Norton.

“Rod has been down to Sydney to our training sessions when I am in town and then goes back and teaches his students, but it is even better when I can visit the students,” he said.

“I first met Rod a few years ago and he is part of Team Norton which is our Brazilian Jiu Jitsu organisation so as a result even though it is a long way away we wanted to travel and see how his students were going and it was fun,” said Richard Norton.

Rod Eadie, head coach of Jiu Jitsu Dynamix said the students were grateful for Richard’s visit and it is testament to the solidarity in the martial arts community.

“It’s not Richard’s notoriety that is the attraction for me, it’s the connection between a student and a teacher and I think everyone in their journey has to have a connection to their teacher and for me in particular a lot of the journey in martial arts has been that you learn from those you feel you have a kinship and Richard has really fostered that in that relationship,” said Mr Eadie.

“Richard has an attention to detail when he delivers something that I admire; he is methodical and brings a real clarity of thought how he teaches and coupled with that he lives and breathes, eats and sleeps the warrior code and it is evident in how he portrays himself you see it in the way he speaks to people, whatever he does it has thought behind it and I look to him to learn that,” he said.

“And it was really important for these guys up here who don’t have the luxury of that on their doorstep, for Richard to come up was just mind blowing for these guys, it gave them a feeling of self-worth and it creates solidarity in the martial arts community,” Rod Eadie said.

Richard encourages people to learn a martial art, but urges them to consider which martial art is the best fit and said the philosophy of martial arts should be more like a sheep dog which is a protector.

“Grappling is safer for kids to start with than doing an art which involves strikes, I’m not saying that boxing and kick boxing is not good, but the very nature of boxing is you get punched and you punch people so it is incredibly important that you find a club for the child that has a culture that has safety and understand how to train kids,” said Richard.

“Grappling is great because it can be very safe given the right instructor, someone who really cares and makes sure that the emotional control is there on the mat,” he said.

“You can be a sheep dog in society, he settles in, he is part of the flock, but once that wolf comes that’s when he gets up and does what he does and becomes ferocious, but he is a protector, not the aggressor and that is the good side of martial arts that people need to understand,” Richard Norton said.

 

The full interview:

Richard Norton grew up in Melbourne beginning his martial arts training in judo. He has lived in the United States for more than 35 years, but he and his wife Judy have always kept a home in Melbourne where they both have family.  He said the nature of the film business means he never knows where he will end up. In the last four years he has been working in Namibia on Mad Max, then to Canada for Suicide Squad and New Zealand to work with Scarlett Johansson. When he left Scone yesterday he was on his way to meet with Mel Gibson, but generously made some time to speak to scone.com.au in the hope it inspires more local people to learn a martial art and teaches people more about the art form he is so passionate about.

How have you seen martial arts change during your career?

Martial Arts is now MMA, it is a mixed martial arts world. When I started I was 11 and I did judo. It was about the only martial art available. Then Tino Ceberano, who is Kate Ceberano’s father and Hawaiian Filipino introduced karate in Melbourne. There were a few others around teaching, but Tino really built it. I started training with Tino as a teenager and the biggest thing about martial arts then was it was very much about keeping with one style. If you did karate you stayed with karate, if you did judo, if you boxed, that’s all you did. But with the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) you really have to be good at grappling, as well as punching and kicking hence the name MMA (mixed martial arts).

So that’s the big difference to be a martial artist today. To be relevant you really need to have skills in a variety of arts from a combat point of view. There are kids watching the UFC and that means in the streets instead of somebody trying to hook and punch you in the head, there is every chance they may try and grab your legs and try and put you on your back so you need to be prepared for a variety of possible attacks.

Now that doesn’t separate the fact that a lot of people do martial arts purely from the art point of view and they’ll stick to one style, but because I did body guard work for 25 years I have an interest in reality based techniques and if there is combat application to what we do and that is the biggest change. If you’re a striker or a boxer and you don’t have an understanding of what a grappler does there is every chance you’ll end up on your back and then you are out of your game.

Grappling is good to know how to fight and control a fight on the ground, but that doesn’t help if they’ve got three mates that are walking around and are kicking you in the head. So you also need to know how to survive on the ground and importantly how to get back up on your feet as quickly as you can.

Is there more opportunity for people to develop a career in martial arts?

No question about it. When I started there were very few martial arts places and now you see one on every street corner. In my life I’ve always just wanted to be the best martial artist I could be. As a result I started doing body guard work for the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac and the top rock’n’roll bands in the world. I then met Chuck Norris and got started in movies and made a career out of that and I say to people it’s a hard business to do and hard to get into, but there is every opportunity, it’s just how badly do you want it.

Look at Rod he’s still at the lower ranks but he’s managed to open up his own school and he’ll keep going and grow in rank and hopefully he’ll grow and add some extra schools. It’s hard, but somebody has got to do it, so why not you?

In the last few years I’ve been training Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron and choreographing the fights in Mad Max and training Will Smith at his house. I started training Margo Robbie on the Gold Coast, giving her the tools and the skill set that she would need for the choreography that we put together so the actors were in a position to do the majority of the fights themselves. Of late I’ve also been working with Scarlet Johansson for a new movie Ghost in the Shell.

Chuck (Norris) is probably one of my best friends in the States, he was best man at Judy and my wedding and he got me started in the film business and opened a lot of doors for me in America.  I’ve played three lead roles with Jackie Chan playing the bad guy opposite Jackie.

Jackie began his career as a stuntman on Into the Dragon and when Bruce passed on there was a career for Jackie, but he realised it was silly for him to try and copy Bruce so he went more down the comedic route. He used to study all of the old black and white movies like Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges, to see the way they used comedy with their physical action and that is what set his style and it is still very appealing.

He is still huge in China and I think he was the second highest paid actor there last year and made something like $53 million for the year and it’s not too bad because Jackie is about 62 now so he’s had a pretty good career.

What is it like for you to watch fight scenes in movies? Is it like nurses watching hospital shows or police watching crime movies, do you spend a lot of time cringing?

Yes, you can’t help but do that (he laughed). I appreciate a good fight scene in a movie, but it’s not like I go and see all of the action movies out there, though I probably should because it is good homework and it is important to stay up to date. I’ve made something like 60 movies and in many of them I had lead roles in myself. They were lower budget or B grade movies and I see some I did in the 80s and it’s funny because everything is so dated it all changes. But I just had the best time doing them, so I look at them now and appreciate them for what they are.

What are you favourite fight scenes in movies?

I like Jackie Chan movies because they are a little out there. I’m not a great fan of the Avenger movies because to me they are a bit too clinical and there is too much wire work. I enjoy the way Brue Lee started which was as a guy who is very good at what he does with both feet on the ground and you can see the skill set of that person. People like Jason Statham have pretty good fight scenes I don’t mind them. The Batman movies, the first ones that Christian Bail did, I thought there was some good stuff in those. I particularly liked Liam Neeson in the Taken movies because they are very close quarters, very military style fights and I like them when they look like they are quite real, even though it is a movie of course. Some of the Bourne movies were quite good, again because they had the whole practical side to them.

What is it like to train someone in short period to look like a proficient martial artist for a movie?

It is totally individual it really depends on the person and I can often tell in the first three minutes if I’m going to have a really hard job or not. I’ve been very lucky recently with two good examples Margo Roby and Scarlett Johansson. Margo is just amazing with her ability to comprehend and take in detail of a technique.  In fact Scarlet and Margo are very similar in that they are both such good actors they are very smart, very detailed, they listen intently and they place a very high expectation on themselves so they really concentrate and take it in. It is very different to getting an actor where the producers have said they have to learn stuff but they really don’t want to, so they just go by numbers. But Margo and Scarlet are just fantastic, to the point where in Suicide Squad and in Ghost in the Shell they both did 95 percent of the fight scenes themselves, which is unheard of. Actors usually have a stunt double who does everything. The other person who is great to train is Will Smith, he is such an amazing athlete anyway and again his ability to take in detail and really want to excel is kind of why they have such great careers. They have a drive that other people don’t have. But by the same token you can get an actor and it doesn’t matter how badly they want it, they have two left feet and it can be very difficult. It is like students in a class some catch on quickly and others take much more work.

There is still some cultural cringe around the phenomena of mixed martial arts, the UFC and cage fighting, how do you view it?

I can see both sides really. I was a bit cringy myself with some of the commentary in the very early mixed martial arts fights in America and it was a bit scary because I saw the potential for a lot of damage and there still is. They use very small gloves, so there is a lot of impact to the head. We are only just discovering how little it takes for a person to be concussed and there is the potential for brain damage, so there is a serious side to that sport. I’m ok when I know it’s people in there that are professional athletes that train specifically for that sport, but importantly that also have an understanding of the damage they can do and have the maturity to know when enough is enough. Of course that gets down to really good referees and the UFC has that most of the time. It’s very important because an athlete gets all charged up with adrenaline and often somebody else needs to be there to roll them off punching their opponent.

The alarming thing is that there is such an appetite for going back to the old Roman Gladiator days. My wife hates it she won’t go because of the audience and the things they yell out. There can be a real lusting after blood and she finds it disconcerting and ugly and I go get it. The worry for me is where does it stop? When the UFC started you were allowed elbow strikes, you could head-butt and there were no weight divisions. Obviously they realised ‘wow we need to look after the athletes’, so you protect them by having weight divisions as boxing and judo does. Weight and size does make a difference so the UFC has been made relatively safe now compared to sports like professional football, or rugby league and things. If you look at the trauma some of those athletes go through you’d have to put it on a par with the MMA, but many would say the difference is the intent. Some people are concerned that your job is to get in the ring and punch that guy as hard as you can or arm bar him or make him submit. I enjoy seeing professionals doing it and doing it well, but again I understand the concerns that some people would have especially with the blood. Even though a lot of the time the blood is caused by cuts above the eyebrows and you can have the smallest cut there and you will bleed like a stuck pig, but that mixed with sweat is a pretty ugly sort of a look. So there is an education of the public to know that they are not bleeding to death and it is not the end of the world.

I would argue chess players are among the most aggressive people in the world, they are not punching each other, but their intent is to get the other person to capitulate and they have the mindset of a warrior.

It’s here to stay but it is up to us to make sure it goes in the right direction.

I come from a traditional martial arts background, which is founded on respect. So you bow to each other and you keep control of your emotions. Nobody can wrestle each other unless you have a ritual like slapping hands or bumping fists and that’s a sign that you are going to work with each other rather than sort of just pairing up with someone who kicked your butt in the last fight and you just want revenge. We don’t want that, it should be very healthy competitiveness in a very safe environment and so that holistic approach to martial arts is very important. Martial arts pertains to the arts, not just martial aspect of war. Especially our kids need to see adults showing respect to each other.

Was it was disappointing that Rhonda Rousey and Holly Holm did not touch gloves before their match or do you think it is just part of the theatre now?

Rhonda Rousey lost a lot of fans for that and I think she should have too. I don’t care how much smack you talk, when the time comes to get into the arena the emotional and psychological stuff that’s done and you just shake hands. You need to be a sports person at the end of the match, so it’s about shaking hands and giving each other a hug, otherwise it is just getting back to the savagery of street fights and that’s what we need to avoid.

What would be your advice to young people who are interested in martial arts today?

Definitely get into martial arts and find the art that suits you. There is a lot of choice, so I would get kids to go along and watch a class. Grappling is a very good thing for kids because as human beings we would have grappled long before we punched each other. It’s safer for kids to start with than doing an art which involves strikes. I’m not saying that boxing and kick boxing is not good, but the very nature of boxing is you get punched and you punch people so it is incredibly important that you find a club for the child that has a culture that has safety and understand how to train kids.

Grappling is great because it can be very safe given the right instructor, someone that really cares and makes sure that the emotional control is there on the mat.

We have a saying that it is better to be a warrior in the garden than a gardener at war. Now if you think about that, it’s not that you’re going to learn all of these war like techniques and go to clubs and create violence. It’s about being peaceful with martial arts, learning your art, loving your art. To be the warrior in the garden, you lead a peaceful existence, but if the violence is ever brought to you be it a home invasion, a car-jacking and you are minding your own business that is the time it is pretty good to have warrior skills and be able to look after yourself or someone you love or just an innocent person. So that is the really positive part. You can be like a sheep dog in society, he settles in he is part of the flock, but once that wolf comes that’s when he gets up and does what he does and becomes ferocious. But he is a protector, not the aggressor and that is the good side of martial arts that people need to understand.