Sure, there were a million teenagers dressed in skintight superhero costumes, and thousands of kids dressed in revealing cosplay outfits, and lots and lots of American land whales wearing enormous, baggy black t-shirts, but despite all these distractions at this year's New York ComicCon I was mostly focused on Marko Zaror, Chile's number one (and only) martial arts star. He was there for screenings of his two movies, the slick spaghetti western action film, KILTRO, and the low budget SPIDER-MAN meets TAXI DRIVER flick, MIRAGE MAN, which is truly great. KILTRO is out on DVD from Magnolia right now, and they've just committed to a theatrical release of MIRAGE MAN later this year (Sept/Oct?) and it's worth the wait.

Marko started out doing martial arts in Chile, became a two-bit actor in two-bit movies in Mexico, moved to LA and became a dishwasher, then a waiter, then taught martial arts (he learned karate from his mother) then wound up being The Rock's stunt double in THE RUNDOWN. Afterwards he got the cash to make a feature, but took the money and ran back to Chile to make KILTRO and MIRAGE MAN. An open audition got him 400 wannabe stuntmen, and from them he put together a team of 15 stunt guys who do everything from scratch, and they do everything full contact. Below are excerpts from our interview.

How was working on THE RUNDOWN?

It was a lot of fun and working with Andy Cheng was a learning experience. He’s been in Hong Kong martial arts films for a long time, he used to work with Jackie Chan, so for me working with him was a big learning process because I wanted to do my own movies. I was all the time looking at the monitor to see how it looked, why the camera was here, why this, why that, and it was a tough job. We did some crazy, crazy scenes, fight scenes and falling down the cliff and tumbling down, it was pretty dangerous. I wasn't expecting something as dangerous as what I did.

Was it easy to bring those working methods back to Chile?

When we arrived at KILTRO we had to transform all these methods of working with all this money and equipment into a method of working where we can get something similar with no money and no equipment. Instead of having auto remote control pulls, we do hand pulls using a wire with a pulley. When I kick people we have to make them fly backwards, so we put them on one end of the wire, send a bunch of people up some stairs and grab the other end of the wire, and when I kick them they jump down the stairs and the guy just flies. It's like how they did it back in the day in Hong Kong.

MIRAGE MAN used no wires and was full contact, whereas KILTRO used a lot of wires and wasn't quite as hard-hitting. Can you talk about why you went full contact for MIRAGE MAN?

We had a meeting with the stunt team and I said, “Look, guys, with this movie we don’t have a big budget, we don’t have special effects, we don’t have the craziest lighting and the sets, the only thing we have is the guts to make this the best we can. The best fights and the best contact possible.” So they were all committed to make people say, “Wow!” with just two people fighting. When you watch the full movie in the theater, especially in my country, people going “Hollyyyyyy ---“

Like the scene where the guy jumps at you and you kick him in the face and his head goes at a funny angle?

And the guy changed direction in the air! You can see that’s not a trick.

Was he okay?

Well, he was kind of dizzy for a little bit, but you can see the guy jump over towards me and I stop him in the air with a kick in the face - boom!

What's your favorite scene you've done?

In KILTRO, my favorite fight scene is for sure the one with all the guys. I think that was a really original idea of using the knives in the heels of my boots, and I think it came out well and it’s really emotional. When I saw it at the premiere, you could feel the tension, and it was breathtaking to watch. It was crazy. When I first hit the guy and he bounced into the wall and then landed on the car, I think that was, for Chile, that was a before and after moment. I think for sure because no one had ever seen a scene like that, as powerful as that, in a local film.

Did you see Jackie Chan and Jet Li's FORBIDDEN KINGDOM?

Yes, I saw it. I think it’s a movie that’s going to do good, it’s entertaining, it’s a kids' movie. I have a lot of respect for Jet Li and Jackie Chan's careers, but it’s just not my type of film - it’s not what I like to see when I go to the theatre.

So who's your big influence?

The big guy who inspired me is Bruce Lee. That’s...for me, there’s never been something not even similar. When I was six years old I saw ENTER THE DRAGON on TV and nothing has ever been close to that for me.

What's your philosophy on action choreography?

For me, the thing is that it’s about the story. When you lose the attention on the story because of the choreography you lose the spirit of everything. As a martial artist, and then as a moviemaker, you want to be able to transmit an emotion through the fight because you want to accomplish something, but when the choreography turns out to be more important than your objective it’s better to go watch a martial arts exhibition. In a real fight you have the adrenaline, a real fight has the desperation, a real fight has an element where it grabs you and that’s exactly what Bruce Lee did really well in his movies. That adrenaline, that anger. When he enters a room you know he’s going to go through that door and he’s going to get to his goal no matter who was in front of him and the fight scenes were explosive. There weren't too many fight, block, jump, fight, block jump cycles. It was bap, bap, bap, bap, bap. It was the real thing.

My objective as a martial artist is to communicate the story through a movie. Obviously you have to add more flashy stuff, more acrobatic stuff to make it more cinematographic, but I believe you have to show that without losing that tension, that adrenaline. People need to never forget that you’re fighting for a reason and that it’s dangerous, you’re fighting and you could get hurt. And that’s exactly what I don’t like in a lot of the recent martial arts movies, you forget about why they’re fighting. If your brain is starting to see the choreography then it’s because you’re totally out of the scene.

Was MIRAGE MAN choreographed or were the fights improvised?

In some parts they were choreographed, and in some parts we improvised. That’s what I believe: if you mix improvisation and choreography you get moments where you get truth because you cannot repeat what you've just done. If you improvise, there are moments of truth and those moments are what give the fight scenes a different feel.

There's a long, complicated fight scene at a house in the middle of MIRAGE MAN. How long did that take you to film?

A couple of days. Four days. Because that used lot of improvisation, and a lot of real contact so it’s totally the opposite of KILTRO. In KILTRO we filmed six days just for the fight scene with the blades in my boots, it was a full week for a scene that was only onscreen for three minutes. In MIRAGE MAN the scene is eight minutes long but it only took us three or four days to shoot. The difference is the feeling of the fight scenes because MIRAGE MAN used more improvising. I'd say, “Okay, three guys - boom, boom, boom - attack me and I react and then I say, "Okay, this works and let’s shoot it from here." Instead of on KILTRO where we have everything planned from the gym, we already shot it, we know the camera angle, we just have to do it again on the set and take care of the lighting. In MIRAGE MAN we were shooting handheld and we'd say, okay attack me from here and let's see what works. I like this technique because it's creating from a more organic method.

How's MIRAGE MAN doing in Chile?

It's still in theaters right now, and we've done really well. We beat RAMBO and we beat JUMPER at the box office.

(KILTRO trailer)

(MIRAGE MAN trailer)

(See how macho Mirage Man is in this clip entitled "Mirage Man is Immune to Two Girls, One Cup.")