Tim Tackett:
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW!
Tim Tackett:
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Being a no-nonsense martial artist, Tim Tackett is the epitome of the do-what-works fighting system Bruce Lee created. A second-generation jeet kune do student, Tackett was first awarded the rank of senior by Dan Inosanto in 1973. Since then, Tackett has traveled the world teaching jeet kune do but remains devoted to the class he runs out of his garage every Wednesday night with first-generation student Bob Bremer. He has added to our understanding of Lee's art by writing numerous articles and several books on the subject, including the brand-new Chinatown Jeet Kune Do: Essential Elements of Bruce Lee's Martial Art.Why did jeet kune do appeal to you over other arts? I immediately fell in love with it because it was so much more efficient than what I was doing. It made me look at what I was doing and keep some but throw most of it away. When I was in graduate school, we learned about a guy named Neil Postman,who said that education should just give you a built-in [crap] detector. That’s what jeet kune do gave me. Also, the science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon said, “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” About 90 percent of what I had been learning and teaching was not as efficient as what I was learning from Dan Inosanto. What makes JKD more efficient than other arts? The simplicity, the basic structure and the idea of intercepting and reading your opponent’s preparation. I’ve just discovered that a lot of arts have a lot of preparation. You can feel their attacks coming at you. And JKD for the most part has the tools with to deal with most things in a really simple matter. It’s simple, but at the same time quite difficult to be able to do because you need to have certain attributes. It’s kind of an "easy hard." One JKD guy [called it] "complicated simplicity."
After Bruce [Lee] passed away, Dan Inosanto gave me a certificate that made me a senior first in the Jun Fan Institute, which was Bruce Lee’s school, and it had jeet kune do at the top of it. What is your training regimen like now? Well, at 66 years old, it’s not too much. I go to the YMCA three or four times a week and do a lot of exercises in the swimming pool because I don’t want to be running on my old joints. I teach at my house on Wednesday nights with Bob Bremer. We don’t charge anything for lessons, so it’s a thing we do to pass the art on. What element of your personal development has been most positively influenced by the martial arts? Probably it’s been that I’ve been able to travel quite a bit, because people have wanted me to come and share stuff with them. Most of the times I don’t make anything, but I just go and I’ve been able to meet a lot of people. We’ve had a non-profit camp for a couple of years, and we have instructors come from all over and take lessons. None of us are making any money out of it, but we’ve made a lot of good friends [and met] a lot of good family members in the JKD family. What advice would you give to a martial artist just starting out? Pick your school well. In other words, have a good feeling about the teacher, talk to the students, watch a couple of the classes and see how they are. If the students or teacher are arrogant, stay away from it. Where do you see jeet kune do in 20 years? Hopefully the new Bruce Lee Foundation will get going [at full speed] and we’ll be able to have yearly seminars, and then we’ll be picking up new people who want to know what Bruce Lee taught. Part of the problem is a lot of people are confused about what JKD is. Is it a mixture of 50 arts, 26 arts—what exactly is it? We hope with the Bruce Lee Foundation to show what Bruce was teaching while he was alive, and that will be what people know as jeet kune do. If there’s one thing you’d like readers to take away from your [new] book, Chinatown Jeet Kune Do: Essential Elements of Bruce Lee's Martial Art, what would that be? There’s a lot to [jeet kune do]. It’s not a mixed martial art. It’s not a mixture of different things. It’s unique in itself. You can look at the book and see that that it has boxing elements in it, but it’s not boxing. It has fencing principles in it, but it’s not fencing, It has some wing chun in it, but it’s not wing chun. It is of itself a unique thing that Bruce created. What do you enjoy most about teaching? I just enjoy sharing what I know with people. What’s your biggest challenge as a teacher? For high school, it wasn’t so bad because I was teaching drama and most of the kids wanted to take it. For JKD, it’s people who really don’t get it. They think you don’t have to come in and put in the time. They think that you whisper secrets in their ear and they’ll have it, and they don’t realize how much real work and effort it takes to do it. If you weren’t a martial artist or teacher, what would you be? Lord, I don’t know. (Laughs) Probably homeless. I wanted at one time wanted to be an actor and director. I went to Summerstock and did all that crap. Probably a broke actor waiting on tables in Hollywood. About the interviewer: Jon Sattler is the assistant editor for Black Belt magazine. |
