As the Wu-Tang members went their separate ways, RZA moved his career to Los Angeles, where he focused on film scores and small acting roles. But a part of him continued to dream up kung fu characters and stories — “I got a bad habit of creating,” he said — as he did growing up in Brooklyn’s impoverished Brownsville neighborhood. (Citing one of his unused inventions, RZA described an expert fighter called the Seven-Blow Assassin: anyone who faces him, he explained, “will die by seven blows.”)
This is amazing. This is why RZA is a superstar: because he comes up with these fantastic ideas that people are just dying to see. I mean, I can't wait to see this Seven-Blow Assassin movie, and have even started picturing it in my head.
See, I figure this guy is going to beat up a lot of people, though he probably won't want to kill them all. Which means there's a problem: every time he hits somebody, the whole audience is gonna go, "THAT'S ONE!" But what if he doesn't want to kill the guy? What if he just wanted to hit him? Blow number two never comes. All that anticipation just fizzles out. Everybody in the audience goes, "Oh, I guess we weren't supposed to start counting," and they feel really dumb.
What they have to do, then, is start a countdown when dude starts with the seven blows. It'd be like flat-out killer if he taunted his victims with the count. He could narrate exactly what the score was to keep his victim -- and the audience --clued in.
"I'm the Seven-Blow Assassin!" he'd tell the miscreant in advance, "and you will die by the seventh blow of my fist!" This way the guy is warned, and everybody in the audience moves to the edge of their seat. The evildoer goes ahead and attacks the Assassin, and the Assassin lands his first blow. "That is NUMBER ONE!" he'd valiantly shout.
As the fight progresses he'd keep up a running commentary so nobody loses track. "This is the SECOND BLOW! And here comes the third! Say hi to number four! Five is coming atcha! Counting down to number six!" And even before he lands the seventh blow his adversary will say, like, "Oh, Jesus Christ, just fuckin' KILL me already," and the audience can count off the seventh blow in their heads.
