RICHARD MUNCHKIN: Ring of Fire is a great story. Joe calls me into his office at the beginning of December 1990. At the time, they were making more money and their films were getting bigger. So he calls me into his office and says, "We want you to do a kickboxing movie and we want to shoot it in February." So I say, "Yeah, I’d love to, can I see the script?" He responds, "Yeah. Right after you write it." Now this the beginning of December and we are supposed to shoot in February. I had already scheduled a two-week trip to Chicago to spend the holidays with my family. So I called my brother and told him to rent every kickboxing moving that he could find, because we had to write a script during the two weeks that I was home for Christmas. We didn’t have time to really do it, so we just stole from the best and did Romeo and Juliet with kickboxing; West Side Story but instead of the dancing, it’s kickboxing.

Joe had already hired Don "the dragon" Wilson for Ring of Fire, before I even wrote the script. But every Asian actor in Hollywood showed up at my door to audition, whether they were called or not. They came and they said, "The word is out that you are making a movie where the hero is an Asian doctor who gets the white girl."

PM were always reactive instead of proactive. You know, they saw Don Wilson did Bloodfist for Roger Corman and it made money, so they said, "Let’s get Don Wilson." Cynthia Rothrock did some movies for another company, so they said, "let’s get Cynthia Rothrock."

Cynthia Rothrock (Actor: Guardian Angel, Martial Artist): When I started training, there was the big fallacy that "women couldn’t do martial arts." It was believed that you had to be big, strong, and look like a man. I think that it was during my time in films that I helped women to get involved in martial arts. They would see me in my films and see that I was not big and strong but could still do it. I became a role model for people. When I started doing films in Hong Kong, they had a different mentality and liked me being the lead. In the first couple of films I got offered when I came to America, they would always cast me as the partner that helped the guy and, in the end, I would always need the partner to come in and save the day. At that time, they thought that women in the lead roles of action films wouldn’t sell. Van Damme, Segal, and Chuck Norris—they all got big movies but I was doing the same thing and never could get a big movie. I think it was because I was a woman.

RICHARD MUNCHKIN: PM never had any desire or care about social good. It wasn’t about promoting female action stars or Asian American action stars. It was always about the bottom line: can I sell it? I had discussions about this thing all the time with them and they always said the same thing, "Women don’t sell. Nobody wants to see a woman action star."

Steven Williams (Actor: L.A. Heat): Racism was there and we still have that issue, in America and the industry, but I had already been the male lead actor on a television show, so it wasn’t cutting edge or anything to hire a black male lead for L.A. Heat. Number one, it’s about me. It’s about Steven Williams, who happens to be a black actor. Number two, this is still the most racist motherfucking country on the planet and racism runs rampant in this industry, especially for black males. That’s just a fact, I am not bitching or complaining about it, it is just a fact. But I had already been the star, I had already been on 21 Jump Street… and I am a special kind of cat. I don’t know if they really consider me black in this industry; I don’t know if they consider me at all in this industry. My work is outstanding and I have a track record that is a monster yet, still, I am not Denzel or Samuel and not even a well-paid television star. But I am a working actor and I am still blessed in that sense, and I appreciate every opportunity that I get. I just want to work.

CYNTHIA ROTHROCK: I feel like in both film and in competition, I had to be better than the average person. Now, they have a women’s grand championship, but I’ve never in my life competed in a women’s championship, I had to compete against the men. I pushed myself harder because if I was only a little bit better, I wouldn’t win; I had to be phenomenally better. That inspired me to train really, really hard because I did have to prove myself. I remember that I was once asked to be on the cover of Karate Illustrated because the editor really wanted to put me on, but the owner said "women and minorities don’t sell." The editor fought for me to get on and the cover sold out. Later, I was at a bar with a top karate guy after a tournament, and he asked me "How did you get on the cover of Karate Illustrated, did you sleep with the editor?" And I responded, "no, is that how you got on?"

Kathleen Kinmont (Actor: The Art of Dying, CIA Code Name: Alexa): The first film I did for them was The Art of Dying, which was [pause] weird. It was kind of a glorified snuff film. It was interesting because Wings Hauser was directing and starring in it, and he did a fine job but he maybe wasn’t seasoned enough of a director to do both. That’s a really hard thing to pull off.

Wings is a lot like his name suggests. He’s like an ex-Vietnam guy, a bit unpredictable. To give you an example, in one of our sex scenes, he all of a sudden on set really wanted to shoot it in a kitchen and have the camera framing his back and bare ass. So Wings just pulls down his pants to his ankles and has the makeup girl apply makeup to make him look good, while we all sit around waiting to shoot the scene watching. That is what it was like on set.

CYNTHIA ROTHROCK: PM Entertainment put me in the lead, they were one of the few companies at that time that said, "Yes, Cynthia can sell as the lead." I was grateful that they had the foresight to say yes, and, obviously, they were looking at my track record too. I think that one of the biggest reasons that women weren’t selling was because they would get women — and even today you still see this — that look really hot and young but can’t fight. When you have someone that looks OK but can really fight, that is the package that's really going to sell. PM saw that.

COLE MCKAY: Joe (Merhi) was an amazing producer. He was really good at funding and financing, and he directed a number of the films as well. But Rick (Pepin) came from a filmmaking background, so, with Rick, the stories seemed to feel a little bit more real. Joseph’s stuff was primarily wall-to-wall action. Joe’s films were amazing, because it was like being part of a machine. Both guys had a great working relationship because they really complimented each other.

RICHARD MUNCHKIN: In my film The Deadly Bet, I think there were 15 fights in the ring over the course of that movie, and that doesn’t count fights that weren’t in the ring. They gave me a script that was only 42 pages long and the last 25% of the movie was summed up in one line: he goes to a big fight and wins. It was a factory: more fighting, more action, bigger stunts.