I Am Bruce Lee (2012) - full transcript

If someone says, "I can't watch a

Bruce Lee film," I

can't talk to 'em.

Bruce Lee is a worldwide

fighting icon.

He was a 130-something-pound

lethal weapon.

Bruce and his fighting

style changed the game.

In the beginning I

had no intention

that what I was practising,

and what I am still practising

now, would lead to this.

Bruce Lee, Bob Dylan, Ali,

Jay-Z, Tiger, Kobe, Jordan,

they all have the same spirit.

No stunt coordinator coordinated

his shit. He did it himself.

The guy you see in Bruce's films

is the way Bruce was in person.

He could lose his temper.

Bruce Lee is my idol.

He was directing, writing, acting.

I don't even look at him as

being Asian. He's my idol.

When you think of

Bruce Lee, you don't

think about the Asian karate guy.

You think about a legacy.

The moves that he could do,

you were wondering if they

were speeding up the camera.

Bruce Lee was like the superhero

of the Asian community.

You had Muhammad Ali.

You had Malcolm X.

Bruce Lee represented that

same kind of radicalism.

Technically brilliant

choreography.

You get mysticism,

hyper-masculinity.

This guy is like, bang.

He's put balls on Chinese men.

There's some cool stuff.

You're like, "Wow. That

super cool guy is my dad."

There'll never be

another Bruce Lee.

Baby, here I am, man.

How does a small

Chinese guy become the

greatest martial

artist of all time?

Production 263-05-224-10.

Test X1, take 1.

Bruce, just look right

into the camera

and tell us your name, your

age and where you were born.

My last name is Lee, Bruce Lee.

I was born in San Francisco

in 1940. I'm 24 right now.

There was controversy

about me taking

him back to the United States.

But he loved his

time that he lived

in Seattle before all of this.

It was important for my children

to know where their father was.

I just intimately

just started crying.

I think I literally

cried after the

funeral all the way from Seattle,

all the way to the

California border,

all the way up to Sacramento.

That was a very difficult

time to leave Hong Kong

and... take their

favourite son away.

Bruce's childhood is

interesting to look at

from the standpoint

of where he ended up.

First of all, Hong

Kong in the early '40s

was occupied by Japan

during World War ll,

and this had an

influence on Bruce.

It was very important

to him as a child

from the get-go to

be self-sufficient,

and in doing that,

you have to shoulder

a lot of personal responsibility.

There's bad blood

historically between

China and Hong Kong and Japan.

His mother used to

tell me how Bruce

would hang over the

side of the balcony

and shake his fist at the Japanese

planes coming to

land in Hong Kong.

If anyone said a word against

the Chinese, he would rebel.

And you work in motion

pictures in Hong Kong?

Yes, since I was

around six years old.

Bruce became a child actor

under his father's influence,

his father being an actor

in the Chinese opera

and then in Cantonese

films as well.

Tell the crew what time they

shoot the pictures in Hong Kong.

Well, it's mostly in

the morning because

it's kind of noisy in Hong Kong,

you know, around three

million people there,

so every time when

you have a picture,

it's mostly, say, around

12am to 5am in the morning.

A lot of people don't

touch on this,

but he was the biggest

childhood star in Hong Kong.

He made 20, 20-something

movies as a child star.

He was like the Macaulay

Culkin of that era.

And then you have

the fact that Hong

Kong was governed by the British.

They targeted the British.

You are crazy.

But there's a lot of

competition between

the British people living there

and the Chinese living there.

He's also part Caucasian.

I think he saw a lot

of adversity racially,

not only around him

but within himself.

And he had run-ins with English

schoolboys and that kind of thing,

so there was always that

feeling of resentment

of others dictating his future.

Then, of course, when he was 13,

he went to study with Yip Man.

As human beings, fighting's in our

DNA. We get it and we like it.

Yip Man trained

Bruce in Wing Chun,

and Yip Man was a

fabulous kung fu master.

Bruce had many

run-ins with the law

and other teenagers in Hong

Kong, and he had fights.

He loved the street

fights. He loved

other people who can street-fight.

Bruce's style is made

for street survival.

He grew up fighting fights

in Hong Kong on the rooftop.

Bruce had some of the films,

8mm, that he used to show us,

where they get into the

old traditional stance

and one guy would come in and

throw a couple of punches

and the other guy would back up

and fall down over the plant pot.

There were two clans usually,

the Choy Li Fut clan

and the Wing Chun clan

by Yip Man and his students,

and they would have battles.

Although this stuff about the Choy

Li Fut and Wing

Chun rooftop fights

is the stuff of

legend, it is true.

I was in Hong Kong.

The sentiment, the

animosity between

Wing Chun and Choy

Li Fut still exists.

So Yip Man was a great

influence on Bruce

and leaned him in the

direction of philosophy.

Yip Man would not be a

legend without Bruce Lee.

Wing Chun was a very, very

minor martial art style,

and now it's global, and that's

all because of Bruce Lee.

Ultimately, martial art means

honestly expressing yourself.

Now, it is very difficult to do.

A lot of that warrior spirit,

to me, it's really honourable.

It's really pure.

It breaks through

to every culture,

every language, every colour.

It's all about getting

respect back, you know.

If you're gonna hurt

me, you're gonna

have to earn it, motherfucker.

I was the youngest of three boys.

I got obsessed with Bruce

Lee and martial arts.

I wanted to kick my brothers'

asses and prove my worthiness.

When a good fight breaks out,

you can't help but be excited.

You can't help but show emotion.

It took a while, but as many times

as each of my brothers beat me up,

each one of them got

one ass-kicking

from me and that was it.

I didn't do so well

talking shit back,

so I don't see the

point in talking

about it. Let's just go there.

But then you feel

bad and embarrassed

afterwards, "That was childish."

"I could have handled that

better." But you also feel good.

If you couldn't get laid,

you got in a fight.

Let me punch this

ugly motherfucker.

In Youngstown. It was

a nice place to live.

Fighting has taken over

my mind and my being.

It's not what I do. It's who I am.

My father told me

fighters are born, not

made. Bruce Lee was

a born fighter.

When you do punch, now I'm

leaning forward a little bit,

hoping not to hurt

any camera angle.

I mean, you gotta put the

whole hip into it and snap it

and get all your energy in there,

and make this into a weapon.

When Bruce Lee was

a young boy, maybe

13 or 14, training in Wing Chun,

they found out that Bruce

Lee had Caucasian blood.

I believe it's one fourth German.

Well?

The other students

said he shouldn't

be allowed to learn Wing Chun

because he wasn't purely Chinese.

When you're by yourself and

no one wants to be there

because they didn't

wanna get beat up,

it's the loneliest

feeling in the world.

One thing I have definitely

learned in my life

is that I do have a bad temper.

A violent temper, in fact.

His whole life is sort of this

play between East and West.

He hated the oppression

of little people

which he saw everywhere, in

the Japanese occupation,

the Boxer Rebellion,

the foreign powers

going into China.

He just thought all

of that was wrong.

To live the life he wanted to

live, he had to fight for it.

He really had to put it out

there and really walk the walk.

I mean, it is easy for

me to put on a show

and be cocky and be flooded

with a cocky feeling

and then feel like pretty

cool and all that.

Or I can make all kinds of phoney

things, you see what I mean?

Blinded by it. Or I can show you

some really fancy movement.

But to express oneself honestly,

not lying to oneself,

and to express myself honestly,

that, my friend, is...

In some ways it's the

total opposite of anger.

It's beauty, it's

passion, it's art.

It's painting a picture

without tools.

It was a surprise, but

an understandable one,

when I found out that Bruce

Lee was a cha-cha champion,

because you could see that

reflected in his fighting style.

He was the 1957 Hong

Kong cha-cha champion.

People don't know that.

His footwork was

impeccable. Incredible

samba dancer.

He didn't move like anybody

else. He moved like himself.

In a fight you have

footwork and you have form

and you have stance and

power that you interject,

and that's the way that dancing

and martial arts go hand in hand.

For him to be steeped into that

rhythm reinforced why black people

have always identified with

Bruce and his fighting style.

So what I got from Bruce

as a performer is...

You know, most performers perform

like this, right? Straight up.

Me, perform from the side,

sort of like how Bruce

used to always, you know,

be ready for combat like this.

Honestly expressing yourself,

like me being a dancer,

that's what it's all about.

That's another big,

big philosophy from

him that I take with

me to this day.

So I'll be performing like,

"Bah, bah. Bah, bah, bah, bah."

I keep trying to dig deeper

and deeper within myself

and find that fluidity

that no one can replicate.

That's the vibe that

Bruce Lee taught me.

It's to always bring it.

That's what I get from Bruce.

And when did you leave Hong Kong?

1959, when I was 18.

It had gotten a little difficult

with the police on one side

and with gangs on the other side.

He beat this kid up, but he

didn't know that the kid

was the son of a high-ranking

police officer in Hong Kong.

He got into so many street fights

that by 18, his

father gave him $100

and sent him off to America.

If he wanted his immigration

status to be US citizen,

then he had to return

by the time he was 18.

To go when you're still

a star is very strange,

because he could have kept doing

films, but they wanted him to go,

to make the right decision

of where he's going next.

In Seattle, my father started

teaching martial arts.

He didn't ever look

at people because

of their race or their

stature in life.

If you had a sincere interest in

martial arts, he would teach you.

Taky Kimura was really

his best friend.

Taky became his first assistant

instructor in his first school,

the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute,

in Seattle, Washington.

Bruce used to come

to my high school

and he used to teach in the

Chinese philosophy class.

He was five years

older than we were

and I do remember my heart going,

"Pah, Pah, Pah," you

know, "He is sure cute."

It wasn't long after

that that I started

taking gung fu lessons from him,

and my relationship with him

changed more from just a student

to actually feeling

that maybe, maybe

there could be a

connection between us.

We both attended the

University of Washington.

We would get together on campus

and attend our classes,

occasionally, when we weren't

doing gung fu or something else.

And then when we were both

done with our classes,

we would rush back to his studio,

which was just right there

in the university district,

and we'd turn on the TV and watch

General Hospital every day.

And it was like, "We have to get

there. It's almost three o'clock."

In the '60s, marriages were

happening in California.

In the rest of the

country there were no

interracial marriages.

It was difficult.

My mother was not thrilled

when we decided to get married

and didn't want her

daughter to have

to suffer any

negativity from others.

The ban on interracial

marriage was lifted in 1968.

That didn't mean the ban

lifted in people's hearts.

Bruce was very strong in saying,

"I want to marry Linda. I know

that we are a good match."

And so we did get married. It

was really hard on my mother.

But it wasn't long before she

came to love Bruce very much.

It's so important

to know that it was

his wife Linda that grounded him.

She was his rock.

As a couple, we really did not

suffer any prejudice

from outsiders,

and I think this had

a great deal to do

with Bruce's overwhelming

personality.

I absolutely recognise that

my uncle was a gorgeous man.

He's got swagger.

We love his style.

He had style the way Muhammad

Ali had style in the ring.

He was like the Elvis of martial

arts. He looked like a movie star.

He was always such a snappy

dresser and so handsome.

I've heard the term that he's

put balls on Chinese men.

He's shown that the

Chinese man can be,

you know, sexy and

hot and enticing.

I'm trying to copy his hair.

That's why my hair is long.

After Bruce Lee, my

God, Chinese men,

they're a force to

be reckoned with.

They're invincible. So that's

an amazing transformation.

He's one of a kind and

extremely attractive.

That would be for

both straight women

and a lot of gay men

that I know too.

Let's just put it this way.

I think the one thing

that's missing

in my life right now is Bruce Lee.

A man like Bruce Lee.

The first internationals

were in Long Beach.

I was instructed to take out

Bruce Lee. He was the guest.

So I was sort of like

the tour guide for him.

He demonstrated his art

before he even demonstrated

in front of the

black-belt audience.

In the hotel room

he says, "You can

use everything, you can side-kick,

you can round-kick, and

I'll just use my jab."

When he knocked me out,

it was more like a hook.

It sort of came off the side like

that. The ease in which he did it,

and explaining while

he was doing it to me,

that was mind-boggling for me.

It was like a bad dream, like

the dreams where you can't run.

When Bruce Lee came up and did

his performance of his gung fu,

it was something I had

never seen before.

He said, "The individual is more

important in any style or system."

I said, "I need to train

with a man like this."

He was just so ahead of the times.

He'd go to Ed Parker's

events in Long

Beach and they treated

him like a god.

When he did his

one-thumb push-ups,

you could hear a pin drop.

He showed his speed,

showed his power,

showed his one-inch punch.

People say, "Bruce Lee is the

fastest person on earth."

He did these things

so realistically

that people didn't know if it was

show business or the real McCoy.

When Bruce did the

demonstration in 1964,

before he had even come back to

Oakland where we

lived at the time,

I had received a phone call

from William Dozier's office.

Jay Sebring, the famous hair

stylist, happened to see my father

at the Long Beach

internationals, and

he cut the hair of William Dozier.

He said, "You have to see

this guy. He's amazing."

When Bruce came home,

I said to him,

"You need to call this guy

back, William Dozier."

"He's a producer in Hollywood

and he wants to see you."

That was the first inkling that,

"Wow, I might be able to do

something in Hollywood."

Look directly into the camera.

Very dapper. He's got the suit and

the tie, you know, white shirt.

He's so elegant.

But he feels like a coiled cobra.

- You've just had a baby boy?

- Yeah.

And you've lost a little

sleep over it, have you?

Three nights.

He was 24, and he went in

there, it's almost like,

"You're lucky that I'm

here auditioning for you."

There is the finger jab

There is the punch.

Just the poise he had said it all.

There is the back fist and elbow.

Even in conversation, you could

feel his explosive nature.

Of course, then they use legs,

straight to the groin or come up.

That's a special

kind of star power.

Or, if I can back up a little bit,

we stop at the...

and then come back.

- Alright.

- This kind of works.

He never had any intention

of going into show business.

His passion was his martial arts,

so he had a school in Seattle

and a second school in Oakland.

His plan was to open many, many

schools all over the county.

Obviously he started

with the classical

Chinese arts, which is Wing Chun.

And then everyone knows about

the fight in 1964 in Oakland.

There's the famous story

about how he was challenged

by the Chinese

community in Oakland,

and he had to defend the right to

teach his art to

non-Chinese people.

You and this entire

society are useless

in this country. You are archaic.

And you're a fool to think that

you can break away from us

merely because you choose to.

To prove Bruce Lee was wrong,

he was a fake and a fraud,

the Chinese traditionalists sent

somebody over to fight him.

The Chinese sent someone

to shut down the school.

Shut down or thrown down,

and Bruce chose throw down.

The fight was to be

held at Bruce's school.

If Bruce lost the

fight, he would have

to stop teaching

non-Chinese people.

Anything that forces you

to review your dogmas,

most people don't

respond too well to it.

I was there, eight months

pregnant with Brandon,

and these elders arrived

from San Francisco,

led by Wong Jack

Man, who was going

to be the opponent

in this challenge.

They came and they

had this big match.

I didn't have a shred of a doubt

about how this would come out.

Wong Jack Man started

to run around the

room trying to get

away from Bruce,

and it took three

minutes for Bruce

to get him down on the ground

and say, "Do you give UP?"

So Wong Jack Man and

those people all left.

And I remember so clearly

in my mind's eye

Bruce sitting on the steps

in the back of the studio

with his head in his hands.

And she said, "What's the matter?"

That was the fight

that he realised the

classical arts were

not working for him.

He should have put

that guy down sooner.

Bruce Lee doesn't

beat him fast enough,

so he goes off to rethink it all,

and these tales all had the

structure of myth and fantasy.

Little parables about the master.

He said, "My training in

Wing Chun, my classical art,

didn't prepare me for

this kind of a battle."

That was the beginning

of the evolution

of his own way of martial arts.

If you read the notes that he left

behind, 1965 he starts to write,

"My style is Western fencing,

Western boxing and Wing Chun."

He said he owe our knowledge

to the Wing Chun,

but we're gonna go

beyond the Wing Chun.

Bruce Lee took a lot from boxing.

He felt boxing was more realistic

in that you were trading blows.

He likes the boxing footwork. It's

alive, it's moving and it changes.

He was totally invested

in watching boxing films,

going way back to Jack

Johnson, Gene Tunney, Dempsey.

What he took from Dempsey

was the kinetic chain,

how to generate power, the

importance of a good jab.

There's a lot about the

alignment of the body.

Bruce had a huge

collection of boxing films

and he thought the

world of Muhammad Ali.

What he would do

was very unique. I

once came in, lights were all out.

And he's watching this 8mm film

and he's watching it backwards.

Ali had a left-foot forward stance

and Bruce a right foot forward.

So he would run the films

backward in the film editor

and study them meticulously.

He would stretch and read

and review on 8mm film of

a boxer at the same time.

According to John Saxon, his

co-star on Enter the Dragon,

John asked him, "Why do you have

all these boxing films on Ali?"

And Bruce said, "Because one

day I'm gonna fight him."

If I was to fight Bruce Lee, Bruce

Lee was so quick, so smooth,

but the one thing that negates

speed on a fighter is pressure,

and I was a pressure fighter.

With Bruce Lee, you gotta

go inside, smother him

and outmuscle him. But you can't

fight a dude like that outside.

I see Bruce leading off

with some long-ass kicks

and Boom Boom gets pissed off and

tries to give him

some body punches.

And when you get close,

then Bruce, I'm sure,

would be trying to bring

knees and high head kicks,

and I'd throw an upper cut,

bring the elbow across.

And he's gonna be

trying to counter me,

so I have to bob and weave inside.

Bruce gets it to the ground and

arm-bars him or guillotines him.

It would have been a good time.

People are watching

this going, "He

took more shots than we thought."

"He absolutely has lost his mind

thinking he can do that

against Bruce Lee."

Ray was good to the

body. Then he'd

eventually get that hook on you.

Bruce wouldn't know how to stop

it. Why? Because he never did it.

(Bruce Lee)

People bring up the question:

Was Bruce Lee a real fighter?

Bruce was a brilliant

fighter. I saw

him beat up a guy on

Enter the Dragon.

It was a gang banger,

a tong member,

who started giving him a bad time.

Pound for pound, I think he's

probably one of the best fighters.

He had tons of street fights and

with that speed and footwork,

he'd be a hell of a 135-pounder.

He was a 130-something-pound

lethal weapon.

He has all the attributes

that make a good fighter:

The agility, the balance, the

coordination, the dexterity.

People say was he the

toughest man that ever lived?

He was 130, 135 pounds.

You'd grab him and, you

know, out the window.

And that isn't to put him down.

He was an entertainer,

and the best.

If he wanted to become

an MMA fighter today,

he would easily have been that

fighter that everyone fears.

His technique was beautiful,

perfect technique.

I don't care how good you

are, 135lb wrestler,

you fight Brock Lesnar,

you're gonna lose.

The bigger guy equally trained is

always gonna beat the littler guy.

But the fact is, it

wasn't about mass.

He would just put it down

no matter how big you were.

But, then again, everybody's

chin is different, you know?

Whether Bruce Lee was a great

fighter or wasn't a great fighter

doesn't make any difference to his

cultural and

historical importance,

because his films

changed the world.

You got the job on

The Green Hornet,

where you played

Kato, the chauffeur,

mainly because you're the

only Chinese-looking guy

who could pronounce

the name of the

leading character, Britt Reid.

I made that as a joke, of course.

And it's a heck of a name, man.

Every time I said it at that

time, I was superconscious.

Mr Reid's residence.

As a kid, we watched

Green Hornet for him.

We could care less

about Green Hornet.

He had a fly car, I'll give

him props for the car,

but Kato was incredible.

Everybody in the neighbourhood

was fighting to be Bruce Lee,

not the Green Hornet.

A lot of stunt guys

didn't know how to react.

You do the old John

Wayne, you throw

a punch and the guy goes down.

With him, it's boom, boom,

boom, boom, lightning fast.

There's a shot of Bruce

and he's doing a kick,

and his thigh, his inner thigh,

is flat against his chest.

And we would just look at that

kick like, "Are you kidding me?"

"Look how incredible

this guy can kick."

I think about what

my dad said about

his first foray into Hollywood.

There were all these seasoned

actors doing their thing,

and he felt like the

only robot in the room.

That's something I

can really relate

to in my life, back

when I was acting,

and I was trying so hard to

impress the right people.

When I did The Green Hornet,

I was not being myself

and I'm trying to accumulate

external security,

external technique,

but never to ask what Bruce

Lee would have done.

The beauty was that

he immediately said,

"I'm not gonna do that any more."

Sort of an awakening

moment for him.

By the way, I did

a really terrible

job in that, I have to say.

Really? You didn't like

yourself? I didn't see it.

He was always trying to

be a holistic person,

the fight, the philosophy,

the better human being.

Martial art has a very, very deep

meaning as far as my

life is concerned.

And he was a very literate guy.

He really did read

and really did study

and really did think.

All type of knowledge ultimately

means self-knowledge.

He had a huge library

of books in his

den from the ceiling to the floor.

Any book I'd pick up, there were

notations about what was good,

what was functional,

what was no good.

As an actor, as a martial

artist, as a human being,

all these I have learned

from martial art.

Most of the writings in the Tao of

Jeet Kune Do are

Western influenced

and they come directly from

fencing and boxing books.

And you can take most of

the passages in that book

and trace them to their

roots, verbatim.

He might have changed

"fighter" from

"fencer," but pretty

much it's intact.

People will say, "Hey, that's

not Bruce's philosophy."

"That was this author

or that author."

That doesn't matter. These

people are missing the point.

Bruce Lee's writings are very fun

to read, but they were notes.

You get these quotes where

he may change one word

and substitute Jeet

Kune Do for Tao.

So therefore it's not pure

naturalness or unnaturalness.

The ideal is unnatural naturalness

or natural unnaturalness.

- Yin yang.

- You're right, man, that's it.

Because of Bruce Lee, now

I read up on Alan Watts.

JD Krishnamurti,

of course Lao Tsu,

Tao Te Ching.

Bruce Lee dissected

those philosophies,

making them straight and

direct and to the point.

That's what real

philosophy's about,

something that you can apply

to day-to-day living.

That's what Bruce Lee did.

This is where he was a genius.

It might sound too philosophical,

but it's unacting acting or

acting unacting if you...

- You've lost me.

- I have, huh?

So Bruce Lee as a philosopher

introduces nothing new

but introduces a radicalism

into martial art.

He's speaking the ideology

of the counterculture.

He speaks the zeitgeist.

So you get an

interest in Buddhism,

in yoga, in all things Eastern.

Bruce Lee shows you

meditation in movement.

You set up a school in Hollywood

for people like James Garner,

Steve McQueen and the others.

Why would they want

to learn Chinese

martial art? Because

of a movie role?

Not really.

Most of them, you see, they are

coming in to ask me to teach them

not so much how to

defend themselves,

they want to learn to

express themselves

through some movement,

be it anger,

be it determination or whatsoever.

He is paying me to show

him in combative form

the art of expressing

the human body.

Our back yard was always

a back yard school,

so for Jim Coburn to come over

or Steve McQueen to come over

was like not that big a deal.

Of all your students, famous,

James Garner, Steve McQueen,

James Coburn, Roman Polanski,

which was the best?

Depending, ok? Now, as a fighter,

Steve McQueen, that son of a gun,

got the toughness in him.

Now, James Coburn is

a peace-loving man.

- I've met him.

- You've met him.

He's really, really nice.

Super mellow and all that,

you know what I mean?

Now, he appreciates the

philosophical part of it,

therefore his understanding

of it is deeper than Steve's.

He often told me, "I would

like to see Steve McQueen

be a little bit more like Coburn

and Coburn to be a little bit

more like Steve McQueen."

Actually, you see, it's

a combination of both.

I mean, here is the natural

instinct and here is control.

You are to combine

the two in harmony.

Not if you have one

to the extreme,

you will be very unscientific.

If you have another

to the extreme,

you become all of a

sudden a mechanical man.

All the big, big names in

tournament fighting came to Bruce

because they wanted to

refine their skills.

Joe Lewis, Bob Wall, Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris was probably the

greatest kicker I've ever seen.

Chuck Norris is unbelievable.

Bruce didn't want

to teach beginners.

He did have some in

his own schools.

But he took the top

martial artists and

he felt he could make them better.

"One more time. You don't get

it, we move to something else."

"You gonna get it?" That's

how he would teach.

He knew a lot. He

taught me gung fu.

Joe Lewis was highly

influenced by Bruce Lee.

Joe Lewis was a world

champion when he met Bruce,

but it was a lot more of Bruce

being the instructor to Joe.

I don't think he had boxing

hands until he met Bruce Lee,

but his side kick was phenomenal.

Joe would throw 1,000

side kicks a day.

Listen, Joe Lewis,

in today's world,

he would have learned

all that shit

and been just as bad as

he was back in the day.

Bruce didn't think point karate,

point martial arts competition,

was valuable at all, and I

totally disagreed with him.

Bruce watched it but

didn't believe in it.

He always advocated

full-contact sparring.

Bruce Lee looked

at all of that and

said, "This is not martial arts."

"This is nonsense. Let's

get rid of these rules."

I respect that he didn't feel

like he wanted to compete

because it wasn't real combat.

He says you're not fighting for

yourself or expressing yourself.

You're fighting for the judges,

the referee, the rules.

What's the reality

of combat? There's

someone who wants

to beat you down.

He said to learn to swim,

you cannot swim on land.

You gotta get in the water.

To learn to fight,

you gotta fight.

Can you break five

or six pieces of

wood with your hand or your foot?

Boards don't hit back.

I'll probably break

my hand and foot.

He had high regard for those

martial artists of the day

that were winning tournaments.

He just had a different

philosophy about

martial arts and actual fighting.

I do not believe in

styles any more.

I mean, I do not believe

that there is such thing

as like a Chinese way of fighting

or the Japanese way of fighting

or whatever way of fighting.

Because if you don't have styles,

if you just say, "Well, here I

am, you know, as a human being,

how can I express myself

totally and completely?"

Now, that way, you

won't create a style,

because style is a

crystallisation.

I mean, that way it's a

process of continuing growth.

He called his institute

Jun Fan Gung Fu.

We were riding in a car and he

mentioned what he

enjoyed in fencing

was the stop hit.

Bruce didn't have any passive

blocks. His blocks were a strike.

Bruce took the stances

from the stances

that you see in Western fencing.

Instead of just block and then

hit, it's done simultaneously.

He says we wanna intercept his

physical motion and his thought.

It's almost like fencing. You see

this capture? That's the capture.

And that's why he

said, "I'm gonna call

my new method the intercepting way

or the intercepting fist."

Come on, touch me.

Any way you can.

To reach me, you must move to me.

Your attack offers me an

opportunity to intercept you.

And they said, "What

do you call that?"

He says, "We call

that Jeet Kune Do."

In Cantonese, Jeet Kune Do.

Then it was Dan who says,

"Acronym would be JKD."

And Bruce Lee said, "I like that."

The way of the intercepting fist.

Intercepting fist?

It sounds Chinese, but it's very

much an American martial art.

Jeet Kune Do

was how can I most efficiently

directly end a moment of combat?

The philosophy Bruce Lee had was:

The simpler the better, the most

effective, the direct line.

- The other stuff was Hollywood.

- It can be taught.

Do you understand?

But it cannot really

be standardised.

And that's not to say that

it can't be passed on.

But it was very personal to him.

All the wannabes,

all the imposters

who put up Jeet Kune Do signs

on their school building,

and they have no idea

what Jeet Kune Do is.

They think it's a style.

I don't know if he'd

be dojo-busting in

his days, but that

would upset Bruce.

(Bruce Lee)

Bruce Lee has the

big middle finger

raised toward any

form of authority.

All kinds of dogmas, all

kinds of traditions.

He's saying a big "screw

you" to all of them.

This guy was preaching back in the

'60s you shouldn't

stay to one style.

No one style is the best.

Have a piece of everything.

In 1968 he says, "JKD in

'69 will be different."

I said, "This is really good

stuff we're doing now."

He says, "JKD in '69

will be different.

JKD in 1970 will be different."

Martial arts has evolved

more in the last ten years

than it has in the

last 10,000 years,

because all the stuff that

Bruce Lee talked about

and his philosophies

and things that

he believed were finally proven

and now this new martial art was

able to start to grow and evolve.

Our main event, for the

light heavyweight title,

here we go.

You talk about Chinese

boxing. How does

it differ from, say,

our kind of boxing?

Well, first we use the feet.

Second to none.

And then we use the elbow.

Oh. Beautiful elbow.

- Do you use the thumb too?

- You name it, man, we use it.

- You use it all.

- You have to.

Because that is the

expression of the human body.

I mean, the... everything,

I mean, not just the hand.

The crazy thing about

martial arts is

people debate and fight

over this stuff.

There's no debate.

Bruce Lee is definitely the

father of mixed martial arts.

I do think there's a

correlation there,

but it's not that Jeet Kune

Do is the same thing as MMA.

If Dana White says Bruce Lee is

the father of mixed martial arts,

I would say he's one

of the earliest ones,

but Gene LeBell is the father

of mixed martial arts.

In 1963 you'll see Gene defeating

Milo Savage, a professional boxer.

Well, Bruce wasn't into

mixed martial arts in 1963.

As I was choking him, he grabbed

my hand and started to bite,

and I said, "Milo,

you bite my hand,

I'm gonna take your eye out."

He opened his mouth, I pulled

my hand out and I choked him.

And he was out, like,

for 22 minutes.

Gene LeBell taught Bruce

Lee grappling moves.

I'd throw him and flip him

and he'd land on his feet.

Then he'd spin, do a

crescent kick on me

or do a Judo throw.

And he was a magnificent athlete.

If you're gonna say

father of mixed

martial... it's gotta be Bruce.

He's before anyone else.

He's the first one who decided

to put it all together.

He had the little shorts on, too.

That's as close as

he could get to what

the UFC and the MMA

was 25 years later.

In 1947, Kajukenbo was the first

to put all these different

martial arts in one title:

Karate, Judo, Kenpo, Boxing.

Like Bruce Lee, they put all

these practical things together

but Kajukenbo had it first.

I agree with Dana White.

He is one of the pioneers

of mixed martial art.

The reality is, everybody has

been a part of this evolution,

from Benny "the Jet" Urquidez

to Joe Lewis to all these guys,

to Joe Lewis the boxer, too, and

the list goes on and on and on.

When the UFC came in, they

weren't talking about Bruce Lee.

They were talking

about Royce Gracie.

Royce Gracie.

The Gracies were a

piece of that too, a

piece of the history

of not only the UFC

but of the martial arts evolving.

For a while they owned

those competitions.

There's the tag.

What the Gracies did

was they took the

ground game, the submission game,

and really refined it

to a whole other level.

Bruce would have loved

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.

I think if he saw the Gracies,

he would have studied.

He really embraced wrestling

and he really embraced Judo.

The difference between the

Gracies and Bruce Lee

is Bruce Lee was never stuck

and married to one thing.

I think once everybody

started to learn Jiu-jitsu

and then people started to

do more stand-up in there...

My goodness.

Then I think they started

talking about Bruce Lee.

Oh, man. That is the Karate Kid.

And when you're talking

about combat...

Well, I mean, if

it is a sport, now

you're talking about

something else.

You have regulations.

You have rules.

But when you're talking

about fighting as it is...

- No rules?

- With no rules.

Real fighting.

Well, then, baby, you'd better

train every part of your body.

Mixed martial art in the cage

is for a contest. It's a sport.

I don't know that I would call him

exactly the father of

mixed martial arts

because, again, it is still

sport, there are still rules.

Bruce Lee was strictly

for the street,

taking guys out, not

for competition.

When they had these

Vale Tudo fights in

Brazil, there were

barely any rules.

You could head-butt,

you could kick

in the groin, all kinds of things.

Bruce's favourite weapon in the

street fight was the finger jab.

This hand would block the vision,

so when he came up, like that.

If you do that, it could be very

serious damage to his

vision for life.

Mixed martial art is the

purest form of combat

that you can possibly

have in civilisation.

Oh. With a kick.

I just always felt like it

was such a real raw sport

and that it was gonna

overtake boxing one day.

It seems like that day's here.

Let's fight.

It's the most

hardcore real form of

competition and

honesty I could find,

and that's the kind

of thing I crave.

Carano, a big-time puncher.

There is fear. Sometimes you

don't wanna go in there.

It just teaches you

to face the music,

that fear's something that

needs to be devoured.

My biggest fear is not

that I'm gonna get hurt.

Carano getting pounded.

My biggest fear is

that I'm not going

to be able to make it authentic

and honestly express myself.

You're not trying to

express yourself in

real fighting. You're

trying to survive.

And you ask yourself how can

you honestly express yourself

at that moment?

If I want to punch, I'm gonna do

it, man, and I'm gonna do it.

Not you want to punch because

you're trying to avoid getting hit

but to really be in with

it and express yourself.

So that is the type of thing you

have to train yourself into it,

to become one with the...

This might sound different.

I feel as if I'm helping people

as I'm punching them in the face.

- Shogun's badly hurt.

- Jon Jones.

I'm beating weakness out of them,

making them a better person.

In my opinion it's the

highest art of expression

and that's what honestly

expressing yourself is.

To the body.

And it is all over.

Jon Jones, look, guys like this,

it's important for them to

have this kind of confidence.

I don't look at it as if I'm

hurting my opponent, my enemy.

It's like we're brothers

painting this picture together.

It helps them, until,

of course, it doesn't,

which, as we know

historically, always happens,

where they run into that guy

where, "Oh, this isn't fun."

"This is reality. You

can get hurt in there."

What happens is after

several years of that,

it takes its effect, you know?

Like when I had to go

take my neurological

and my hands were going,

and I couldn't remember where I

parked my car in the morning.

It should be regulated.

There should

be judges and medical staff there.

You don't wanna see

people get injured.

I think my father, from a

pure martial arts interest

and combat interest standpoint,

would have loved to watch the UFC.

I believe that Bruce Lee

was a huge fight fan.

He'd have been jumping

out of his seat,

getting as excited as any of us.

I think he'd have been proud to be

called the father of

mixed martial arts.

Ok, there's people out

there, they got it.

They say that Bruce Lee was the

father of mixed martial arts.

That bothers me.

If he's the father of

mixed martial arts,

I'm the grandfather of

mixed martial arts,

And if you don't believe

me, I'll choke you,

cos you got a nice

neck for choking.

When you get into this

whole martial arts thing

and you start talking about Bruce

Lee, a lot of people get offended.

People get pissed off and

bombed out and everything else.

But Bruce Lee is 100 percent the

father of mixed martial arts.

He was so directed and so concrete

about his thoughts and his beliefs

that he actually went out

and had his friend George

make a little miniature tombstone.

It's really heavy and it says,

"In memory of a once fluid man

crammed and distorted

by the classical mess."

The classical mess

meant that all these

traditions were a classical mess.

"Right punch comes. I'll move

out to a 30-degree angle."

"Then I'll bend my..."

It's too complicated.

It's not gonna work in real life.

So here was this

tombstone he created

to essentially remind himself

to go back to fluidity.

Bruce had a vast library

of motivational books

and wrote motivational

thoughts every day

and had a little diary

that he kept every day.

Always they would say you've got

to have the plan and work the plan

and write down your

goals, which he did.

You know, his famous paper he

wrote, My Definite Chief Aim.

1969 was a very

difficult time for him.

A lot of things were

going through his life.

As I recall, money was short.

Bruce was very

traditionalist and very

ashamed that I had to go to work.

This was not in his

way of thinking.

He contemplated maybe going back

to Hong Kong at that time period.

And then in the summer of '69

these horrific murders happened.

We have a weird homicide.

When the Manson murders happened,

it was horrible,

it was horrifying.

The scene described

by one investigator

as reminiscent of a

weird religious rite.

Bruce was a very good friend of

Jay Sebring and of Sharon Tate.

Five persons, including actress

Sharon Tate, were found dead

at the home of Miss Tate and her

husband, screen director

Roman Polanski.

My father worked with Sharon Tate

the summer before the murders

on the film The Wrecking Crew.

Miss Tate was eight

months pregnant.

Among the other victims

were Hollywood

hair stylist Jay Sebring...

Jay Sebring introduced my

father to William Dozier,

who was the producer of Batman and

also produced The Green Hornet.

The murders were

then followed up the

very next night by more murders.

It was just a nightmare and

very scary for Bruce, too,

because Bruce's

whole mentality was

protection, to take care of us.

One officer summed up the murders:

"In all my years I have never

seen anything like this before."

Those were tough times, going out

of the '60s and into the '70s.

And every day, I

practise martial arts.

We were really struggling

financially to make it,

and we had bought our

first house which

we ended up not being

able to afford.

And right in the middle

of that he hurt his back.

He was doing a good

morning stretch

exercise which can

be very dangerous.

Chiropractors like that exercise.

- You see?

- Watch out.

For whatever reason, he did not

warm up and just... that was it.

He was in excruciating pain.

I said, "Where's

Bruce?" They never

wanted to say he hurt his back,

because I knew he was working

on the screen scripts.

They told him that he was

never going to walk properly,

and forget doing any gung fu.

On the back of his business card

he wrote the words "Walk on".

He used to put the

card on his bathroom

mirror and his doors and walls,

so everywhere he went in his

room, he'd see "Walk on".

So he'd get down and start

doing his stretching.

Bruce brought himself back

through rigorous rehabilitation.

I had a similar expression

when I would drive

down to Torrance

to do my Jiu-jitsu

class every week.

His expression was "Walk on" and

mine was "Walk in the front door".

I had every excuse on the

way down to go back.

My stomach hurts. My arm

hurts. My knee's aching.

And I used to say,

"Walk in the front

door. Walk in the front door."

The end result of

walking in that front

door 16 years was I

got my black belt,

which I consider the greatest

achievement of my life,

apart from my children.

The back problem was a constant

problem in his filming

from day one after the injury.

Something he had to

be careful about

and nurse each day when

he finished working.

And you push it out,

but all the time

you are keeping the

continuity going.

Bending, stretching.

He worked extremely hard.

Most of us, I think, don't know

what it is to work that hard.

My father went to India

with James Coburn and the

writer Stirling Silliphant.

They were scouting locations

for a film, The Silent Flute,

that my father had written

the treatment for

that he was really hoping

would come together,

because he was struggling at that

point in time to get

a project going.

The Silent Flute

could have blasted

Bruce into Hollywood big time.

This was going to be the

big breakthrough project.

This was going to put money in the

bank to pay the

mortgage and all that.

But they couldn't find the

locations that they wanted.

Stirling and Jim came

back to Warner Bros

and said, "This is just not what

we're looking for in location."

And then it all

came crashing down.

That was such a

disappointment to Bruce

because we were banking

on it, literally.

(Bruce Lee)

Bruce took a trip back to

Hong Kong to help his mum

with immigration into

the United States.

He took Brandon took with him.

Brandon was five years old.

He wasn't working, had no

money. He dropped everything.

Closed his schools. "I'm

going to Hong Kong."

The Green Hornet was at that

time showing on TV in Hong Kong,

only the people were

calling it The Kato Show.

They didn't care

about Van Williams.

He was the biggest thing there.

He was greeted there

as a returning star.

That was the first

time he thought,

"Wow. People recognise me here."

"They remember me."

He did a couple of interviews

on television shows.

Oh, yeah, that kid. Now he's

a big star in Hollywood.

So that was the first inkling

that maybe there would be a

future there in Hong Kong.

But he wasn't quite ready

to follow up on that.

Bruce Lee had a bit part,

or a supporting role,

in the Longstreet series.

And this had an enormous effect

on the audience. What was it?

I think the successful

ingredient in it

was because I was being Bruce Lee.

- Yourself?

- Myself, right.

And did that part, just

expressed myself, like I say,

honestly expressed

myself at that time.

He was very proud of Longstreet,

and it was very much from him

and his art and his thoughts.

Can you remember the lines

by Stirling Silliphant to...

- He's one of my students.

- Was he, too?

Yes.

You've had everybody

as your student.

But some lines there

expressed your philosophy.

I don't know if you remember them.

I remember.

I said... This is what it is, ok?

If you try to remember,

you will lose.

I said empty your mind.

Be formless, shapeless.

Like water.

Now, you put water into a cup,

it becomes the cup.

Put water into a bottle,

it becomes the bottle.

You put it in a teapot,

it becomes the teapot.

Now, water can flow or

creep or drip or crash.

Be water, my friend.

- Like that. You see?

- I see. I get the idea.

- A-ha.

- I get the power behind it.

The thing that I got off

him the most is the trust,

being able to trust your

abilities in each situation.

A lot of times the game

becomes too scripted.

When it's too scripted

and you start planning for

certain things to take place,

that's when I believe you're weak.

What he's saying is

that you have to adapt

to your surroundings,

your environment.

James Coburn said, "Look, man,

the best thing you can do,

go back to Hong Kong,

do what you do

best, come back, rock the world."

James Coburn did tell Bruce that

he shouldn't keep doing TV,

that it would eat up his genius.

He had much more to

offer the world and

he should hold out

for starring roles.

Jimi Hendrix had to break away and

go to England to be recognised

as the rock star that he was.

Clint Eastwood, he had a

career out of Rawhide,

but it was the Italian Westerns

that really made his career.

Bruce ultimately had to

go back to Hong Kong

to be recognised as the

movie star he was.

Here's a plane ticket. Just go

back to Hong Kong for a few years.

You wouldn't want

any trouble, huh?

That's one of the things

I admire most about him.

He said, "ok, the institution's

not gonna work for me."

"I'll figure something else out."

He just went to through back door.

Bruce made the first

two pictures with

independent producer Raymond Chow

for $15,000 each.

That was... It was

made in Thailand

in a small village in Thailand.

Bruce Lee plays a

working-class hero.

He's from the land.

He's one of the folk.

But at the same time as that,

he's never one of the guys.

And this is why it

was so successful,

as well as the brilliant

choreography.

Bruce Lee completely

changed the way

action scenes look

today in cinema.

It's about making

violence look beautiful,

which may sound like a

paradox, it probably is,

but a director like John Woo, he

shoots a gunfight

like martial arts.

It's a ballet. In

terms of the craft

of film-making,

that's a huge change.

But the Western movies really piss

me off. They chop 'em up so much.

Most of the scenes overzoom, so

you can't see what's going on.

Those guys have to go back

and watch Bruce Lee movies.

You can see these awesome moves

he's doing in their entirety.

You can have a shot

that doesn't have

to last only a half-second long.

I never even thought about it

until I did this movie Haywire.

Now every time I see a movie,

I'm like, "Stop cutting away."

"Oh, that's a stunt double."

They were wonderful to watch. No

wires, no gimmicks, no quick cuts.

You get an actor to portray that,

you're gonna have

to do quick cuts.

Bruce Lee set a new baseline.

Every piece of film

fight choreography

has been influenced by Bruce Lee,

whether the people

involved know it or not.

- A motion picture is motion.

- Yeah.

I mean, you gotta keep

the dialogue down.

We came over to Hong Kong

and that was when they showed

the premiere of The Big Boss.

The theatre was packed.

Bruce and I sat there

towards the back.

When Bruce Lee's first

movie showed in Hollywood,

I was so elated, I

was so emotional,

seeing my friend, my

teacher, on the screen.

When the movie finishes,

it is so quiet...

you could hear a pin drop.

And Bruce is like, "Oh, no.

They hate it." You know.

And all of a sudden...

a huge roar goes up.

And they're cheering and laughing

and clapping. It was wonderful.

Every time he came on and did his

fight scene, everybody applauded.

That's when we knew he

was a movie star now.

And then they started to

spot Bruce in the audience.

They carried him out

on their shoulders.

Oh, it was thrilling. It

was thrilling to him.

"Finally I have been

appreciated in my work."

It was wonderful, a very

high moment in his life.

It's The Pierre Berton Show,

the programme that

comes to you from

the major capitals of the world.

This edition comes to

you from Hong Kong.

And Pierre's guest, the

newest Mandarin superstar.

His name is Bruce Lee and he

doesn't even speak Mandarin.

Here's Pierre.

There's a pretty good chance

that you'll get a TV series in

the States called The Warrior

in which you use,

what, the martial

arts in a Western setting?

That was the original idea.

Bruce Lee had an idea for a

TV show called The Warrior,

which later became the series Kung

Fu, which we all know and love.

David Carradine did a good job,

but Kung Fu, the TV series,

was Bruce Lee's role.

The better guy doesn't always get

the job in the movie business.

There's a lot of

politics involved.

Have people come up in

the industry and said,

"We don't know how

the audience are

going to take a non-American?"

Well, such question

has been raised.

In fact, it is being discussed,

and that is why The Warrior

probably is not gonna be on.

- I see.

- You see?

Because unfortunately such thing

does exist in this world.

Bruce Lee was a bigger star,

both in Asia and America.

He was a world-class

martial artist.

He had already done

The Green Hornet.

And then he did not get the

role for being too Asian.

He had such disdain for Hollywood

and all those old movies

having Caucasian people play the

parts of Chinese characters.

I have already made up my mind

that in the United States I think

something about the Oriental,

I mean, the true Oriental,

should be shown.

- Hollywood sure as heck hasn't.

- You better believe it, man.

It's always the pigtail and

bouncing around, chop-chop,

with the eyes slanted

and all of that.

There's nothing worse in a movie

than when all of a sudden

some horrific stereotype shows up.

You're like, "Why? Just leave

us out. Just leave us out."

"We'd rather not

exist in your world

than exist in your world in

some buffoonery coonery."

He had a lot of celebrity students

and he was teaching them

philosophy and martial arts,

so he sold them.

But when it came

down to it for Bruce

and Hollywood, they didn't get it.

They didn't take the time

to know who Bruce was.

This was his struggle.

You want to get ahead?

Here you have a bright future,

if you apply yourself.

I will, sir.

Hollywood was a terrible

disappointment to him,

especially because then you throw

in the racial factor as well,

that studios did not want to

back a major Chinese star.

Asian stereotypes for women are

pretty bad. For men

it's much worse.

And I think he was railing

against that his whole life.

When that little

thing of disrespect

crept into my life again,

which was the movie business,

I got really angry.

It is kind of shocking, isn't it,

that that much time, 40 years,

has passed and there hasn't been

one Asian-American romantic lead,

or even just a movie star on that

scale, an Asian-American

movie star?

Not one.

I don't think

I could name an Asian

romantic lead male.

There hasn't really

been anyone since my

uncle here, particularly

in Hollywood.

Obviously out of China you have

Jet Li, you have Donnie Yen.

There have been no

great Asian male

leads in Hollywood who are sexy.

Er, a lead male, Asian-American?

Erm...

I don't even look at

him as being Asian.

He's like Bruce Lee.

He's like my idol.

And that's something

I guess I don't

think of so much,

but I guess, yeah.

A Chinese nationalist

watching Bruce Lee films will

see Chinese nationalism.

A white Westerner may not

even notice the ethnicity.

Maybe Dean Cain, right?

Isn't he part Asian?

At certain times there were

prejudices against my skin,

but I never let it

bother me, because

in the back of my

mind I used to think,

"I'll take care out in the parking

lot and I'll beat your head in."

Bruce Lee became a complete star

making films in his own country.

40 years later, things

haven't changed.

So if you wanna see

another star like that,

it has to happen in films

made outside of the system.

My first memory of Bruce Lee is

in the movie Chinese Connection.

The last scene in the movie

there's a firing squad.

When he came out and ran up

and jumped and they froze it.

I was like, "Mum, what happened?"

And she said, "He

wanted to go that way."

And that just... that

just stuck with me.

If you look at Chinese Connection,

it's a movie about

cultural nationalism,

as expressed through

action sequences,

but that's no different

than Swan Lake.

There's no difference between

a ballet and a kung fu movie,

expressing the ideas and the

emotion through movement.

When the Japanese bring the sick

man of Asia framed picture,

this is speaking to

a long period of

Chinese suppression

and subordination

that was within living

memory of those

1970s Hong Kong Bruce Lee films.

If you play the film

with the dubbed English

and then in the

original Cantonese,

you see that they're

essentially different films.

So, for example, one

of the characters

goes up to Mr Wu, the translator,

and in the English

dubbed version he says:

Look, here, now what's

the point of this?

The translator goes:

In the Cantonese version he says:

So in the English version

he's not Chinese,

but in the subtitled Cantonese

version, he says,

"Yes, I'm Chinese,

but I've chosen to go with

the Japanese, the powerful."

So there's a world of difference.

We're consuming different films

depending on the nature of the

decisions they make

in translating.

Westerners have thought

that they're slapstick,

but the Chinese

audience are watching

highly politically charged films

with quite recent

history, animosities

and resentments

coursing through them.

Now, you listen to me, and

I'll only say it once.

We are not sick men.

What he gave was

so real and so raw

because he lived it

every day of his life.

Bruce did not get

along well with the

director of the first

two films, Lo Wei.

Lo Wei thought that he could

put his thumb on Bruce

as one of his simple actors.

Well, he was old

school and wouldn't

listen to any ideas Bruce had.

The bottom line is

Bruce still didn't

feel the freedom that he wanted.

He said to Raymond Chow,

"I want to make this film,

The Way of the Dragon."

I want to write it, I want to

produce it, I want to direct it

and I can do this and act in it.

It's really a simple

plot of a country boy

going to a place where he

cannot speak the language

but somehow he came out on top.

He goes to Italy and the

mafia can't beat him,

so they call America and

America sends over Colt.

We must call America for Colt.

- Is this Colt good?

- Is Colt good?

And Colt is Chuck Norris.

Bruce Lee is fighting a

real American, you know.

He's strawberry blond. He's

got hair all over his body.

In fact, he uses that

hair against him.

So when he fought Chuck Norris...

He represented all

people of colour

fighting the Western oppressor.

(speaks Spanish)

If you're a non-white

viewer, this is a big deal.

The little guy is beating the

best that America can provide.

I can tell you, at the

Fox Theatre in St Louis,

which was 100 percent all

black, we cheered for him.

Some of us were more

politically aware than others,

but everyone got the joke.

He was very appealing to anybody

who's ever been oppressed

because of ethnic reasons

or other reason.

That time when Bruce

was on the rise, we

were looking for

countercultural heroes

to fight the establishment.

It's 40 years. Wouldn't have

people forgotten him by now?

No, I think a lot of cultures have

picked him up as

sort of their hero.

You had Muhammad

Ali. You had Malcolm

X. You had the Black Panthers.

You had a lot of

radicalism going on.

Bruce Lee represented that

same kind of radicalism.

Bruce Lee emerges when America is

having a very bad time in Vietnam

and cannot beat the Viet Cong,

these little yellow

guys in pyjamas,

so Bruce Lee speaks to that.

Anywhere you go,

everybody is about

Bruce Lee and rallies behind him.

He's the underdog.

You don't have to start

shouting political declarations

to be culturally and

politically significant.

That Colosseum fight

was very accurate.

Taking nothing away

from Chuck Norris,

but I think Bruce Lee

would be victorious.

That fight scene gave Chuck

Norris pretty much a career.

If they said Bruce could

have beat Chuck Norris,

I'd say, "How much

do you wanna bet?"

I got a fistful of green

backs in my pocket.

Chuck got chucked out right

there in that movie.

That's one of my favourites. Boom.

Guillotine choke in

the '70s. Hello.

That's being ahead of your time.

When Bruce started doing

the film Way of the Dragon

and he was this huge

star on the rise,

things were changing.

I think he started having a hard

time trusting people around him.

You bastard.

Fame is a killer, literally.

Put money on top of that.

Suddenly you distrust people's

motives, for very good reason.

He had told me that he doesn't

know who his friends were.

He says he doesn't

know who to trust.

It was eye-opening to know

what the price of fame was.

(Bruce Lee)

You can't go to school for it. You

deal with it on a

day-to-day basis.

(Bruce Lee)

Fame took over my mind.

It almost destroyed

my career, my family.

I was caught up in my own hype.

I thought the only way to

save myself from myself

was to do something where I

could get hit and hit back.

And I thought I'd

made a healthy choice

because it was

better than a whisky

bottle or, you know,

whatever the fuck.

It got to the point

where he could

hardly go out of the

house without people

following him.

He craved on sort of a soul level

to be a little bit more peaceful.

(Bruce Lee)

Well, you can't have a normal life

or make normal mistakes

because everybody's constantly,

you know, looking in.

And it was just

like a smorgasbord.

He could have had ten at a time

if he even remotely wanted to.

The word superstar really turned

me off and I'll tell you why.

Because the word star,

man, it's an illusion.

It's something what

the public calls you.

I really loved... I might get

a lot of crap for this,

but Game of Death,

and to have like

no way is the way.

He's fighting each

opponent that brings

a different problem to the table

and he's gotta adapt.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

came to Hong Kong

to visit and Bruce

had this great idea.

"Let's do a scene

together. It'll be

great, a great fighting sequence."

I'd speak to Kareem about his

sessions with Bruce and he said,

"I sparred with him and

like he was just so quick."

"I'd turn this way and

then he's not there."

"He's kicking you in

the back of the head."

"Then I turn this way

and he's over here."

He said he couldn't

catch him. There was

just no way he could

lock in on him.

He was just like a rabbit.

I really love the

idea of the levels

and getting to the next level,

and fighting different styles.

As a dancer who battled

other dancers,

that was like the whole mentality.

And on the third level,

it's supposed to

be a person who is

trained in weaponry,

and so he chose me to do the part.

Dan Inosanto, being one of the

freshest Filipinos on the planet,

was actually the

person that brought

the nunchucks to Bruce Lee.

1964, I introduced the

nunchucks to Bruce Lee.

And at the time he thought this

was a worthless piece of junk.

When he moved into the LA area,

I taught him how to use it.

He said, "I'm gonna use

this on The Green Hornet."

Nunchucks was always some mother's

broom getting sacrificed,

which would then turn into

someone's groin being sacrificed.

In three months he

was swinging it like

he had been doing

it for a lifetime.

I was living in Miami

when they came out.

Every gangster in

town had nunchucks,

and couldn't use 'em worth a shit.

I would spend hours whipping 'em

around and trying

to learn the moves,

trying to copy how he'd have it

under his shoulder right here

and have the hand out.

In a short time I think almost

every child is using this.

It became like a

household product.

It's outlawed now in California.

After I watched this

movie, I used to use that.

But I always hit my elbow.

Right out of the gate

I swung real hard

and I even made the

Bruce Lee noise.

I went, "Whoo." and I hit my head

and there was this big nut

that came out maybe an inch.

And after that I stopped

making the noise

and I stopped playing

with the nunchucks.

I tried to make my

parents buy me some

real ones. Thank God they didn't.

I'm nunchucking, I'm busting

myself all in the head.

I had the rubber

ones, so I'm good.

I got into it because

I stopped carrying

a gun. I carried a gun for years.

I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I think I went into therapy and I

thought, "Let me carry

something else."

This one particularly

is sentimental for me.

These are the same nunchucks that

we used in The Game of Death.

He gave me these to

keep in the house.

It brings out really

fond memories for me.

Fred Weintraub, who was an

executive at Warner Bros,

comes to visit him in Hong Kong

on the set of Game of Death,

says, "Hey, man, we've

seen what you can do."

"We wanna do a film

with you and we

wanna do it with

Warner Bros." Boom.

It was a time when Bruce

had so much opportunity

and he was so thrilled to

co-produce Enter the Dragon.

He said, "This is my opening

back into Hollywood."

They were all there in Hong Kong,

the producers, Fred

Weintraub, Paul Heller.

They're ready to

film, have all this

crew, Western crew, Chinese crew,

which was a very difficult

situation in itself,

and sets are built, and

Bruce won't come to work.

He wants to put a

little more Chinese

philosophy that fits

in with the story.

Bruce knew what he

wanted Dragon to be,

but had problems with folks

who didn't share his vision.

And he was adamant he was

not going to the set.

It was kind of hard

around our house

because was Bruce

was so frustrated.

He could lose his temper.

If he didn't like anything

you did, he would tell you.

Linda was that fabulous wife.

She knew how to talk to

him and counsel him.

I was talking behind the scenes to

Fred and Paul and

the other people,

saying, "You need

to listen to what

he has to say because

he is right."

He was fighting for his career.

It was a coming

together, and, yes,

Bruce did get things in that film.

Let me think.

Don't think. Feel.

And they're all better off,

the world is better off,

for the stand that

he took that time.

Action.

Enter the Dragon was Hollywood's

first dipping its toe

into the water of the

martial art genre.

Bruce Lee is explosive in a way

that no one had seen before.

The opening scene,

Bruce Lee basically

put the mixed martial

arts in his film.

Fighting in the Kenpo gloves.

The mixed martial arts gloves

with the open fingers.

And he used arm bars.

There's not a lot of charisma

in a straight arm bar.

He was the man.

When he stomps out Bob

Wall and kills him...

you see a lot of complex

emotions all going on at once.

I haven't seen any actor

in an action film

match all those levels and nuances

in the middle of a fight scene.

The mirror scene was just, you

know, when he's walking around

and he's cut up and

all of a sudden

he hears his master in his head

saying if you destroy the image...

Destroy the image and you

will break the enemy.

You defeat the enemy,

he was just... It had a tension

that to me resonates because it's

cutting through all illusions.

This is the moment that

he was waiting for.

This was Bruce Lee's

film in Hollywood.

Bruce was in a studio doing

dubbing for Enter the Dragon

and he went to the

restroom and he collapsed.

I was called and came

to the hospital.

And he was unconscious and

I was talking to him,

and he told me later that he was

like in the bottom of a well

and he could hear me calling

him, "Come back, come back."

And he did recover from that.

It was a cerebral oedema, a

pressing of fluid on the brain,

but they never found

the cause of it.

Ted Wong used to

always tell me, "Bruce

Lee was never afraid of anything,

except one thing, and

that's getting older."

He came to the United States

and had a complete physical

and they pronounced

him in perfect health

with the body of an 18-year-old.

The doctors were very reassuring.

He had just had a collapse. He

didn't have frequent headaches.

Of course, they

didn't have MRIs then

to see what his brain

tissue was looking like.

I had seen him in June.

He told me that he'd had an ok

from UCLA that his body was fit.

He was not worried

about himself and

he was taking good

care of himself.

Bruce Lee faces a real dilemma.

He's on the verge of stardom

in the United States,

but he's just

achieved superstardom

as a film actor here in Hong Kong.

So what does he chose,

the East or the West?

It's the kind of problem most

budding movie actors

would welcome.

I was called and told

by Raymond Chow,

"You should get to the hospital."

"They're taking Bruce

to the hospital."

And I was there way

before Bruce got there.

So eventually the ambulance

arrived. It took a long time.

Everything took too long a time.

He got to the hospital and

I saw him laying there

and I saw them do a big injection

of something right into his heart.

And I remember

turning to a medical

person standing

there and saying...

I couldn't say, "Is he dead?"

I said, "Is he alive?

And they shook their

heads and said, "No."

And that was just unbelievable.

It must be a mistake, you

know, it's not real.

What can I say? It was.

You can see how when he

passed away, you know, how...

how difficult that

was and, you know,

how difficult that was for my dad.

It's the first time I

saw my dad ever cry.

Yeah, that's true.

It was really rough.

Well, yeah.

I said, "Dan, is it true?

Is Bruce Lee dead?"

"I got a lot of calls." And

he says, "Yeah, Rich."

Linda called him from Hong Kong,

and he was in a trance on his own

and talking about Bruce Lee.

He was so in grief, so in

mourning about Bruce's death.

He was just really uniquely

different from everybody else.

My memories, they're

more like glimpses.

But I remember primarily

the funeral in Hong Kong,

because it was so

massive, and sort

of being dragged through that,

because it was chaotic.

And I remember my dad's mum

taking us to get candy

and feeling really

happy about that.

I was in class, actually,

when Bruce Lee died.

There were guys in there

crying, sobbing, just...

I mean, Bruce Lee, you know...

He was just... he was it.

Will you tell me what

Teacher died of?

Forensic scientists

from around the

world came up with the conclusion

that he had had a

hypersensitive reaction

to this medication that he had

been given for a headache

and that that had caused

the fluid on his brain

and that he had succumbed to that.

It's still something that

people cannot believe.

He was well. There was nothing

wrong. How could a

healthy man die?

And then there's all this stuff

about, you know, how he died,

the sinister way in which he died.

He had an aneurysm

or the death hands got

him or, you know...

He was murdered.

They gave him the dim mak,

they gave him a death touch.

There's absolutely positively

something a little shady

about the way that

it all went down.

How he could pass away at that

age, you know, but it does happen,

so I've learned to cope

with it and deal with it.

But it always puzzled me.

The fact that my family is cursed

and the very sad and tragic

circumstance that my brother died,

those are sort of the

themes that pop up.

They wrote so many

stupid stories, the

tong killing him and

all that bullshit,

and he died of drugs,

that sold magazines.

He died in Betty Ting

Pei's apartment,

so there's no denying that.

The decision was made

by the producers

to say that he had died at home.

When that news got out that

he had not died at home,

the tabloid press went crazy.

But my mum knew he had been at

a meeting and doing his films.

She was dealing with his death

and taking care of her kids,

and all of that gossip was

just the tabloid press

trying to make it bigger and

crazier than it needed to be.

It is my wish that the newspapers

and the people of Hong Kong

will stop speculating

on the circumstances

surrounding my husband's death.

Please remember him for

his genius, his art

and the magic he brought

to every one of us.

Of course I was going to go and

see his film and applaud him

and be with people

who admired him.

That was always my

thought in my head,

is, "I need to do this for Bruce."

She really is this

incredible woman

with just great dignity

and grace under fire.

It was great to see Bruce again,

but only a month later my memories

were very fresh anyway, you know.

It was more pain than

joy at the time.

Everybody said all

these years, you know,

he had an allergic reaction to

marijuana, he had

a brain aneurysm.

The most important

thing is how he lived.

Every time you see him,

it's still emotional.

We miss the friend.

I'm now 74, but there really

has not ever been a day

that I haven't thought about

him at least once, maybe twice

or three times or four times

or five times through the day.

There's nobody who's

gonna replace Bruce

Lee, not while you or I are alive.

It just ain't gonna happen.

This genius passes away

way before his time.

We have to be thankful

we had him for 32 years.

Bruce Lee was just a symbol

of everything that every

little boy wanted to be.

You have offended my

family and you have...

Disgraced the Shaolin temple.

Whoo.

The most important thing he's

ever done and accomplished

is bringing people together.

Bruce brought... he brought

cultures together.

People remember him for being

powerful beyond measure,

you know, for being limitless,

for standing for things

when people crucified him.

It didn't matter what colour you

are, what country you came from,

you were a Bruce Lee fan.

He's the man. He's the truth.

And it was amazing how he

connected so many people.

Not just martial arts, but

people from all walks of life.

If Bruce was here today, he'd

be on Dancing with the Stars

and he'd win it, hands down.

Doggone it, such is the basic

need of a human being,

I might as well enjoy it

before I kick the bucket,

like that type of an attitude.

We remember Bruce

Lee today because

he was so much fun to watch.

He was like a mythological hero.

My strength flowed through

Bruce to me, so...

He left me with that gift.

The idea is running water

never grows stale,

so you gotta just keep on flowing.

He didn't compromise.

People really felt

that presence about

him and felt that

influence from him

and they just wanna

somehow connect with him.

When people try to relate

to him, they do say,

"That's my Bruce Lee. That's

what I connect with."

When I watch Bruce

Lee, I am Bruce Lee.

- Dragon whips his tail.

- Dragon whips his tail.

I watch Bruce Lee, you watch Bruce

Lee and we're both

being Bruce Lee.

Bruce would want us to recognise

that he honestly

expressed himself,

that he did not bow down

to any sacred cows.

To express oneself honestly,

not lying to oneself,

and to express myself honestly,

that, my friend, is

very hard to do.

He would urge others to

examine your life, you know,

see how things fit you personally,

find your strength,

take a stab at life,

don't just sit back and

take it easy, you know?

That's not what life is about.

It's even more fun to see him

now when I look back, you know.

Oh. What an amazing

young man he was.

Do you think of yourself as

Chinese or North American?

You know what I want

to think of myself?

As a human being.

Because, I mean, I don't wanna

sound like "as Confucius say,"

but under the sky,

under the heaven,

man, there is but one family.

It just so happened, man,

that people are different.

Empty your mind. Be

formless, shapeless.

Like water.

Now, you put water into a cup,

it becomes the cup.

Put water into a bottle,

it becomes the bottle.

You put it in a teapot,

it becomes the teapot.

Now, water can flow

or it can crash.

Be water, my friend.