- Dr. Craig D. Reid
- Jul 9, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 15, 2024
No one person in history has done more for the growth of martial arts and martial arts cinema than Bruce Lee. Besides giving the Chinese people a sense of pride and national identity, he was the first martial artist to mainstream the concept of cross-training and combine the best attributes of different arts into one.
His cult of personality continues to dominate mass media martial arts circles as his treasure trove of celebrity and non-celebrity fans, publicity machines and timely projects maintains his idealized and idolized image. A martial artist, an Asian and Hollywood movie icon, a philosopher and a man of action with a message, Lee became a hero to moviegoers regardless of race, color, creed, gender or religion.
It’s a crime he didn’t live long enough to run for president of the United States!
Instead, we’re left with millions of opinions overflowing with admiration and praise not to mention jealousy and ego and five history changing films. The following are my recollections from the period in which his life overlapped with mine.
Faced with Death
On March 21, 1973, ordinary Americans got their first taste of a wild-and-woolly Chinese kung fu film. It was The Five Fingers of Death, a Lieh Lo vehicle that was titled King Boxer when it was released in Hong Kong a year earlier. The U.S. premiere took place around the time my doctor broke the news: I’d be dead in five years because of cystic fibrosis. I was popping 30 pills a day and visiting the hospital every three months, and that was not going to save my life.
Two weeks later, my brothers, home on spring break, dragged me to a drive in theater in Vestal, New York, to see Lee in The Big Boss (aka Fists of Fury). Cheng, the character Lee portrays, is perplexed by the disappearances of his co-workers at a Thai ice factory. Around Cheng’s neck hangs a jade amulet, a reminder of his vow to refrain from fighting. The tension builds as Cheng helplessly watches one friend after another get pulverized like apples in a cider mill. Midway into the movie, Cheng gets whacked across the face. Rage boiling in his veins, he seeks out his amulet to remind himself of his promise, but wait, the amulet is broken.
What follows was an explosion of fists and feet more dynamic than anything I’d ever been exposed to. Lee’s patented snarl elated me as he dealt out everything he’d been taking, making sure each villain got what was coming to him. It started with two greased-lightning kicks that had me cheering inside the car. I instantly went from being depressed and waiting to die to wanting to live and learn what Lee was doing. The Big Boss wasn’t the best martial arts movie ever made, but it was without a doubt the most important one for several reasons: It introduced Lee to the people of planet Earth, it launched a martial arts craze in the West that’s still going strong, it revitalized the kung fu film industry in the East and it gave at least one person the power to save his own life.
No Sick Man
Speaking of power, Lee’s next project was one of the most powerful martial arts movies ever made. To explain why, I’ll need to set the historical context. After the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), China was fractured, divided and carved up by European, Japanese and American powers. Japan started playing a villainous role in Chinese history—in small part because of this carving and in large part because of the cruelty of the Japanese forces in occupied China. Recall the Rape of Nanjing, the heinous incident in which Japanese troops killed 300,000 Chinese and raped 20,000.
Despite Japan’s defeat in World War II, Hong Kong and the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) kept silent on this because Japan’s postwar economy was U.S. supported and they feared a backlash if they spoke up. It took the clout of Bruce Lee to overcome Hong Kong’s fear of producing anti-Japanese films. Fist of Fury (aka The Chinese Connection) was set during the occupation of Shanghai in 1909. The story revolves around the death of Huo Yuan-jia, after which Huo’s student Chen Chen (Lee) vows revenge. Chen endures ridicule from the visiting Japanese entourage, who claim China is the sick man of Asia, until he’s pushed too far. Enraged, Chen defeats every Japanese martial artist in a monumental battle. On-screen and off, Lee single-handedly broke down the barrier that stood between the Chinese and national pride. Never again would they forget what it meant to be Chinese—or a Chinese martial artist. Although I’m by no means Chinese, I sensed this at every showing of Fist of Fury I took in. I felt the emotions when I watched it in 1979 in Taiwan, where normally quite audiences cheered with every nunchaku strike Lee landed. Afterward, I remember thinking it was cool that an American actor in a Chinese kung fu film could make a Japanese (actually Okinawan) karate weapon the most popular martial arts fighting implement in the world. Now that’s power!
In the ensuing years, during which I worked as an entertainment reporter, I interviewed scores of top Chinese martial arts filmmakers, always asking them about Lee. Without fail, they all referenced Fist of Fury. “It gave our country an identity and made me proud to be Chinese,” they’d say.
But the ultimate cult-of-personality power of this film—dare I say propaganda?—was Lee’s subliminal message that the Chinese are the equals of any nationality. It was manifested in part when Lee defeated a bunch of Japanese fighters near Shanghai Park, then slammed a flying kick into a wooden sign that read “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed.” To this day, many people believe that sign really existed, while in actuality it was a prop designed to make a political statement.
Return of the Nunchaku
In Way of the Dragon (aka Return of the Dragon), Lee revisited the race card, this time in Italy. He plays a Hong Kong resident who’s sent to Rome to work at his uncle’s restaurant, where he quickly finds himself taking on the Mafia with a pole and a pair of nunchaku prompting some to joke that the movie should have been named Return of the Nunchaku. The crime boss hires three karate killers to slay Lee; they’re played by Bob Wall, Whang In-shik and Chuck Norris.
Few fans know that Way of the Dragon drew from Lee’s own life for inspiration. He spent time waiting tables in a Chinese restaurant in Oakland, California, where he no doubt ran into anti Asian sentiments that eventually made their way into the script. Lee’s fights were symbolic, messages designed to convey the notion that Chinese people no longer had to be subservient to the West witness his victory over Norris’ character, a fair-haired, Hollywood goldenboy. It’s ironic that none of the white villains in any of Lee’s films were British, considering that much of the racism Lee experienced took place while he was living in Hong Kong, a British colony.
It’s interesting to note that the last time I was in Hong Kong, the consensus among those I spoke with was that the residents of the enclave preferred the British presence to the Chinese. As they say, you miss something only after it’s gone.
End Game
In 1972 and ’73, Lee wrote and filmed 40 minutes of a concept piece that was to be titled Song of the Knife. It encapsulated his philosophy about the existence of martial arts styles, focusing on separating the useful from the nonessential, a process that’s revealed via a hero’s journey up a five-story pagoda. Each floor was a step toward truth and was guarded by a practitioner of a different style—one of whom was Dan Inosanto, representing the Filipino martial arts. What was the treasure at the top of the pagoda?
Perhaps knowledge, understanding or the realization that the journey toward truth never ends. Five years after his death, the project, now called The Game of Death, would be released. If the star had lived to see it, chances are he’d have been less than thrilled by the final version, which contained only 15 minutes of the footage he directed. It’s possible Lee never intended for the scenes he’d created for Song of the Knife to be part of a final cut of anything—perhaps they were shot and edited only to get financing.
He must have known that once funding was secured, he’d have to re-shoot some of the battles to ensure the quality he’d always served his fans. Example: In a nunchaku sequence with Inosanto, Lee makes two mistakes that are as obvious as an elephant running in a herd of buffalos.
The Blockbuster
The reason Lee never finished Song of the Knife was Warner Bros. agreed in 1973 to finance a film that would unite Hong Kong and Hollywood under the parasol of kung fu. Little did they know the $550,000 they were about to invest in Enter the Dragon would gross $90 million worldwide. Sure, the movie had some phenomenal fights, but what really stands out now, nearly four decades later, is how it was politically correct 20 years before it was politically correct to be politically correct. In the language of the day, the heroes were a black, a white and an Oriental; nowadays, it’s safer to say they were African American, Caucasian and Asian.On July 20, 1973, Lee passed away.
My dad was driving me home from the public library in Endicott, New York, when I heard the news on the radio. I cried all the way home. I vowed to dedicate my life to the martial arts and all they stand for, and to use them for the betterment of myself and others. Enter the Dragon came out about two weeks later. Then and now, whenever I watch the movie I shed a tear.
Battling Public Opinion
The irony about Lee’s ascension in the West is that it commenced in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the early 1970s when his movies were taking off around the world, the United States was reeling from the Vietnam War. As such, anti-Asian sentiment was rampant.
Furthermore, in those days, most Westerners regarded the use of feet in a fight as the refuge of sissies. Real men punched—just look at any John Wayne movie. There couldn’t have been a worse time for an Asian actor/martial artist to make his mark on Hollywood, yet Lee did exactly that—by using facial contortions, rapid-fire punches, jaw-dropping kicks and high-pitched screeches. And he resonated with everyone. Millions of moviegoers myself among them walked out of theaters channeling Lee, launching kicks, punches and screams just like he did on-screen. Not once have I seen a person do that after watching a martial arts movie headlined by a different star.
As for this writer, Lee’s inspiration helped me find the true martial arts the first lesson of which was that not fighting is better than fighting. (Most MMA competitors would do well to remember that tenet.) My second Lee-inspired discovery was chi kung, which I subsequently studied in Taiwan. Five months after starting, I was able to wean myself off the medications I’d been taking and dispense with the therapies. How could I possibly pay him back? In 1986 I walked 3,000 miles across America to give my respects at his grave in Seattle. And for the past 25 years, my wife Silvia and I have dedicated our lives to healing others using the martial arts as our foundation. Thank you, Bruce.
