February 25, 2021 • 51 mins
Bruce Lee may have introduced more Westerners to Asian culture than any person in history. And, because he died young just as he became an international superstar, he’s become a legend. Josh and Chuck try to uncover the man underneath.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Roland, and this
is Stuff you should Know. I couldn't think of any um,
(00:24):
non problematic nicknames for us to use. Well, you could
probably just go, yeah, that's what I'm talking about? Is
that probably figure that? I'm sure yes, we would probably
here about the man that's uh. You watch any great
kung fu movie and they all make that great, great
sound after a good death punch. Did you ever take
(00:47):
kung fu when you were young or any kind of
martial arts? No, I'm notoriously have zero interested in martial arts,
and my biggest fears that my daughter is gonna want
to do it. I oh really, well, I mean, will
you tell her to sweep the leg at a tournament
as she ever does? Yeah? Sure, I mean I wanted
like to be able to protect herself, so that sounds
like a very selfish thing. But as far as like
(01:07):
going to martial arts tournaments kind of like uh, just
you know, kill me. Now, what you should get her
interested in, like, um, wielding a knife or something? It
would be really cool or just being a good person,
so people don't pick fights with her? Yeah, is that
how things work? No, not at all. So I'll tell
(01:31):
you somebody who liked to pick fights, not just would
get into fights and accept the challenge, would actually pick fights.
And it turns out that person also happens to be
the person we're talking about today, one Mr Bruce Lee. Yeah,
Bruce Lee. I mean, I'm sure, like me, you spent
the past couple of days watching a lot of Bruce
(01:53):
Lee stuff. But my question is were you into this?
Did you watch kung fu movies and Bruce Lee movies
only in so far as like the whole nineties like
throwback thing. You know. I would have him on every
once a while and watch him, but I was never
super into my friends that were super into them. I remember,
(02:14):
of course, I underwent extensive ninja training under since a
Tommy Roper as a much younger person. This is in
the eighties. Um, but I was never really into kung
fu or or martial arts movies. Um. Outside of that, UM,
I will say though, watching Fist of Fury last night, UM,
(02:37):
I was just absolutely blown away like that. Yeah, the
whole things I think black Belt Karate Dot com pirate
of the movie and put it on YouTube, the whole thing,
and it is just really good. Like the fighting in
there is astounding and it gives you, like a really
good like appreciation. It's hard not to appreciate what you're
(02:58):
seeing with Bruce Lee when you when you watch it. Yeah,
I have still not seen many of those movies. But
for a movie Crush episode, one of my guests, um uh,
Stuart Wellington of the flap House podcast, one of my
favorite other podcast on movies, he had me watch his
favorite movie, which is Ricky, Oh Colin the story of
(03:22):
Ricky and Dude. You have to see this movie. It
is the gory, over the top crazy martial arts movie
to beat all over the top gory crazy martial arts movies.
It is when was nuts? When was it made? Well
ninety one, but it seems like seventy eight. Um it's
(03:43):
it's amazing. Was there a shot where some guy jammed
his fingers into his opponents testicles and then they cut
to a view from inside his screwed them and you
see the fingers wiggling. Did that happened? Because I saw
a martial arts movie that had that and I was like, well,
there it is. But that is the thing I've ever seen.
(04:06):
It's got a lot of stuff like that. But I
don't think that was from Ricky. Oh, but it's You're
on the right track there, as far as you know.
It's not for everybody. I gotta check it out, man,
it's pretty fun. You had me. You're on the right
track there. Um. So, Bruce lee movies were not nearly
as violent, but for the time they were, they were
exceedingly violent, it seems like, and Bruce Lee laid the
(04:29):
foundation that people said, well, I want to top that.
I want to top that. Um. And while maybe Gore
there was plenty of like blood in in Fists of Fury,
at least in other movies that he made, but um,
it wasn't anything like what we just talked about. But
the I think the larger point for Bruce Lee is
(04:50):
that he laid this foundation, like he introduced the United
States in the West to the idea of not just
kung fu movie but of like Asians being heroes, like
like protagonists, like like tough. You know, because up to
(05:10):
that point, not necessarily exactly up to that point, but
awfully close to it. Um, especially in the West. Uh,
the people from China Japan seemed very docile, cerebral. I
saw um not at all like Bruce Lee. And Bruce
Lee changed all of that basically singlehandedly, especially as far
(05:33):
as America is concerned with a single one inch punch. Basically.
So let's talk a little bit about his early life,
because he had a pretty interesting background, uh, pretty interesting
genetic family tree. Um, because you know, we all think
of him as Chinese, and he was certainly, he certainly
was Chinese. But um, if you if you poke around
(05:57):
his lineage and you will learn that his maternal great
and father was Dutch Jewish, which is really interesting. He
was a merchant, his name was Moses with a z
hard dog Boseman, and he went to Hong Kong in
the eighteen fifties as part of the Dutch East India Company.
Became the Dutch ambassador to Hong Kong, had six kids
(06:18):
with his concubine, and then one of those kids, one
of his sons, Ho Kam Tong. He became a very
rich man. He had a wife, thirteen concubines and a
British mistress, and then he had a daughter with a
British mistress, and that was Bruce Lee's mom. Yeah, that's
(06:39):
it sounds more convenient. Yeah. Yeah. So Bruce Lee was
part Jewish, part British, um and lots of Chinese mixed together.
His father was Chinese Han Chinese um and his father
was born poor. But he actually worked his way up
to fairly sizeable celebrity in Hong Kong um or was
(07:06):
it China? I don't remember if if Bruce Lee, if
Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee's father lived in Hong Kong or China. Well,
it was kind of both. He was a Cantonese opera
star and an actor. Uh and then I think of
visually they did settle in Hong Kong. Okay, all right,
so um, but he was like very well known, like
(07:26):
he was in movies, he was on TV, like he
was a pretty famous guy. He was probably I would
liken him to uh two, Jerry Orbach. He was the
Jerry or Bach of his time and place. No, but
(07:47):
he was like everywhere, he was in everything from dirty
dancing to murder. She wrote, you know, like he was
all over the place. And he was multi talented too.
Don't try to tell me Jerry Orbach is not multi talented,
because he is sure, but he was no opera star.
Do you don't know that you're right? You're right. I
could be I could be a martial arts expert. Jerry
(08:08):
Orbot could be an opera star. Right, we could be
whatever we want to be in our mind's eye. But
so Bruce Lee's father was the Jerry Orbach of his
time and place. That's right. So uh he was touring
the US when Bruce was born. He was born in
San Francisco in nineteen forty uh, and his parents named
him Lee June Faun and apparently a nurse said you
(08:28):
should call him Bruce for his English name. He said,
what what did you say exactly? Did you hear what
we named him? Originally? She's like, yeah, Bruce Len Bruce. Uh.
They moved back to Hong Kong when he was a baby,
and he grew up there, but he grew up with UM,
going to English schools, English language private schools. Yeah. So um.
(08:52):
He always kind of had this this UM I don't
want to say split identity, but his his identity, a
sense of self was deaf and divided between America and UM.
I believe the UK to an extent, and also obviously
Hong Kong UM and then of course his ancestry in China.
(09:12):
Like he he he seemed to have UM not necessarily
like felt spread all over the place, but in in
a different sense, he was more open to influences wherever
he found them. I saw somebody somebody say that Bruce
Lee learned from everybody, everyone that he came in contact with, UM,
including people who he had to fight, who fought of
(09:33):
different styles. He he was always open to learning something
he didn't. He was very cocky, he was very arrogant
by a lot of people's estimations, but he also was
humble enough to want to learn wherever he thought he
could learn something new. Uh. And I think that that,
according at least UM to again named Matthew Polly, who's
(09:54):
known as one of his UM better biographers. Uh. That
that really kind of underscored that that UM, that his
personality just kind of being divided among different places around
the world and having different influences. Yeah. So well, we'll
take a little break here and we'll come back and
talk about UM some of the early formative years of
(10:14):
young Bruce Lee right after this and shock. Uh, alright,
(10:40):
So little Bruce was born not only in the Year
of the Dragon, but the Day of the Dragon, and
his nickname was Little Dragon. When he became a child actor,
if you only know Bruce Lee from his martial arts work,
his kind of short career in martial arts films, he
he was actually on screen as a baby. Um, but
(11:02):
his real first kind of role was I think when
he was like ten years old. Uh. Yeah, he was
in a movie called The Kid, Yeah, which I watched
some clips of this. I'm sure you did too. Um,
it's you know, it's a cute little Bruce Lee. He
does he kind of throw a lot of child abuse
and was it really Yeah, He's like, he offers he
(11:23):
has some money, so he offers to help his uncle out,
and his uncle just basically deafens him in one ear. Well, yeah,
I didn't see that clip. I would call that child abuse, chuck. No, two,
I didn't see that clip. You're like, yeah, well, I
guess if it's your definition of child No, No, not
at all. I just didn't see that. When I just
saw the one where he was kind of did that
famous Bruce Lee sort of uh you know, thumb across
(11:45):
the nose and throw his little shirt open. I know
that's crazy that like he was that young ten years
old and he's already like laying the groundwork for the
things that we're going to make him famous in the future. Yeah,
and he was a little guy. He um, I think,
you know, as a as a full grown adult. He
he reached five seven, about a hundred and thirty pounds.
He was not very big when he was a kid.
(12:07):
He was very small. He was fairly weak because of
food rations because Hong Kong was occupied by Imperial Japan
at the time and they were rationing food out there
was a cholera epidemic. He had one leg shorter than
the other. He had an undescended testicle, which actually ended
up keeping him out of Vietnam. So a little bit
(12:29):
of a silver lining there. Uh. He had glasses, he
had acne. I think his biographer said that he and
this is the only person I really saw say that,
but he said he'd probably be diagnosed with a d
h D today. I looked for other places to find that,
and no one. I don't think he's on record of
saying that, but it did seem like that could be
(12:50):
possible because he was very active, had trouble with focus,
but could also hyper focus. Uh, and like he you know,
like you said, he would kind of picked fights with
people because he was a little kid, and that's a
lot of times little kids will do that if they
want to, you know, they want to prove that they're
strong and have value, they'll pick fights and try and
beat people up. Not not the way to do with
(13:10):
their kids, no, but I mean, like, like, he was
well known in Hong Kong as being like this kind
of local tough who would start fights um and frequently
won them, but sometimes would lose them too. Um. But
there was one fight in particular that he lost around
the age of fifteen or sixteen UM to a kid
who had been studying h kung fu style called wing chun. Yeah,
(13:35):
wing chun um, And that is where his famous um
like one inch punch comes from. That style of fighting.
It's really good for close quarters type fighting where your
opponents right in front of you and coming at you.
Wing chun is very good for that. So that was
the kind of dude that Bruce Lee was, even back
when he was a little hot shot fifteen year old,
(13:56):
he lost a fight to somebody and he wanted to
know how that person had beat him, So he went
and learned it and that UM actually formed the basis
for his UH. His formal education and martial arts was
entering into the Wing Chun school UM at age fifteen. Yeah,
and I looked a little more into Wing Chung to
see what it was kind of all about. And apparently
there's two sort of main tenants, which is the center
(14:18):
line theory and then stand and guard UH. And the
center line theory is basically, you draw a line from
the center of your body to your opponent's body and
that is the quickest route to strike. So if you've
got someone coming at you, like you know, if you
go throw a punch like American boxing style, like a haymaker,
you're going up and around towards the jaw, to the
(14:41):
side of the jaw. If you're practicing wing chun, you're
standing right in front of that person, and as you're
throwing your haymaker, you've gotten a very quick straight punch
to your solar plexus and you're like, what just happened?
That is basically the essence of Bruce Lee's as super
(15:01):
lightning fast would take advantage of you while you thought
you were about to strike him. He used that against you.
Whatever flaw there was, and what you were doing to
to hit or kick him or come at him, he
would he would take advantage of it and hit you
within that time. And and like if you watch any
of his movies, you can see it quite clearly. But
(15:23):
he'd been working on that. I didn't realize that was
necessarily wing Chun. I thought that was his own style. Um,
but it would make sense because again that was wing Chun.
Is the is the foundation for his style of kung
fu that he ended up coming up with. Right. So, Um,
Like we said, his dad was fairly famous. Bruce's in
(15:46):
the Jerry or box level famous. Don't forget Bruce's in
this movie when he was ten years old, called the
kid that was a big success. And then they said, hey,
let's sign this kid up to do some sequels. And
his dad said, no, no, no, no, no, My kid's
not gonna be an actor. He's going to be a
doctor or a lawyer or something like that. Um. And
he's always in trouble in school, so I'm not gonna
let him be in uh sign this contract. Uh. He
(16:09):
ended up being in some movies kind of off and on.
I think he ended up being in about twenty different
movies that before his kung fu movie days, but it
was never like he never turned into the big kids
star that they were trying to get him to be
with that first contract. I think, yeah, apparently he would
have been had his father not directly intervened to make
(16:29):
sure that didn't happen, which is pretty interesting. But he
can't sign a contract without daddy saying so and mommy
saying so. Well, yeah, you definitely need to have your
parents support like that for sure. Um. But so his
father like stepped in and said, no, you're gonna You're
gonna do something else. And um that was at age ten,
I don't know, I think at least eighteen at the latest.
(16:53):
But at some point he um had kind of gotten like,
like I said, he had a reputation as like local
tough street fighter in Hong Kong. Um, and I guess
he fought another kid and and beat him quite badly.
And the kid turned out to be the son of
a local mob boss. I don't know if he's a
(17:16):
boss or a connected mob guy, but it's a member
of the triad. It does sound like a movie. And um,
that between that and the Hong Kong police basically saying like, look,
your kid is totally on our radar and it's a
real problem and he's going to end up in jail
or dead if he keeps this stuff up. And by
the way, the local the local mob now wants to
(17:38):
kill him because he beat up one of the one
of the boss's sons. Um his father was said, you're
out of here. You're going to America. Um. Which again
this wasn't like a complete out of the blue place
to send Bruce Lee. This was the land that he
was born. He was he had an American passport, he
was an American by birth, and he also had family
(17:59):
there too, But this is the first time that he
was living on his own. From what I saw, his
father gave him eight hundred dollars, which is pretty substantial
back then, said here the addresses of some family in
the Pacific Northwest. Head on out to San Francisco. And
he started in San Francisco and ended up in Seattle
pretty quickly, I believe, Yeah, Seattle in the um. In college,
(18:21):
he went to you dub and he you know that
money obviously would run out, so he had to get
a job. He worked as a bus boy in a
Chinese restaurant, actually lived in the restaurant, kind of a
closet type of deal, and everyone started hearing about his
his martial arts skills and the fact that he was
pretty good at this stuff. So he started teaching a
(18:42):
little bit on the side in that Wing chun style,
and he met Linda there, who would go on to
be his wife. She was a fellow student of his. Um,
Linda got pregnant and they got married. They were very young,
they were still in college, and they had little Brandon Lee.
Uh well, we'll talk about him later on, and then
(19:02):
a daughter named Shannon. Yeah. Um, so, all of a sudden,
Bruce Lee, who is a bus boy at a Chinese
restaurant and also teaching um kung fu on the side,
has a family, a wife, kid, then kids, and um
he's got He needs money now more than he ever
(19:24):
did before. And he has a pretty good idea he's
going to start opening of a franchise of martial arts studios.
Because martial arts was already known in the United States,
but typically it was kept within the whatever Asian community
that practiced it. Right, so like if it was kung fu,
you would find almost entirely Chinese people learning it UM
(19:49):
that you know, immigrants to the country, or they're the
children of immigrants. Um, it's taekwondo. It would be like
Korean families. UM. And Bruce Lee said, you know what,
I want to kind of explode that. There's a lot
of talk about whether he was the first person in
the United States to come along and open up martial
arts to anybody who wanted to learn of any race,
(20:10):
any ethnicity, women, men. From what I saw, that's not
necessarily true, but they that is UM often credited as
UH as evidence of just kind of how UM cocky
and unconventional and and um disrespectful. I guess of norms
and traditions just for the fact, you know, or just
(20:30):
for norms and tradition's sake. UM. And And I don't
know if he was the first person to teach just
anybody who wanted to learn, UM, but it definitely fell
within his UH persona, his outlook of martial arts, which is,
you know, I'll take what I'll learn whatever I can
and put it in to my fighting style so that
(20:51):
I survive. And UM, that would make sense to kind
of flip it on the on the other way and say, well,
you know, I'm going to teach his fighting style to
whoever wants to learn it. Yeah, and it turns out
it was just as he ended up learning Wing Chung
because of a fight he had early on. He also
expanded his fighting style because of another fight. Um, which
(21:12):
this sounds like it. I mean, I think there are
a lot of legends and tall tales around Bruce Lee
as well. This story. The story sounds a little dubious,
but maybe it's true. It's it is. It's not dubious.
It definitely happened, but there, it was close to the public,
and there were only three eyewitnesses there and to one
gives a conflicting report from the other two to a
(21:34):
large degree. But it's been so thoroughly studied and researched
by some people like that Matthew Pauly guy spent a
year just researching this fight alone. There was another guy
named m Charles Russo who wrote a book called Striking Distance.
He spent a decade on that book and he interviewed
a hundred people just for that to for that fight alone,
(21:56):
because it's the one of the most legendary fights that's
ever happened in the history of a world, and only
three people were there to see it besides the fighters.
Yet they interviewed a hundred people about what they heard
what happened. Basically, yeah, I mean, that's as close as
they could get, aside from the people who were there,
who were again saying, you know, this is kind of conflicting.
(22:16):
But overall, what seems to be the ultimate upshot of
it is that it was at least a draw. It
seems like it was a draw. Yeah, he thought a
man named Wong jack Man, and apparently it was a
pretty brutal fight, like you were saying, very legendary and
uh yeah, conflicting reports. Let's just call it a draw.
(22:37):
Let's be magnanimous here. But at the end of this,
you know, the sort of upshot is it was that
Bruce was like, I have limits now with Wing Chun,
and I need to, uh like, I need to be
able to best larger opponents because I'm a small guy.
I need to I need to really kind of ramp
up my study if especially if I'm a teacher, and
(23:01):
and kind of get better. Basically, so he came up
with his own jam and that's called Jeet Kun do
the way of the intercepting fist, and this was a
little bit. He was a really really good boxer. I
don't think we've mentioned that yet. Um. If he had
only boxed and dedicated himself to being a boxer, he
(23:21):
probably could have been like a belt holding boxer, uh
and like an Olympic champion. Um. So he incorporated elements
of boxing. He incorporated all the wing chun that he
had learned. Uh. And then fencing, which his older brother did,
which is you know, when you're lunging at your opponent,
but instead of a foil, he would use his fist.
And if you, um, you know I mentioned that the
(23:43):
one inch punch earlier. Uh, there was also the six
inch punch. There's tons and tons of videos and breakdowns
of what that is. But that's what he was really
famous for, which is basically and then Tarantino kind of
you know, borrowed for the uh kill Bill movies. Um.
You know, you put your fingers on like the stern
um of a of a human and that's how far
(24:05):
you punch from. Like you don't rare back and swing
or anything. You just use your hips and your legs
and you focus your energy and all your momentum to
just very very quickly punch and push somebody. And and
even from one inch you can knock somebody backwards like
seven feet so and that's super helpful if you can
(24:28):
do that. But what that one fight UM with um
Uh Wong jack Man taught him. Wong Jackman kept moving
away from him. And if you're fighting style is entirely
about fighting in close quarters with your opponent coming at you.
If your opponent is getting away from you, you're just
kind of up up the creek. And that's what really
(24:49):
kind of opened his eyes that he needed to expand it.
And so, like you said, he incorporated boxing and incorporated fencing.
He also realized that he needed grappling too. He didn't
have any grappling moves, and apparently that came um into
focus when he was on set for a TV show
that he would end up being on for a season
called The Green Hornet. She'll talk about in a second, Um,
(25:13):
And apparently on the set of The Green Hornet, he
would he was He became quickly known for actually beating
up the stunt doubles rather than you know, pulling his
punch and just you know, not making contact or just
barely making contact. He was punching these guys and kicking
these guys and Um they apparently brought in a ringer
(25:34):
named Judo Geen LaBelle, who was a very tough stunt
man at two time Judoku champion UM and brought him
and as a stuntman, and the first day on the set,
he picked up Bruce Lee out of nowhere, put him
in a fireman carry like on his shoulder, and Bruce
Lee had he couldn't do anything. He was just so mad,
but there was nothing he could do to get out
(25:54):
of this. And he realized he needed to incorporate grappling,
and he ended up training with Jean LaBelle for a
year and expanded his fighting style even further. And that
fireman carry, that meeting, that fight, basically on the set
of The Green Hornet is what Quentin Tarantino was recreating
in that movie Once upon a Time in Hollywood when
(26:15):
Cliff Robertson Um Brad Pitt fights Bruce Lee on the
sound stage in the in the parking lot. Um and
a lot of people were very upset because he took
tremendous liberties with that fight, but it was based on
this kernel of history that had a much better outcome
than than what UM what Quentin Tarantino showed. Yeah, Cliff Booth,
(26:36):
by the way, Cliff Robertson was a real actor. Oh
was he? Yeah? The way I thought it was the
basis from Italica. No, that was close somebody else, I think, Okay, um, yeah,
I mean Tarantino, we we should kind of talk about
that for sect, because he was taken to task by
a lot of people, um, certainly people from Bruce Lee's
(26:56):
own family for that scene, and they were like, this
is not what Bruce Lee was like, his daughter especially,
It's like, this is not what my dad was like.
He was not cocky, he was not arrogant. He was confident,
and he was a good teacher. But you know, Tarantino
then fired back in some interviews like he was arrogant
and cocky, he was known as this guy, and apparently
(27:17):
the people closest to him said he wasn't at all.
This is a misconception by white people, and uh, Tarantino
took a lot of grief and sort of argued back,
and then she finally, in uh an interview in Variety magazine,
was like, he should just kind of shut up about
this and and say I'm making fictionalized movies and not
purport to know what my dad was like. Yeah, when
(27:39):
it's coming from the daughter, it seems like you should
probably just shut up for sure. Probably so, and we'll
probably get an email from her two because you said
he was cocky and arrogant. Yeah right, yeah, I was
thinking back to that flashing back, um. And one I
guess one thing I saw too kind of that gives
weight to the idea that he had a certain amount
(28:00):
of arrogance or cockiness or I can understand how some
people would take him that way or portray him that way. Um.
Is he was well known for going around publicly insulting
established martial arts schools. Like one of the first things
he did where he made a name for himself among
the martial arts community, especially in the Bay Area, that
(28:20):
some people say led to that fight between him and
Um Wong jack Man was to insult basically every established
martial arts school in America and say that these were, um,
they were taught by old tigers with no teeth, basically
if they were misguided, um, and that they were, they
(28:40):
were just wrong, and that his way was the right way. Um.
And it wasn't that he had it out for like
the old establishment just because they were the old establishment.
But what he had decided, um with Jeekee Kundo is
that it was it didn't make any sense to train
and train and train to know exactly where your feet
(29:02):
are going to go and exactly where to put your
fists or that kind of thing, because all that stuff
dissolved in a real fight. And so to Bruce Lee
and his fighting style, the whole point is to survive
the fight, and so you use whatever you can get
your hands on, whatever technique, whatever style is going to work.
And that that really doesn't jibe with the idea of
(29:24):
us an established, rigid school. So he certainly ran a
foul of, um, of some of the established martial art groups. Um.
And I think that that has kind of contributed to
this idea that he was cocky in real life. I'm
not his daughter, so I certainly can't say, but you know, um,
that's that's what I was basing my interpretation on. Yeah,
(29:45):
my read is that he was a business person and
that he was trying to make some money because his
idea was that he wanted to open up a chain
of kung fu schools. Um. He goes back to l
A to give a demonstration at a karate tournament to
try and you know, make a little headway there with
maybe getting investors or getting people interested, and it worked.
(30:08):
He met a TV producer there and that is how
he got the role on The Green Hornet, which, like
you said, ran for a single season. And he stayed
in Hollywood though, and he really got the acting bug.
I think he was in a few, um, kind of
smaller parts over the next few years. He played Winslow
Wong in the movie Marlo in nineteen nine, and then
(30:29):
he like you mentioned, kind of at the beginning, it
was he was trying to do something that didn't exist yet,
which was become an Asian uh and at least an
Asian American hero, because they just didn't do that. They
were like, you can play this kind of role. Um,
you're probably gonna come in as the bad guy or something.
You're gonna show off some of your kung fu skills,
(30:50):
but you're not going to be the star of the movie.
And he said, all right, I'll hang around here. I'll
start making a ton of money teaching the Hollywood elite
uh my fighting style and ended up making making some
really really close friends, uh, notably James Koburn and Steve
McQueen ended up being two of his closest friends over
the years until his death. Yeah, along with um Chuck
(31:15):
Morris of course. Yeah, he was a ball bear. Also
saw Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate were two of his
students too. Yeah, Roman Polanski tried to sleep with him. No,
he Bruce Lee lost his glasses. Roman Polanski found some
glasses like his at the murder scene, and Roman Polanski
(31:37):
was very suspicious of that, and apparently he went so
far as to um take Bruce Lee to get a
prescription made to replace the glasses that were broken, and
then wanted to get his hands on that prescription and
compare him, and apparently they didn't match, so he, you know,
he backed off. He suspected Bruce Lee and the Manson
(31:58):
family murders. He the TB. I don't wanna, I don't
want to put any words in Roman Polanski's mouth, but
I'm telling you what happened, which is that he found
these glasses and had him checked out. Wow, that's a
Hollywood nugget, Chuck, that you just put that jewel in
your crown right there. Well, I didn't discover it. I mean,
(32:18):
I just read it. Yeah, but I mean, I mean
it's well known. Okay, well whatever, you can wear the
crown around me and I'll just be like I totally earned. Uh.
He got really into health and fitness. Um, this was
the time in the nineteen sixties, kind of before the
big exercise and weight lifting boom and stuff that happened.
He was he was eating protein shakes and lifting weights
(32:41):
kind of before a lot of people were. And you know,
he wanted to get his body in the best shape possible.
And if you've ever seen Bruce Lee's body, then he
you know, he did exactly that. Yeah, Mischief accomplished for sure.
And I mean again, he was a little guy, like
he weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, but he was
just as lean as they come and totally chiseled like
he he was very very strong for his his size
(33:04):
and stature. Um, and just lightning fast too. But none
of this was amounting to anything as far as his
film career was concerned. He was going quite far as
a martial artist martial arts instructor for sure, but clearly
he UM, I don't know if his he felt like
his calling was always you know, the movies or TV
(33:29):
or something like that. Okay, well, then that would explain it.
I had the impression that, you know, he just knew
that that was something he could do. Um, which he
apparently was starting to accumulate some debt, and at one point,
to keep his UH, to keep his his chain of
um of martial arts studios open, he decided to go
(33:49):
to Hong Kong and do some acting rather quickly and
pick up some some fast money. So I didn't know
if he considered that like a step towards stardom or
if that was just he knew he could go make
some money acting and come back and pour it back
into the studios to keep them open. Do you know.
(34:10):
I mean, I think the studios were making his living.
But I think since he was ten years old, he
was bitten by the acting bug, which is why he
went on to be in twenty more movies over the
next eight years. And I think that was his true
like I think the Kung Fu studios, in my reading,
was the means to get to where he wanted to be,
which was a big Hollywood superstar. Well it actually it
(34:33):
worked that trip Um Like I was saying, he was
just going for some money to keep the studios or
his his studios afloat Um or open Um. But it
turned out to be the greatest move that any actor
has ever undertaken, just going to Hong Kong and trying
to pick up some parts and martial arts films, and
(34:54):
that's exactly what he did, and he blew up as
a result. That's right, So stake our final break here
and then we'll come back and wrap it up and
spanking on the bottom right after this shock shock Alright,
(35:31):
So Bruce Lee goes to Hong Kong to make some movies,
make a little dough and he goes to Hong Kong
and signs a two picture movie deal with Golden Harvest
Studios and signs on for his first movie, a little
movie called The Big Boss, which originally in the United
States was called Fist of Fury. A little confusing because
(35:53):
then there was a movie called Fist of Fury that
also had an alternate title, uh to Chinese, the Chinese connection,
but the Big Boss a k A in America at first.
The Fist se Fury or Fist of Fury was his
first sort of foray into those movies, and it was
a big, big hit. It was it's it's hard to
(36:17):
explain what happened that that first movie, The Big Boss
came out and basically made Bruce Lee an overnight sensation
in Asia as far as martial arts is concerned, not
just Hong Kong Asia. He just became an absolute superstar.
The Big Boss shattered the box office record. The previous
Hong Kong box office record was held by the Sound
of Music, and it had made something like eight hundred
(36:38):
thousand Hong Kong dollars um. The Big Boss made something
like four times that in its box office run um.
And then as more Bruce Lee movies came out over
the next couple of years, each one shattered the record
of the previous Bruce Lee movie. So when something like
(36:58):
that happens, you know you have something once in a
lifetime basically on your hands. And he was right smack
dab in the in the middle of that once in
a lifetime thing. Yeah, And not only were these movies
making a lot of money, they were really cheap to make,
which was like he was like the Golden Boy, because
I think Fist of Fury, the second movie, cost about
(37:22):
a hundred thousand dollars to make and made a hundred
million I think the um The Way of the Dragon
made a hundred and thirty million and cost about a
hundred and thirty thousand, So he was making like huge,
huge money. I mean not personally, but the studios were
making huge, huge money on very little investment. And Um,
(37:42):
the thing with Bruce Lee was he was, like you said,
he was selling these fights better than anyone ever had.
And his speed was really the key to it. Um
and a lot of if you watch a lot of
older kung fu movies and it looks like the action
is sped up, it's because it is. They would speed
at the camera or actually slow down the camera to
make the action appear faster, to make it more exciting.
(38:05):
But Bruce Lee was so naturally fast they had to
tell him to slow down just so the camera could
like record stuff accurately. So there were a few legends
that grew up around his speed. One speed and strength.
One that he could steal a dime off of your hand,
like if you're holding it in the palm of your
hand before you could just close your hand. Uh, he
(38:28):
could catch a rice green that that he you would
throw at him with chopsticks. And these are all, you know,
maybe true or not, but I just love these legends. Wait,
you would use chopsticks to throw a rice green at
no, no no, no, you would throw a rice green at
him and he would catch it with chopsticks. That's way
more impressive. So and then the last one was that
he could he could punch a hole through a can
(38:50):
of coke with his finger. And I hope these are
true because they're so great. Well, if they're not true,
that's okay. Like you're not the first person to fall
for some of the exaggerations, like I saw Matthew PAULI
was kind of not called out, but somebody made mention
the fact that this is one of those top biographers,
like one of the best biographers of Bruce Lee still said,
(39:12):
you know, somebody got punched and they flew back six
ft in the air and it's almost certainly not correct,
Like six ft is probably an exaggeration. But the fact
that things like that get repeated and like like smart
people like say like this, like this is what he
was capable of, like it at the very least goes
(39:34):
to underscore his abilities. That they were so mind boggling
that this is it's possible that that's true. You know
what I mean, it's not like, oh, that's ridiculous. It's like, no,
this is Bruce Lee we're talking about. I think I
can explain the six ft thing. If he's it might
be an exaggeration that someone literally didn't touch the ground
(39:54):
for six ft, But if you look at demonstrations of
his of the one finger munch, he can knock someone
back six to eight feet very easily until they can
like regain their composure. Like people are flying back six
ft but not necessarily not touching the ground in between,
you know what I mean. I think this was quote
(40:16):
flying through the air. It sounds like the air little
writers flourish. Yeah. Maybe, but I mean again, it comes
like people are like, oh that's cool. It's crazy because
we're talking about Bruce Lee. If if like my biographer
said that, everyone would be like, stop the pressus, whoa
you got a biographer? I question every I will eventually,
I assume. But if people would be like I questioned
(40:38):
everything that's in this book now Bruce Lee, it's like, yeah,
totally buy that. You know. So Bruce Lee is uh
made a name for himself. Now. He is drive around
sports cars, he's wearing for coats, he is a big,
big pothead, which is something that yeah, I forgot about
that you don't hear about a lot. But apparently after yeah,
(41:00):
but after Bruce Lee's training sessions, he would uh. He
apparently had this wooden box just full of joints, also
smoked hash and got really into this sort of hippie lifestyle,
kind of grew his hair along for a little while,
and I think it was wrapped up in this Hollywood
hippie thing of the time, understandable. Uh, and his careers
go along great, and it all culminates with a movie
(41:21):
called Enter the Dragon in nineteen three. Big movie. Yeah,
it was a huge movie. I think he wrote and
directed that one, and I think the first one he
wrote and directed was Way of the Dragon. But like
by this time on his third movie, he was now
writing and directing it, and certainly by his fourth one
he wrote and directed it. I saw that the Way
of the Dragon, a quarter of the script was just
(41:44):
a couple of like just a couple of fight scenes.
Choreography took up like a quarter of the script. Um.
And it was this was the one that put him
on the map as an overnight sensation in the United
States in the West. Like the other two, the first
two or three. Um yea, his first three had made
him an overnight sensation in Asia. This was the one
(42:05):
that taught America what a kung fu movie was because
we hadn't heard of it before, and now all of
a sudden, we couldn't get enough of Bruce Lee. Unfortunately,
Bruce Lee had died a month before in one of
the great ironic tragedies as far as like Hollywood stardom goes. Yeah,
only thirty two years old. Um, if you look up
Bruce Lee death, there's a lot of different stories and
(42:27):
theories out there. Um he was. He had a mistress
at the time named Betty ting Pie, and apparently he
had been on and this is the way Chuck Norris
told it too. Apparently he had been on back medication
for a while because of a back injury, so pain
meds for his back. Came home to his apartment in
(42:49):
Hong Kong with his mitress mistress, and complained of a headache.
She gave him, I think a different kind of pain reliever,
although Chuck Norris said it was Ah, what's I'm blanking? Now?
What's the thing you take to fight an infection? And uh,
antibiotic anty biotic, which I think he just must spoke
because that wouldn't make any sense. But um, that's what
(43:10):
Chuck North said. Uh. So it took another pain reliever,
went down for a nap, and died never woke up.
Uh he um. You know, there are all kinds of
speculation about what happened. It seems like it was just
a reaction of these medications. Uh. Some people say, including
the biographer, it was also had to do with a
(43:30):
heat stroke because because he'd had one ten weeks before, right, Yeah,
and he also um a few months before he died,
had he used to be very embarrassed about his under
armed sweat, so he had the sweat glands removed from
his underarms. What and so apparently they said that could
have contributed to the You know, his body wasn't shedding
sweat like it should and that could have led to
(43:52):
a heat stroke. I had not heard that before that.
That definitely crosses a couple of tease that I had
anotherwise seen. May be, but I think it was like
ten weeks before he died, he collapsed when he was
dubbing a movie in an on an room without air conditioning.
It was really hot got that heat stroke. Uh, and
some people are saying this all contributed with these medications
(44:12):
to a brain edema. Yeah, but again, I mean the
fact that he died mysteriously. This guy who's like one
of the fittest people on the planets just dies after
saying he has a headache and lies down and wakes up.
That's just conspiracy theory fodder for eon. Sure it's still
going on today. Like apparently that he had a break
with the director low Way, who directed the first two
(44:35):
Bruce Lee films, um, the first two kung fu films
he was in. He pulled a knife on him because
the guy the director had been taunting him and Bruce
Lee was Uh. There was a legend that like low
Way had had him assassinated by ninja or something like that.
But the upshot of it is, however he died. Um,
he died like a month before he became extra like
(44:59):
world famous, and he's still world famous today. Like everyone
knows Bruce Lee. He's one of the most famous people
to ever lived, and he died a month before that happened.
Which is you know, you say that and you read
it and you think it's it just doesn't quite sink
in and when it does, you're like, that is astounding
that that happened, just the timing of all that. Yeah,
And then you know, many years later, his son, Brandon
(45:21):
Lee would die very tragically on the set of a
film because of an accident with a um, a blank bullet,
um actually shooting a slug out of a gun on
set of of The Crow, right yeah, um yeah. He
think he was twenty eight, and his father had died
when he was thirty two. So a lot of people
(45:42):
are like, well, there's clearly the Lee family is cursed, right,
which is nonsense. I think you should probably just shut
up about that, probably so, but um, one of the
things that it's hard to overstate like the cultural legacy
that he left, Like he introduced the West to a
completely different concept of Asian people, like like, oh, they
(46:06):
can actually like stars, action heroes, like they're they're not
like you know, valets or servants or whatever. Like it
just completely altered americans understanding of Asian people. Like it's
really hard to understate that. And then the other thing
too is you know, we were kind of talking about
whether he was um, you know, whether he was an
(46:26):
actor or martial artist, and a lot of people are like,
would is Bruce Lee? Would he actually was he really
a good fighter? Or was he like a movie fighter
like Jean Claude van Dam or Steven Seagal, who like
in a real life fight that we would just be
hopelessly lost, you know. And um, because Bruce Lee died
at such a young age, like there's there's not this
(46:49):
we don't know or a lot of people don't know.
But if you talk to the people who trained with him,
who worked with him, who were there who actually physically
interacted with him, like it seems like completely understandable that
he was as everything you saw in film, he could
do for real in real life. And you would never
have wanted to fight Bruce Lee. So he wasn't just
(47:10):
a fake movie martial artists. He was the real deal,
and in a lot of ways largely self taught, which
makes them all the more impressive. That's right, You got
anything else about Mr Bruce Lee? Chuck and got nothing else?
And maybe watch the classic two farcical comedy they call
Me Bruce. Oh yeah, okay, I will check that out.
(47:31):
That one more thing, that his death is untimely death
led to a whole genre of movies called Bruce Floitation,
which was basically fake Bruce Lee movies. They're trying to
cash in on his fame. Yeah. I think he had
a movie, another movie released after his tattoo, didn't he
That they compiled like footage and stuff for I believe
(47:51):
they were filming it when he died, and they didn't
release it for another five years. Game of Death, that's
the one where he fights Kareem's actually, and Chuck Norris
is in it too. Game of Death. Yeah, that that
fight with Kareem was pretty awesome because to see a
man that tall, be that lithe and that quick was
pretty impressive. And he was one of Bruce Lee's like
(48:12):
genuine students, one of his long time students. And he
credits Bruce Lee with his his longevity and the n
B a UM. Yeah. So if you want to more
about Bruce Lee, just go out and start watching movies
and videos and demonstrations of Bruce Lee. There's a lot
worse things you can do with your time and thank
us later. And since I said thank us later, it's
time for listener mail. Yeah. I'm gonna call this return
(48:35):
of Noah from Scotland. I'm pretty sure I read this
on the air, but I told Noah to rite in
once a year. Um, and here's the follow up. Because
you know, Sarah, the amazing eleven year old fan is
now probably in college and has long since forgotten about us.
So we miss Sarah. We've we've been ghosted. We've have
been ghosted years ago. But this is our new friend Noah. Hey,
(48:56):
it's me Noah from Scotland. You told me to write
in once a year, so this is my annual letter
in case you don't remember me. I've been listening since
I was four and writing you a letter every year
since I was five. I still live in Scotland and
for most of the last year my mom's been home
schooling me because of the coronavirus. It's not always great,
but when I'm doing my own topics, I can choose
them based on your episodes. My favorite was space weather,
(49:20):
because I didn't know there was weather in space. My
favorite fact that I found out was the most powerful
northern lights can generate over one trillion lots of power,
which is I think about three million solar panels. Uh.
It was a hard sum, but I think it's right. Uh.
I don't you're if you're asking us about math, and
no we're just gonna say yes, you got it right.
(49:41):
You just ran a circle around this. I don't want
to be an engineer anymore. By the way, I really
like chemistry now. I think the periodic table is interesting
and I want to find a way to stop global
warming using science. I love it. I've asked for your
book for my ninth birthday in May, and I hope
to get it because I think it be interesting. I'm
glad you're still podcasting. Love from Noah and this was
(50:06):
sent through his mom's Rachel's email, of course as always,
and she added a very sweet note as well, so
much love to the to Noah's family there. Yeah, thank
you very much Rachel and knowing the whole fam for
writing to us from beloved Scotland. Keep us updated. Noah,
We're pretty your progress is just fascinating. Yes, we love it,
(50:27):
um and uh, happy early birthday too, from Josh and Chuck.
If you want to get in touch with this, like
Noah did, you can give it your best shot. You
can send us an email, send it to Stuff Podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts. For my
(50:48):
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Roland, and this
is Stuff you should Know. I couldn't think of any um,
(00:24):
non problematic nicknames for us to use. Well, you could
probably just go, yeah, that's what I'm talking about? Is
that probably figure that? I'm sure yes, we would probably
here about the man that's uh. You watch any great
kung fu movie and they all make that great, great
sound after a good death punch. Did you ever take
(00:47):
kung fu when you were young or any kind of
martial arts? No, I'm notoriously have zero interested in martial arts,
and my biggest fears that my daughter is gonna want
to do it. I oh really, well, I mean, will
you tell her to sweep the leg at a tournament
as she ever does? Yeah? Sure, I mean I wanted
like to be able to protect herself, so that sounds
like a very selfish thing. But as far as like
(01:07):
going to martial arts tournaments kind of like uh, just
you know, kill me. Now, what you should get her
interested in, like, um, wielding a knife or something? It
would be really cool or just being a good person,
so people don't pick fights with her? Yeah, is that
how things work? No, not at all. So I'll tell
(01:31):
you somebody who liked to pick fights, not just would
get into fights and accept the challenge, would actually pick fights.
And it turns out that person also happens to be
the person we're talking about today, one Mr Bruce Lee. Yeah,
Bruce Lee. I mean, I'm sure, like me, you spent
the past couple of days watching a lot of Bruce
(01:53):
Lee stuff. But my question is were you into this?
Did you watch kung fu movies and Bruce Lee movies
only in so far as like the whole nineties like
throwback thing. You know. I would have him on every
once a while and watch him, but I was never
super into my friends that were super into them. I remember,
(02:14):
of course, I underwent extensive ninja training under since a
Tommy Roper as a much younger person. This is in
the eighties. Um, but I was never really into kung
fu or or martial arts movies. Um. Outside of that, UM,
I will say though, watching Fist of Fury last night, UM,
(02:37):
I was just absolutely blown away like that. Yeah, the
whole things I think black Belt Karate Dot com pirate
of the movie and put it on YouTube, the whole thing,
and it is just really good. Like the fighting in
there is astounding and it gives you, like a really
good like appreciation. It's hard not to appreciate what you're
(02:58):
seeing with Bruce Lee when you when you watch it. Yeah,
I have still not seen many of those movies. But
for a movie Crush episode, one of my guests, um uh,
Stuart Wellington of the flap House podcast, one of my
favorite other podcast on movies, he had me watch his
favorite movie, which is Ricky, Oh Colin the story of
(03:22):
Ricky and Dude. You have to see this movie. It
is the gory, over the top crazy martial arts movie
to beat all over the top gory crazy martial arts movies.
It is when was nuts? When was it made? Well
ninety one, but it seems like seventy eight. Um it's
(03:43):
it's amazing. Was there a shot where some guy jammed
his fingers into his opponents testicles and then they cut
to a view from inside his screwed them and you
see the fingers wiggling. Did that happened? Because I saw
a martial arts movie that had that and I was like, well,
there it is. But that is the thing I've ever seen.
(04:06):
It's got a lot of stuff like that. But I
don't think that was from Ricky. Oh, but it's You're
on the right track there, as far as you know.
It's not for everybody. I gotta check it out, man,
it's pretty fun. You had me. You're on the right
track there. Um. So, Bruce lee movies were not nearly
as violent, but for the time they were, they were
exceedingly violent, it seems like, and Bruce Lee laid the
(04:29):
foundation that people said, well, I want to top that.
I want to top that. Um. And while maybe Gore
there was plenty of like blood in in Fists of Fury,
at least in other movies that he made, but um,
it wasn't anything like what we just talked about. But
the I think the larger point for Bruce Lee is
(04:50):
that he laid this foundation, like he introduced the United
States in the West to the idea of not just
kung fu movie but of like Asians being heroes, like
like protagonists, like like tough. You know, because up to
(05:10):
that point, not necessarily exactly up to that point, but
awfully close to it. Um, especially in the West. Uh,
the people from China Japan seemed very docile, cerebral. I
saw um not at all like Bruce Lee. And Bruce
Lee changed all of that basically singlehandedly, especially as far
(05:33):
as America is concerned with a single one inch punch. Basically.
So let's talk a little bit about his early life,
because he had a pretty interesting background, uh, pretty interesting
genetic family tree. Um, because you know, we all think
of him as Chinese, and he was certainly, he certainly
was Chinese. But um, if you if you poke around
(05:57):
his lineage and you will learn that his maternal great
and father was Dutch Jewish, which is really interesting. He
was a merchant, his name was Moses with a z
hard dog Boseman, and he went to Hong Kong in
the eighteen fifties as part of the Dutch East India Company.
Became the Dutch ambassador to Hong Kong, had six kids
(06:18):
with his concubine, and then one of those kids, one
of his sons, Ho Kam Tong. He became a very
rich man. He had a wife, thirteen concubines and a
British mistress, and then he had a daughter with a
British mistress, and that was Bruce Lee's mom. Yeah, that's
(06:39):
it sounds more convenient. Yeah. Yeah. So Bruce Lee was
part Jewish, part British, um and lots of Chinese mixed together.
His father was Chinese Han Chinese um and his father
was born poor. But he actually worked his way up
to fairly sizeable celebrity in Hong Kong um or was
(07:06):
it China? I don't remember if if Bruce Lee, if
Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee's father lived in Hong Kong or China. Well,
it was kind of both. He was a Cantonese opera
star and an actor. Uh and then I think of
visually they did settle in Hong Kong. Okay, all right,
so um, but he was like very well known, like
(07:26):
he was in movies, he was on TV, like he
was a pretty famous guy. He was probably I would
liken him to uh two, Jerry Orbach. He was the
Jerry or Bach of his time and place. No, but
(07:47):
he was like everywhere, he was in everything from dirty
dancing to murder. She wrote, you know, like he was
all over the place. And he was multi talented too.
Don't try to tell me Jerry Orbach is not multi talented,
because he is sure, but he was no opera star.
Do you don't know that you're right? You're right. I
could be I could be a martial arts expert. Jerry
(08:08):
Orbot could be an opera star. Right, we could be
whatever we want to be in our mind's eye. But
so Bruce Lee's father was the Jerry Orbach of his
time and place. That's right. So uh he was touring
the US when Bruce was born. He was born in
San Francisco in nineteen forty uh, and his parents named
him Lee June Faun and apparently a nurse said you
(08:28):
should call him Bruce for his English name. He said,
what what did you say exactly? Did you hear what
we named him? Originally? She's like, yeah, Bruce Len Bruce. Uh.
They moved back to Hong Kong when he was a baby,
and he grew up there, but he grew up with UM,
going to English schools, English language private schools. Yeah. So um.
(08:52):
He always kind of had this this UM I don't
want to say split identity, but his his identity, a
sense of self was deaf and divided between America and UM.
I believe the UK to an extent, and also obviously
Hong Kong UM and then of course his ancestry in China.
(09:12):
Like he he he seemed to have UM not necessarily
like felt spread all over the place, but in in
a different sense, he was more open to influences wherever
he found them. I saw somebody somebody say that Bruce
Lee learned from everybody, everyone that he came in contact with, UM,
including people who he had to fight, who fought of
(09:33):
different styles. He he was always open to learning something
he didn't. He was very cocky, he was very arrogant
by a lot of people's estimations, but he also was
humble enough to want to learn wherever he thought he
could learn something new. Uh. And I think that that,
according at least UM to again named Matthew Polly, who's
(09:54):
known as one of his UM better biographers. Uh. That
that really kind of underscored that that UM, that his
personality just kind of being divided among different places around
the world and having different influences. Yeah. So well, we'll
take a little break here and we'll come back and
talk about UM some of the early formative years of
(10:14):
young Bruce Lee right after this and shock. Uh, alright,
(10:40):
So little Bruce was born not only in the Year
of the Dragon, but the Day of the Dragon, and
his nickname was Little Dragon. When he became a child actor,
if you only know Bruce Lee from his martial arts work,
his kind of short career in martial arts films, he
he was actually on screen as a baby. Um, but
(11:02):
his real first kind of role was I think when
he was like ten years old. Uh. Yeah, he was
in a movie called The Kid, Yeah, which I watched
some clips of this. I'm sure you did too. Um,
it's you know, it's a cute little Bruce Lee. He
does he kind of throw a lot of child abuse
and was it really Yeah, He's like, he offers he
(11:23):
has some money, so he offers to help his uncle out,
and his uncle just basically deafens him in one ear. Well, yeah,
I didn't see that clip. I would call that child abuse, chuck. No, two,
I didn't see that clip. You're like, yeah, well, I
guess if it's your definition of child No, No, not
at all. I just didn't see that. When I just
saw the one where he was kind of did that
famous Bruce Lee sort of uh you know, thumb across
(11:45):
the nose and throw his little shirt open. I know
that's crazy that like he was that young ten years
old and he's already like laying the groundwork for the
things that we're going to make him famous in the future. Yeah,
and he was a little guy. He um, I think,
you know, as a as a full grown adult. He
he reached five seven, about a hundred and thirty pounds.
He was not very big when he was a kid.
(12:07):
He was very small. He was fairly weak because of
food rations because Hong Kong was occupied by Imperial Japan
at the time and they were rationing food out there
was a cholera epidemic. He had one leg shorter than
the other. He had an undescended testicle, which actually ended
up keeping him out of Vietnam. So a little bit
(12:29):
of a silver lining there. Uh. He had glasses, he
had acne. I think his biographer said that he and
this is the only person I really saw say that,
but he said he'd probably be diagnosed with a d
h D today. I looked for other places to find that,
and no one. I don't think he's on record of
saying that, but it did seem like that could be
(12:50):
possible because he was very active, had trouble with focus,
but could also hyper focus. Uh, and like he you know,
like you said, he would kind of picked fights with
people because he was a little kid, and that's a
lot of times little kids will do that if they
want to, you know, they want to prove that they're
strong and have value, they'll pick fights and try and
beat people up. Not not the way to do with
(13:10):
their kids, no, but I mean, like, like, he was
well known in Hong Kong as being like this kind
of local tough who would start fights um and frequently
won them, but sometimes would lose them too. Um. But
there was one fight in particular that he lost around
the age of fifteen or sixteen UM to a kid
who had been studying h kung fu style called wing chun. Yeah,
(13:35):
wing chun um, And that is where his famous um
like one inch punch comes from. That style of fighting.
It's really good for close quarters type fighting where your
opponents right in front of you and coming at you.
Wing chun is very good for that. So that was
the kind of dude that Bruce Lee was, even back
when he was a little hot shot fifteen year old,
(13:56):
he lost a fight to somebody and he wanted to
know how that person had beat him, So he went
and learned it and that UM actually formed the basis
for his UH. His formal education and martial arts was
entering into the Wing Chun school UM at age fifteen. Yeah,
and I looked a little more into Wing Chung to
see what it was kind of all about. And apparently
there's two sort of main tenants, which is the center
(14:18):
line theory and then stand and guard UH. And the
center line theory is basically, you draw a line from
the center of your body to your opponent's body and
that is the quickest route to strike. So if you've
got someone coming at you, like you know, if you
go throw a punch like American boxing style, like a haymaker,
you're going up and around towards the jaw, to the
(14:41):
side of the jaw. If you're practicing wing chun, you're
standing right in front of that person, and as you're
throwing your haymaker, you've gotten a very quick straight punch
to your solar plexus and you're like, what just happened?
That is basically the essence of Bruce Lee's as super
(15:01):
lightning fast would take advantage of you while you thought
you were about to strike him. He used that against you.
Whatever flaw there was, and what you were doing to
to hit or kick him or come at him, he
would he would take advantage of it and hit you
within that time. And and like if you watch any
of his movies, you can see it quite clearly. But
(15:23):
he'd been working on that. I didn't realize that was
necessarily wing Chun. I thought that was his own style. Um,
but it would make sense because again that was wing Chun.
Is the is the foundation for his style of kung
fu that he ended up coming up with. Right. So, Um,
Like we said, his dad was fairly famous. Bruce's in
(15:46):
the Jerry or box level famous. Don't forget Bruce's in
this movie when he was ten years old, called the
kid that was a big success. And then they said, hey,
let's sign this kid up to do some sequels. And
his dad said, no, no, no, no, no, My kid's
not gonna be an actor. He's going to be a
doctor or a lawyer or something like that. Um. And
he's always in trouble in school, so I'm not gonna
let him be in uh sign this contract. Uh. He
(16:09):
ended up being in some movies kind of off and on.
I think he ended up being in about twenty different
movies that before his kung fu movie days, but it
was never like he never turned into the big kids
star that they were trying to get him to be
with that first contract. I think, yeah, apparently he would
have been had his father not directly intervened to make
(16:29):
sure that didn't happen, which is pretty interesting. But he
can't sign a contract without daddy saying so and mommy
saying so. Well, yeah, you definitely need to have your
parents support like that for sure. Um. But so his
father like stepped in and said, no, you're gonna You're
gonna do something else. And um that was at age ten,
I don't know, I think at least eighteen at the latest.
(16:53):
But at some point he um had kind of gotten like,
like I said, he had a reputation as like local
tough street fighter in Hong Kong. Um, and I guess
he fought another kid and and beat him quite badly.
And the kid turned out to be the son of
a local mob boss. I don't know if he's a
(17:16):
boss or a connected mob guy, but it's a member
of the triad. It does sound like a movie. And um,
that between that and the Hong Kong police basically saying like, look,
your kid is totally on our radar and it's a
real problem and he's going to end up in jail
or dead if he keeps this stuff up. And by
the way, the local the local mob now wants to
(17:38):
kill him because he beat up one of the one
of the boss's sons. Um his father was said, you're
out of here. You're going to America. Um. Which again
this wasn't like a complete out of the blue place
to send Bruce Lee. This was the land that he
was born. He was he had an American passport, he
was an American by birth, and he also had family
(17:59):
there too, But this is the first time that he
was living on his own. From what I saw, his
father gave him eight hundred dollars, which is pretty substantial
back then, said here the addresses of some family in
the Pacific Northwest. Head on out to San Francisco. And
he started in San Francisco and ended up in Seattle
pretty quickly, I believe, Yeah, Seattle in the um. In college,
(18:21):
he went to you dub and he you know that
money obviously would run out, so he had to get
a job. He worked as a bus boy in a
Chinese restaurant, actually lived in the restaurant, kind of a
closet type of deal, and everyone started hearing about his
his martial arts skills and the fact that he was
pretty good at this stuff. So he started teaching a
(18:42):
little bit on the side in that Wing chun style,
and he met Linda there, who would go on to
be his wife. She was a fellow student of his. Um,
Linda got pregnant and they got married. They were very young,
they were still in college, and they had little Brandon Lee.
Uh well, we'll talk about him later on, and then
(19:02):
a daughter named Shannon. Yeah. Um, so, all of a sudden,
Bruce Lee, who is a bus boy at a Chinese
restaurant and also teaching um kung fu on the side,
has a family, a wife, kid, then kids, and um
he's got He needs money now more than he ever
(19:24):
did before. And he has a pretty good idea he's
going to start opening of a franchise of martial arts studios.
Because martial arts was already known in the United States,
but typically it was kept within the whatever Asian community
that practiced it. Right, so like if it was kung fu,
you would find almost entirely Chinese people learning it UM
(19:49):
that you know, immigrants to the country, or they're the
children of immigrants. Um, it's taekwondo. It would be like
Korean families. UM. And Bruce Lee said, you know what,
I want to kind of explode that. There's a lot
of talk about whether he was the first person in
the United States to come along and open up martial
arts to anybody who wanted to learn of any race,
(20:10):
any ethnicity, women, men. From what I saw, that's not
necessarily true, but they that is UM often credited as
UH as evidence of just kind of how UM cocky
and unconventional and and um disrespectful. I guess of norms
and traditions just for the fact, you know, or just
(20:30):
for norms and tradition's sake. UM. And And I don't
know if he was the first person to teach just
anybody who wanted to learn, UM, but it definitely fell
within his UH persona, his outlook of martial arts, which is,
you know, I'll take what I'll learn whatever I can
and put it in to my fighting style so that
(20:51):
I survive. And UM, that would make sense to kind
of flip it on the on the other way and say, well,
you know, I'm going to teach his fighting style to
whoever wants to learn it. Yeah, and it turns out
it was just as he ended up learning Wing Chung
because of a fight he had early on. He also
expanded his fighting style because of another fight. Um, which
(21:12):
this sounds like it. I mean, I think there are
a lot of legends and tall tales around Bruce Lee
as well. This story. The story sounds a little dubious,
but maybe it's true. It's it is. It's not dubious.
It definitely happened, but there, it was close to the public,
and there were only three eyewitnesses there and to one
gives a conflicting report from the other two to a
(21:34):
large degree. But it's been so thoroughly studied and researched
by some people like that Matthew Pauly guy spent a
year just researching this fight alone. There was another guy
named m Charles Russo who wrote a book called Striking Distance.
He spent a decade on that book and he interviewed
a hundred people just for that to for that fight alone,
(21:56):
because it's the one of the most legendary fights that's
ever happened in the history of a world, and only
three people were there to see it besides the fighters.
Yet they interviewed a hundred people about what they heard
what happened. Basically, yeah, I mean, that's as close as
they could get, aside from the people who were there,
who were again saying, you know, this is kind of conflicting.
(22:16):
But overall, what seems to be the ultimate upshot of
it is that it was at least a draw. It
seems like it was a draw. Yeah, he thought a
man named Wong jack Man, and apparently it was a
pretty brutal fight, like you were saying, very legendary and
uh yeah, conflicting reports. Let's just call it a draw.
(22:37):
Let's be magnanimous here. But at the end of this,
you know, the sort of upshot is it was that
Bruce was like, I have limits now with Wing Chun,
and I need to, uh like, I need to be
able to best larger opponents because I'm a small guy.
I need to I need to really kind of ramp
up my study if especially if I'm a teacher, and
(23:01):
and kind of get better. Basically, so he came up
with his own jam and that's called Jeet Kun do
the way of the intercepting fist, and this was a
little bit. He was a really really good boxer. I
don't think we've mentioned that yet. Um. If he had
only boxed and dedicated himself to being a boxer, he
(23:21):
probably could have been like a belt holding boxer, uh
and like an Olympic champion. Um. So he incorporated elements
of boxing. He incorporated all the wing chun that he
had learned. Uh. And then fencing, which his older brother did,
which is you know, when you're lunging at your opponent,
but instead of a foil, he would use his fist.
And if you, um, you know I mentioned that the
(23:43):
one inch punch earlier. Uh, there was also the six
inch punch. There's tons and tons of videos and breakdowns
of what that is. But that's what he was really
famous for, which is basically and then Tarantino kind of
you know, borrowed for the uh kill Bill movies. Um.
You know, you put your fingers on like the stern
um of a of a human and that's how far
(24:05):
you punch from. Like you don't rare back and swing
or anything. You just use your hips and your legs
and you focus your energy and all your momentum to
just very very quickly punch and push somebody. And and
even from one inch you can knock somebody backwards like
seven feet so and that's super helpful if you can
(24:28):
do that. But what that one fight UM with um
Uh Wong jack Man taught him. Wong Jackman kept moving
away from him. And if you're fighting style is entirely
about fighting in close quarters with your opponent coming at you.
If your opponent is getting away from you, you're just
kind of up up the creek. And that's what really
(24:49):
kind of opened his eyes that he needed to expand it.
And so, like you said, he incorporated boxing and incorporated fencing.
He also realized that he needed grappling too. He didn't
have any grappling moves, and apparently that came um into
focus when he was on set for a TV show
that he would end up being on for a season
called The Green Hornet. She'll talk about in a second, Um,
(25:13):
And apparently on the set of The Green Hornet, he
would he was He became quickly known for actually beating
up the stunt doubles rather than you know, pulling his
punch and just you know, not making contact or just
barely making contact. He was punching these guys and kicking
these guys and Um they apparently brought in a ringer
(25:34):
named Judo Geen LaBelle, who was a very tough stunt
man at two time Judoku champion UM and brought him
and as a stuntman, and the first day on the set,
he picked up Bruce Lee out of nowhere, put him
in a fireman carry like on his shoulder, and Bruce
Lee had he couldn't do anything. He was just so mad,
but there was nothing he could do to get out
(25:54):
of this. And he realized he needed to incorporate grappling,
and he ended up training with Jean LaBelle for a
year and expanded his fighting style even further. And that
fireman carry, that meeting, that fight, basically on the set
of The Green Hornet is what Quentin Tarantino was recreating
in that movie Once upon a Time in Hollywood when
(26:15):
Cliff Robertson Um Brad Pitt fights Bruce Lee on the
sound stage in the in the parking lot. Um and
a lot of people were very upset because he took
tremendous liberties with that fight, but it was based on
this kernel of history that had a much better outcome
than than what UM what Quentin Tarantino showed. Yeah, Cliff Booth,
(26:36):
by the way, Cliff Robertson was a real actor. Oh
was he? Yeah? The way I thought it was the
basis from Italica. No, that was close somebody else, I think, Okay, um, yeah,
I mean Tarantino, we we should kind of talk about
that for sect, because he was taken to task by
a lot of people, um, certainly people from Bruce Lee's
(26:56):
own family for that scene, and they were like, this
is not what Bruce Lee was like, his daughter especially,
It's like, this is not what my dad was like.
He was not cocky, he was not arrogant. He was confident,
and he was a good teacher. But you know, Tarantino
then fired back in some interviews like he was arrogant
and cocky, he was known as this guy, and apparently
(27:17):
the people closest to him said he wasn't at all.
This is a misconception by white people, and uh, Tarantino
took a lot of grief and sort of argued back,
and then she finally, in uh an interview in Variety magazine,
was like, he should just kind of shut up about
this and and say I'm making fictionalized movies and not
purport to know what my dad was like. Yeah, when
(27:39):
it's coming from the daughter, it seems like you should
probably just shut up for sure. Probably so, and we'll
probably get an email from her two because you said
he was cocky and arrogant. Yeah right, yeah, I was
thinking back to that flashing back, um. And one I
guess one thing I saw too kind of that gives
weight to the idea that he had a certain amount
(28:00):
of arrogance or cockiness or I can understand how some
people would take him that way or portray him that way. Um.
Is he was well known for going around publicly insulting
established martial arts schools. Like one of the first things
he did where he made a name for himself among
the martial arts community, especially in the Bay Area, that
(28:20):
some people say led to that fight between him and
Um Wong jack Man was to insult basically every established
martial arts school in America and say that these were, um,
they were taught by old tigers with no teeth, basically
if they were misguided, um, and that they were, they
(28:40):
were just wrong, and that his way was the right way. Um.
And it wasn't that he had it out for like
the old establishment just because they were the old establishment.
But what he had decided, um with Jeekee Kundo is
that it was it didn't make any sense to train
and train and train to know exactly where your feet
(29:02):
are going to go and exactly where to put your
fists or that kind of thing, because all that stuff
dissolved in a real fight. And so to Bruce Lee
and his fighting style, the whole point is to survive
the fight, and so you use whatever you can get
your hands on, whatever technique, whatever style is going to work.
And that that really doesn't jibe with the idea of
(29:24):
us an established, rigid school. So he certainly ran a
foul of, um, of some of the established martial art groups. Um.
And I think that that has kind of contributed to
this idea that he was cocky in real life. I'm
not his daughter, so I certainly can't say, but you know, um,
that's that's what I was basing my interpretation on. Yeah,
(29:45):
my read is that he was a business person and
that he was trying to make some money because his
idea was that he wanted to open up a chain
of kung fu schools. Um. He goes back to l
A to give a demonstration at a karate tournament to
try and you know, make a little headway there with
maybe getting investors or getting people interested, and it worked.
(30:08):
He met a TV producer there and that is how
he got the role on The Green Hornet, which, like
you said, ran for a single season. And he stayed
in Hollywood though, and he really got the acting bug.
I think he was in a few, um, kind of
smaller parts over the next few years. He played Winslow
Wong in the movie Marlo in nineteen nine, and then
(30:29):
he like you mentioned, kind of at the beginning, it
was he was trying to do something that didn't exist yet,
which was become an Asian uh and at least an
Asian American hero, because they just didn't do that. They
were like, you can play this kind of role. Um,
you're probably gonna come in as the bad guy or something.
You're gonna show off some of your kung fu skills,
(30:50):
but you're not going to be the star of the movie.
And he said, all right, I'll hang around here. I'll
start making a ton of money teaching the Hollywood elite
uh my fighting style and ended up making making some
really really close friends, uh, notably James Koburn and Steve
McQueen ended up being two of his closest friends over
the years until his death. Yeah, along with um Chuck
(31:15):
Morris of course. Yeah, he was a ball bear. Also
saw Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate were two of his
students too. Yeah, Roman Polanski tried to sleep with him. No,
he Bruce Lee lost his glasses. Roman Polanski found some
glasses like his at the murder scene, and Roman Polanski
(31:37):
was very suspicious of that, and apparently he went so
far as to um take Bruce Lee to get a
prescription made to replace the glasses that were broken, and
then wanted to get his hands on that prescription and
compare him, and apparently they didn't match, so he, you know,
he backed off. He suspected Bruce Lee and the Manson
(31:58):
family murders. He the TB. I don't wanna, I don't
want to put any words in Roman Polanski's mouth, but
I'm telling you what happened, which is that he found
these glasses and had him checked out. Wow, that's a
Hollywood nugget, Chuck, that you just put that jewel in
your crown right there. Well, I didn't discover it. I mean,
(32:18):
I just read it. Yeah, but I mean, I mean
it's well known. Okay, well whatever, you can wear the
crown around me and I'll just be like I totally earned. Uh.
He got really into health and fitness. Um, this was
the time in the nineteen sixties, kind of before the
big exercise and weight lifting boom and stuff that happened.
He was he was eating protein shakes and lifting weights
(32:41):
kind of before a lot of people were. And you know,
he wanted to get his body in the best shape possible.
And if you've ever seen Bruce Lee's body, then he
you know, he did exactly that. Yeah, Mischief accomplished for sure.
And I mean again, he was a little guy, like
he weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, but he was
just as lean as they come and totally chiseled like
he he was very very strong for his his size
(33:04):
and stature. Um, and just lightning fast too. But none
of this was amounting to anything as far as his
film career was concerned. He was going quite far as
a martial artist martial arts instructor for sure, but clearly
he UM, I don't know if his he felt like
his calling was always you know, the movies or TV
(33:29):
or something like that. Okay, well, then that would explain it.
I had the impression that, you know, he just knew
that that was something he could do. Um, which he
apparently was starting to accumulate some debt, and at one point,
to keep his UH, to keep his his chain of
um of martial arts studios open, he decided to go
(33:49):
to Hong Kong and do some acting rather quickly and
pick up some some fast money. So I didn't know
if he considered that like a step towards stardom or
if that was just he knew he could go make
some money acting and come back and pour it back
into the studios to keep them open. Do you know.
(34:10):
I mean, I think the studios were making his living.
But I think since he was ten years old, he
was bitten by the acting bug, which is why he
went on to be in twenty more movies over the
next eight years. And I think that was his true
like I think the Kung Fu studios, in my reading,
was the means to get to where he wanted to be,
which was a big Hollywood superstar. Well it actually it
(34:33):
worked that trip Um Like I was saying, he was
just going for some money to keep the studios or
his his studios afloat Um or open Um. But it
turned out to be the greatest move that any actor
has ever undertaken, just going to Hong Kong and trying
to pick up some parts and martial arts films, and
(34:54):
that's exactly what he did, and he blew up as
a result. That's right, So stake our final break here
and then we'll come back and wrap it up and
spanking on the bottom right after this shock shock Alright,
(35:31):
So Bruce Lee goes to Hong Kong to make some movies,
make a little dough and he goes to Hong Kong
and signs a two picture movie deal with Golden Harvest
Studios and signs on for his first movie, a little
movie called The Big Boss, which originally in the United
States was called Fist of Fury. A little confusing because
(35:53):
then there was a movie called Fist of Fury that
also had an alternate title, uh to Chinese, the Chinese connection,
but the Big Boss a k A in America at first.
The Fist se Fury or Fist of Fury was his
first sort of foray into those movies, and it was
a big, big hit. It was it's it's hard to
(36:17):
explain what happened that that first movie, The Big Boss
came out and basically made Bruce Lee an overnight sensation
in Asia as far as martial arts is concerned, not
just Hong Kong Asia. He just became an absolute superstar.
The Big Boss shattered the box office record. The previous
Hong Kong box office record was held by the Sound
of Music, and it had made something like eight hundred
(36:38):
thousand Hong Kong dollars um. The Big Boss made something
like four times that in its box office run um.
And then as more Bruce Lee movies came out over
the next couple of years, each one shattered the record
of the previous Bruce Lee movie. So when something like
(36:58):
that happens, you know you have something once in a
lifetime basically on your hands. And he was right smack
dab in the in the middle of that once in
a lifetime thing. Yeah, And not only were these movies
making a lot of money, they were really cheap to make,
which was like he was like the Golden Boy, because
I think Fist of Fury, the second movie, cost about
(37:22):
a hundred thousand dollars to make and made a hundred
million I think the um The Way of the Dragon
made a hundred and thirty million and cost about a
hundred and thirty thousand, So he was making like huge,
huge money. I mean not personally, but the studios were
making huge, huge money on very little investment. And Um,
(37:42):
the thing with Bruce Lee was he was, like you said,
he was selling these fights better than anyone ever had.
And his speed was really the key to it. Um
and a lot of if you watch a lot of
older kung fu movies and it looks like the action
is sped up, it's because it is. They would speed
at the camera or actually slow down the camera to
make the action appear faster, to make it more exciting.
(38:05):
But Bruce Lee was so naturally fast they had to
tell him to slow down just so the camera could
like record stuff accurately. So there were a few legends
that grew up around his speed. One speed and strength.
One that he could steal a dime off of your hand,
like if you're holding it in the palm of your
hand before you could just close your hand. Uh, he
(38:28):
could catch a rice green that that he you would
throw at him with chopsticks. And these are all, you know,
maybe true or not, but I just love these legends. Wait,
you would use chopsticks to throw a rice green at
no, no no, no, you would throw a rice green at
him and he would catch it with chopsticks. That's way
more impressive. So and then the last one was that
he could he could punch a hole through a can
(38:50):
of coke with his finger. And I hope these are
true because they're so great. Well, if they're not true,
that's okay. Like you're not the first person to fall
for some of the exaggerations, like I saw Matthew PAULI
was kind of not called out, but somebody made mention
the fact that this is one of those top biographers,
like one of the best biographers of Bruce Lee still said,
(39:12):
you know, somebody got punched and they flew back six
ft in the air and it's almost certainly not correct,
Like six ft is probably an exaggeration. But the fact
that things like that get repeated and like like smart
people like say like this, like this is what he
was capable of, like it at the very least goes
(39:34):
to underscore his abilities. That they were so mind boggling
that this is it's possible that that's true. You know
what I mean, it's not like, oh, that's ridiculous. It's like, no,
this is Bruce Lee we're talking about. I think I
can explain the six ft thing. If he's it might
be an exaggeration that someone literally didn't touch the ground
(39:54):
for six ft, But if you look at demonstrations of
his of the one finger munch, he can knock someone
back six to eight feet very easily until they can
like regain their composure. Like people are flying back six
ft but not necessarily not touching the ground in between,
you know what I mean. I think this was quote
(40:16):
flying through the air. It sounds like the air little
writers flourish. Yeah. Maybe, but I mean again, it comes
like people are like, oh that's cool. It's crazy because
we're talking about Bruce Lee. If if like my biographer
said that, everyone would be like, stop the pressus, whoa
you got a biographer? I question every I will eventually,
I assume. But if people would be like I questioned
(40:38):
everything that's in this book now Bruce Lee, it's like, yeah,
totally buy that. You know. So Bruce Lee is uh
made a name for himself. Now. He is drive around
sports cars, he's wearing for coats, he is a big,
big pothead, which is something that yeah, I forgot about
that you don't hear about a lot. But apparently after yeah,
(41:00):
but after Bruce Lee's training sessions, he would uh. He
apparently had this wooden box just full of joints, also
smoked hash and got really into this sort of hippie lifestyle,
kind of grew his hair along for a little while,
and I think it was wrapped up in this Hollywood
hippie thing of the time, understandable. Uh, and his careers
go along great, and it all culminates with a movie
(41:21):
called Enter the Dragon in nineteen three. Big movie. Yeah,
it was a huge movie. I think he wrote and
directed that one, and I think the first one he
wrote and directed was Way of the Dragon. But like
by this time on his third movie, he was now
writing and directing it, and certainly by his fourth one
he wrote and directed it. I saw that the Way
of the Dragon, a quarter of the script was just
(41:44):
a couple of like just a couple of fight scenes.
Choreography took up like a quarter of the script. Um.
And it was this was the one that put him
on the map as an overnight sensation in the United
States in the West. Like the other two, the first
two or three. Um yea, his first three had made
him an overnight sensation in Asia. This was the one
(42:05):
that taught America what a kung fu movie was because
we hadn't heard of it before, and now all of
a sudden, we couldn't get enough of Bruce Lee. Unfortunately,
Bruce Lee had died a month before in one of
the great ironic tragedies as far as like Hollywood stardom goes. Yeah,
only thirty two years old. Um, if you look up
Bruce Lee death, there's a lot of different stories and
(42:27):
theories out there. Um he was. He had a mistress
at the time named Betty ting Pie, and apparently he
had been on and this is the way Chuck Norris
told it too. Apparently he had been on back medication
for a while because of a back injury, so pain
meds for his back. Came home to his apartment in
(42:49):
Hong Kong with his mitress mistress, and complained of a headache.
She gave him, I think a different kind of pain reliever,
although Chuck Norris said it was Ah, what's I'm blanking? Now?
What's the thing you take to fight an infection? And uh,
antibiotic anty biotic, which I think he just must spoke
because that wouldn't make any sense. But um, that's what
(43:10):
Chuck North said. Uh. So it took another pain reliever,
went down for a nap, and died never woke up.
Uh he um. You know, there are all kinds of
speculation about what happened. It seems like it was just
a reaction of these medications. Uh. Some people say, including
the biographer, it was also had to do with a
(43:30):
heat stroke because because he'd had one ten weeks before, right, Yeah,
and he also um a few months before he died,
had he used to be very embarrassed about his under
armed sweat, so he had the sweat glands removed from
his underarms. What and so apparently they said that could
have contributed to the You know, his body wasn't shedding
sweat like it should and that could have led to
(43:52):
a heat stroke. I had not heard that before that.
That definitely crosses a couple of tease that I had
anotherwise seen. May be, but I think it was like
ten weeks before he died, he collapsed when he was
dubbing a movie in an on an room without air conditioning.
It was really hot got that heat stroke. Uh, and
some people are saying this all contributed with these medications
(44:12):
to a brain edema. Yeah, but again, I mean the
fact that he died mysteriously. This guy who's like one
of the fittest people on the planets just dies after
saying he has a headache and lies down and wakes up.
That's just conspiracy theory fodder for eon. Sure it's still
going on today. Like apparently that he had a break
with the director low Way, who directed the first two
(44:35):
Bruce Lee films, um, the first two kung fu films
he was in. He pulled a knife on him because
the guy the director had been taunting him and Bruce
Lee was Uh. There was a legend that like low
Way had had him assassinated by ninja or something like that.
But the upshot of it is, however he died. Um,
he died like a month before he became extra like
(44:59):
world famous, and he's still world famous today. Like everyone
knows Bruce Lee. He's one of the most famous people
to ever lived, and he died a month before that happened.
Which is you know, you say that and you read
it and you think it's it just doesn't quite sink
in and when it does, you're like, that is astounding
that that happened, just the timing of all that. Yeah,
And then you know, many years later, his son, Brandon
(45:21):
Lee would die very tragically on the set of a
film because of an accident with a um, a blank bullet,
um actually shooting a slug out of a gun on
set of of The Crow, right yeah, um yeah. He
think he was twenty eight, and his father had died
when he was thirty two. So a lot of people
(45:42):
are like, well, there's clearly the Lee family is cursed, right,
which is nonsense. I think you should probably just shut
up about that, probably so, but um, one of the
things that it's hard to overstate like the cultural legacy
that he left, Like he introduced the West to a
completely different concept of Asian people, like like, oh, they
(46:06):
can actually like stars, action heroes, like they're they're not
like you know, valets or servants or whatever. Like it
just completely altered americans understanding of Asian people. Like it's
really hard to understate that. And then the other thing
too is you know, we were kind of talking about
whether he was um, you know, whether he was an
(46:26):
actor or martial artist, and a lot of people are like,
would is Bruce Lee? Would he actually was he really
a good fighter? Or was he like a movie fighter
like Jean Claude van Dam or Steven Seagal, who like
in a real life fight that we would just be
hopelessly lost, you know. And um, because Bruce Lee died
at such a young age, like there's there's not this
(46:49):
we don't know or a lot of people don't know.
But if you talk to the people who trained with him,
who worked with him, who were there who actually physically
interacted with him, like it seems like completely understandable that
he was as everything you saw in film, he could
do for real in real life. And you would never
have wanted to fight Bruce Lee. So he wasn't just
(47:10):
a fake movie martial artists. He was the real deal,
and in a lot of ways largely self taught, which
makes them all the more impressive. That's right, You got
anything else about Mr Bruce Lee? Chuck and got nothing else?
And maybe watch the classic two farcical comedy they call
Me Bruce. Oh yeah, okay, I will check that out.
(47:31):
That one more thing, that his death is untimely death
led to a whole genre of movies called Bruce Floitation,
which was basically fake Bruce Lee movies. They're trying to
cash in on his fame. Yeah. I think he had
a movie, another movie released after his tattoo, didn't he
That they compiled like footage and stuff for I believe
(47:51):
they were filming it when he died, and they didn't
release it for another five years. Game of Death, that's
the one where he fights Kareem's actually, and Chuck Norris
is in it too. Game of Death. Yeah, that that
fight with Kareem was pretty awesome because to see a
man that tall, be that lithe and that quick was
pretty impressive. And he was one of Bruce Lee's like
(48:12):
genuine students, one of his long time students. And he
credits Bruce Lee with his his longevity and the n
B a UM. Yeah. So if you want to more
about Bruce Lee, just go out and start watching movies
and videos and demonstrations of Bruce Lee. There's a lot
worse things you can do with your time and thank
us later. And since I said thank us later, it's
time for listener mail. Yeah. I'm gonna call this return
(48:35):
of Noah from Scotland. I'm pretty sure I read this
on the air, but I told Noah to rite in
once a year. Um, and here's the follow up. Because
you know, Sarah, the amazing eleven year old fan is
now probably in college and has long since forgotten about us.
So we miss Sarah. We've we've been ghosted. We've have
been ghosted years ago. But this is our new friend Noah. Hey,
(48:56):
it's me Noah from Scotland. You told me to write
in once a year, so this is my annual letter
in case you don't remember me. I've been listening since
I was four and writing you a letter every year
since I was five. I still live in Scotland and
for most of the last year my mom's been home
schooling me because of the coronavirus. It's not always great,
but when I'm doing my own topics, I can choose
them based on your episodes. My favorite was space weather,
(49:20):
because I didn't know there was weather in space. My
favorite fact that I found out was the most powerful
northern lights can generate over one trillion lots of power,
which is I think about three million solar panels. Uh.
It was a hard sum, but I think it's right. Uh.
I don't you're if you're asking us about math, and
no we're just gonna say yes, you got it right.
(49:41):
You just ran a circle around this. I don't want
to be an engineer anymore. By the way, I really
like chemistry now. I think the periodic table is interesting
and I want to find a way to stop global
warming using science. I love it. I've asked for your
book for my ninth birthday in May, and I hope
to get it because I think it be interesting. I'm
glad you're still podcasting. Love from Noah and this was
(50:06):
sent through his mom's Rachel's email, of course as always,
and she added a very sweet note as well, so
much love to the to Noah's family there. Yeah, thank
you very much Rachel and knowing the whole fam for
writing to us from beloved Scotland. Keep us updated. Noah,
We're pretty your progress is just fascinating. Yes, we love it,
(50:27):
um and uh, happy early birthday too, from Josh and Chuck.
If you want to get in touch with this, like
Noah did, you can give it your best shot. You
can send us an email, send it to Stuff Podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts. For my
(50:48):
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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