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How Bruce Lee Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Roland, and this
0:19
Speaker 1: is Stuff you should Know. I couldn't think of any um,
0:24
Speaker 1: non problematic nicknames for us to use. Well, you could
0:28
Speaker 1: probably just go, yeah, that's what I'm talking about? Is
0:33
Speaker 1: that probably figure that? I'm sure yes, we would probably
0:36
Speaker 1: here about the man that's uh. You watch any great
0:40
Speaker 1: kung fu movie and they all make that great, great
0:44
Speaker 1: sound after a good death punch. Did you ever take
0:47
Speaker 1: kung fu when you were young or any kind of
0:49
Speaker 1: martial arts? No, I'm notoriously have zero interested in martial arts,
0:53
Speaker 1: and my biggest fears that my daughter is gonna want
0:55
Speaker 1: to do it. I oh really, well, I mean, will
0:58
Speaker 1: you tell her to sweep the leg at a tournament
1:00
Speaker 1: as she ever does? Yeah? Sure, I mean I wanted
1:02
Speaker 1: like to be able to protect herself, so that sounds
1:05
Speaker 1: like a very selfish thing. But as far as like
1:07
Speaker 1: going to martial arts tournaments kind of like uh, just
1:12
Speaker 1: you know, kill me. Now, what you should get her
1:15
Speaker 1: interested in, like, um, wielding a knife or something? It
1:19
Speaker 1: would be really cool or just being a good person,
1:21
Speaker 1: so people don't pick fights with her? Yeah, is that
1:27
Speaker 1: how things work? No, not at all. So I'll tell
1:31
Speaker 1: you somebody who liked to pick fights, not just would
1:35
Speaker 1: get into fights and accept the challenge, would actually pick fights.
1:39
Speaker 1: And it turns out that person also happens to be
1:42
Speaker 1: the person we're talking about today, one Mr Bruce Lee. Yeah,
1:47
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee. I mean, I'm sure, like me, you spent
1:50
Speaker 1: the past couple of days watching a lot of Bruce
1:53
Speaker 1: Lee stuff. But my question is were you into this?
1:57
Speaker 1: Did you watch kung fu movies and Bruce Lee movies
2:02
Speaker 1: only in so far as like the whole nineties like
2:05
Speaker 1: throwback thing. You know. I would have him on every
2:08
Speaker 1: once a while and watch him, but I was never
2:10
Speaker 1: super into my friends that were super into them. I remember,
2:14
Speaker 1: of course, I underwent extensive ninja training under since a
2:17
Speaker 1: Tommy Roper as a much younger person. This is in
2:21
Speaker 1: the eighties. Um, but I was never really into kung
2:24
Speaker 1: fu or or martial arts movies. Um. Outside of that, UM,
2:30
Speaker 1: I will say though, watching Fist of Fury last night, UM,
2:37
Speaker 1: I was just absolutely blown away like that. Yeah, the
2:41
Speaker 1: whole things I think black Belt Karate Dot com pirate
2:45
Speaker 1: of the movie and put it on YouTube, the whole thing,
2:48
Speaker 1: and it is just really good. Like the fighting in
2:51
Speaker 1: there is astounding and it gives you, like a really
2:55
Speaker 1: good like appreciation. It's hard not to appreciate what you're
2:58
Speaker 1: seeing with Bruce Lee when you when you watch it. Yeah,
3:01
Speaker 1: I have still not seen many of those movies. But
3:04
Speaker 1: for a movie Crush episode, one of my guests, um uh,
3:10
Speaker 1: Stuart Wellington of the flap House podcast, one of my
3:13
Speaker 1: favorite other podcast on movies, he had me watch his
3:18
Speaker 1: favorite movie, which is Ricky, Oh Colin the story of
3:22
Speaker 1: Ricky and Dude. You have to see this movie. It
3:26
Speaker 1: is the gory, over the top crazy martial arts movie
3:31
Speaker 1: to beat all over the top gory crazy martial arts movies.
3:35
Speaker 1: It is when was nuts? When was it made? Well
3:39
Speaker 1: ninety one, but it seems like seventy eight. Um it's
3:43
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Was there a shot where some guy jammed
3:48
Speaker 1: his fingers into his opponents testicles and then they cut
3:53
Speaker 1: to a view from inside his screwed them and you
3:58
Speaker 1: see the fingers wiggling. Did that happened? Because I saw
4:00
Speaker 1: a martial arts movie that had that and I was like, well,
4:02
Speaker 1: there it is. But that is the thing I've ever seen.
4:06
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of stuff like that. But I
4:07
Speaker 1: don't think that was from Ricky. Oh, but it's You're
4:10
Speaker 1: on the right track there, as far as you know.
4:13
Speaker 1: It's not for everybody. I gotta check it out, man,
4:16
Speaker 1: it's pretty fun. You had me. You're on the right
4:19
Speaker 1: track there. Um. So, Bruce lee movies were not nearly
4:23
Speaker 1: as violent, but for the time they were, they were
4:26
Speaker 1: exceedingly violent, it seems like, and Bruce Lee laid the
4:29
Speaker 1: foundation that people said, well, I want to top that.
4:31
Speaker 1: I want to top that. Um. And while maybe Gore
4:35
Speaker 1: there was plenty of like blood in in Fists of Fury,
4:39
Speaker 1: at least in other movies that he made, but um,
4:44
Speaker 1: it wasn't anything like what we just talked about. But
4:47
Speaker 1: the I think the larger point for Bruce Lee is
4:50
Speaker 1: that he laid this foundation, like he introduced the United
4:55
Speaker 1: States in the West to the idea of not just
4:59
Speaker 1: kung fu movie but of like Asians being heroes, like
5:05
Speaker 1: like protagonists, like like tough. You know, because up to
5:10
Speaker 1: that point, not necessarily exactly up to that point, but
5:14
Speaker 1: awfully close to it. Um, especially in the West. Uh,
5:18
Speaker 1: the people from China Japan seemed very docile, cerebral. I
5:24
Speaker 1: saw um not at all like Bruce Lee. And Bruce
5:28
Speaker 1: Lee changed all of that basically singlehandedly, especially as far
5:33
Speaker 1: as America is concerned with a single one inch punch. Basically.
5:38
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about his early life,
5:41
Speaker 1: because he had a pretty interesting background, uh, pretty interesting
5:45
Speaker 1: genetic family tree. Um, because you know, we all think
5:49
Speaker 1: of him as Chinese, and he was certainly, he certainly
5:53
Speaker 1: was Chinese. But um, if you if you poke around
5:57
Speaker 1: his lineage and you will learn that his maternal great
6:00
Speaker 1: and father was Dutch Jewish, which is really interesting. He
6:04
Speaker 1: was a merchant, his name was Moses with a z
6:07
Speaker 1: hard dog Boseman, and he went to Hong Kong in
6:10
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties as part of the Dutch East India Company.
6:14
Speaker 1: Became the Dutch ambassador to Hong Kong, had six kids
6:18
Speaker 1: with his concubine, and then one of those kids, one
6:21
Speaker 1: of his sons, Ho Kam Tong. He became a very
6:25
Speaker 1: rich man. He had a wife, thirteen concubines and a
6:29
Speaker 1: British mistress, and then he had a daughter with a
6:32
Speaker 1: British mistress, and that was Bruce Lee's mom. Yeah, that's
6:39
Speaker 1: it sounds more convenient. Yeah. Yeah. So Bruce Lee was
6:44
Speaker 1: part Jewish, part British, um and lots of Chinese mixed together.
6:50
Speaker 1: His father was Chinese Han Chinese um and his father
6:55
Speaker 1: was born poor. But he actually worked his way up
6:59
Speaker 1: to fairly sizeable celebrity in Hong Kong um or was
7:06
Speaker 1: it China? I don't remember if if Bruce Lee, if
7:09
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee's father lived in Hong Kong or China. Well,
7:12
Speaker 1: it was kind of both. He was a Cantonese opera
7:15
Speaker 1: star and an actor. Uh and then I think of
7:18
Speaker 1: visually they did settle in Hong Kong. Okay, all right,
7:22
Speaker 1: so um, but he was like very well known, like
7:26
Speaker 1: he was in movies, he was on TV, like he
7:29
Speaker 1: was a pretty famous guy. He was probably I would
7:32
Speaker 1: liken him to uh two, Jerry Orbach. He was the
7:42
Speaker 1: Jerry or Bach of his time and place. No, but
7:47
Speaker 1: he was like everywhere, he was in everything from dirty
7:50
Speaker 1: dancing to murder. She wrote, you know, like he was
7:52
Speaker 1: all over the place. And he was multi talented too.
7:55
Speaker 1: Don't try to tell me Jerry Orbach is not multi talented,
7:58
Speaker 1: because he is sure, but he was no opera star.
8:02
Speaker 1: Do you don't know that you're right? You're right. I
8:04
Speaker 1: could be I could be a martial arts expert. Jerry
8:08
Speaker 1: Orbot could be an opera star. Right, we could be
8:11
Speaker 1: whatever we want to be in our mind's eye. But
8:13
Speaker 1: so Bruce Lee's father was the Jerry Orbach of his
8:16
Speaker 1: time and place. That's right. So uh he was touring
8:19
Speaker 1: the US when Bruce was born. He was born in
8:22
Speaker 1: San Francisco in nineteen forty uh, and his parents named
8:25
Speaker 1: him Lee June Faun and apparently a nurse said you
8:28
Speaker 1: should call him Bruce for his English name. He said,
8:32
Speaker 1: what what did you say exactly? Did you hear what
8:36
Speaker 1: we named him? Originally? She's like, yeah, Bruce Len Bruce. Uh.
8:42
Speaker 1: They moved back to Hong Kong when he was a baby,
8:44
Speaker 1: and he grew up there, but he grew up with UM,
8:47
Speaker 1: going to English schools, English language private schools. Yeah. So um.
8:52
Speaker 1: He always kind of had this this UM I don't
8:55
Speaker 1: want to say split identity, but his his identity, a
8:58
Speaker 1: sense of self was deaf and divided between America and UM.
9:04
Speaker 1: I believe the UK to an extent, and also obviously
9:08
Speaker 1: Hong Kong UM and then of course his ancestry in China.
9:12
Speaker 1: Like he he he seemed to have UM not necessarily
9:16
Speaker 1: like felt spread all over the place, but in in
9:19
Speaker 1: a different sense, he was more open to influences wherever
9:22
Speaker 1: he found them. I saw somebody somebody say that Bruce
9:25
Speaker 1: Lee learned from everybody, everyone that he came in contact with, UM,
9:30
Speaker 1: including people who he had to fight, who fought of
9:33
Speaker 1: different styles. He he was always open to learning something
9:36
Speaker 1: he didn't. He was very cocky, he was very arrogant
9:39
Speaker 1: by a lot of people's estimations, but he also was
9:44
Speaker 1: humble enough to want to learn wherever he thought he
9:47
Speaker 1: could learn something new. Uh. And I think that that,
9:50
Speaker 1: according at least UM to again named Matthew Polly, who's
9:54
Speaker 1: known as one of his UM better biographers. Uh. That
9:57
Speaker 1: that really kind of underscored that that UM, that his
10:01
Speaker 1: personality just kind of being divided among different places around
10:05
Speaker 1: the world and having different influences. Yeah. So well, we'll
10:09
Speaker 1: take a little break here and we'll come back and
10:10
Speaker 1: talk about UM some of the early formative years of
10:14
Speaker 1: young Bruce Lee right after this and shock. Uh, alright,
10:40
Speaker 1: So little Bruce was born not only in the Year
10:43
Speaker 1: of the Dragon, but the Day of the Dragon, and
10:47
Speaker 1: his nickname was Little Dragon. When he became a child actor,
10:52
Speaker 1: if you only know Bruce Lee from his martial arts work,
10:55
Speaker 1: his kind of short career in martial arts films, he
10:58
Speaker 1: he was actually on screen as a baby. Um, but
11:02
Speaker 1: his real first kind of role was I think when
11:05
Speaker 1: he was like ten years old. Uh. Yeah, he was
11:09
Speaker 1: in a movie called The Kid, Yeah, which I watched
11:12
Speaker 1: some clips of this. I'm sure you did too. Um,
11:14
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a cute little Bruce Lee. He
11:16
Speaker 1: does he kind of throw a lot of child abuse
11:18
Speaker 1: and was it really Yeah, He's like, he offers he
11:23
Speaker 1: has some money, so he offers to help his uncle out,
11:24
Speaker 1: and his uncle just basically deafens him in one ear. Well, yeah,
11:29
Speaker 1: I didn't see that clip. I would call that child abuse, chuck. No, two,
11:33
Speaker 1: I didn't see that clip. You're like, yeah, well, I
11:36
Speaker 1: guess if it's your definition of child No, No, not
11:38
Speaker 1: at all. I just didn't see that. When I just
11:39
Speaker 1: saw the one where he was kind of did that
11:41
Speaker 1: famous Bruce Lee sort of uh you know, thumb across
11:45
Speaker 1: the nose and throw his little shirt open. I know
11:49
Speaker 1: that's crazy that like he was that young ten years
11:52
Speaker 1: old and he's already like laying the groundwork for the
11:54
Speaker 1: things that we're going to make him famous in the future. Yeah,
11:57
Speaker 1: and he was a little guy. He um, I think,
12:00
Speaker 1: you know, as a as a full grown adult. He
12:02
Speaker 1: he reached five seven, about a hundred and thirty pounds.
12:05
Speaker 1: He was not very big when he was a kid.
12:07
Speaker 1: He was very small. He was fairly weak because of
12:12
Speaker 1: food rations because Hong Kong was occupied by Imperial Japan
12:16
Speaker 1: at the time and they were rationing food out there
12:18
Speaker 1: was a cholera epidemic. He had one leg shorter than
12:22
Speaker 1: the other. He had an undescended testicle, which actually ended
12:26
Speaker 1: up keeping him out of Vietnam. So a little bit
12:29
Speaker 1: of a silver lining there. Uh. He had glasses, he
12:32
Speaker 1: had acne. I think his biographer said that he and
12:37
Speaker 1: this is the only person I really saw say that,
12:38
Speaker 1: but he said he'd probably be diagnosed with a d
12:41
Speaker 1: h D today. I looked for other places to find that,
12:46
Speaker 1: and no one. I don't think he's on record of
12:48
Speaker 1: saying that, but it did seem like that could be
12:50
Speaker 1: possible because he was very active, had trouble with focus,
12:55
Speaker 1: but could also hyper focus. Uh, and like he you know,
12:58
Speaker 1: like you said, he would kind of picked fights with
13:00
Speaker 1: people because he was a little kid, and that's a
13:02
Speaker 1: lot of times little kids will do that if they
13:04
Speaker 1: want to, you know, they want to prove that they're
13:06
Speaker 1: strong and have value, they'll pick fights and try and
13:08
Speaker 1: beat people up. Not not the way to do with
13:10
Speaker 1: their kids, no, but I mean, like, like, he was
13:13
Speaker 1: well known in Hong Kong as being like this kind
13:16
Speaker 1: of local tough who would start fights um and frequently
13:20
Speaker 1: won them, but sometimes would lose them too. Um. But
13:23
Speaker 1: there was one fight in particular that he lost around
13:26
Speaker 1: the age of fifteen or sixteen UM to a kid
13:30
Speaker 1: who had been studying h kung fu style called wing chun. Yeah,
13:35
Speaker 1: wing chun um, And that is where his famous um
13:38
Speaker 1: like one inch punch comes from. That style of fighting.
13:42
Speaker 1: It's really good for close quarters type fighting where your
13:46
Speaker 1: opponents right in front of you and coming at you.
13:48
Speaker 1: Wing chun is very good for that. So that was
13:50
Speaker 1: the kind of dude that Bruce Lee was, even back
13:53
Speaker 1: when he was a little hot shot fifteen year old,
13:56
Speaker 1: he lost a fight to somebody and he wanted to
13:58
Speaker 1: know how that person had beat him, So he went
14:00
Speaker 1: and learned it and that UM actually formed the basis
14:02
Speaker 1: for his UH. His formal education and martial arts was
14:06
Speaker 1: entering into the Wing Chun school UM at age fifteen. Yeah,
14:11
Speaker 1: and I looked a little more into Wing Chung to
14:13
Speaker 1: see what it was kind of all about. And apparently
14:15
Speaker 1: there's two sort of main tenants, which is the center
14:18
Speaker 1: line theory and then stand and guard UH. And the
14:21
Speaker 1: center line theory is basically, you draw a line from
14:25
Speaker 1: the center of your body to your opponent's body and
14:28
Speaker 1: that is the quickest route to strike. So if you've
14:32
Speaker 1: got someone coming at you, like you know, if you
14:35
Speaker 1: go throw a punch like American boxing style, like a haymaker,
14:38
Speaker 1: you're going up and around towards the jaw, to the
14:41
Speaker 1: side of the jaw. If you're practicing wing chun, you're
14:45
Speaker 1: standing right in front of that person, and as you're
14:48
Speaker 1: throwing your haymaker, you've gotten a very quick straight punch
14:52
Speaker 1: to your solar plexus and you're like, what just happened?
14:56
Speaker 1: That is basically the essence of Bruce Lee's as super
15:01
Speaker 1: lightning fast would take advantage of you while you thought
15:06
Speaker 1: you were about to strike him. He used that against you.
15:09
Speaker 1: Whatever flaw there was, and what you were doing to
15:12
Speaker 1: to hit or kick him or come at him, he
15:15
Speaker 1: would he would take advantage of it and hit you
15:18
Speaker 1: within that time. And and like if you watch any
15:21
Speaker 1: of his movies, you can see it quite clearly. But
15:23
Speaker 1: he'd been working on that. I didn't realize that was
15:26
Speaker 1: necessarily wing Chun. I thought that was his own style. Um,
15:29
Speaker 1: but it would make sense because again that was wing Chun.
15:33
Speaker 1: Is the is the foundation for his style of kung
15:37
Speaker 1: fu that he ended up coming up with. Right. So, Um,
15:42
Speaker 1: Like we said, his dad was fairly famous. Bruce's in
15:46
Speaker 1: the Jerry or box level famous. Don't forget Bruce's in
15:49
Speaker 1: this movie when he was ten years old, called the
15:50
Speaker 1: kid that was a big success. And then they said, hey,
15:54
Speaker 1: let's sign this kid up to do some sequels. And
15:57
Speaker 1: his dad said, no, no, no, no, no, My kid's
15:59
Speaker 1: not gonna be an actor. He's going to be a
16:00
Speaker 1: doctor or a lawyer or something like that. Um. And
16:04
Speaker 1: he's always in trouble in school, so I'm not gonna
16:05
Speaker 1: let him be in uh sign this contract. Uh. He
16:09
Speaker 1: ended up being in some movies kind of off and on.
16:12
Speaker 1: I think he ended up being in about twenty different
16:14
Speaker 1: movies that before his kung fu movie days, but it
16:19
Speaker 1: was never like he never turned into the big kids
16:22
Speaker 1: star that they were trying to get him to be
16:24
Speaker 1: with that first contract. I think, yeah, apparently he would
16:27
Speaker 1: have been had his father not directly intervened to make
16:29
Speaker 1: sure that didn't happen, which is pretty interesting. But he
16:33
Speaker 1: can't sign a contract without daddy saying so and mommy
16:36
Speaker 1: saying so. Well, yeah, you definitely need to have your
16:38
Speaker 1: parents support like that for sure. Um. But so his
16:43
Speaker 1: father like stepped in and said, no, you're gonna You're
16:45
Speaker 1: gonna do something else. And um that was at age ten,
16:49
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think at least eighteen at the latest.
16:53
Speaker 1: But at some point he um had kind of gotten like,
16:57
Speaker 1: like I said, he had a reputation as like local
17:00
Speaker 1: tough street fighter in Hong Kong. Um, and I guess
17:05
Speaker 1: he fought another kid and and beat him quite badly.
17:09
Speaker 1: And the kid turned out to be the son of
17:12
Speaker 1: a local mob boss. I don't know if he's a
17:16
Speaker 1: boss or a connected mob guy, but it's a member
17:19
Speaker 1: of the triad. It does sound like a movie. And um,
17:23
Speaker 1: that between that and the Hong Kong police basically saying like, look,
17:27
Speaker 1: your kid is totally on our radar and it's a
17:29
Speaker 1: real problem and he's going to end up in jail
17:32
Speaker 1: or dead if he keeps this stuff up. And by
17:34
Speaker 1: the way, the local the local mob now wants to
17:38
Speaker 1: kill him because he beat up one of the one
17:40
Speaker 1: of the boss's sons. Um his father was said, you're
17:45
Speaker 1: out of here. You're going to America. Um. Which again
17:48
Speaker 1: this wasn't like a complete out of the blue place
17:51
Speaker 1: to send Bruce Lee. This was the land that he
17:53
Speaker 1: was born. He was he had an American passport, he
17:56
Speaker 1: was an American by birth, and he also had family
17:59
Speaker 1: there too, But this is the first time that he
18:01
Speaker 1: was living on his own. From what I saw, his
18:04
Speaker 1: father gave him eight hundred dollars, which is pretty substantial
18:06
Speaker 1: back then, said here the addresses of some family in
18:10
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. Head on out to San Francisco. And
18:14
Speaker 1: he started in San Francisco and ended up in Seattle
18:16
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, I believe, Yeah, Seattle in the um. In college,
18:21
Speaker 1: he went to you dub and he you know that
18:25
Speaker 1: money obviously would run out, so he had to get
18:28
Speaker 1: a job. He worked as a bus boy in a
18:30
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant, actually lived in the restaurant, kind of a
18:32
Speaker 1: closet type of deal, and everyone started hearing about his
18:38
Speaker 1: his martial arts skills and the fact that he was
18:40
Speaker 1: pretty good at this stuff. So he started teaching a
18:42
Speaker 1: little bit on the side in that Wing chun style,
18:46
Speaker 1: and he met Linda there, who would go on to
18:48
Speaker 1: be his wife. She was a fellow student of his. Um,
18:52
Speaker 1: Linda got pregnant and they got married. They were very young,
18:55
Speaker 1: they were still in college, and they had little Brandon Lee.
18:59
Speaker 1: Uh well, we'll talk about him later on, and then
19:02
Speaker 1: a daughter named Shannon. Yeah. Um, so, all of a sudden,
19:07
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee, who is a bus boy at a Chinese
19:11
Speaker 1: restaurant and also teaching um kung fu on the side,
19:15
Speaker 1: has a family, a wife, kid, then kids, and um
19:21
Speaker 1: he's got He needs money now more than he ever
19:24
Speaker 1: did before. And he has a pretty good idea he's
19:27
Speaker 1: going to start opening of a franchise of martial arts studios.
19:32
Speaker 1: Because martial arts was already known in the United States,
19:36
Speaker 1: but typically it was kept within the whatever Asian community
19:40
Speaker 1: that practiced it. Right, so like if it was kung fu,
19:43
Speaker 1: you would find almost entirely Chinese people learning it UM
19:49
Speaker 1: that you know, immigrants to the country, or they're the
19:51
Speaker 1: children of immigrants. Um, it's taekwondo. It would be like
19:55
Speaker 1: Korean families. UM. And Bruce Lee said, you know what,
19:58
Speaker 1: I want to kind of explode that. There's a lot
20:02
Speaker 1: of talk about whether he was the first person in
20:04
Speaker 1: the United States to come along and open up martial
20:08
Speaker 1: arts to anybody who wanted to learn of any race,
20:10
Speaker 1: any ethnicity, women, men. From what I saw, that's not
20:13
Speaker 1: necessarily true, but they that is UM often credited as
20:18
Speaker 1: UH as evidence of just kind of how UM cocky
20:23
Speaker 1: and unconventional and and um disrespectful. I guess of norms
20:28
Speaker 1: and traditions just for the fact, you know, or just
20:30
Speaker 1: for norms and tradition's sake. UM. And And I don't
20:33
Speaker 1: know if he was the first person to teach just
20:36
Speaker 1: anybody who wanted to learn, UM, but it definitely fell
20:40
Speaker 1: within his UH persona, his outlook of martial arts, which is,
20:46
Speaker 1: you know, I'll take what I'll learn whatever I can
20:48
Speaker 1: and put it in to my fighting style so that
20:51
Speaker 1: I survive. And UM, that would make sense to kind
20:54
Speaker 1: of flip it on the on the other way and say, well,
20:56
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to teach his fighting style to
20:58
Speaker 1: whoever wants to learn it. Yeah, and it turns out
21:01
Speaker 1: it was just as he ended up learning Wing Chung
21:04
Speaker 1: because of a fight he had early on. He also
21:07
Speaker 1: expanded his fighting style because of another fight. Um, which
21:12
Speaker 1: this sounds like it. I mean, I think there are
21:13
Speaker 1: a lot of legends and tall tales around Bruce Lee
21:15
Speaker 1: as well. This story. The story sounds a little dubious,
21:19
Speaker 1: but maybe it's true. It's it is. It's not dubious.
21:24
Speaker 1: It definitely happened, but there, it was close to the public,
21:27
Speaker 1: and there were only three eyewitnesses there and to one
21:30
Speaker 1: gives a conflicting report from the other two to a
21:34
Speaker 1: large degree. But it's been so thoroughly studied and researched
21:39
Speaker 1: by some people like that Matthew Pauly guy spent a
21:42
Speaker 1: year just researching this fight alone. There was another guy
21:46
Speaker 1: named m Charles Russo who wrote a book called Striking Distance.
21:50
Speaker 1: He spent a decade on that book and he interviewed
21:52
Speaker 1: a hundred people just for that to for that fight alone,
21:56
Speaker 1: because it's the one of the most legendary fights that's
21:58
Speaker 1: ever happened in the history of a world, and only
22:01
Speaker 1: three people were there to see it besides the fighters.
22:04
Speaker 1: Yet they interviewed a hundred people about what they heard
22:07
Speaker 1: what happened. Basically, yeah, I mean, that's as close as
22:10
Speaker 1: they could get, aside from the people who were there,
22:13
Speaker 1: who were again saying, you know, this is kind of conflicting.
22:16
Speaker 1: But overall, what seems to be the ultimate upshot of
22:20
Speaker 1: it is that it was at least a draw. It
22:23
Speaker 1: seems like it was a draw. Yeah, he thought a
22:26
Speaker 1: man named Wong jack Man, and apparently it was a
22:29
Speaker 1: pretty brutal fight, like you were saying, very legendary and
22:33
Speaker 1: uh yeah, conflicting reports. Let's just call it a draw.
22:37
Speaker 1: Let's be magnanimous here. But at the end of this,
22:41
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of upshot is it was that
22:43
Speaker 1: Bruce was like, I have limits now with Wing Chun,
22:47
Speaker 1: and I need to, uh like, I need to be
22:51
Speaker 1: able to best larger opponents because I'm a small guy.
22:54
Speaker 1: I need to I need to really kind of ramp
22:57
Speaker 1: up my study if especially if I'm a teacher, and
23:01
Speaker 1: and kind of get better. Basically, so he came up
23:04
Speaker 1: with his own jam and that's called Jeet Kun do
23:09
Speaker 1: the way of the intercepting fist, and this was a
23:12
Speaker 1: little bit. He was a really really good boxer. I
23:14
Speaker 1: don't think we've mentioned that yet. Um. If he had
23:17
Speaker 1: only boxed and dedicated himself to being a boxer, he
23:21
Speaker 1: probably could have been like a belt holding boxer, uh
23:25
Speaker 1: and like an Olympic champion. Um. So he incorporated elements
23:28
Speaker 1: of boxing. He incorporated all the wing chun that he
23:31
Speaker 1: had learned. Uh. And then fencing, which his older brother did,
23:35
Speaker 1: which is you know, when you're lunging at your opponent,
23:37
Speaker 1: but instead of a foil, he would use his fist.
23:41
Speaker 1: And if you, um, you know I mentioned that the
23:43
Speaker 1: one inch punch earlier. Uh, there was also the six
23:46
Speaker 1: inch punch. There's tons and tons of videos and breakdowns
23:50
Speaker 1: of what that is. But that's what he was really
23:52
Speaker 1: famous for, which is basically and then Tarantino kind of
23:55
Speaker 1: you know, borrowed for the uh kill Bill movies. Um.
23:59
Speaker 1: You know, you put your fingers on like the stern
24:03
Speaker 1: um of a of a human and that's how far
24:05
Speaker 1: you punch from. Like you don't rare back and swing
24:08
Speaker 1: or anything. You just use your hips and your legs
24:11
Speaker 1: and you focus your energy and all your momentum to
24:14
Speaker 1: just very very quickly punch and push somebody. And and
24:19
Speaker 1: even from one inch you can knock somebody backwards like
24:23
Speaker 1: seven feet so and that's super helpful if you can
24:28
Speaker 1: do that. But what that one fight UM with um
24:32
Speaker 1: Uh Wong jack Man taught him. Wong Jackman kept moving
24:36
Speaker 1: away from him. And if you're fighting style is entirely
24:39
Speaker 1: about fighting in close quarters with your opponent coming at you.
24:43
Speaker 1: If your opponent is getting away from you, you're just
24:46
Speaker 1: kind of up up the creek. And that's what really
24:49
Speaker 1: kind of opened his eyes that he needed to expand it.
24:52
Speaker 1: And so, like you said, he incorporated boxing and incorporated fencing.
24:55
Speaker 1: He also realized that he needed grappling too. He didn't
24:58
Speaker 1: have any grappling moves, and apparently that came um into
25:02
Speaker 1: focus when he was on set for a TV show
25:06
Speaker 1: that he would end up being on for a season
25:09
Speaker 1: called The Green Hornet. She'll talk about in a second, Um,
25:13
Speaker 1: And apparently on the set of The Green Hornet, he
25:16
Speaker 1: would he was He became quickly known for actually beating
25:19
Speaker 1: up the stunt doubles rather than you know, pulling his
25:23
Speaker 1: punch and just you know, not making contact or just
25:26
Speaker 1: barely making contact. He was punching these guys and kicking
25:30
Speaker 1: these guys and Um they apparently brought in a ringer
25:34
Speaker 1: named Judo Geen LaBelle, who was a very tough stunt
25:36
Speaker 1: man at two time Judoku champion UM and brought him
25:41
Speaker 1: and as a stuntman, and the first day on the set,
25:43
Speaker 1: he picked up Bruce Lee out of nowhere, put him
25:46
Speaker 1: in a fireman carry like on his shoulder, and Bruce
25:49
Speaker 1: Lee had he couldn't do anything. He was just so mad,
25:52
Speaker 1: but there was nothing he could do to get out
25:54
Speaker 1: of this. And he realized he needed to incorporate grappling,
25:57
Speaker 1: and he ended up training with Jean LaBelle for a
26:00
Speaker 1: year and expanded his fighting style even further. And that
26:04
Speaker 1: fireman carry, that meeting, that fight, basically on the set
26:08
Speaker 1: of The Green Hornet is what Quentin Tarantino was recreating
26:12
Speaker 1: in that movie Once upon a Time in Hollywood when
26:15
Speaker 1: Cliff Robertson Um Brad Pitt fights Bruce Lee on the
26:20
Speaker 1: sound stage in the in the parking lot. Um and
26:22
Speaker 1: a lot of people were very upset because he took
26:25
Speaker 1: tremendous liberties with that fight, but it was based on
26:28
Speaker 1: this kernel of history that had a much better outcome
26:31
Speaker 1: than than what UM what Quentin Tarantino showed. Yeah, Cliff Booth,
26:36
Speaker 1: by the way, Cliff Robertson was a real actor. Oh
26:39
Speaker 1: was he? Yeah? The way I thought it was the
26:41
Speaker 1: basis from Italica. No, that was close somebody else, I think, Okay, um, yeah,
26:47
Speaker 1: I mean Tarantino, we we should kind of talk about
26:50
Speaker 1: that for sect, because he was taken to task by
26:53
Speaker 1: a lot of people, um, certainly people from Bruce Lee's
26:56
Speaker 1: own family for that scene, and they were like, this
27:00
Speaker 1: is not what Bruce Lee was like, his daughter especially,
27:03
Speaker 1: It's like, this is not what my dad was like.
27:04
Speaker 1: He was not cocky, he was not arrogant. He was confident,
27:07
Speaker 1: and he was a good teacher. But you know, Tarantino
27:11
Speaker 1: then fired back in some interviews like he was arrogant
27:14
Speaker 1: and cocky, he was known as this guy, and apparently
27:17
Speaker 1: the people closest to him said he wasn't at all.
27:20
Speaker 1: This is a misconception by white people, and uh, Tarantino
27:24
Speaker 1: took a lot of grief and sort of argued back,
27:27
Speaker 1: and then she finally, in uh an interview in Variety magazine,
27:30
Speaker 1: was like, he should just kind of shut up about
27:32
Speaker 1: this and and say I'm making fictionalized movies and not
27:36
Speaker 1: purport to know what my dad was like. Yeah, when
27:39
Speaker 1: it's coming from the daughter, it seems like you should
27:42
Speaker 1: probably just shut up for sure. Probably so, and we'll
27:44
Speaker 1: probably get an email from her two because you said
27:46
Speaker 1: he was cocky and arrogant. Yeah right, yeah, I was
27:48
Speaker 1: thinking back to that flashing back, um. And one I
27:52
Speaker 1: guess one thing I saw too kind of that gives
27:57
Speaker 1: weight to the idea that he had a certain amount
28:00
Speaker 1: of arrogance or cockiness or I can understand how some
28:03
Speaker 1: people would take him that way or portray him that way. Um.
28:07
Speaker 1: Is he was well known for going around publicly insulting
28:12
Speaker 1: established martial arts schools. Like one of the first things
28:15
Speaker 1: he did where he made a name for himself among
28:17
Speaker 1: the martial arts community, especially in the Bay Area, that
28:20
Speaker 1: some people say led to that fight between him and
28:24
Speaker 1: Um Wong jack Man was to insult basically every established
28:29
Speaker 1: martial arts school in America and say that these were, um,
28:34
Speaker 1: they were taught by old tigers with no teeth, basically
28:37
Speaker 1: if they were misguided, um, and that they were, they
28:40
Speaker 1: were just wrong, and that his way was the right way. Um.
28:44
Speaker 1: And it wasn't that he had it out for like
28:46
Speaker 1: the old establishment just because they were the old establishment.
28:50
Speaker 1: But what he had decided, um with Jeekee Kundo is
28:54
Speaker 1: that it was it didn't make any sense to train
28:59
Speaker 1: and train and train to know exactly where your feet
29:02
Speaker 1: are going to go and exactly where to put your
29:04
Speaker 1: fists or that kind of thing, because all that stuff
29:06
Speaker 1: dissolved in a real fight. And so to Bruce Lee
29:09
Speaker 1: and his fighting style, the whole point is to survive
29:13
Speaker 1: the fight, and so you use whatever you can get
29:17
Speaker 1: your hands on, whatever technique, whatever style is going to work.
29:20
Speaker 1: And that that really doesn't jibe with the idea of
29:24
Speaker 1: us an established, rigid school. So he certainly ran a
29:28
Speaker 1: foul of, um, of some of the established martial art groups. Um.
29:32
Speaker 1: And I think that that has kind of contributed to
29:34
Speaker 1: this idea that he was cocky in real life. I'm
29:38
Speaker 1: not his daughter, so I certainly can't say, but you know, um,
29:42
Speaker 1: that's that's what I was basing my interpretation on. Yeah,
29:45
Speaker 1: my read is that he was a business person and
29:48
Speaker 1: that he was trying to make some money because his
29:52
Speaker 1: idea was that he wanted to open up a chain
29:54
Speaker 1: of kung fu schools. Um. He goes back to l
29:58
Speaker 1: A to give a demonstration at a karate tournament to
30:01
Speaker 1: try and you know, make a little headway there with
30:04
Speaker 1: maybe getting investors or getting people interested, and it worked.
30:08
Speaker 1: He met a TV producer there and that is how
30:11
Speaker 1: he got the role on The Green Hornet, which, like
30:13
Speaker 1: you said, ran for a single season. And he stayed
30:16
Speaker 1: in Hollywood though, and he really got the acting bug.
30:19
Speaker 1: I think he was in a few, um, kind of
30:22
Speaker 1: smaller parts over the next few years. He played Winslow
30:25
Speaker 1: Wong in the movie Marlo in nineteen nine, and then
30:29
Speaker 1: he like you mentioned, kind of at the beginning, it
30:33
Speaker 1: was he was trying to do something that didn't exist yet,
30:36
Speaker 1: which was become an Asian uh and at least an
30:40
Speaker 1: Asian American hero, because they just didn't do that. They
30:43
Speaker 1: were like, you can play this kind of role. Um,
30:46
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna come in as the bad guy or something.
30:48
Speaker 1: You're gonna show off some of your kung fu skills,
30:50
Speaker 1: but you're not going to be the star of the movie.
30:53
Speaker 1: And he said, all right, I'll hang around here. I'll
30:55
Speaker 1: start making a ton of money teaching the Hollywood elite
31:00
Speaker 1: uh my fighting style and ended up making making some
31:03
Speaker 1: really really close friends, uh, notably James Koburn and Steve
31:07
Speaker 1: McQueen ended up being two of his closest friends over
31:09
Speaker 1: the years until his death. Yeah, along with um Chuck
31:15
Speaker 1: Morris of course. Yeah, he was a ball bear. Also
31:19
Speaker 1: saw Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate were two of his
31:22
Speaker 1: students too. Yeah, Roman Polanski tried to sleep with him. No,
31:29
Speaker 1: he Bruce Lee lost his glasses. Roman Polanski found some
31:33
Speaker 1: glasses like his at the murder scene, and Roman Polanski
31:37
Speaker 1: was very suspicious of that, and apparently he went so
31:40
Speaker 1: far as to um take Bruce Lee to get a
31:44
Speaker 1: prescription made to replace the glasses that were broken, and
31:49
Speaker 1: then wanted to get his hands on that prescription and
31:51
Speaker 1: compare him, and apparently they didn't match, so he, you know,
31:54
Speaker 1: he backed off. He suspected Bruce Lee and the Manson
31:58
Speaker 1: family murders. He the TB. I don't wanna, I don't
32:03
Speaker 1: want to put any words in Roman Polanski's mouth, but
32:06
Speaker 1: I'm telling you what happened, which is that he found
32:09
Speaker 1: these glasses and had him checked out. Wow, that's a
32:12
Speaker 1: Hollywood nugget, Chuck, that you just put that jewel in
32:16
Speaker 1: your crown right there. Well, I didn't discover it. I mean,
32:18
Speaker 1: I just read it. Yeah, but I mean, I mean
32:21
Speaker 1: it's well known. Okay, well whatever, you can wear the
32:25
Speaker 1: crown around me and I'll just be like I totally earned. Uh.
32:29
Speaker 1: He got really into health and fitness. Um, this was
32:31
Speaker 1: the time in the nineteen sixties, kind of before the
32:35
Speaker 1: big exercise and weight lifting boom and stuff that happened.
32:38
Speaker 1: He was he was eating protein shakes and lifting weights
32:41
Speaker 1: kind of before a lot of people were. And you know,
32:44
Speaker 1: he wanted to get his body in the best shape possible.
32:47
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen Bruce Lee's body, then he
32:49
Speaker 1: you know, he did exactly that. Yeah, Mischief accomplished for sure.
32:53
Speaker 1: And I mean again, he was a little guy, like
32:55
Speaker 1: he weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, but he was
32:57
Speaker 1: just as lean as they come and totally chiseled like
33:01
Speaker 1: he he was very very strong for his his size
33:04
Speaker 1: and stature. Um, and just lightning fast too. But none
33:08
Speaker 1: of this was amounting to anything as far as his
33:11
Speaker 1: film career was concerned. He was going quite far as
33:16
Speaker 1: a martial artist martial arts instructor for sure, but clearly
33:20
Speaker 1: he UM, I don't know if his he felt like
33:23
Speaker 1: his calling was always you know, the movies or TV
33:29
Speaker 1: or something like that. Okay, well, then that would explain it.
33:32
Speaker 1: I had the impression that, you know, he just knew
33:34
Speaker 1: that that was something he could do. Um, which he
33:38
Speaker 1: apparently was starting to accumulate some debt, and at one point,
33:42
Speaker 1: to keep his UH, to keep his his chain of
33:45
Speaker 1: um of martial arts studios open, he decided to go
33:49
Speaker 1: to Hong Kong and do some acting rather quickly and
33:54
Speaker 1: pick up some some fast money. So I didn't know
33:59
Speaker 1: if he considered that like a step towards stardom or
34:03
Speaker 1: if that was just he knew he could go make
34:05
Speaker 1: some money acting and come back and pour it back
34:07
Speaker 1: into the studios to keep them open. Do you know.
34:10
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the studios were making his living.
34:13
Speaker 1: But I think since he was ten years old, he
34:15
Speaker 1: was bitten by the acting bug, which is why he
34:18
Speaker 1: went on to be in twenty more movies over the
34:20
Speaker 1: next eight years. And I think that was his true
34:23
Speaker 1: like I think the Kung Fu studios, in my reading,
34:27
Speaker 1: was the means to get to where he wanted to be,
34:29
Speaker 1: which was a big Hollywood superstar. Well it actually it
34:33
Speaker 1: worked that trip Um Like I was saying, he was
34:36
Speaker 1: just going for some money to keep the studios or
34:38
Speaker 1: his his studios afloat Um or open Um. But it
34:42
Speaker 1: turned out to be the greatest move that any actor
34:46
Speaker 1: has ever undertaken, just going to Hong Kong and trying
34:50
Speaker 1: to pick up some parts and martial arts films, and
34:54
Speaker 1: that's exactly what he did, and he blew up as
34:58
Speaker 1: a result. That's right, So stake our final break here
35:01
Speaker 1: and then we'll come back and wrap it up and
35:04
Speaker 1: spanking on the bottom right after this shock shock Alright,
35:31
Speaker 1: So Bruce Lee goes to Hong Kong to make some movies,
35:34
Speaker 1: make a little dough and he goes to Hong Kong
35:38
Speaker 1: and signs a two picture movie deal with Golden Harvest
35:40
Speaker 1: Studios and signs on for his first movie, a little
35:44
Speaker 1: movie called The Big Boss, which originally in the United
35:49
Speaker 1: States was called Fist of Fury. A little confusing because
35:53
Speaker 1: then there was a movie called Fist of Fury that
35:56
Speaker 1: also had an alternate title, uh to Chinese, the Chinese connection,
36:02
Speaker 1: but the Big Boss a k A in America at first.
36:05
Speaker 1: The Fist se Fury or Fist of Fury was his
36:07
Speaker 1: first sort of foray into those movies, and it was
36:11
Speaker 1: a big, big hit. It was it's it's hard to
36:17
Speaker 1: explain what happened that that first movie, The Big Boss
36:20
Speaker 1: came out and basically made Bruce Lee an overnight sensation
36:24
Speaker 1: in Asia as far as martial arts is concerned, not
36:26
Speaker 1: just Hong Kong Asia. He just became an absolute superstar.
36:30
Speaker 1: The Big Boss shattered the box office record. The previous
36:33
Speaker 1: Hong Kong box office record was held by the Sound
36:35
Speaker 1: of Music, and it had made something like eight hundred
36:38
Speaker 1: thousand Hong Kong dollars um. The Big Boss made something
36:43
Speaker 1: like four times that in its box office run um.
36:47
Speaker 1: And then as more Bruce Lee movies came out over
36:51
Speaker 1: the next couple of years, each one shattered the record
36:55
Speaker 1: of the previous Bruce Lee movie. So when something like
36:58
Speaker 1: that happens, you know you have something once in a
37:03
Speaker 1: lifetime basically on your hands. And he was right smack
37:06
Speaker 1: dab in the in the middle of that once in
37:08
Speaker 1: a lifetime thing. Yeah, And not only were these movies
37:11
Speaker 1: making a lot of money, they were really cheap to make,
37:13
Speaker 1: which was like he was like the Golden Boy, because
37:17
Speaker 1: I think Fist of Fury, the second movie, cost about
37:22
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars to make and made a hundred
37:24
Speaker 1: million I think the um The Way of the Dragon
37:29
Speaker 1: made a hundred and thirty million and cost about a
37:32
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty thousand, So he was making like huge,
37:35
Speaker 1: huge money. I mean not personally, but the studios were
37:38
Speaker 1: making huge, huge money on very little investment. And Um,
37:42
Speaker 1: the thing with Bruce Lee was he was, like you said,
37:45
Speaker 1: he was selling these fights better than anyone ever had.
37:48
Speaker 1: And his speed was really the key to it. Um
37:51
Speaker 1: and a lot of if you watch a lot of
37:53
Speaker 1: older kung fu movies and it looks like the action
37:56
Speaker 1: is sped up, it's because it is. They would speed
38:00
Speaker 1: at the camera or actually slow down the camera to
38:02
Speaker 1: make the action appear faster, to make it more exciting.
38:05
Speaker 1: But Bruce Lee was so naturally fast they had to
38:08
Speaker 1: tell him to slow down just so the camera could
38:11
Speaker 1: like record stuff accurately. So there were a few legends
38:16
Speaker 1: that grew up around his speed. One speed and strength.
38:20
Speaker 1: One that he could steal a dime off of your hand,
38:24
Speaker 1: like if you're holding it in the palm of your
38:25
Speaker 1: hand before you could just close your hand. Uh, he
38:28
Speaker 1: could catch a rice green that that he you would
38:31
Speaker 1: throw at him with chopsticks. And these are all, you know,
38:35
Speaker 1: maybe true or not, but I just love these legends. Wait,
38:38
Speaker 1: you would use chopsticks to throw a rice green at
38:40
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, you would throw a rice green at
38:41
Speaker 1: him and he would catch it with chopsticks. That's way
38:44
Speaker 1: more impressive. So and then the last one was that
38:47
Speaker 1: he could he could punch a hole through a can
38:50
Speaker 1: of coke with his finger. And I hope these are
38:54
Speaker 1: true because they're so great. Well, if they're not true,
38:57
Speaker 1: that's okay. Like you're not the first person to fall
39:00
Speaker 1: for some of the exaggerations, like I saw Matthew PAULI
39:03
Speaker 1: was kind of not called out, but somebody made mention
39:06
Speaker 1: the fact that this is one of those top biographers,
39:09
Speaker 1: like one of the best biographers of Bruce Lee still said,
39:12
Speaker 1: you know, somebody got punched and they flew back six
39:14
Speaker 1: ft in the air and it's almost certainly not correct,
39:18
Speaker 1: Like six ft is probably an exaggeration. But the fact
39:22
Speaker 1: that things like that get repeated and like like smart
39:27
Speaker 1: people like say like this, like this is what he
39:31
Speaker 1: was capable of, like it at the very least goes
39:34
Speaker 1: to underscore his abilities. That they were so mind boggling
39:39
Speaker 1: that this is it's possible that that's true. You know
39:42
Speaker 1: what I mean, it's not like, oh, that's ridiculous. It's like, no,
39:46
Speaker 1: this is Bruce Lee we're talking about. I think I
39:48
Speaker 1: can explain the six ft thing. If he's it might
39:52
Speaker 1: be an exaggeration that someone literally didn't touch the ground
39:54
Speaker 1: for six ft, But if you look at demonstrations of
39:58
Speaker 1: his of the one finger munch, he can knock someone
40:02
Speaker 1: back six to eight feet very easily until they can
40:06
Speaker 1: like regain their composure. Like people are flying back six
40:09
Speaker 1: ft but not necessarily not touching the ground in between,
40:14
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I think this was quote
40:16
Speaker 1: flying through the air. It sounds like the air little
40:19
Speaker 1: writers flourish. Yeah. Maybe, but I mean again, it comes
40:24
Speaker 1: like people are like, oh that's cool. It's crazy because
40:26
Speaker 1: we're talking about Bruce Lee. If if like my biographer
40:29
Speaker 1: said that, everyone would be like, stop the pressus, whoa
40:32
Speaker 1: you got a biographer? I question every I will eventually,
40:35
Speaker 1: I assume. But if people would be like I questioned
40:38
Speaker 1: everything that's in this book now Bruce Lee, it's like, yeah,
40:41
Speaker 1: totally buy that. You know. So Bruce Lee is uh
40:45
Speaker 1: made a name for himself. Now. He is drive around
40:49
Speaker 1: sports cars, he's wearing for coats, he is a big,
40:52
Speaker 1: big pothead, which is something that yeah, I forgot about
40:55
Speaker 1: that you don't hear about a lot. But apparently after yeah,
41:00
Speaker 1: but after Bruce Lee's training sessions, he would uh. He
41:03
Speaker 1: apparently had this wooden box just full of joints, also
41:06
Speaker 1: smoked hash and got really into this sort of hippie lifestyle,
41:10
Speaker 1: kind of grew his hair along for a little while,
41:12
Speaker 1: and I think it was wrapped up in this Hollywood
41:14
Speaker 1: hippie thing of the time, understandable. Uh, and his careers
41:18
Speaker 1: go along great, and it all culminates with a movie
41:21
Speaker 1: called Enter the Dragon in nineteen three. Big movie. Yeah,
41:26
Speaker 1: it was a huge movie. I think he wrote and
41:28
Speaker 1: directed that one, and I think the first one he
41:31
Speaker 1: wrote and directed was Way of the Dragon. But like
41:34
Speaker 1: by this time on his third movie, he was now
41:36
Speaker 1: writing and directing it, and certainly by his fourth one
41:39
Speaker 1: he wrote and directed it. I saw that the Way
41:41
Speaker 1: of the Dragon, a quarter of the script was just
41:44
Speaker 1: a couple of like just a couple of fight scenes.
41:46
Speaker 1: Choreography took up like a quarter of the script. Um.
41:51
Speaker 1: And it was this was the one that put him
41:53
Speaker 1: on the map as an overnight sensation in the United
41:57
Speaker 1: States in the West. Like the other two, the first
42:00
Speaker 1: two or three. Um yea, his first three had made
42:03
Speaker 1: him an overnight sensation in Asia. This was the one
42:05
Speaker 1: that taught America what a kung fu movie was because
42:09
Speaker 1: we hadn't heard of it before, and now all of
42:11
Speaker 1: a sudden, we couldn't get enough of Bruce Lee. Unfortunately,
42:14
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee had died a month before in one of
42:17
Speaker 1: the great ironic tragedies as far as like Hollywood stardom goes. Yeah,
42:22
Speaker 1: only thirty two years old. Um, if you look up
42:25
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee death, there's a lot of different stories and
42:27
Speaker 1: theories out there. Um he was. He had a mistress
42:31
Speaker 1: at the time named Betty ting Pie, and apparently he
42:36
Speaker 1: had been on and this is the way Chuck Norris
42:38
Speaker 1: told it too. Apparently he had been on back medication
42:41
Speaker 1: for a while because of a back injury, so pain
42:43
Speaker 1: meds for his back. Came home to his apartment in
42:49
Speaker 1: Hong Kong with his mitress mistress, and complained of a headache.
42:54
Speaker 1: She gave him, I think a different kind of pain reliever,
42:56
Speaker 1: although Chuck Norris said it was Ah, what's I'm blanking? Now?
43:01
Speaker 1: What's the thing you take to fight an infection? And uh,
43:04
Speaker 1: antibiotic anty biotic, which I think he just must spoke
43:07
Speaker 1: because that wouldn't make any sense. But um, that's what
43:10
Speaker 1: Chuck North said. Uh. So it took another pain reliever,
43:13
Speaker 1: went down for a nap, and died never woke up.
43:17
Speaker 1: Uh he um. You know, there are all kinds of
43:20
Speaker 1: speculation about what happened. It seems like it was just
43:23
Speaker 1: a reaction of these medications. Uh. Some people say, including
43:27
Speaker 1: the biographer, it was also had to do with a
43:30
Speaker 1: heat stroke because because he'd had one ten weeks before, right, Yeah,
43:35
Speaker 1: and he also um a few months before he died,
43:38
Speaker 1: had he used to be very embarrassed about his under
43:40
Speaker 1: armed sweat, so he had the sweat glands removed from
43:43
Speaker 1: his underarms. What and so apparently they said that could
43:47
Speaker 1: have contributed to the You know, his body wasn't shedding
43:50
Speaker 1: sweat like it should and that could have led to
43:52
Speaker 1: a heat stroke. I had not heard that before that.
43:55
Speaker 1: That definitely crosses a couple of tease that I had
43:58
Speaker 1: anotherwise seen. May be, but I think it was like
44:00
Speaker 1: ten weeks before he died, he collapsed when he was
44:02
Speaker 1: dubbing a movie in an on an room without air conditioning.
44:07
Speaker 1: It was really hot got that heat stroke. Uh, and
44:10
Speaker 1: some people are saying this all contributed with these medications
44:12
Speaker 1: to a brain edema. Yeah, but again, I mean the
44:17
Speaker 1: fact that he died mysteriously. This guy who's like one
44:19
Speaker 1: of the fittest people on the planets just dies after
44:22
Speaker 1: saying he has a headache and lies down and wakes up.
44:25
Speaker 1: That's just conspiracy theory fodder for eon. Sure it's still
44:29
Speaker 1: going on today. Like apparently that he had a break
44:32
Speaker 1: with the director low Way, who directed the first two
44:35
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee films, um, the first two kung fu films
44:38
Speaker 1: he was in. He pulled a knife on him because
44:41
Speaker 1: the guy the director had been taunting him and Bruce
44:43
Speaker 1: Lee was Uh. There was a legend that like low
44:46
Speaker 1: Way had had him assassinated by ninja or something like that.
44:50
Speaker 1: But the upshot of it is, however he died. Um,
44:54
Speaker 1: he died like a month before he became extra like
44:59
Speaker 1: world famous, and he's still world famous today. Like everyone
45:02
Speaker 1: knows Bruce Lee. He's one of the most famous people
45:04
Speaker 1: to ever lived, and he died a month before that happened.
45:07
Speaker 1: Which is you know, you say that and you read
45:10
Speaker 1: it and you think it's it just doesn't quite sink
45:12
Speaker 1: in and when it does, you're like, that is astounding
45:15
Speaker 1: that that happened, just the timing of all that. Yeah,
45:18
Speaker 1: And then you know, many years later, his son, Brandon
45:21
Speaker 1: Lee would die very tragically on the set of a
45:23
Speaker 1: film because of an accident with a um, a blank bullet,
45:28
Speaker 1: um actually shooting a slug out of a gun on
45:32
Speaker 1: set of of The Crow, right yeah, um yeah. He
45:38
Speaker 1: think he was twenty eight, and his father had died
45:40
Speaker 1: when he was thirty two. So a lot of people
45:42
Speaker 1: are like, well, there's clearly the Lee family is cursed, right,
45:45
Speaker 1: which is nonsense. I think you should probably just shut
45:50
Speaker 1: up about that, probably so, but um, one of the
45:54
Speaker 1: things that it's hard to overstate like the cultural legacy
45:57
Speaker 1: that he left, Like he introduced the West to a
46:01
Speaker 1: completely different concept of Asian people, like like, oh, they
46:06
Speaker 1: can actually like stars, action heroes, like they're they're not
46:10
Speaker 1: like you know, valets or servants or whatever. Like it
46:13
Speaker 1: just completely altered americans understanding of Asian people. Like it's
46:19
Speaker 1: really hard to understate that. And then the other thing
46:22
Speaker 1: too is you know, we were kind of talking about
46:23
Speaker 1: whether he was um, you know, whether he was an
46:26
Speaker 1: actor or martial artist, and a lot of people are like,
46:29
Speaker 1: would is Bruce Lee? Would he actually was he really
46:32
Speaker 1: a good fighter? Or was he like a movie fighter
46:35
Speaker 1: like Jean Claude van Dam or Steven Seagal, who like
46:38
Speaker 1: in a real life fight that we would just be
46:40
Speaker 1: hopelessly lost, you know. And um, because Bruce Lee died
46:45
Speaker 1: at such a young age, like there's there's not this
46:49
Speaker 1: we don't know or a lot of people don't know.
46:51
Speaker 1: But if you talk to the people who trained with him,
46:54
Speaker 1: who worked with him, who were there who actually physically
46:56
Speaker 1: interacted with him, like it seems like completely understandable that
47:02
Speaker 1: he was as everything you saw in film, he could
47:05
Speaker 1: do for real in real life. And you would never
47:08
Speaker 1: have wanted to fight Bruce Lee. So he wasn't just
47:10
Speaker 1: a fake movie martial artists. He was the real deal,
47:13
Speaker 1: and in a lot of ways largely self taught, which
47:16
Speaker 1: makes them all the more impressive. That's right, You got
47:19
Speaker 1: anything else about Mr Bruce Lee? Chuck and got nothing else?
47:22
Speaker 1: And maybe watch the classic two farcical comedy they call
47:26
Speaker 1: Me Bruce. Oh yeah, okay, I will check that out.
47:31
Speaker 1: That one more thing, that his death is untimely death
47:34
Speaker 1: led to a whole genre of movies called Bruce Floitation,
47:39
Speaker 1: which was basically fake Bruce Lee movies. They're trying to
47:42
Speaker 1: cash in on his fame. Yeah. I think he had
47:44
Speaker 1: a movie, another movie released after his tattoo, didn't he
47:48
Speaker 1: That they compiled like footage and stuff for I believe
47:51
Speaker 1: they were filming it when he died, and they didn't
47:53
Speaker 1: release it for another five years. Game of Death, that's
47:56
Speaker 1: the one where he fights Kareem's actually, and Chuck Norris
48:01
Speaker 1: is in it too. Game of Death. Yeah, that that
48:03
Speaker 1: fight with Kareem was pretty awesome because to see a
48:05
Speaker 1: man that tall, be that lithe and that quick was
48:08
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. And he was one of Bruce Lee's like
48:12
Speaker 1: genuine students, one of his long time students. And he
48:15
Speaker 1: credits Bruce Lee with his his longevity and the n
48:17
Speaker 1: B a UM. Yeah. So if you want to more
48:21
Speaker 1: about Bruce Lee, just go out and start watching movies
48:23
Speaker 1: and videos and demonstrations of Bruce Lee. There's a lot
48:26
Speaker 1: worse things you can do with your time and thank
48:28
Speaker 1: us later. And since I said thank us later, it's
48:30
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. Yeah. I'm gonna call this return
48:35
Speaker 1: of Noah from Scotland. I'm pretty sure I read this
48:38
Speaker 1: on the air, but I told Noah to rite in
48:40
Speaker 1: once a year. Um, and here's the follow up. Because
48:44
Speaker 1: you know, Sarah, the amazing eleven year old fan is
48:46
Speaker 1: now probably in college and has long since forgotten about us.
48:49
Speaker 1: So we miss Sarah. We've we've been ghosted. We've have
48:52
Speaker 1: been ghosted years ago. But this is our new friend Noah. Hey,
48:56
Speaker 1: it's me Noah from Scotland. You told me to write
49:00
Speaker 1: in once a year, so this is my annual letter
49:02
Speaker 1: in case you don't remember me. I've been listening since
49:03
Speaker 1: I was four and writing you a letter every year
49:05
Speaker 1: since I was five. I still live in Scotland and
49:08
Speaker 1: for most of the last year my mom's been home
49:10
Speaker 1: schooling me because of the coronavirus. It's not always great,
49:14
Speaker 1: but when I'm doing my own topics, I can choose
49:16
Speaker 1: them based on your episodes. My favorite was space weather,
49:20
Speaker 1: because I didn't know there was weather in space. My
49:23
Speaker 1: favorite fact that I found out was the most powerful
49:26
Speaker 1: northern lights can generate over one trillion lots of power,
49:30
Speaker 1: which is I think about three million solar panels. Uh.
49:34
Speaker 1: It was a hard sum, but I think it's right. Uh.
49:37
Speaker 1: I don't you're if you're asking us about math, and
49:39
Speaker 1: no we're just gonna say yes, you got it right.
49:41
Speaker 1: You just ran a circle around this. I don't want
49:44
Speaker 1: to be an engineer anymore. By the way, I really
49:46
Speaker 1: like chemistry now. I think the periodic table is interesting
49:49
Speaker 1: and I want to find a way to stop global
49:51
Speaker 1: warming using science. I love it. I've asked for your
49:56
Speaker 1: book for my ninth birthday in May, and I hope
49:59
Speaker 1: to get it because I think it be interesting. I'm
50:01
Speaker 1: glad you're still podcasting. Love from Noah and this was
50:06
Speaker 1: sent through his mom's Rachel's email, of course as always,
50:09
Speaker 1: and she added a very sweet note as well, so
50:12
Speaker 1: much love to the to Noah's family there. Yeah, thank
50:16
Speaker 1: you very much Rachel and knowing the whole fam for
50:18
Speaker 1: writing to us from beloved Scotland. Keep us updated. Noah,
50:22
Speaker 1: We're pretty your progress is just fascinating. Yes, we love it,
50:27
Speaker 1: um and uh, happy early birthday too, from Josh and Chuck.
50:32
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this, like
50:33
Speaker 1: Noah did, you can give it your best shot. You
50:36
Speaker 1: can send us an email, send it to Stuff Podcast
50:39
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
50:45
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts. For my
50:48
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
50:51
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.