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Brandon Lee: Hungry Ghosts, Cursed Movies, and a Goth Masterpiece · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is the
0:18
Speaker 1: story of a curse, of a haunted legacy, of a
0:22
Speaker 1: massive movie set, destroying storm, a car crash, and one
0:27
Speaker 1: too many eerie coincidences leading up to the strange accidental
0:31
Speaker 1: death of one of Hollywood's brightest young stars at the time,
0:36
Speaker 1: Brandon Lee. But it's also the story of a Goth masterpiece,
0:41
Speaker 1: the movie The Crow, a film with a soundtrack filled
0:46
Speaker 1: with great music. Unlike that music I played for you
0:50
Speaker 1: at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
0:54
Speaker 1: That was a preset loop from my melotron called as
0:58
Speaker 1: the Crow Dies m one. I played you that loop
1:03
Speaker 1: because I can't afford the rights to Informer by Snow.
1:08
Speaker 2: And why would I.
1:09
Speaker 1: Play you that specific slice of Northern coxposure cheese?
1:13
Speaker 2: Could I afford it?
1:16
Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
1:20
Speaker 1: March thirty first, nineteen ninety three, and that was the
1:24
Speaker 1: day Brandon Lee's life was tragically cut short by a
1:28
Speaker 1: fatal mistake.
1:30
Speaker 2: On this episode, a curse.
1:33
Speaker 1: A Goth masterpiece, an accidental death, and the Crows Brandon Lee.
1:40
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan, and this this disgrace Sland the five
2:18
Speaker 1: year old sad in the wings as his father demonstrated
2:20
Speaker 1: martial arts moves on stage. The Hong Kong television audience
2:24
Speaker 1: went wild. Here Bruce Lee was a massive star, unlike
2:29
Speaker 1: in America. In America, Bruce was just the sidekick. He
2:34
Speaker 1: was the other guy on the Green Hornet, a mid
2:37
Speaker 1: sixties attempt to cash in on Batman's success. But here
2:40
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong, the Green Hornet was known as the
2:44
Speaker 1: Cato Show name, so after Bruce's character didn't matter if
2:48
Speaker 1: it was a supporting character.
2:50
Speaker 2: Bruce Lee was the star.
2:52
Speaker 1: After the applause died down, Bruce looked off to the
2:55
Speaker 1: edge of the stage. He made eye contact with his
2:58
Speaker 1: five year old son, and then he beckoned for him
3:01
Speaker 1: to come out of the dark shadows, and Brandon Lee
3:04
Speaker 1: stepped into the spotlight to thunderous applause. His father held
3:07
Speaker 1: out a board and said, just like I showed you.
3:10
Speaker 1: Bruce had been training his son in martial arts since
3:13
Speaker 1: practically before the kid could walk.
3:15
Speaker 2: Brand embraced, he blocked out.
3:17
Speaker 1: The eyes looking at him from the crowd. He took
3:20
Speaker 1: his stance. He clenched the fingers on one hand tight,
3:23
Speaker 1: cocked his arm back straight and put his fist through
3:26
Speaker 1: the board.
3:28
Speaker 2: The audience loved it.
3:30
Speaker 1: Brandon stood there and bassed in their adoration, and looking
3:33
Speaker 1: back on this moment later in life, you'd think maybe
3:36
Speaker 1: they were really clapping for his father. But he was
3:38
Speaker 1: just an extension of Bruce Lee's stardom, the way a
3:41
Speaker 1: nunchuck can extend the fighter's reach. But in this moment,
3:46
Speaker 1: Brandon Lee felt like a star. His father knew all
3:50
Speaker 1: too well about being a star. You got all the attention,
3:53
Speaker 1: positive and negative, but none of the power.
3:57
Speaker 2: Bruce took hold of little Brandon and looked.
3:59
Speaker 3: Him in the eye. Never become an actor, Be a
4:02
Speaker 3: producer instead.
4:03
Speaker 2: That's how you hold the real power.
4:06
Speaker 1: In this Hong Kong trip was full of conflicting emotions.
4:09
Speaker 1: For Bruce Lee, The Green Hornet had been canceled after
4:12
Speaker 1: only one season. He'd failed to land any major American
4:15
Speaker 1: film roles, and here in Hong Kong, studios were ready
4:18
Speaker 1: to go to war over the actor. But back in
4:20
Speaker 1: his adopted home in America, things seemed cursed, and maybe
4:26
Speaker 1: that was why Bruce Lee decided to tell his son
4:29
Speaker 1: about an older curse, one that had haunted the family
4:32
Speaker 1: since before Bruce was born, Bruce's older brother died at.
4:36
Speaker 2: Just three months old.
4:37
Speaker 1: Some superstitious members of the family believed this meant that
4:40
Speaker 1: the next male child and the family would be marked
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Speaker 1: for death. Bruce's mother took this to heart, but when
4:46
Speaker 1: she became pregnant with another child, she adopted a daughter
4:50
Speaker 1: in an attempt to break the streak to distract any
4:53
Speaker 1: hungry ghosts that might try to claim another baby boy
4:55
Speaker 1: from the family in case that wasn't enough. When she
4:59
Speaker 1: did give birth to an the boy Peter, they gave
5:01
Speaker 1: him a girl's nickname, and they dressed him in girl's clothes,
5:05
Speaker 1: and they pierced his ear to trick the ghosts. But
5:08
Speaker 1: there were no superstitious rituals when Bruce was born because
5:12
Speaker 1: Bruce wasn't born in China. He was born in San
5:15
Speaker 1: Francisco while his father was touring the US as a
5:18
Speaker 1: stage performer. He was given an American name, a boy's name,
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Speaker 1: and no one had thought to pierce his ear or
5:25
Speaker 1: address him as a girl. That maybe being born in
5:28
Speaker 1: America meant the hungry ghosts would never find him, or
5:32
Speaker 1: maybe it would just take more time. July twentieth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: seventy three, the phone rang in Bruce Lee's Hong Kong home. Brandon,
5:45
Speaker 1: not eight answered. It was unusual for the house to
5:48
Speaker 1: be this quiet. Bruce had converted part of it into
5:51
Speaker 1: a martial arts school. Men and women were often found
5:54
Speaker 1: training in the backyard, swinging weapons and shouting as they
5:57
Speaker 1: threw themselves at each other. All that action can at
6:00
Speaker 1: Brandon's friends away. The same violence they paid to see
6:03
Speaker 1: at the movies was a little too scary of close
6:05
Speaker 1: in real life. The man on the line was calling
6:09
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles and the assistant director of the film
6:12
Speaker 1: that would be Bruce's major breakthrough in the West. They
6:15
Speaker 1: were currently in post production, but the assistant director had
6:18
Speaker 1: heard a rumor that Bruce Lee had died in a
6:21
Speaker 1: fight in Hong Kong, beaten to death by twenty guys.
6:25
Speaker 1: The truth, though, was much stranger, but the outcome was
6:28
Speaker 1: the same. Bruce Lee had been found dead in a
6:32
Speaker 1: Hong Kong apartment at the age of thirty two. Somehow,
6:36
Speaker 1: though news had made it all the way around the
6:38
Speaker 1: world before it made it to Bruce's own home. The
6:41
Speaker 1: assistant director on the phone didn't say any of this
6:44
Speaker 1: to Brandon. He just asked the boy if his father
6:47
Speaker 1: was there in Cantonese. Brandon replied his father wasn't home,
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Speaker 1: and the director asked where Bruce was. Brandon hadn't given
6:55
Speaker 1: it much thought. His father was away most of the time. Movie,
6:58
Speaker 1: he said in Cantonese. Enter the Dragon premiered one month
7:04
Speaker 1: after Bruce Lee's death and became a massive box office hit.
7:09
Speaker 2: US Studios followed it up by re.
7:11
Speaker 1: Releasing his Hong Kong film Way of the Dragon. Then
7:14
Speaker 1: there was the question of the film Bruce had been
7:16
Speaker 1: directing and starring it at the time he died. Game
7:18
Speaker 1: of Death, a Hong Kong film he'd put on pause
7:21
Speaker 1: to make Enter the Dragon in the United States, and
7:24
Speaker 1: the footage Bruce shot before his death was repurposed with
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Speaker 1: an entirely different plot and the version that was released
7:30
Speaker 1: five years later in nineteen seventy eight. Bruce plays an
7:33
Speaker 1: international martial arts star who gets shot during filming by
7:37
Speaker 1: a stuntman turned assassin. Pieces of a bullet lodged themselves
7:41
Speaker 1: in the actor's face, and he uses the opportunity to
7:44
Speaker 1: fake his own death and adopt a series of disguises
7:47
Speaker 1: to take revenge. This meant that the studio could slap
7:51
Speaker 1: false beards and dark glasses on a Korean actor who
7:54
Speaker 1: looked nothing like Bruce Lee, and complete the film using
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Speaker 1: only eleven minutes of the original film. Game of Death
8:02
Speaker 1: came out when Brandon Lee was thirteen years old. By
8:06
Speaker 1: that point, his mother had moved the family back to
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Speaker 1: the United States, and every time he started at a
8:10
Speaker 1: new school, there were always a couple of kids and
8:12
Speaker 1: wanted to kick the shit out of Bruce Lee's kid.
8:15
Speaker 1: But when Brandon Lee got into a scrap, other people
8:18
Speaker 1: got hurt. He'd been trained to martial arts since he
8:21
Speaker 1: was a baby, and after his father's death, he continued
8:24
Speaker 1: studying with one of his father's students, but every dojo
8:28
Speaker 1: in studio he trained in had his father's pictures on
8:30
Speaker 1: the walls, as if Bruce Lee were some kind of saint.
8:34
Speaker 1: Brandon's feelings about his father were complicated, and they were
8:38
Speaker 1: still raw even before his death. Bruce was away more
8:42
Speaker 1: often than he was home. When he did show up,
8:45
Speaker 1: he never knew what you were going to get. Either
8:47
Speaker 1: he was happy about a big deal going through when
8:50
Speaker 1: he came bearing expensive gifts, or he was sulling over
8:53
Speaker 1: how poorly things were going. Brandon was kicked out of
8:56
Speaker 1: high school four months before graduation, after being a senior
9:00
Speaker 1: class president in using his office to incite a rebellion,
9:04
Speaker 1: and despite his father's warning never to become an actor,
9:07
Speaker 1: he began studying at the famed Lee Strausburg Institute in
9:11
Speaker 1: New York.
9:12
Speaker 2: He wanted to be like his father, but not that
9:15
Speaker 2: much like his father.
9:16
Speaker 1: Casting directors came to him with kung fu rolls, clearly
9:19
Speaker 1: itching to bill him as the son of the greatest
9:21
Speaker 1: martial artist ever captured on film. Instead, Brandon looked for
9:25
Speaker 1: parts that would allow him to step out of his
9:27
Speaker 1: father's shadow and into the light. He was still pushing
9:31
Speaker 1: against being cast in his father's image, but with his
9:34
Speaker 1: leading role in the action movie Rapid Fire, Hollywood immediately
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Speaker 1: identified him as part of a new generation of action
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Speaker 1: stars and as the son of one of the best
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Speaker 1: to ever do it.
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Speaker 2: All the attention got him.
9:46
Speaker 1: Interviews, but all the interviews wanted to talk about was
9:49
Speaker 1: his dead father. In nineteen ninety one, Brandon Lee was
9:55
Speaker 1: approached with a bizarre offer universal the studio option to
10:00
Speaker 1: memoir written by Brandon's mother.
10:03
Speaker 2: The studio was going all in. They were buying up the.
10:05
Speaker 1: Life rights to the Bruce Lee story, and they wanted
10:07
Speaker 1: Brandon to play his dad. Maybe he was uncomfortable playing
10:12
Speaker 1: the romantic lead opposite an actress playing his own mom,
10:15
Speaker 1: or maybe the whole idea of playing his father felt haunted.
10:20
Speaker 2: Either way, Brandon passed and the part went.
10:23
Speaker 4: To Jason Scott Lee no relation.
10:26
Speaker 1: Brandon went out of his way to make sure that
10:27
Speaker 1: Jason knew he had the family's blessing. They ate dinner
10:31
Speaker 1: at Mister Child, the Beverly Hills restaurant that was a
10:33
Speaker 1: hotspot for celebrity sightings.
10:36
Speaker 2: On his way to being a big star. Brandon made
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Speaker 2: a grand entrance.
10:40
Speaker 1: He pulled Jason aside and told the younger star not
10:42
Speaker 1: to try to be like Bruce Lee, just be himself Dragon.
10:47
Speaker 1: The Bruce Lee story includes a dream sequence in which
10:50
Speaker 1: an actual demon, a manifestation of the curse Bruce Lee's
10:53
Speaker 1: family believed haunted them, smashes Brucely's face into his tombstone
10:58
Speaker 1: and then turns to go after the little brand. But
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Speaker 1: Brandon Lee never saw.
11:02
Speaker 3: That scene or that movie.
11:04
Speaker 1: By the time the movie was filming, Brandon Lee had
11:07
Speaker 1: landed his dream role, a part that combined his physicality
11:11
Speaker 1: with his charisma as an actor Brandon Lee was going
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Speaker 1: to become a.
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Speaker 4: Ghost nineteen eighty.
11:43
Speaker 1: The Marine put his tumbler of whiskey down on a
11:45
Speaker 1: discarded newspaper. His ghosts were after him again. Sometimes the
11:50
Speaker 1: whiskey chased them away. Sometimes it magnified them, like tonight,
11:55
Speaker 1: when he looked through the bottom of his glass and
11:57
Speaker 1: saw an article about a couple murdered in Detroit, mugged
12:01
Speaker 1: for the girl's engagement ring, the killer shot them both.
12:05
Speaker 1: The Marine stared at the article. He read it again.
12:09
Speaker 1: It wasn't his story, but it was familiar. When he
12:12
Speaker 1: was eighteen and his fiance had been killed by a
12:14
Speaker 1: drunk driver, his whole life was in front of him,
12:17
Speaker 1: and now he'd wound up here, drinking in a military
12:19
Speaker 1: bar and not giving a shit whether he lived or died.
12:23
Speaker 1: Wishing he could get revenge on the man that killed
12:25
Speaker 1: the woman he loved, Wishing he could get revenge on
12:28
Speaker 1: the whole world. Broken snippets of poetry floated through his
12:32
Speaker 1: drunken mind.
12:33
Speaker 2: He picked up a pencil.
12:34
Speaker 1: The ghost of all his pain, all his anger, whispered
12:37
Speaker 1: in his ear as he thought about that couple in Detroit,
12:40
Speaker 1: thought about his fiance. He sketched a face, a clownish
12:45
Speaker 1: death mask in black. He thought, what if he could
12:49
Speaker 1: get that revenge? What if the worst thing imaginable happened?
12:52
Speaker 1: But then you came back. Over the next several years,
12:58
Speaker 1: James O'Barr worked on the character whenever he could. His protagonist,
13:02
Speaker 1: Eric Draven, was a rock star who was murdered along
13:05
Speaker 1: with his fiancee. A year After his murder, however, Eric
13:09
Speaker 1: Draven is resurrected to seek revenge. O Bar based the
13:13
Speaker 1: character visually on the face of Peter Murphy from the
13:16
Speaker 1: band Bauhaus, combined with the wiry, muscular body of iggy Pop,
13:21
Speaker 1: but the character psyche. His drive for revenge was Obar
13:25
Speaker 1: wrestling with his own ghosts, and the resulting black and
13:28
Speaker 1: white comic book was seeped in the aesthetics of goth's
13:31
Speaker 1: subculture and music. Everyone in it was based on someone
13:35
Speaker 1: o Bar knew, and the users and lowlis he'd surrounded
13:38
Speaker 1: himself within his broken life, and if they weren't real,
13:41
Speaker 1: they came out of the worst parts of himself. He
13:44
Speaker 1: was just happy to get all that out of him.
13:46
Speaker 1: He didn't even care if he got published. But in
13:48
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, the back cover of an underground comic
13:51
Speaker 1: book featured a man dressed in all black with black
13:54
Speaker 1: and white makeup, pulling a shotgun and a Samurai sory,
13:57
Speaker 1: and proclaimed in its tagline for something, there is no forgiveness.
14:04
Speaker 1: The first issue of The Crow came out in early
14:07
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, and it was a massive underground hit.
14:12
Speaker 1: It got picked up by Paramount for film development, and
14:14
Speaker 1: Obar was heavily consulted in casting. The movie aimed to
14:18
Speaker 1: outdo the expressionist sensibilities of that year's Batman, portraying a
14:22
Speaker 1: totally self contained, hyper real world of dark shadows and
14:25
Speaker 1: constant rain, but the production seemed cursed from the start.
14:32
Speaker 1: Obar nearly walked away for the whole thing when the
14:34
Speaker 1: initial script bore no resemblance to his comic.
14:37
Speaker 2: A carpenter was.
14:38
Speaker 1: Electrocuted when live power lines hit the crane he was
14:41
Speaker 1: working on, leaving him hospitalized for two years. On the
14:44
Speaker 1: same day, one of the film's equipment trucks mysteriously burst
14:48
Speaker 1: into flames, and the film's publicist was in a car
14:51
Speaker 1: accident in the city near where they were shooting. Another
14:54
Speaker 1: construction worker slipped and put a screwdriver through his hand.
14:57
Speaker 1: A sculptor who'd been working on sets for several days,
15:00
Speaker 1: is lost as shit and drove his car through the
15:02
Speaker 1: studio's plaster shop. Another car crashed into one of the
15:05
Speaker 1: sets barriers after the driver and passengers had been involved
15:08
Speaker 1: in a drive by shooting. The same publicist who'd been
15:11
Speaker 1: in the car crash joked that the movie was already
15:14
Speaker 1: contributing to the cause of justice by stopping the shooters,
15:18
Speaker 1: and on March thirteenth, three weeks before filming was finished,
15:22
Speaker 1: a massive storm destroyed several of the film's sets. As
15:27
Speaker 1: the sets were rebuilt and shooting slogged along, prop masters
15:30
Speaker 1: were getting ready for what came next. There was a
15:36
Speaker 1: particular gun that was key to the plot, one that
15:39
Speaker 1: would show up in two different scenes, first and close up,
15:43
Speaker 1: and then in action in a scene that showed the
15:46
Speaker 1: murder of the main character and his fiance. That scene
15:50
Speaker 1: would be one of the last to be shot. For
15:52
Speaker 1: the gun's first appearance, they'd need a revolver that could
15:55
Speaker 1: be shot and close up, and there are two basic
15:58
Speaker 1: things you need from a prop gun. One is the
16:01
Speaker 1: flash and the bang, And for that prop masters used blanks,
16:04
Speaker 1: a bullet cartridge that has primer and gunpowder, but no slug.
16:08
Speaker 1: There's an explosion, but there's nothing to fire. You get
16:11
Speaker 1: the bang and the muzzle flash, but there's no risk
16:14
Speaker 1: to it. But with a revolver, if you're shooting close up,
16:18
Speaker 1: you wanted to look like there are bullets, and the
16:20
Speaker 1: gun blanks don't look like bullets. Since the projectile, the
16:24
Speaker 1: part you actually see is the part that has been removed.
16:28
Speaker 2: For a big budget production.
16:30
Speaker 1: The answer was to have two guns, one with blanks
16:33
Speaker 1: and another with dummy rounds, but by this point the
16:36
Speaker 1: Crow was struggling to come in under budget. As an
16:40
Speaker 1: unidentified member of the crew said afterward, they wanted to
16:43
Speaker 1: make a thirty million dollar movie, but they only wanted.
16:45
Speaker 2: To spend twelve.
16:47
Speaker 1: So the prop masters decided to improvise. They made their
16:51
Speaker 1: own dummy cartridges for the close up out of live rounds,
16:55
Speaker 1: and they took up the gunpowder but left the primer
16:57
Speaker 1: and the cartridge. This is different than what allegedly happened
17:01
Speaker 1: more recently on the set of the film Russ, when
17:04
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin fired a gun that killed the cinematographer and
17:07
Speaker 1: wounded the director. That was apparently a live gun firing
17:11
Speaker 1: off a live round a loaded gun that should never
17:15
Speaker 1: have been on set in the first place. That film
17:18
Speaker 1: had a licensed armorer on set, a requirement that the
17:21
Speaker 1: Motion Picture Association put in place after the filming of
17:25
Speaker 1: this movie that we're talking about.
17:27
Speaker 2: The Crow.
17:28
Speaker 1: But the armorer on Alec Baldwin's movie had only worked
17:32
Speaker 1: on one other film, where she received complaints for firing
17:35
Speaker 1: off a weapon without warning, and the assistant director had
17:38
Speaker 1: been fired from another movie when a firearm went off
17:41
Speaker 1: and injured a crew member. None of those safety precautions
17:44
Speaker 1: were in place on the set of The Crow. The
17:47
Speaker 1: prop gun got used in one scene earlier during shooting
17:51
Speaker 1: when it was fired and the primer sparked. It wasn't
17:55
Speaker 1: enough to fire the dummy bullet, but it was enough
17:57
Speaker 1: to push the bullet out of the cartridge, lodging it
17:59
Speaker 1: in to the barrel of the gun.
18:01
Speaker 2: The rest of the.
18:02
Speaker 1: Dummy bullets were removed. Nobody noticed they were won short.
18:06
Speaker 1: The prop gun was set aside, and a hungry ghost
18:09
Speaker 1: was waiting for the last.
18:11
Speaker 3: Day of shooting.
18:16
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after this. We're, we're, we're.
18:24
Speaker 1: The shoot was almost over. Brandon Lee was coming back
18:28
Speaker 1: to life. The production of The Crow had been grueling.
18:31
Speaker 1: A lot of that had been due to Brandon's own decisions.
18:34
Speaker 1: He'd fallen in love with the script and the comic
18:36
Speaker 1: book that it was based on, and when the character's creator,
18:39
Speaker 1: James O'Barr threatened to walk out over changes to the story,
18:43
Speaker 1: it was Brandon who got the changes mixed.
18:45
Speaker 2: He took Chris.
18:46
Speaker 1: Robinson of the Southern rock band The Black Crows as
18:49
Speaker 1: his visual inspiration for the character he was playing. Robinson
18:53
Speaker 1: was skinnier lankier than Brandon, so Brandon put himself on
18:57
Speaker 1: the strict diet.
18:58
Speaker 2: And workout regiment before production even started.
19:01
Speaker 1: For the first scene they shot, though, when Eric Draven
19:03
Speaker 1: claws out of his own grave, Brandon had bags of
19:06
Speaker 1: ice brought to the set. He plunged himself into a
19:09
Speaker 1: tub of ice naked to get himself mentally prepared. He
19:13
Speaker 1: was playing at corpse and corpses were cold. The character's
19:17
Speaker 1: iconic makeup looked simple, but it had to be in
19:20
Speaker 1: exactly the right place to avoid continuity errors In shooting.
19:24
Speaker 1: At the beginning of each day, which usually met in
19:26
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, makeup artists laid a death
19:29
Speaker 1: mask over Brandon's face with slits cut out where the
19:32
Speaker 1: long streaks of black were filled in, and almost all
19:36
Speaker 1: the shooting was at night in freezing winter temperatures. Brandon
19:41
Speaker 1: was often shirtless and barefoot. The script called for almost
19:44
Speaker 1: constant rain, and the weather mostly complied, and when it didn't,
19:48
Speaker 1: the crew fired up rain makers and flung freezing water
19:51
Speaker 1: at the actors. Brandon would wake up at four in
19:54
Speaker 1: the afternoon to go into makeup, shoot all night, and
19:57
Speaker 1: collapse into bed at nine in the morning. One day
20:00
Speaker 1: off a week, which ideally he spent with his fiance.
20:06
Speaker 1: Brandon Lee and Eliza Hutton met when she was working
20:09
Speaker 1: as an assistant to director Renny Harlan.
20:12
Speaker 2: Brandon flirted with her.
20:13
Speaker 1: During the meeting, and soon the two were a regular item,
20:15
Speaker 1: with Eliza accompanying Brandon on the worldwide.
20:18
Speaker 2: Press tour for Rapid Fire.
20:20
Speaker 1: They moved in together, adopted a cat they named Cato,
20:23
Speaker 1: a nod to Brandon's father, and.
20:25
Speaker 2: They were engaged to be married. After The Crow was
20:27
Speaker 2: finished shooting, Eliza flew.
20:30
Speaker 1: To North Carolina whenever she could to be around Brandon
20:32
Speaker 1: on set. He even got the producers to hire her
20:35
Speaker 1: as an assistant, and by the end of March as
20:38
Speaker 1: shooting moved into its final phase. She was in California
20:42
Speaker 1: planning for the wedding. The Crow was almost finished filming,
20:48
Speaker 1: but one of the best things for Brandon was that
20:50
Speaker 1: he no longer.
20:51
Speaker 2: Had to sit for makeup every day.
20:53
Speaker 1: The final set of scenes to her flashbacks happier scenes
20:57
Speaker 1: of Eric Draven this doomed fiance all shot and which
21:00
Speaker 1: color to contrast the rest of the film's stark rays
21:02
Speaker 1: and reds. That also finished most of the stunt work,
21:06
Speaker 1: which was a relief for Brandon, who was physically exhausted
21:09
Speaker 1: for weeks spent throwing himself off buildings in the rain.
21:13
Speaker 1: One particularly gluing shot involved Brandon's indestructible character being shot
21:18
Speaker 1: over fifty times with semi automatic weapons, and for each
21:23
Speaker 1: bullet that supposedly hit him, a squib fired off a
21:26
Speaker 1: tiny explosive device that made it look like he'd actually
21:30
Speaker 1: been hit. Most of the shooting scenes were done now
21:34
Speaker 1: in the film's weapons expert had already left the set,
21:37
Speaker 1: moving on to another project. In fact, there was only
21:41
Speaker 1: one more scene of violence to shoot, the murder of
21:45
Speaker 1: Eric Draven and his fiance, and after that it was
21:48
Speaker 1: just more scenes of the couple's happy days together, and
21:51
Speaker 1: it would make a great segue from Brandon out of
21:53
Speaker 1: the dark work at the Crow and into the preparations
21:56
Speaker 1: for his real life wedding. He also hoped it would
21:59
Speaker 1: be the last time he evolved in violence on screen
22:01
Speaker 1: for a while.
22:03
Speaker 2: Brandon had embraced the label.
22:04
Speaker 1: Of action star while doing the press junkit for Rapid Fire,
22:07
Speaker 1: but even then he thought of himself as a different
22:10
Speaker 1: kind of action star, not another Jean Claude von Dam
22:13
Speaker 1: or Adolph Lundgren, more like Mel Gibson or Bruce willis
22:17
Speaker 1: a guy who could do shoot him up action on
22:19
Speaker 1: film and then turn around and play an actual, honest
22:22
Speaker 1: to God Hamlin.
22:24
Speaker 2: The Crow was going to put him on the.
22:25
Speaker 1: Map as a serious actor, not just Bruce Lee's air.
22:29
Speaker 1: For his next film, he wanted to leave the punching aside.
22:35
Speaker 1: On the evening of March thirtieth, nineteen ninety one, the
22:38
Speaker 1: set was ready to shoot the murder scene. The scene
22:41
Speaker 1: called for Brandon to enter his apartment carrying a bag
22:44
Speaker 1: of groceries, only to be shot by a thug played
22:47
Speaker 1: by Michael Massey. Brandon was supposed to slump forward so
22:50
Speaker 1: that he could be dragged into the apartment by Massey
22:52
Speaker 1: and the other thugs. Michael Massey was handed the prop gun.
22:56
Speaker 1: The revolver had been loaded with dummy bullets for a
22:59
Speaker 1: close up show earlier in filming, one of which was
23:02
Speaker 1: still lodged in the barrel, and the revolver was now
23:04
Speaker 1: loaded with blanks cartridges with gunpowder and primer, so that
23:07
Speaker 1: when Massy fired the gun there'd be muzzle flash and
23:10
Speaker 1: an appropriate bang. Then Brandon would trigger a squib in
23:14
Speaker 1: the grocery bag, a small explosive to make it look
23:17
Speaker 1: like he'd been shot, But no one knew that all
23:20
Speaker 1: the necessary pieces of a live bullet were actually still
23:23
Speaker 1: lodged in the gun, all lined up, separated by just
23:27
Speaker 1: a hair's breath, the bullet in the barrel and the
23:30
Speaker 1: blank in the chamber. The director called action. The thugs
23:35
Speaker 1: in the apartment were tossing the fiance around the room.
23:38
Speaker 1: Brandon made his entrance, Massy turned on him from a
23:40
Speaker 1: few feet away, leveled the prop gun at his chest
23:44
Speaker 1: and fired. The hammer of the gun struck the primer,
23:47
Speaker 1: igniting the gunpowder in the blank, and the explosive force
23:50
Speaker 1: of the gunpowder dislodged the dummy slug from the barrel
23:53
Speaker 1: of the gun and fired the actual bullet into Brandon
23:57
Speaker 1: Lee's stomach, where it lodged against his spine. The squib
24:01
Speaker 1: in the grocery bag went off and Brandon fell backward
24:05
Speaker 1: out of the camera's frame.
24:07
Speaker 3: The director called cut.
24:11
Speaker 1: He assumed Brandon was just trying something new. Brandon regularly
24:15
Speaker 1: improvised action scenes, experimenting with falls and punch combinations. Not
24:20
Speaker 1: everything worked, but when it did work, it was brilliant.
24:23
Speaker 1: Everyone reset to do the shot again, and that's when
24:26
Speaker 1: they noticed that Brandon Lee was still lying on the ground.
24:30
Speaker 1: That's when they also noticed he was bleeding. Brandon Lee
24:34
Speaker 1: was rushed to the hospital. The doctors worked on her
24:37
Speaker 1: for hours, pumping him with over sixty pints of blood
24:39
Speaker 1: as he hemorrhaged from his shredded intestines. In the California
24:44
Speaker 1: home Brandon shared with his fiance, the phone rang, not
24:48
Speaker 1: unlike the phone that had rung in the Lee family
24:51
Speaker 1: home in Hong Kong back when Brandon was eight. Eliza
24:54
Speaker 1: Hutton got on the first plane to North Carolina. She
24:57
Speaker 1: arrived the next morning, had been moved out of surgery
25:01
Speaker 1: and into an intensive care unit. The doctors had done
25:04
Speaker 1: all they could but he'd lost a staggering amount of
25:07
Speaker 1: blood and the dummy bullet had ripped up his guts.
25:11
Speaker 1: Brandon Lee never regained consciousness. He was pronounced dead the
25:15
Speaker 1: next afternoon. He was two months past his twenty eighth birthday,
25:20
Speaker 1: three weeks short of his wedding. Brandon Lee wasn't a
25:23
Speaker 1: ghost anymore. Brandon Lee was gone in February nineteen ninety three.
25:49
Speaker 1: While The Crow was still shooting, producers worked to put
25:53
Speaker 1: together the soundtrack. They needed bands that matched the dark
25:57
Speaker 1: gothic tone of the movie, The Cure, Rage Against the Machine,
26:01
Speaker 1: Nine Inch Nails, The Jesus, and Mary Chean. But there
26:04
Speaker 1: was one band whose involvement to the filmmakers was the
26:08
Speaker 1: most crucial to the movie. They wanted to get New Order.
26:13
Speaker 1: New Order was formed by members of Joy Division in
26:15
Speaker 1: the wake of singer Ian Curtis's suicide. Joy Division was
26:19
Speaker 1: a huge influence on James O'Barr when he wrote his
26:21
Speaker 1: original comic. He even dedicated the book to Ian Curtis.
26:26
Speaker 1: Chapter titles in the book, like Atmosphere Atrocity Exhibition were
26:30
Speaker 1: direct lifts from Joy Division songs. The cop character in
26:34
Speaker 1: the book and in the movie he was named after
26:36
Speaker 1: one of the band members. So the producers reached out
26:40
Speaker 1: to the Manchester Band and they provided a list of
26:43
Speaker 1: the other bands that had signed on. They sent the
26:45
Speaker 1: film's entire script, They sent the copy of the comic book,
26:49
Speaker 1: and they asked New Order if they would cover a
26:50
Speaker 1: Joy Division song Love Will Tear Us Apart or Dead Souls.
26:56
Speaker 1: The members of New Order read the story of a
26:58
Speaker 1: dead guitarist who comes back to life. It wasn't the
27:01
Speaker 1: story of their own band, not exactly, but something about
27:04
Speaker 1: it felt too close. New Order had played their first
27:08
Speaker 1: show only months after Ian Curtis's death, adopting a new
27:12
Speaker 1: band name because as Joydavision, they swore even before Curtis's
27:16
Speaker 1: death that if any member of the band ever left,
27:18
Speaker 1: they'd stop using the name. It took them years to
27:22
Speaker 1: find their own sound, in years to no longer be
27:24
Speaker 1: haunted by the ghost of their deadly and singer, but
27:27
Speaker 1: not long enough to forget about it all. New Order passed.
27:32
Speaker 1: Nine Inch Nails provided the bit of Joy Division the
27:34
Speaker 1: movie needed with a cover of Dead Souls. The Crow
27:38
Speaker 1: soundtrack album was released along with the movie. More than
27:41
Speaker 1: a year after Brandon Lee's death. They went to the
27:44
Speaker 1: top of the charts. The movie, however, nearly didn't get finished.
27:50
Speaker 1: James O'Barr couldn't bring himself to come back to the set.
27:53
Speaker 1: He blamed himself for Brandon's death. It was like losing
27:57
Speaker 1: his fiance all over again. He wished he'd never and
28:00
Speaker 1: that stupid comic book to begin with. Brandon's fiance and
28:04
Speaker 1: his mother sued the filmmakers for negligence and eventually settled
28:08
Speaker 1: out of court for an undisclosed sum. In addition to
28:11
Speaker 1: the settlement, it became a requirement that all film productions
28:14
Speaker 1: have a licensed armorer on set at all times. There
28:18
Speaker 1: were strict protocols created for the handling of firearms to
28:21
Speaker 1: prevent another tragedy like Brandon's. Paramount got nervous and dropped
28:26
Speaker 1: the movie. With the extremely violent nature of the film,
28:29
Speaker 1: there was no way they could bring it to market.
28:31
Speaker 1: It would be like some gruesome joke, a movie about
28:34
Speaker 1: a corpse played by a dead man. But then Mirrimax
28:39
Speaker 1: swooped in. Miramax was an independent distributor that specialized in
28:44
Speaker 1: art house and foreign films, but with The Crow, they
28:47
Speaker 1: saw a chance to walk the line between superhero blockbuster
28:50
Speaker 1: and dark brooding art film. The studio pumped millions more
28:54
Speaker 1: into the film's budget, most of which went to CGI efforts.
28:58
Speaker 1: To fill in missing pieces of Brandon Lee's performance. A
29:01
Speaker 1: fleet of writers reconfigured the script without James O'Barr's help,
29:05
Speaker 1: arranging the pieces that had already been shot into a
29:07
Speaker 1: coherent story. No footage of Brandon Lee's death was used
29:13
Speaker 1: in the film. The scene in question was rewritten with
29:16
Speaker 1: Brandon's character being stabbed and thrown out a window rather
29:19
Speaker 1: than shot, but rumors would continue that there were versions
29:23
Speaker 1: of the movie where you could see the real life shooting,
29:27
Speaker 1: and when The Crow was finally released, hordes of teenage
29:30
Speaker 1: fans lined up dressed in black, decked out.
29:33
Speaker 3: And make up to see it.
29:34
Speaker 1: It became a slow burn hit, a defining artifact of
29:38
Speaker 1: the nineties goth culture, all driven by ghosts, by James
29:42
Speaker 1: O'Barr's dead fiance, by the murdered couple in Detroit, by
29:46
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee's dead brother, by Brandon Lee's dead father, and
29:52
Speaker 1: by the tragic death of Brandon Nutt. I'm Jake Brennan
29:59
Speaker 1: from This Is Disgrace Slam All right, guys, hope you
30:14
Speaker 1: dug this episode obviously, Brandon Lee left us too soon.
30:17
Speaker 2: So this week's question of the week is it's kind
30:20
Speaker 2: of like that old Billy Joel lyric. Only the good
30:22
Speaker 2: die young? Which young artists? They could be actors, they
30:25
Speaker 2: could be athletes, they could be.
30:26
Speaker 1: Musicians, left us too soon and left a giant hole
30:30
Speaker 1: in your heart. Let us know six one seven nine
30:33
Speaker 1: oh six six six three eight, Send me a voicemail,
30:35
Speaker 1: lead me a text, hit me up.
30:37
Speaker 2: And you might hear your own voice.
30:38
Speaker 1: Or your own text on the next after party episode.
30:41
Speaker 1: You can also hit me at Disgrace Slam pod on Instagram,
30:44
Speaker 1: X and Facebook. Leave a review for the show on
30:46
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts for Spotify, Win some free merch.
30:49
Speaker 2: All right, here come some credits.
30:52
Speaker 1: Disgrace Slam was created by Yours Truly and is produced
30:54
Speaker 1: in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can
30:58
Speaker 1: be found on the show notes page disgracelampod dot com.
31:02
Speaker 1: If you're listening as a Disgracelan All Access member, thank.
31:05
Speaker 2: You for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.
31:07
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31:10
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Speaker 1: and Facebook at disgracelampod and on YouTube at YouTube dot
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Speaker 1: com slash at disgracelampod Rock a roll up.
31:47
Speaker 3: He then