Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview

Last updated

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview
Directed byMichael Rothery
Produced byElsa Franklin
Starring Bruce Lee
Pierre Berton
Release date
  • 2 November 1994 (1994-11-02)
Running time
25 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview is the name given to the 9 December 1971 edition of The Pierre Berton Show , which featured martial artist/actor Bruce Lee in his only English speaking television interview. [1] Its title is derived from its status; it was presumed lost for several years until its rediscovery and airing on 2 November 1994. Over the course of the interview, which was filmed in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee and Pierre Berton discuss Lee's career, various aspects of martial arts philosophy and the inherent problems faced by an Asian in pursuing stardom in Hollywood. [2] A review of the interview by Bill Stockey said that Bruce Lee's "human side is exposed and he is portrayed as more approachable". [3]

Contents

Interview summary

In the first few minutes of the interview, Bruce Lee asserts that he speaks Cantonese and reveals that he does not actually speak Mandarin despite his successes starring in many Mandarin movies. He discloses the fact that he just mouths the words while they shoot the Mandarin film, but someone else's voice is played over his for when the final movie is released.

Berton asks about Bruce Lee's career in terms of his shift from martial arts to his role as an actor in various movies, to which Lee says that he never expected that his love of martial art would lead to him becoming an actor in movies. Bruce Lee goes further into his martial arts career and talks about how it shaped him into the person he has become (as an actor, martial artist, and human being). Lee also asserts that he has never had a stunt double in any movie that he has acted in.

Berton then questions him about his acting career and the martial arts school that he set in up in Hollywood. Bruce Lee explains that he set up the school to teach martial arts like judo, karate, and Chinese boxing to people like James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, and James Coburn in order to help them to learn how to express their feelings (e.g. anger, determination, pride or happiness) through movements of the body. Lee says that the school was not set up to train people for acting roles, but rather to teach the art of expressing the human body in combated form (he also demonstrates the different types of combat movements as he speaks).

Lee also talks about his future career in Hollywood and discusses which series he is going to be in. He talks about the differences in Western and Eastern media that he noticed, such as the likelihood of violence occurring more often in Western films in day-to-day activities. When talking about Western media, he says that there is a lack of the true oriental person being portrayed in the media i.e. there are constant depictions of stereotypes (e.g. pigtails, slim eyes) in Western media.

Berton asks about the problems he has faced as an Asian in Western society in terms of fears of not being accepted by Western audiences, and Lee says it is not a strange occurrence to be unaccepted because it is even seen as a business risk for most film producers. This is because of the idea that the general audience will perceive the actor as foreign. He explains that it is the same in Asia when a foreigner is seen in the media. He also says that when he does Chinese films, he tries not to act as Western as he normally would because he wouldn't want to be perceived as different from other Chinese people. However, when he goes back to the United States, it is the other way around because he is perceived as an exotic person so the film producers try to get him to do things for the sake of being exotic or foreign.

Berton also asks if Lee considers himself American or Chinese to which he explains that he would like to think of himself as a human being. He says:

"You know what I think of myself? As a human being, because I mean I don't want to be like as Confucius say, but under the sky, under the heavens, there is but one family. It just so happens that people are different." [4]

Related Research Articles

<i>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon</i> 2000 film by Ang Lee

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia martial arts film directed by Ang Lee and written for the screen by Wang Hui-ling, James Schamus, and Tsai Kuo-jung. The film stars Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, and Chang Chen. It is based on the Chinese novel of the same name, serialized between 1941 and 1942 by Wang Dulu, the fourth part of his Crane-Iron_Series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martial arts film</span> Film genre

Martial arts films are a subgenre of action films that feature martial arts combat between characters. These combats are usually the films' primary appeal and entertainment value, and often are a method of storytelling and character expression and development. Martial arts are frequently featured in training scenes and other sequences in addition to fights. Martial arts films commonly include hand-to-hand combat along with other types of action, such as stuntwork, chases, and gunfights. Sub-genres of martial arts films include kung fu films, wuxia, karate films, and martial arts action comedy films, while related genres include gun fu, jidaigeki and samurai films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Lee</span> Hong Kong-American martial artist and actor (1940–1973)

Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong-American martial artist and actor. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines. Credited with helping popularize martial arts films in the 1970s, Lee is considered by some commentators and martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West. He is credited with promoting Hong Kong action cinema and helping to change the way Chinese people were presented in American films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jackie Chan</span> Hong Kong actor and martial artist (born 1954)

Fang Shilong, known professionally as Jackie Chan, is a Hong Kong actor, director, writer, producer, martial artist, and stuntman known for his slapstick acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, and innovative stunts, which he typically performs himself. Before entering the film industry, he was one of the Seven Little Fortunes from the China Drama Academy at the Peking Opera School, where he studied acrobatics, martial arts, and acting. Chan has been acting since the 1960s, performing in more than 150 films. He holds the Guinness World Record for "Most Stunts by a Living Actor", and is regarded as one of the most iconic and influential martial artists in the history of cinema.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brandon Lee</span> American actor and martial artist (1965–1993)

Brandon Bruce Lee was an American actor. Establishing himself as a rising action star in the early 1990s, he landed what was to be his breakthrough role as Eric Draven in the supernatural superhero film The Crow (1994). However, Lee's career and life were cut short by his accidental death during the film's production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Inosanto</span> Filipino-American martial arts instructor

Dan Inosanto is a Filipino-American martial arts instructor and actor. Inosanto holds Instructor or black belt level ranks in several martial arts. He has studied traditional Okinawan karate, Judo, Jujutsu, Kenpo, Shoot wrestling, Systema, Filipino martial arts, and Jeet Kune Do. He was one of three people who were appointed to teach at one of the three Jun Fan Gung Fu institutes under Bruce Lee, the other two being Taky Kimura and James Yimm Lee. After Bruce Lee's death, Inosanto became the principal spokesperson and historian for Jeet Kune Do.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cinema of Hong Kong</span>

The cinema of Hong Kong is one of the three major threads in the history of Chinese-language cinema, alongside the cinema of China and the cinema of Taiwan. As a former British colony, Hong Kong had a greater degree of political and economic freedom than mainland China and Taiwan, and developed into a filmmaking hub for the Chinese-speaking world.

Kung Fu is an American action-adventure martial arts Western drama television series starring David Carradine. The series follows the adventures of Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin monk who travels through the American Old West, armed only with his spiritual training and his skill in martial arts, as he seeks Danny Caine, his half-brother.

<i>Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story</i> 1993 film by Rob Cohen

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is a 1993 American biographical martial arts drama film directed by Rob Cohen. The film stars Jason Scott Lee, with a supporting cast including Lauren Holly, Nancy Kwan, and Robert Wagner. The film follows the life of actor and martial artist Bruce Lee (Jason) from his relocation to the United States from Hong Kong to his career as a martial arts teacher, and then as a television and film actor. It also focuses on the relationship between Bruce and his wife Linda Lee Cadwell, and the racism to which Bruce was subjected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jason Scott Lee</span> American actor and martial artist

Jason Scott Lee is an American actor and martial artist. He played Mowgli in Disney's 1994 live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book and Bruce Lee in the 1993 martial arts film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

Chopsocky is a colloquial term for martial arts films and kung fu films made primarily by Hong Kong action cinema between the late 1960s and early 1980s. The term was coined by the American motion picture trade magazine Variety following the explosion of films in the genre released in 1973 in the U.S. after the success of Five Fingers of Death. The word is a play on chop suey, combining "chop" and "sock".

Bruce Li is a Taiwanese martial artist and actor who starred in martial arts films from the Bruceploitation movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donnie Yen</span> Hong Kong actor and martial artist (born 1963)

Donnie Yen Chi-tan is a Hong Kong actor, filmmaker, martial artist, and action director best known for his martial arts films. He is the recipient of various accolades, including three Golden Horse Awards and five Hong Kong Film Awards. He is one of the highest paid actors in Asia.

Bruceploitation is an exploitation film subgenre that emerged after the death of martial arts film star Bruce Lee in 1973, during which time filmmakers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea cast Bruce Lee look-alike actors ("Lee-alikes") to star in imitation martial arts films, in order to exploit Lee's sudden international popularity. Bruce Lee look-alike characters also commonly appear in other media, including anime, comic books, manga, and video games.

Hong Kong action cinema is the principal source of the Hong Kong film industry's global fame. Action films from Hong Kong have roots in Chinese and Hong Kong cultures including Chinese opera, storytelling and aesthetic traditions, which Hong Kong filmmakers combined with elements from Hollywood and Japanese cinema along with new action choreography and filmmaking techniques, to create a culturally distinctive form that went on to have wide transcultural appeal. In turn, Hollywood action films have been heavily influenced by Hong Kong genre conventions, from the 1970s onwards.

Kung fu film is a subgenre of martial arts films and Hong Kong action cinema set in the contemporary period and featuring realistic martial arts. It lacks the fantasy elements seen in wuxia, a related martial arts genre that uses historical settings based on ancient China. Swordplay is also less common in kung-fu films than in wuxia and fighting is done through unarmed combat.

Portrayals of East Asians in American film and theatre has been a subject of controversy. These portrayals have frequently reflected an ethnocentric perception of East Asians rather than realistic and authentic depictions of East Asian cultures, colors, customs, and behaviors.

<i>Ip Man</i> (film) 2008 Hong Kong film directed by Wilson Yip

Ip Man is a 2008 Hong Kong biographical martial arts film based on the life of Ip Man, a grandmaster of the martial art Wing Chun and teacher of martial artist legend Bruce Lee. The film focuses on events in Ip's life that supposedly took place in the city of Foshan during the Sino-Japanese War. The film was directed by Wilson Yip, and stars Donnie Yen as the titual character, with martial arts choreography by Sammo Hung. The film co-stars Simon Yam, Lynn Hung, Lam Ka-tung, Xing Yu, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, and Tenma Shibuya. The film was a co-production between China and Hong Kong, and was the last film to be distributed by Mandarin Films.

Martial artist and actor Bruce Lee has been subject to extensive media coverage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shang-Chi (Marvel Cinematic Universe)</span> Character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Xu Shang-Chi is a fictional character portrayed by Simu Liu in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) multimedia franchise, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. In the franchise, Shang-Chi is the son of Ying Li and Wenwu, the founder and first leader of the Ten Rings terrorist organization. Trained to be a highly skilled martial artist and assassin by his father, alongside his sister Xialing, Shang-Chi left the Ten Rings for a normal life in San Francisco, only to be drawn back into the world he left behind when Wenwu seeks him out. After traveling to his mother's home of Ta Lo and confronting his father, Shang-Chi is bequeathed Wenwu's ten rings.

References

  1. ↑ Chan, B. (2013). Live Show to Mark 40th Year of Bruce Lee’s Death. Retrieved from https://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Showbiz/Story/A1Story20130421-417463.html
  2. ↑ "'We're the geeks, the prostitutes': Asian American actors on Hollywood's barriers". the Guardian. 11 April 2017.
  3. ↑ Stockey, Bill. "Video Reviews – Bruce Lee: The Lost Interviews with Pierre Burton". Library Journal, Vol.121(6), 1996, pp.132. EBSCOHost.
  4. ↑ "Confucius Quotes (Author of The Analects)". www.goodreads.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.