I Am Bruce Lee

If someone says, "I can't watch

a Bruce Lee film," I can't talk to 'em.

Bruce Lee is a worldwide fighting icon.

He was a 130-something-pound

lethal weapon.

Bruce and his fighting style

changed the game.

In the beginning I had no intention

that what I was practising,

and what I am still practising now,

would lead to this.

Bruce Lee, Bob Dylan, Ali,

Jay-Z, Tiger, Kobe, Jordan,

they all have the same spirit.

No stunt coordinator coordinated

his sh*t. He did it himself.

The guy you see in Bruce's films

is the way Bruce was in person.

He could lose his temper.

Bruce Lee is my idol. Wha-aa!

He was directing, writing, acting.

I don't even look at him

as being Asian. He's my idol.

When you think of Bruce Lee, you don't

think about the Asian karate guy.

You think about a legacy.

The moves that he could do,

you were wondering

if they were speeding up the camera.

Bruce Lee was like the superhero

of the Asian community.

You had Muhammad Ali.

You had Malcolm X.

Bruce Lee represented

that same kind of radicalism.

Technically brilliant choreography.

You get mysticism, hyper-masculinity.

This guy is like, bang!

He's put balls on Chinese men.

There's some cool stuff.

You're like, "Wow.

That supercool guy is my dad. "

- There'll never be another Bruce Lee.

- Baby, here I am, man.

How does a small Chinese guy become

the greatest martial artist of all time?

Production 263-05-224-10.

Test X1, take 1.

Bruce,

just look right into the camera

and tell us your name,

your age and where you were born.

My last name is Lee, Bruce Lee.

I was born in San Francisco

in 1940. I'm 24 right now.

There was controversy about me

taking him back to the United States.

But he loved his time that he lived

in Seattle before all of this.

It was important for my children

to know where their father was.

I just intimately just started crying.

I think I literally cried after

the funeral all the way from Seattle,

all the way to the California border,

all the way up to Sacramento.

That was a very difficult time

to leave Hong Kong

and... take their favourite son away.

Bruce's childhood

is interesting to look at

from the standpoint

of where he ended up.

First of all, Hong Kong

in the early '40s

was occupied by Japan

during World War ll,

and this had an influence on Bruce.

It was very important to him as a child

from the get-go to be self-sufficient,

and in doing that, you have to shoulder

a lot of personal responsibility.

There's bad blood historically

between China and Hong Kong and Japan.

His mother used to tell me how Bruce

would hang over the side of the balcony

and shake his fist at the Japanese

planes coming to land in Hong Kong.

If anyone said a word against

the Chinese, he would rebel.

And you work

in motion pictures in Hong Kong?

Yes, since I was around six years old.

Bruce became a child actor

under his father's influence,

his father being an actor

in the Chinese opera

and then in Cantonese films as well.

Tell the crew what time

they shoot the pictures in Hong Kong.

Well, it's mostly in the morning

because it's kind of noisy in Hong Kong,

you know,

around three million people there,

so every time when you have a picture,

it's mostly, say, around

A lot of people

don't touch on this,

but he was the biggest childhood star

in Hong Kong.

He made 20, 20-something movies

as a child star.

He was like

the Macaulay Culkin of that era.

And then you have the fact that

Hong Kong was governed by the British.

They targeted the British.

You are crazy.

But there's a lot of competition

between the British people living there

and the Chinese living there.

He's also part Caucasian.

I think he saw

a lot of adversity racially,

not only around him but within himself.

And he had run-ins with English

schoolboys and that kind of thing,

so there was always

that feeling of resentment

of others dictating his future.

Then, of course, when he was 13,

he went to study with Yip Man.

As human beings, fighting's in our DNA.

We get it and we like it.

Yip Man trained Bruce in wing chun,

and Yip Man

was a fabulous kung fu master.

Bruce had many run-ins

with the law

and other teenagers in Hong Kong,

and he had fights.

He loved the street fights. He loved

other people who can street-fight.

Bruce's style

is made for street survival.

He grew up fighting fights

in Hong Kong on the rooftop.

Bruce had some of the films, 8mm,

that he used to show us,

where they get

into the old traditional stance

and one guy would come in

and throw a couple of punches

and the other guy would back up

and fall down over the plant pot.

There were two clans usually,

the choy li fut clan

and the wing chun clan

by Yip Man and his students,

and they would have battles.

Although this stuff about the choy

li fut and wing chun rooftop fights

is the stuff of legend, it is true.

I was in Hong Kong.

The sentiment, the animosity between

wing chun and choy li fut still exists.

So Yip Man

was a great influence on Bruce

and leaned him in the direction

of philosophy.

Yip Man would not be a legend

without Bruce Lee.

Wing chun was

a very, very minor martial art style,

and now it's global,

and that's all because of Bruce Lee.

Ultimately, martial art means

honestly expressing yourself.

Now, it is very difficult to do.

A lot of that warrior spirit,

to me, it's really honourable.

It's really pure.

It breaks through to every culture,

every language, every colour.

It's all about getting respect back,

you know.

If you're gonna hurt me, you're gonna

have to earn it, motherf***er.

I was the youngest

of three boys.

I got obsessed

with Bruce Lee and martial arts.

I wanted to kick my brothers' asses

and prove my worthiness.

When a good fight breaks out,

you can't help but be excited.

You can't help but show emotion.

It took a while, but as many times

as each of my brothers beat me up,

each one of them got one ass-kicking

from me and that was it.

I didn't do so well talking sh*t back,

so I don't see the point in talking

about it. Let's just go there.

But then you feel bad and embarrassed

afterwards, "That was childish. "

"I could have handled that better. "

But you also feel good.

If you couldn't get laid,

you got in a fight.

Let me punch this ugly motherf***er.

In Youngstown.

It was a nice place to live.

Fighting has taken over

my mind and my being.

It's not what I do. It's who I am.

My father told me fighters are born,

not made. Bruce Lee was a born fighter.

When you do punch,

now I'm leaning forward a little bit,

hoping not to hurt any camera angle.

I mean, you gotta put the whole hip

into it and snap it

and get all your energy in there,

and make this into a weapon.

When Bruce Lee was a young boy,

maybe 13 or 14, training in wing chun,

they found out that Bruce Lee

had Caucasian blood.

- I believe it's one fourth German.

- Well?

The other students said he shouldn't

be allowed to learn wing chun

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