I Am Bruce Lee Page #10

"We wanna do a film with you and we

wanna do it with Warner Bros. " Boom.

It was a time

when Bruce had so much opportunity

and he was so thrilled

to co-produce Enter the Dragon.

He said, "This is my opening

back into Hollywood. "

They were all there in Hong Kong,

the producers,

Fred Weintraub, Paul Heller.

They're ready to film, have all this

crew, Western crew, Chinese crew,

which was

a very difficult situation in itself,

and sets are built,

and Bruce won't come to work.

He wants to put a little more Chinese

philosophy that fits in with the story.

Bruce knew

what he wanted Dragon to be,

but had problems with folks

who didn't share his vision.

And he was adamant

he was not going to the set.

It was kind of hard around our house

because was Bruce was so frustrated.

He could lose his temper.

If he didn't like anything you did,

he would tell you.

Linda was that fabulous wife.

She knew how to talk to him

and counsel him.

I was talking behind the scenes

to Fred and Paul and the other people,

saying, "You need to listen to what

he has to say because he is right. "

He was fighting for his career.

It was a coming together, and, yes,

Bruce did get things in that film.

Let me think.

Don't think. Feel.

And they're all better off,

the world is better off,

for the stand that he took that time.

Action.

Enter the Dragon

was Hollywood's first dipping its toe

into the water of the martial art genre.

Bruce Lee is explosive in a way

that no one had seen before.

The opening scene, Bruce Lee basically

put the mixed martial arts in his film.

Fighting in the kenpo gloves.

The mixed martial arts gloves

with the open fingers.

And he used arm bars.

There's not a lot of charisma

in a straight arm bar.

He was the man.

When he stomps out Bob Wall

and kills him...

you see a lot of complex emotions

all going on at once.

I haven't seen any actor

in an action film

match all those levels and nuances

in the middle of a fight scene.

The mirror scene was just, you know,

when he's walking around

and he's cut up and all of a sudden

he hears his master in his head

saying if you destroy the image...

Destroy the image

and you will break the enemy.

You defeat the enemy,

he was just... It had a tension

that to me resonates because

it's cutting through all illusions.

This is the moment

that he was waiting for.

This was Bruce Lee's film in Hollywood.

Bruce was in a studio

doing dubbing for Enter the Dragon

and he went to the restroom

and he collapsed.

I was called and came to the hospital.

And he was unconscious

and I was talking to him,

and he told me later

that he was like in the bottom of a well

and he could hear me calling him,

"Come back, come back. "

And he did recover from that.

It was a cerebral oedema,

a pressing of fluid on the brain,

but they never found the cause of it.

Ted Wong used to always tell me,

"Bruce Lee was never afraid of anything,

except one thing,

and that's getting older. "

He came to the United States

and had a complete physical

and they pronounced him

in perfect health

with the body of an 18-year-old.

The doctors were very reassuring.

He had just had a collapse.

He didn't have frequent headaches.

Of course, they didn't have MRls then

to see what his brain tissue

was looking like.

I had seen him in June.

He told me that he'd had an OK from UCLA

that his body was fit.

He was not worried about himself

and he was taking good care of himself.

Bruce Lee faces a real dilemma.

He's on the verge of stardom

in the United States,

but he's just achieved superstardom

as a film actor here in Hong Kong.

So what does he chose,

the East or the West?

It's the kind of problem most

budding movie actors would welcome.

I was called and told by Raymond Chow,

"You should get to the hospital. "

"They're taking Bruce to the hospital. "

And I was there

way before Bruce got there.

So eventually the ambulance arrived.

It took a long time.

Everything took too long a time.

He got to the hospital

and I saw him laying there

and I saw them do a big injection

of something right into his heart.

And I remember turning to a medical

person standing there and saying...

I couldn't say, "Is he dead?"

I said, "Is he alive?

And they shook their heads

and said, "No. "

And that was just unbelievable.

It must be a mistake,

you know, it's not real.

What can I say? It was.

You can see how

when he passed away, you know, how...

how difficult that was and, you know,

how difficult that was for my dad.

It's the first time

I saw my dad ever cry.

Yeah, that's true.

It was really rough.

Well, yeah.

I said, "Dan, is it true?

Ls Bruce Lee dead?"

"I got a lot of calls. "

And he says, "Yeah, Rich. "

Linda called him from Hong Kong,

and he was in a trance on his own

and talking about Bruce Lee.

He was so in grief,

so in mourning about Bruce's death.

He was just really uniquely different

from everybody else.

My memories,

they're more like glimpses.

But I remember primarily

the funeral in Hong Kong,

because it was so massive,

and sort of being dragged through that,

because it was chaotic.

And I remember my dad's mom

taking us to get candy

and feeling really happy about that.

I was in class, actually,

when Bruce Lee died.

There were guys in there

crying, sobbing, just...

I mean, Bruce Lee, you know...

He was just... he was it.

Will you tell me what Teacher died of?

Forensic scientists from around

the world came up with the conclusion

that he had had

a hypersensitive reaction

to this medication

that he had been given for a headache

and that that had caused

the fluid on his brain

and that he had succumbed to that.

It's still something

that people cannot believe.

He was well. There was nothing wrong.

How could a healthy man die?

And then there's all this stuff about,

you know, how he died,

the sinister way in which he died.

He had an aneurysm

or the death hands got him

or, you know...

He was murdered.

They gave him the dim mak,

they gave him a death touch.

There's absolutely positively

something a little shady

about the way that it all went down.

How he could pass away at that age,

you know, but it does happen,

so I've learned to cope with it

and deal with it.

But it always puzzled me.

The fact that my family is cursed

and the very sad and tragic circumstance

that my brother died,

those are sort of the themes

that pop up.

They wrote so many stupid stories, the

tong killing him and all that bullshit,

and he died of drugs,

that sold magazines.

He died in Betty Ting Pei's apartment,

so there's no denying that.

The decision was made by the producers

to say that he had died at home.

When that news got out

that he had not died at home,

the tabloid press went crazy.

But my mom knew he had been

at a meeting and doing his films.

She was dealing with his death

and taking care of her kids,

and all of that gossip

was just the tabloid press

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