I Am Bruce Lee Page #9

listen to any ideas Bruce had.

The bottom line is Bruce still

didn't feel the freedom that he wanted.

He said to Raymond Chow,

"I want to make this film,

The Way of the Dragon. "

I want to write it, I want

to produce it, I want to direct it

and I can do this and act in it.

It's really a simple plot

of a country boy

going to a place

where he cannot speak the language

but somehow he came out on top.

He goes to Italy

and the mafia can't beat him,

so they call America

and America sends over Colt.

We must call America for Colt.

- Is this Colt good?

- Is Colt good?

And Colt is Chuck Norris.

Bruce Lee is fighting a real American,

you know.

He's strawberry blond.

He's got hair all over his body.

In fact, he uses that hair against him.

So when he fought Chuck Norris...

He represented all people of colour

fighting the Western oppressor.

If you're a non-white viewer,

this is a big deal.

The little guy is beating

the best that America can provide.

I can tell you,

at the Fox Theatre in St Louis,

which was 100 percent all black,

we cheered for him.

Some of us were

more politically aware than others,

but everyone got the joke.

He was very appealing to anybody

who's ever been oppressed

because of ethnic reasons

or other reason.

That time when Bruce was on the rise, we

were looking for countercultural heroes

to fight the establishment.

It's 40 years. Wouldn't have

people forgotten him by now?

No, I think a lot of cultures have

picked him up as sort of their hero.

You had Muhammad Ali. You had

Malcolm X. You had the Black Panthers.

You had a lot of radicalism going on.

Bruce Lee represented

that same kind of radicalism.

Bruce Lee emerges when America

is having a very bad time in Vietnam

and cannot beat the Viet Cong,

these little yellow guys in pyjamas,

so Bruce Lee speaks to that.

Anywhere you go, everybody is

about Bruce Lee and rallies behind him.

He's the underdog.

You don't have to

start shouting political declarations

to be culturally

and politically significant.

That Colosseum fight was very accurate.

Taking nothing away from Chuck Norris,

but I think Bruce Lee

would be victorious.

That fight scene gave Chuck Norris

pretty much a career.

If they said Bruce

could have beat Chuck Norris,

I'd say, "How much do you wanna bet?"

I got a fistful of green backs

in my pocket.

Chuck got chucked out

right there in that movie.

That's one of my favourites. Boom.

Guillotine choke in the '70s. Hello.

That's being ahead of your time.

When Bruce started doing the film

Way of the Dragon

and he was this huge star on the rise,

things were changing.

I think he started having a hard time

trusting people around him.

You bastard!

Fame is a killer, literally.

Put money on top of that.

Suddenly you distrust people's motives,

for very good reason.

He had told me that he doesn't know

who his friends were.

He says he doesn't know who to trust.

It was eye-opening

to know what the price of fame was.

You can't go to school for it.

You deal with it on a day-to-day basis.

Fame took over my mind.

It almost destroyed my career,

my family.

I was caught up in my own hype.

I thought the only way

to save myself from myself

was to do something

where I could get hit and hit back.

And I thought I'd made a healthy choice

because it was better than a whisky

bottle or, you know, whatever the f***.

It got to the point

where he could hardly go out of

the house without people following him.

He craved on sort of a soul level

to be a little bit more peaceful.

Well, you can't have a normal life

or make normal mistakes

because everybody's constantly,

you know, looking in.

And it was just like a smorgasbord.

He could have had ten at a time

if he even remotely wanted to.

The word superstar really turned me off

and I'll tell you why.

Because the word star, man,

it's an illusion.

It's something

what the public calls you.

I really loved... I might get

a lot of crap for this,

but Game of Death,

and to have like no way is the way.

He's fighting each opponent that brings

a different problem to the table

and he's gotta adapt.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar came to Hong Kong

to visit and Bruce had this great idea.

"Let's do a scene together. It'll be

great, a great fighting sequence. "

I'd speak to Kareem about his sessions

with Bruce and he said,

"I sparred with him

and like he was just so quick. "

"I'd turn this way

and then he's not there. "

"He's kicking you

in the back of the head. "

"Then I turn this way

and he's over here. "

He said he couldn't catch him. There was

just no way he could lock in on him.

He was just like a rabbit.

I really love the idea of the levels

and getting to the next level,

and fighting different styles.

As a dancer who battled other dancers,

that was like the whole mentality.

And on the third level, it's supposed to

be a person who is trained in weaponry,

and so he chose me to do the part.

Dan Inosanto, being one of the freshest

Filipinos on the planet,

was actually the person that brought

the nunchucks to Bruce Lee.

to Bruce Lee.

And at the time he thought

this was a worthless piece of junk.

When he moved into the LA area,

I taught him how to use it.

He said, "I'm gonna use this

on The Green Hornet. "

Nunchucks was always

some mother's broom getting sacrificed,

which would then turn into

someone's groin being sacrificed.

In three months he was swinging it like

he had been doing it for a lifetime.

I was living in Miami

when they came out.

Every gangster in town had nunchucks,

and couldn't use 'em worth a sh*t.

I would spend hours whipping 'em around

and trying to learn the moves,

trying to copy how he'd have it

under his shoulder right here

and have the hand out.

In a short time I think

almost every child is using this.

It became like a household product.

It's outlawed now in California.

After I watched this movie,

I used to use that.

But I always hit my elbow.

Whaaa!

Right out of the gate I swung real hard

and I even made the Bruce Lee noise.

I went, "Whoo!" and I hit my head

and there was this big nut

that came out maybe an inch.

And after that

I stopped making the noise

and I stopped playing

with the nunchucks.

I tried to make my parents buy me

some real ones. Thank God they didn't.

I'm nunchucking,

I'm busting myself all in the head.

I had the rubber ones, so I'm good.

I got into it because I stopped carrying

a gun. I carried a gun for years.

I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I think I went into therapy and I

thought, "Let me carry something else. "

This one particularly

is sentimental for me.

These are the same nunchucks

that we used in The Game of Death.

He gave me these to keep in the house.

It brings out

really fond memories for me.

Fred Weintraub,

who was an executive at Warner Bros,

comes to visit him in Hong Kong

on the set of Game of Death,

says, "Hey, man,

we've seen what you can do. "

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