# Resolved: Bruce Lee's Extraordinary Genius Was Utterly Wasted in His 1970s Movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 7, 2023, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843 "2023-01-07T17:28:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2023, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/21 "2023-02-01T15:49:07Z")
IMHO I disagree with the ‘utterly wasted’ premise of the OP. While the movies taken as a whole are generally cheap and poorly produced with respect to editing, sets, directing, etc, Bruce Lee himself in those movies and his influence on the fight choreography and fight editing was revolutionary and the rest of HK cinema and mainstream Hollywood didn’t start catching up until the 80s when we started seeing Yuen Woo Ping rewrite the rules tropes of fight choreography. Bruce was the major reason why the established Shaw-style staccato “punch-pause-kick-pause-scowl-pause-punch-pause” looks so fake and silly in retrospect, and he revolutionized how a fight on film could approach “realism” more accurately and increase audience immersion and tension. So, yeah, the whole movies are corny, but Bruce changed the cinematic world with those movies and his destruction of the established cinema tropes of the time. –I was also inspired by Bruce to take up martial arts studies and it has been a wonderful journey. I was a student under one of Bruce’s students for a couple of years as well, huge fun learning experience and got to listen to many Bruce stories passed down to us. ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2023, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/22 "2023-02-04T19:43:32Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I saw some MA movie where a guy climbs up a flag pole like a flag - just by his hands, and rigidly perpendicular to the pole. It was so ridiculous I quit watching., > > Was that any of the films being discussed here? Sorry. Not being discussed in this thread. I vaguely recall such a scene and suspect it may be one of Jackie Chan’s _Condor_ pieces – and I think he’s really doing that and in the bloopers at the end of the movie there is probably footage of him trying several times and failing. FWIW Chan was an extra in one of the underground fight scenes in EtD but that’s as close as he gets to being part of this thread. –G! ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2023, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/23 "2023-02-15T22:11:42Z")
Bumping to say I watched ESPNs 30 for 30 “Be Water”. It really humanized Lee for me and made him real, not some mythical figure. He seemed like someone you could easily be friends with. Whjat a shame he died so young. Funny factoid that he got the part on GH due to Jay Sebring, the “hairdresser to the stars”, who saw him and recommended him to the producers. They had Lee’s screen test. Man he was fast! ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2023, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/24 "2023-02-16T00:42:18Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Funny factoid that he got the part on GH due to Jay Sebring, the “hairdresser to the stars”, who saw him and recommended him to the producers. And in case the name isn’t well known, Sebring was one of the victims of the Charles Manson murders, as he was a friend of Sharon Tate who was speaking with her when the killers arrived. In fact, when the killers ordered Tate to lay down on her stomach, Sebring tried to protect her since she was quite pregnant. This led to to Tex Watson shooting Sebring dead with a handgun. At the scene, cops would later find a pair of glasses. Bruce Lee mentioned to Roman Polanski (Tate’s widower) a short time later that he had lost his glasses. This led Polanski to initially suspect that Lee was involved with the murder. > **[Here’s why Roman Polanski thought Bruce Lee killed Sharon Tate](https://nypost.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-roman-polanski-thought-bruce-lee-killed-sharon-tate/)** > > In 1969, Bruce Lee — made famous a few years before for the TV show “The Green Hornet” — was Hollywood’s martial-arts instructor of choice. Roman Polanski, Steve McQueen and celebrity hairdresser J… ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2023, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/25 "2023-02-16T05:23:09Z")
And today I learned that Bruce Lee was nearsighted. ---
**Author:** ![Caribbean\_cruiser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/caribbean_cruiser/32/9349_2.png) [@Caribbean\_cruiser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caribbean_cruiser)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/26 "2023-04-04T17:17:29Z")
Supposedly, Bruce Lee was _so_ fast that film directors actually encouraged him to slow down his punches and kicks because the low frame rate of filming caused too much blurring. Movie viewers, they surmised, wanted to actually see him connect with a villain. Yes, I know: That sounds like an urban legend. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/27 "2023-04-04T17:49:02Z")
It’s been decades since I saw these movies. I will accept your view that the movies do not optimally portray Lee’s acumen. And that there is some validity to comparing Bruce and Arnold. There are too many variables to say their careers could have been similar. But maybe one could say what Lee’s movies, though imperfect, did do. They popularized martial arts, made Lee famous outside of the circles where he was already well known, popularized his philosophy, presumably still made money and still made Lee a perpetually cool dude and household name. Not too shabby for “schlock”. How many films from that era featuring Asian actors could the average person name? And how many old films might benefit from modern techniques and technology? ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2024, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/28 "2024-03-14T04:44:33Z")
> [@Caribbean\_cruiser](#): > > QUOTE: “The fact is, though, David Carradine was a good actor from a family of good and great actors[7] and, in fact, he had done substantial television work (including many Westerns) before trying out for the TV series. His lack of martial arts skill was actually leveraged by the producers.” [./quote] > > Grestarian, this is one of the most generous comments re: Carradine and the GH producers I’ve ever run across. . . Of course, that isn’t how Hollywood did things back then. [/quote] > > Cc, I think you may have missed the point I was trying to make. To be fair, I was trying to keep it subtle, but I’ll be more explicit this time: The way Hollywood did things back then (and still does in many cases, now) is to allow extra ‘qualification points’ to family members of established industry insiders. Again, I’ll note that the Carradine, Baldwin, Barrymore, and other families run strong in the acting world. John and Keith Carradine were legendary actors with tremendous range; David was quite a versatile musician and even a good actor, but had the misfortune of getting typecast by the Kung Fu television show; he was wise to walk away when he saw the story ideas were beginning to repeat, but even that wasn’t fast enough. He did, in fact, rack up quite a variety of roles in various television, stage, and movie productions. Some of those parodied his Kwai Chiang character, some were typecasts, some completely ignored it. That’s the acting world. > > There was an interview with Brandon Lee in which he was asked if he felt he was carrying on his father’s legacy. He noted that Bruce’s legacy and intentions were about more than bringing martial arts to the West – by the mid-1960s there was already a lot of Karate and Judo (from Elvis Presley to James Bond and beyond) and martial arts from other countries, as well. Since you cite Dragon: the Bruce Lee Story, you’d remember that Bruce’s desire was to ‘show people the beauty of Chinese culture’ beyond just local restaurants and laundries. To that end, the Kung Fu show helped a lot of Asian actors and writers initiate and/or continue their acting careers in roles better than butlers and buck-toothed Confucian detectives. Brandon was proud to have taken that goal a step further: While Hollywood couldn’t abide an Asian lead in a TV show and Warner Brothers risked a lot by putting an Asian lead^ in Enter the Dragon, in the early 1980s he was the Asian protagonist in American-made non-martial-arts movies (Rapid Fire, The Crow, and unfortunately, Laser Mission). In contrast, Showdown in Little Tokyo succumbed to the old Hollywood > standards. > > > [@Caribbean\_cruiser](#): > > > > Some maintain DK did study Kung Fu during the show’s final season, but no one can point to where he studied or with whom. > > As I noted before, after the show seemed to be successful enough to afford its own fight choreographer Kam Yuen was brought in to do the Kung Fu choreography & instruction. > > [quote=“Caribbean\_cruiser, post:12, topic:977843”]Same goes for Tom Laughlin of “Billy Jack” fame. . . Problem is, Laughlin believed his own press. . . Laughlin, like Carradine, never studied martial arts; he was too busy playing the dime-store philosopher to his groupies. Laughlin was reputed (at least amongst the members and teachers at the first karate’ school I attended) to have studied Tae Kwon Do while stationed in Korea. His problem wasn’t the first Billy Jack; it had an important message that was carried to the audience on the back of the popularity of the 1970’s martial arts movies. Laughlin’s problem was that the important message+ was buried too deep under the ass-kicking and that he tried to ride that overlooked message all the way to Washington to get some changes made. He failed at promoting his cause because his movies buried the cause too deeply behind the ass-kicking, so he really couldn’t win for losing. Similarly, Chuck Norris claims to have studied Tang Soo Do (a Korean art with the same roots at Tae Kwon Do) directly from Koreans while stationed there. However, the students of my second karate school said he studied alongside them in San Diego, under Jong H. Lee (who helped bring Tang Soo to the USA) – and then Norris stopped coming to class for a few months and was suddenly showing up in the movies.$ But celebrities have the priviledge of cobbling together their own biographies… –G! ^This is why Saxon was put in the supporting actor role, and Kelly (and that New Zealand guy) were cast. The point was to make it an _international_ cast so it would be less objectionable to have one of them – the Asian guy – happen to be the main protagonist. And, therefore, it had to be another Asian as the antagonist because Hollywood wasn’t about to sell the idea of an Asian emerging victorious over a caucasian (or even an Afro-American). +The point of the Billy Jack movies was that caucasians in the USA were abusive of Native Americans as well as Afro-Americans. He was trying to champion the Native American rights and sympathies, but most people just missed that because they were only buying tickets to see the ass-kicking part. $Norris was smart enough to skip championing a cause. He just did his ass-kicking for Canon/Golan-Globus, which was happy to churn out films that were light on plot-and-story but featured whatever was popular at the time – karate, American Nationalism, whatever. And when the fad turned from karate and ninjutsu films to American Pride themes, he was happy to pivot from Good Guys Wear Black, to Delta Force 1 through 6 and keep on cashing checks. Smart actor! ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2024, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/29 "2024-03-14T06:09:06Z")
Actor are actors. Being actors means, by definition, that they lie for a living. I don’t care what their beliefs are or what training they’ve received, so long as they look good when the cameras are rolling. ---
**Author:** ![Caribbean\_cruiser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/caribbean_cruiser/32/9349_2.png) [@Caribbean\_cruiser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caribbean_cruiser)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2024, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/30 "2024-07-02T17:50:34Z")
I know it’s late in the day for this thread, but the _definitive_ plot twist for Enter the Dragon would have had Bolo and Bob Wall switch allegiances late in the movie and fight with Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Ed Parker against hundreds of Han’s fighters. My cameo role would be to sneak off with Ahna Capri for some much-needed R&R. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2024, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843/31 "2024-07-04T18:11:54Z")
And I don’t care what anyone says, Kung Fu Fighting is a damn good song. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-bruce-lees-extraordinary-genius-was-utterly-wasted-in-his-1970s-movies/977843.md?page=1)