Like most people, my image of Bruce Lee was formed almost entirely by his landmark kung fu movie Enter the Dragon. (Ah, that title alone - nearly rejected in favor of a bland alternative for fear audiences would mistake it for a monster movie - promises something good.) One of the scenes I retain from my first viewing, as a kid, is when Lee is traveling by boat to the martial arts tournament. After pushing around a deckhand, a burly thug saunters over to Lee and starts throwing punches near his face. Occasionally the line he says in response to the provocation would resurface through the years: "Don't waste yourself." Good blunt advice. The thug wants to see how he fights. Lee suggests going to a small island nearby for an impromptu bout. The thug agrees and climbs into the dinghy first. Once he's in, Lee uncoils the rope it's attached to and lets him flail on the waves, cursing him.
The most controversial scene in Quentin Tarantino's latest movie, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, depicts the real Bruce Lee as a character, waiting around on the set of a show, wasting himself. Here, Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth, challenged by Lee to an impromptu bout, plays Bruce Lee to Bruce Lee himself and makes the kung fu legend a punch line. It's one of Tarantino's top three movies, by far his warmest and most personal, qualities I wouldn't have readily associated with the director, suffused with a deep affection for Tinseltown and the magic of the entertainment business, onscreen and off. But initially I found myself on the defensive when talking about the scene afterward with my bro. In the days that followed, apropos of nothing, I'd turn to him and say: "Not that bad." Or: "Not that bad?" I didn't know enough about Lee to say whether he was ever really, even at one time, the way he appears in the movie, arrogantly running his mouth. Then it emerged that Tarantino based his depiction on a single line he misattributed to Lee's wife, Linda, as discovered by an internet sleuth who checked his source. It's still one of the director's best. But now the movie should come with a warning for bad history in Lee's case - a strange bit of carelessness and ingratitude for a fan of kung fu movies and, if Kill Bill is any indication, of Lee in particular.
I'd been meaning to read a recently published Bruce Lee biography by Matthew Polly, actually, which was well reviewed. After the movie, it jumped near the top of the list.
The scene, it becomes clear, fails the man in two ways: Seeing it, one might think, when the cameras aren't rolling, he's just another wanna-be tough guy asking to be put in his place. In reality, he devoted his life to the martial arts, worked tirelessly to refine his technique, innovated, and, at every stage, eagerly answered a number of challenges. A running gag through the book is how often people test him, out of pique or curiosity, or are tested by him, in what seems to be a competitive spirit, and end up flying into walls or pools. Or worse. It wasn't movie invention at all. He was both entertainer and fighter.
And, yes, sometimes a showboat. But also at every stage, just as often as he impresses people with his physical prowess, he charms people by sheer force of charisma. When not filming, one is more likely to find him clowning around or insisting on eating lunch with the movie crew rather than retreating to a hotel.
I was absorbed in the book as an account of the come-up. In some ways it's striking, given who we're talking about, how conventional much of it sounds. Bruce Lee was born in the US, raised in Hong Kong, and sent back to the states to straighten out his life. He started from the bottom, literally living in a closet, working a menial job. (He was a dishwasher for years. I can respect how much time he put in, although he only got a knife pulled on him once.) After entering the business, he scrambles for long periods, trying to find the right role. He's slighted, disappointed. The phone doesn't ring, he gets desperate. He hustles to keep himself and his growing family afloat. He makes lots of friends. He gets lucky. He desires the usual: money, fame, power, though not at the expense of his integrity. One glimpses how easily, despite everything he has to offer, he could have been another one of the countless people who dreamed of making it and went nowhere. He meets some of them along the way.
I was expecting racism, of course, yet I was still jarred by what I found. Here's the headline to his first interview: "Lee Hopes for Rotsa Ruck." He refuses to pursue the few parts available to an Asian person - manservant, model minority. Once he lands a major role on the Green Hornet, as the second lead, he gets paid $400 a week while the lead actor gets $2000 a week. (In fact, he gets paid less than every white cast member on the show, something he never found out.) His wife has to keep him secret while they're dating. When some family members learn about it, they intervene in an attempt to break them up. On the road promoting the show, journalists choose to focus on the mixed-race marriage. Commenting on their child, one writes: "his personality is a fascinating blend of the thoughtfulness of the East and the vigor of the West." The television producer William Dozier, the same guy who grossly underpaid him, informs him that the show is canceled like this: "Confucius say, 'Green Hornet to buzz no more.'" The sight of Bruce Lee getting manhandled would have been (and might still be) hilarious to certain people for another reason.... This is the landscape in which he was convinced he'd one day be the internationally famous star of a Hollywood movie, on his own terms.
And he did it.
Polly tells the whole story, with relish and verve (and without veering into hagiography). Instead of psychoanalysis and interpretation, it's built on details and anecdotes, with brief histories of Hong Kong, US policy toward Chinese immigrants, the Shaw Brothers, and more interspersed throughout. If there are dull patches to Lee's life, Polly never lets it read that way. And he systematically addresses the major mysteries, such as what really happened in what he calls the most famous fight in kung fu history and the likely cause of Lee's early death at the age of 32, shrouded in speculation and superstition (a then-unknown ailment that has since been identified as a significant threat to athletes, heat stroke). I couldn't resist reading on and on during my day off, through hundreds of pages, until I was finished.
Now I have to resist simply retelling many of the stories found throughout. So I'll limit myself to one: John Saxon travels to Hong Kong to shoot Enter the Dragon thinking he was supposed to star in it. Upon arriving, he meets Bruce Lee at his home, who asks Saxon to hold a shield he uses for training. He wants to demonstrate the power of his kick. Shield in hand, Saxon prepares himself. Lee kicks it. Saxon goes flying, smashing a chair behind him. Lee appears concerned. Saxon says he's all right. Lee says: "You broke my favorite chair." That's when he knew Lee was the one who was going to be the star of the movie.
