371: Classic: Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story with Matthew Polly

00:02:01:28 – 00:02:25:24
Dan LeFebvre
The movie starts off in Hong Kong in 1949. Since we know from history that Bruce Lee was born on November 27th, 1940, we can assume he’s 8 or 9, depending on when in 1949. This is happening in the movie. But almost right away we see the young Bruce Lee start training one on one with the IT man. Can you give us some background on Bruce Lee as a child?

00:02:26:00 – 00:02:30:07
Dan LeFebvre
And when he started training with Japan, like we see in the movie?

00:02:30:09 – 00:02:49:09
Matthew Polly
Sure. But first I just want to correct one thing that really annoys me about the first part of this movie and annoyed the Lee family, which is that, he wasn’t an only child living along with his father. He had a mother. He had three older siblings and a younger brother. So they were a, a big family.

00:02:49:12 – 00:03:09:03
Matthew Polly
And so this movie depicts him as almost being, you know, an orphan child with just a father around. So that’s the first thing that they, for some odd reason, decided to do. The second thing was, yeah, it. Man, he didn’t begin formal study of martial arts under it, man, as his master until he was 16 years old.

00:03:09:06 – 00:03:41:15
Matthew Polly
So they pushed this up very early. That’s fine that they did that. As far as Hollywood biopics go. This isn’t the worst, poetic license that they took. But no, he, the reason he started studying, kung fu was actually because he was in a gang, like, kind of a middle class gang. We weren’t, like, selling drugs or anything, but, he loved getting into fights, and so they would go around and start trouble on the streets of Hong Kong, which back in the 1950s was a much rougher place than it is today.

00:03:41:18 – 00:03:59:15
Matthew Polly
And he met this older boy by the name of William Chung, who was a better fighter than he was. And Bruce was so competitive, he hated the idea anyone was better, so he wanted to see why. And the reason was because William Chung was studying Wing Chun under it. Man. And so Bruce Lee said, hey, can I learn with you?

00:03:59:17 – 00:04:16:01
Matthew Polly
And he went, man. And Wong Shu Long, who was your senior student? And he said, I want to study with you. How long before I can beat up William Chung? So his his purpose in studying Wing Chun was not to like, protect himself from bullies. It was to become a better street fighter.

00:04:16:01 – 00:04:25:04
Dan LeFebvre
So it had nothing to do with in the movie. It’s like his father is the one that leads him there and kind of hold his hand. Yes, to the to the training. So not that at all.

00:04:25:06 – 00:04:52:02
Matthew Polly
Not that at all, in fact. So what is interesting is when Bruce was 7 or 8, his father tried to teach him tai chi because Bruce was a hyperactive kid. I joked that if he’d been born later, they’d have put him on Ritalin. So, Bruce didn’t like tai chi because it was for old people. And in fact, when he went to study Wing Chun, he didn’t tell his father because his father was so upset with him already for getting into all these fights.

00:04:52:05 – 00:05:00:04
Matthew Polly
And so he kept it a secret. And when his father found out, he was studying Wing Chun, he was furious. So it’s the complete opposite of how they told it in the story.

00:05:00:07 – 00:05:20:17
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned, getting into a fight. And that leads into the next question, because according to the movie, this is, I think 1961, there’s a fight and a scene at the text on the screen tells us it’s at the Lantern Festival, and there’s some soldiers there. One of them happens to be the nephew of the assistant police inspector of Kowloon.

00:05:20:20 – 00:05:41:24
Dan LeFebvre
And Bruce gets into this fight with them. He ends up sending this sailor to the hospital with a punctured lung after getting into a fight. And this is when Bruce’s dad. And it’s. It’s interesting that you mention that there’s no other family around because, yeah, again, you don’t see anybody else. It’s just him and his dad. They’re talking, and he tells Bruce that he has to leave Hong Kong.

00:05:41:27 – 00:06:03:29
Dan LeFebvre
And this is when, in the movie, we see he takes Bruce to this, like, secret room or secret area. And, here’s a birth certificate. Your name is Bruce Lee, and you have to go to America now. And he mentions, I should say, he mentions that he was on tour there with the, Cannes Opera Company in 1940.

00:06:04:01 – 00:06:09:02
Dan LeFebvre
So is that why Bruce Lee left Hong Kong to go to America again?

00:06:09:02 – 00:06:27:03
Matthew Polly
What they do a lot in this movie is they take some elements that are true, and then they stretch it to the point of breaking, and then they kind of put it back together. So Bruce’s father did tours, with the Cantonese opera troupe in America in 1940, and Bruce was born there. So he was an American citizen.

00:06:27:06 – 00:06:47:06
Matthew Polly
He knew that before. Before the great reveal. But they, you know, they didn’t make a big deal. It didn’t matter to him. He didn’t think about it very much. What had happened was that Bruce Lee, after he started studying Wing Chun, wanted to go learn how to be better at it. And so he would go on the streets of Hong Kong and bump into people.

00:06:47:08 – 00:07:08:20
Matthew Polly
And if they got angry, then he’d start a fight with them. And so he was basically this punk who was like starting fights with people. This show, how good he was. And also to practice and get better. And one day he bumped into this Chinese teenage kid, and the kid fought back and he beat him up. And the kid’s father was an important person.

00:07:08:20 – 00:07:20:00
Matthew Polly
And that kid’s father went to the police. He didn’t fight in the British soldiers. He had a lantern festival and beat up five of them doing acrobatics. Which, by the way, he didn’t know how to do Acrobat.

00:07:20:00 – 00:07:22:23
Dan LeFebvre
Ripping his shirt off in the process. He forgot that.

00:07:22:25 – 00:07:45:03
Matthew Polly
Yeah, you ripped up her off, and then the, like, several backflips. So that was like Jackie Chan. Bruce Lee was a Wing Chun guy, and they didn’t do flips. But anyway, so he didn’t fight white guys. It was some Chinese kid from an important family. So the police had heard about Bruce. He had been in so many street fights that his name was on a list.

00:07:45:06 – 00:08:03:24
Matthew Polly
And so finally, the police went around to his parents and to his mother, actually, and said, if you don’t straighten him out, we’re going to have to arrest him. And that’s when they had the conversation, which you see in the movie. But it was the mother and father saying, look, things are going well. Bruce was failing out of high school.

00:08:03:27 – 00:08:14:14
Matthew Polly
It didn’t look like he had any job prospects. So they said, why don’t you go to American, straighten yourself out. And so that aspect is true. But, through the distortion of, Hollywood magic.

00:08:14:16 – 00:08:23:02
Dan LeFebvre
Why go to America then? Because in the movie, it’s like, oh, you love American cars, you love American things. So obviously America is is where you’re going to go.

00:08:23:04 – 00:08:45:15
Matthew Polly
It was America because he had an American passport. And so that was somewhere he could go. But also there was another reason, which was at that time, every American male of 18 years of age had to sign up for the draft. It was a law. And so if Bruce Lee didn’t sign up for the draft, his American citizenship could be revoked.

00:08:45:18 – 00:09:06:23
Matthew Polly
And so they also wanted to make sure that he secured this, because for people living in Hong Kong, which at that time was very third world, an American birth certificate, a citizenship had great value. And so if he secured that, then the family could theoretically move to America with him. And so this was something they didn’t want to lose.

00:09:06:26 – 00:09:11:01
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Yeah. The movie doesn’t mention any of that side of it. No.

00:09:11:03 – 00:09:12:12
Matthew Polly
No.

00:09:12:14 – 00:09:33:19
Dan LeFebvre
Well, once Bruce arrives in America in the movie, he’s in San Francisco, and we see him as a dishwasher in a restaurant called gussy Yang’s here almost right away. He attracts the attention of a waitress named April, which then leads to a fight. Another fight where he’s outnumbered, with the cooks. They’re led by someone named Mr. Ho.

00:09:33:21 – 00:09:55:02
Dan LeFebvre
Of course, vers is a much better fighter than the cooks, so he defeats them pretty easily. But Miss Yang gets upset, fires Bruce, but then gives him two weeks pay, two weeks severance on top of that, and then hands him some extra money as a loan. She suggests that either he can just go blow his money and then wind up.

00:09:55:02 – 00:10:11:27
Dan LeFebvre
There is a dishwasher. I think she says something to the effect of I can always use a good dishwasher, or he should go get an education. Now, if were to believe the movie, Bruce seems to go to America and then get in trouble right away. Is any of that true?

00:10:12:01 – 00:10:31:11
Matthew Polly
One thing I do like about that scene is the, owner of the restaurant. And it’s true, he did work as a dishwasher in a restaurant called Ruby Chiles, and the owner was a woman by the name of Ruby Chao. And on screen, she’s played by Nancy Kwan, who is a famous Hong Kong actress who was also a personal friend of Bruce Lee.

00:10:31:14 – 00:10:58:17
Matthew Polly
So it was it’s nice to see a personal friend of Bruce Lee play a character in the movie. That’s the best part of that scene, actually, Bruce came to America. And Ruby Chao, husband was friends with Bruce’s father. That’s how he got a job in the restaurant. They put him up there. But Bruce, actually, because his father and the owner’s husband were friends, thought he would just go nuts live there.

00:10:58:18 – 00:11:18:15
Matthew Polly
He didn’t realize he was going to have to do scut work. And so he was refused this. But he had to do the worst jobs and the restaurant dishwashing, cleaning up. And that they treated him like a servant because he actually came from a well-to-do family in Hong Kong, and he never had to do. He had servants in Hong Kong, so he never had to do any of this kind of work.

00:11:18:18 – 00:11:41:00
Matthew Polly
And so he would complain loudly that he was being treated like an indentured servant. And all the other cooks were annoyed by this because they didn’t come from this kind of rich background, and they thought he was a snotty little brat. And so there were a couple times where he said something and apparently once one of the cooks picked up a knife and threatened him, and Bruce said, come on, come get me.

00:11:41:03 – 00:11:52:19
Matthew Polly
And then it ended there. So they took that moment, which is true. Which is? Bruce shot his mouth off, and somebody challenged him with a butcher’s knife, and then they turned it into a whole fight scene.

00:11:52:25 – 00:11:57:20
Dan LeFebvre
Going out and in the alley behind the restaurant. And this whole whole fight scene there.

00:11:57:22 – 00:12:16:06
Matthew Polly
Exactly. And that’s actually one of the things Bruce Lee’s life has been turned into many different sort of projects, and they inevitably try to turn his life into a kung fu movie. And that’s one of the problems, is like, he want to turn it into a genre kung fu movie. So you take things that are kind of true, and then you turn it into these big fight scenes.

00:12:16:10 – 00:12:23:11
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, you have to find somewhere in there to to throw in those fight scenes to keep the action in the movie, because people are expecting it at that point.

00:12:23:13 – 00:12:29:26
Matthew Polly
So they have such generic constriction that they’re they’re forced into, and so they try to bend the biography to the genre.

00:12:29:29 – 00:12:55:08
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, I see, I see well, in the movie, we never to my recollection, I don’t remember seeing or hearing any dialog necessarily about where Bruce goes to get an education. After this, we see him on some sort of a college campus, and then there’s another another fight here. And it happens with somebody named Joe Henderson. Bruce is working out in the gym one day and Joe comes in.

00:12:55:15 – 00:13:14:14
Dan LeFebvre
He spurts some racist remarks and picks a fight with Bruce. Bruce again pretty easily defeats Joe and the three other guys that he’s with. He’s always outnumbered in these fights. And then after the fight, a couple of the guys come up to him and ask, can you, can you teach me how to fight? I want to learn. Learn what you did.

00:13:14:16 – 00:13:44:07
Dan LeFebvre
A little bit later, we see, Linda Emery. She enters the movie as the only woman in Bruce’s class. That’s kind of how the movie sets up that he goes from, not basically. He was a dishwasher, and then he goes to get an education, and then he starts teaching. And then, of course, meeting Linda. So how accurate was that where he went from not teaching to teaching his his martial arts to then meeting Linda?

00:13:44:07 – 00:13:47:28
Dan LeFebvre
Was she one of the first students that he had in the US?

00:13:48:00 – 00:14:12:08
Matthew Polly
No. So, they again, they play with the time frame. So what happened was when he first got to America, he was already intent on going to college. They signed him up for a essentially a remedial or vocational high school to get his high school diploma because he hadn’t graduated from high school, Hong Kong. So he went to this high school for older students, vocational education.

00:14:12:10 – 00:14:32:24
Matthew Polly
And in, in his class was, a man, African-American by the name of Jesse Glover. Who later shows up in the movie is it’s kind of best buddy. He actually is the first student of Bruce Lee, and he had wanted to learn kung fu, but other Chinese teachers wouldn’t teach him. And he heard that Bruce Lee knew it.

00:14:32:26 – 00:14:57:13
Matthew Polly
And so he befriended Bruce Lee. And Bruce Lee actually didn’t really want to teach him that much, but because no one else, he didn’t have anything else to do but washing dishes. Jesse Glover became his first student, and Jesse loved him. He thought he was great. So Jesse told his, roommate, who became Bruce Lee’s second student. And then they told a couple other friends, and they became Bruce Lee’s third and fourth student.

00:14:57:16 – 00:15:14:08
Matthew Polly
And then Bruce started doing things like going and giving demonstrations at high schools to gain more students. And at these demonstrations, he would invite a tough guy in the crowd up on stage and say, hey, try to hit me. And they would try to hit him and he would block all their punches and tie them up in knots.

00:15:14:11 – 00:15:40:07
Matthew Polly
And then those people would become his students. So they took that and turned that into a fight scene on the college campus. But before he got to college and he went to the University of Washington, he had already had about 10 or 15, students who were also best friends, and they trained in parks, etc.. And then he opened a school in his first year when he was at the University of Washington, and he had a school running.

00:15:40:09 – 00:15:49:07
Matthew Polly
And one of Lynda’s friends, female friends was one of his students, and she told him about Bruce Lee, and that’s how she became one of its students.

00:15:49:14 – 00:15:54:26
Dan LeFebvre
But she did eventually become one of his students there, but introduced through one of her friends. That was. That’s right.

00:15:54:26 – 00:16:06:06
Matthew Polly
Okay, so that’s absolutely true. And they and they did. She was one of his students. And he started to take a shine to her. And she was sort of gaga for him from the very beginning. And that’s how they ended up dating.

00:16:06:09 – 00:16:27:09
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. So then that leads into the next part, because in the movie we see when once they start dating, the movie very heavily implies that it was Linda’s idea for Bruce to actually start his own school, not just students, but have his own school. We see like a a rundown building that, Bruce is going to fix up.

00:16:27:09 – 00:16:41:08
Dan LeFebvre
And in the in the movie you see on the the glass pane of the door, it says it’s the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. Was it Linda’s idea for Bruce to start a school? I’m assuming not in San Francisco, but perhaps in Washington.

00:16:41:11 – 00:17:15:15
Matthew Polly
No, it wasn’t her idea. So, and one thing you have to know is that, how this movie came about, which is, Linda Lee ran the Bruce Lee estate and Universal Pictures bought all the rights to Bruce Lee from her as part of an overall deal. So the movie rights, the TV rights, the game video game rights, the image rights, and also the her book in order to turn it into this movie, because they were going to make Bruce Lee part of, you know, like Spider-Man, one of their franchises.

00:17:15:17 – 00:17:43:20
Matthew Polly
And so because it’s based on her book, this is really her story of who Bruce Lee was, and it’s from their perspective, which is why this is kind of a romance, because this is Linda’s version of Bruce Lee, how she met him, how it did. And of course, with Hollywood magic, they make her sort of a, you know, a kind of feminist in the 1990s model as opposed to what she was, which was like kind of an Eisenhower girl who was very strong but quiet.

00:17:43:23 – 00:18:02:24
Matthew Polly
And so, you know, Lauren Holly, who’s beautiful place her is this kind of spunky thing. But actually, Linda was much quieter as a person. Bruce Lee already had opened a school. She went to the school that he had opened, and he already had the idea of making it like McDonald’s, like a franchise across the country.

00:18:02:26 – 00:18:09:02
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Yeah, because that’s something that she mentions to the McDonald’s key there of franchising it.

00:18:09:04 – 00:18:13:07
Matthew Polly
So they gave that to her to make her sort of a stronger female lead.

00:18:13:07 – 00:18:40:24
Dan LeFebvre
Basically. Okay, okay. Well, once he starts the school, this kind leads back to something that you had talked about earlier. Bruce, he gets in trouble for teaching what they call Galo or Westerners. The. We never really find out who they are, really. But the other Chinese martial arts teachers around just. He goes into some room and they’re playing poker or something around, you know, around the table.

00:18:40:24 – 00:19:01:03
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Yeah, they’re playing around the table and, yeah, you can’t you can’t teach non-Chinese ways. Yeah. I think the movie just calls them the elders, you know, and they’re going to enforce this rule. And the way they’re going to enforce it is by pitting Bruce Lee against who we presume is their fighting champion, Johnny Sun.

00:19:01:06 – 00:19:24:03
Dan LeFebvre
And in this fight, Bruce beats Johnny. But then at the very last moment, just as Bruce is walking away, Johnny has kind of a cheap shot. He kicks Bruce in the back, breaking his back and sending Bruce to the hospital. That’s how the movie sets this up. Did this fight with Johnny Sun actually happened because Bruce Lee wanted to teach anyone who wanted to learn?

00:19:24:06 – 00:19:40:12
Matthew Polly
Yeah. So again, this is one of those this is one of the great myths of Bruce Lee, that this is why this happened. It’s it is one of it. The fight did happen. It is one of the most famous, kung fu fights ever. The real story is that Bruce Lee was, opening a school in Oakland.

00:19:40:12 – 00:20:03:14
Matthew Polly
He had one in Seattle. And this was going to be a second part of his franchise, part of his great empire. McDonald’s kung fu empire that he was going to build. And he was having trouble getting students to Oakland because all the country students were in San Francisco, because that had the largest Chinatown. Now, there were people who knew that he was teaching white people, and there were people who didn’t think it was a good idea.

00:20:03:17 – 00:20:34:11
Matthew Polly
Chinese people at that time, for example, Ruby Chao told him not to do it, but they there was no elders there that Chinatown didn’t have a system of elders who enforce their laws. They were just people who like, you know, between each other. We’re saying that’s really stupid, that you shouldn’t teach Grillo. What actually happened was he was giving a performance in San Francisco at a Chinese theater with a large crowd, and he was demonstrating his version of kung fu wing Chung, his style.

00:20:34:14 – 00:20:57:17
Matthew Polly
And while giving the demonstration, he said, my style is better than everybody else’s style. And he also said, you’ve got a lot of old masters. These old tigers have no teeth, basically, that their styles are useless and mine’s the best. So you should come study with me now. Every martial artist thinks his style is the best, but you’re not supposed to say it out loud because it gets people pissed off.

00:20:57:19 – 00:21:17:24
Matthew Polly
And that’s what happened. They got pissed off. And so there were a couple of young 20 something kids who were mad that Bruce Lee had said this. And so they started talking amongst themselves, and they got this waiter who also studied kung fu and wanted to open his own school by the name of Wong Jack man to challenge formerly challenged Bruce Lee.

00:21:17:26 – 00:21:34:07
Matthew Polly
And so they went over and they challenged him and Bruce Lee said, yeah, I’ll fight him, but you have to fight me at my school. Another thing, the movie gets wrong. And so they went over to his school. And by the way, when they went over to a school, his wife was there, his friend was there.

00:21:34:07 – 00:21:55:11
Matthew Polly
He didn’t sneak off and had this fight. And he won the fight fairly quickly. It was within three minutes, at the end of the fight, though, he beats up that he beat up Wong deck man. Wong Jack man didn’t break his back, but that’s a total fallacy. What happened was later many like 4 or 5 years later, Bruce Lee was doing an exercise.

00:21:55:11 – 00:22:16:15
Matthew Polly
He hadn’t warmed up for it, where he’s picking dead weight off the ground. And, he strained his back. So he did have a back injury. They just collapsed the time frame, and then they had Wong Jack man sneakily break his back at the end of a fight that he lost. And so they’re combining several elements in order to sort of make the story more exciting.

00:22:16:16 – 00:22:25:16
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. So that’s a common technique that a lot of movies do to compress a timeline of an entire lifetime into just, you know, an hour, hour and a half or so.

00:22:25:22 – 00:22:34:24
Matthew Polly
I should say, though, that, when Wong Jack Mann saw the movie, he was so furious that he sued Linda Lee and Universal Studios for $2 million.

00:22:34:24 – 00:22:35:20
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, wow.

00:22:35:22 – 00:22:58:26
Matthew Polly
So that went to court. And the court ruled that he was somewhat of a public figure, so they threw it out. But he became a very respected, martial arts instructor in San Francisco. And for his whole career, he became the guy who broke Bruce Lee’s back in a fight. And so but his his students hate this movie, and they hate like Bruce Lee.

00:22:59:03 – 00:23:05:09
Matthew Polly
So this has become a lot like within this little world. This is like a really contentious issue. What actually happened at that fight?

00:23:05:12 – 00:23:28:12
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. So as far as the movie is concerned and I it sounds like he did have some sort of a back strain, not necessarily a broken back, but there’s a montage in the movie where Bruce is in rehabilitation and as he’s in rehabilitation, he can barely move. And he takes this idea of a new form of martial arts to Linda.

00:23:28:17 – 00:23:54:18
Dan LeFebvre
And this is where we get, you know, Linda’s taking notes, sketches. We see her typing it out on a typewriter. I pause the movie to see the title of it, just called The Book. And we know from history that, of course, Bruce Lee really did write a book called Tao Ju Ji Kondo. But the publication date on that I looked was in 1975, after Bruce Lee’s death.

00:23:54:20 – 00:24:13:03
Dan LeFebvre
And we see a scene in the movie where Linda is so excited she comes and you can see the book is, you know, oh, your books, your books here. So how accurate is the movie in depicting this montage of how Bruce Lee came up with Jeet Kune Do by dictating it to Linda while he was in rehabilitation?

00:24:13:06 – 00:24:34:29
Matthew Polly
Yeah. So again, time frame and compression, they tried to get all of this into a very tight space. Bruce Lee came up with the idea of G condo in 1967, 1968, and his injury wasn’t until 1969. So he had already had the idea himself, and he’d been working on it for actually the Wong Jack man fight when that ended.

00:24:35:02 – 00:24:56:26
Matthew Polly
That’s true. He was upset by how it did, and that led to his break with Wang Chong and his desire to form a new style. So for maybe 3 or 4 years, he’d already been taking notes about GI Kondo, and he had the name for it, and he had already started teaching it before he had his injury. That, said, Linda Lee was extraordinarily helpful to his career.

00:24:56:26 – 00:25:17:22
Matthew Polly
She supported him all the way. She was one of his students. He was a pretty good martial artist. So they’re giving her a little more credit or specific credit than she deserves for this. But she was very much part of his life. And I think what’s interesting, people should know, the Daljit Kondo’s the bestselling martial arts book of all time.

00:25:17:24 – 00:25:39:15
Matthew Polly
I’ve written three. It’s none of them have sold anywhere near what that has so all respect. But, basically what happened is they went through and they found a box full of notebooks, and they just took those notebooks and splice them together. And that’s the book after he died. So he never finished the book? He didn’t write it.

00:25:39:15 – 00:25:54:20
Matthew Polly
It’s not. If you look at it, it’s not actually a book. It’s just a series of notes and sayings that he scribbled through, like, you know, eight notebooks as you do when you’re prepping to try to write something. But he never got around to the actual writing of it. He just got to the research phase.

00:25:54:25 – 00:26:21:14
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, okay. Yeah. Again, that’s a very different picture than him dictating it all and and having it all typed out and and published and received back in his lifetime. Okay. Okay. So I’m assuming based on what you had had said before because after this we see Bruce Lee go proving his new fighting style. And he does this going to you know, pretty much it.

00:26:21:17 – 00:26:39:07
Dan LeFebvre
Remember if it was a high school auditorium or where it was. But he goes to this auditorium, he’s like pretty much pick out the I’ll fight anybody in this room, prove that my style is better. And you mentioned something earlier similar to that. Of course, the movie uses this as an example of bringing Johnny Son back and he defeats him in under 60s.

00:26:39:07 – 00:26:44:12
Dan LeFebvre
I’m assuming that particular instance didn’t happen.

00:26:44:14 – 00:27:10:23
Matthew Polly
Now. So he, from the moment he opened his first school, he would go give demonstrations. And what I think is interesting about that is that’s how he created the Bruce Lee character that we see on screen is he did it in essentially like a stand up comic working his material. He would go on stage and give demonstrations of what his style was, and he would tell jokes and he would be funny, but he also be serious and invite somebody up.

00:27:10:25 – 00:27:34:18
Matthew Polly
And he got to see from the crowds what worked and what didn’t. And he invented himself as Bruce Lee, the kung fu master, on the sort of small stages of Seattle, Oakland and L.A. And so when you understand who Bruce Lee was, you understand somebody who had honed this persona, which was part him, of course, like any standup, but was also, were reaction to the crowd.

00:27:34:18 – 00:27:57:18
Matthew Polly
He knew what worked because he tested it. So he did go around and give these demonstrations. But he never he was always in control. And it was always like, throw a punch, I’ll block it. And never turned into a full fight. He did have a few fights with people who didn’t like him. There was a Japanese master, mat master, a Japanese karate student.

00:27:57:22 – 00:28:26:01
Matthew Polly
He fought and beaten like 20s. So Bruce Lee was a real fighter, and he could fight, but he never fought the Jackson Wong Jack man guy ever again. The guy who didn’t actually break his back. So, what? And and that scene leads up to him, his discovery in Hollywood. Right. What actually happened was he gave a performance in, Long Beach outside of LA, and there was a hairdresser there.

00:28:26:03 – 00:28:48:11
Matthew Polly
Who was a famous Hollywood hairdresser. And he saw the performance and was impressed by Bruce Lee. And then by the name of Jay Sebring. And Jay Sebring had a TV executive who was one of his clients talking about a new TV series he wanted to do with a Chinese actor who could do action. And so Jay Sebring put the TV producer together with Bruce Lee.

00:28:48:13 – 00:28:55:27
Matthew Polly
So one of his demonstrations did lead to his Hollywood career. But it wasn’t, 62nd fight to the death with someone.

00:28:56:00 – 00:29:17:08
Dan LeFebvre
I think it was, Bill Krieger was. Yes. Happened to be watching. One of the performances is, oh, hey, can you do this stuff in front of the camera? I’ve got a show called The Green Hornet. Let’s let’s do this. That’s pretty much how the movie shows his transition from martial arts to acting. Did he? When when he made that transition to acting, what happened to his schools?

00:29:17:08 – 00:29:26:29
Dan LeFebvre
Did he did he kind of put that part of his chapter of his life behind him and kind of shift over to acting? The movie kind of seems to imply that he did.

00:29:27:01 – 00:30:02:22
Matthew Polly
So he actually, after he got offered the role of Kato in The Green Hornet, he opened the school in Los Angeles. He did close his Oakland school because it didn’t have enough students. And then he had a friend running his Seattle school. So for the early parts of his Hollywood career, he basically still had two schools going, and, he did he did spend a fair amount of time initially, which is a lot, Los Angeles school because L.A. based school and taught some of the students there and that was he sort of had a bifurcated life.

00:30:02:22 – 00:30:10:21
Matthew Polly
He had his Hollywood life, and he still kept up his students. But eventually, by the time he becomes world famous, he closed all of the schools down.

00:30:10:25 – 00:30:33:17
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, okay. Yeah, that’s a lot of different irons in the fire to to keep going, especially spread across the different locations. Now, there’s one scene I want to ask you about because there’s Bruce Lee. He started his acting career, and we see a scene where he’s walking with Bill Krieger, and the two of them are coming up with an idea for a new show.

00:30:33:22 – 00:30:59:15
Dan LeFebvre
They’re talking back and forth, and as they’re doing that from the dialog, we start to get this idea that starts to take shape. It’ll it’ll be a Western starring a Chinese immigrant. He’s searching for his brother. Except he doesn’t use a gun. He uses kung fu, and they’re both just excited about this show. And then later, we see Bruce and Linda sitting at home watching a new TV show called Kung Fu starring David Carradine.

00:30:59:18 – 00:31:21:00
Dan LeFebvre
And you can you can just see that Bruce feels betrayed, like they they cast David Carradine and instead of him. So that’s how the movie sets up this idea that Bruce Lee and Bill Krieger came up with this idea for the show, and then it very heavily implies that David Carradine was cast over Bruce Lee for the lead role.

00:31:21:02 – 00:31:22:05
Dan LeFebvre
That happened.

00:31:22:07 – 00:31:46:00
Matthew Polly
So no, again, this is again, as this is one of the most annoying myths that continue to this day based on this movie. So the TV series Kung Fu was written by, two Jewish Brooklyn from Brooklyn, comedy writers from Brooklyn by the name of, Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander. They came up with the original idea. They sold it to, Warner Brothers.

00:31:46:02 – 00:32:07:00
Matthew Polly
And the producer was, Fred Weintraub, who is the Bill Krieger character. So he had this idea. He went to Bruce Lee and said, I have this idea. I hear you know, you, Ben Kato, what do you think about playing the lead? And then the idea is a movie died, and later got revived as a TV series.

00:32:07:00 – 00:32:35:02
Matthew Polly
It was originally supposed to be a feature movie. And so it got revived as a TV series. But by this time it was 1971, and Bruce Lee had already gone back to Hong Kong and made the big boss. And so after he finished The Big Boss, he flew to Hollywood and auditioned for the role. And the TV producer in charge decided probably didn’t want a casting agent guy anyway, but he felt that Bruce Lee’s accent was too thick.

00:32:35:04 – 00:33:00:09
Matthew Polly
And so the role went to David Carradine. So this wasn’t his idea? He didn’t write the script. He auditioned for the role and didn’t get it. There may have been some racism why he didn’t get it, but he didn’t leave Hollywood because of it. He’d already left Hollywood and gone to Hong Kong. So all of this is mixed up, and it’s becomes this huge myth which everyone tells, which is Hollywood was so racist.

00:33:00:11 – 00:33:13:03
Matthew Polly
Bruce Lee had to leave because they gave Kung fu to David Carradine and go to Hong Kong, and that it just doesn’t fit the chronology. Hollywood was racist. He did face racism, but this wasn’t the example that drove him to Hong Kong.

00:33:13:10 – 00:33:16:16
Dan LeFebvre
What what was his reason for going to Hong Kong then?

00:33:16:18 – 00:33:38:13
Matthew Polly
So, he was really frustrated with, the fact that he couldn’t get roles and the roles he was offered were really stereotypical, terrible roles, which you can imagine at that time. And so, he got offered, a two movie deal by a man named Raymond Chow, who had started Golden Harvest Studios, which was this upstart studio.

00:33:38:15 – 00:34:03:27
Matthew Polly
And initially Bruce blew him off because he still thought his Hollywood career was going to come to fruition. And then after a couple of years of it not going well, he changed his mind and signed the deal. But as soon as he signed the deal, he got this role in Long Street, which did really well. And so he felt like Hollywood was going to work out for him, but he needed the money.

00:34:03:29 – 00:34:28:01
Matthew Polly
He had bought a house in Brentwood that was too expensive for him. And he’d also bought a Porsche because his student, Steve McQueen, had a Porsche. And he wanted to be cool like the other cool kids. And so, he basically was out of money. And so he went, he signed, he agreed to go to Hong Kong, and he planned on going for like 2 or 3 months and filming these two movies, getting a cash infusion.

00:34:28:08 – 00:34:44:07
Matthew Polly
And then he was going to go back to Hollywood and continue his TV career, which right before he left, looked like it was very promising. So, it’s and that’s like a confusing storyline, and that’s why they simplify it and make it just a simple racism story.

00:34:44:09 – 00:35:03:19
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I think there’s little hints as you’re talking there. There’s a little hints of those types of things. There was, I think one scene where we see Linda looking at some pass do notices and some, you know, Bill like the giving the impression that they need the money. And there’s a scene, I think, where where Bruce has a I don’t know if it was a Porsche.

00:35:03:19 – 00:35:09:23
Dan LeFebvre
I didn’t look, I don’t remember specifically, but it was a pretty nice car that he was he was driving around in.

00:35:09:26 – 00:35:13:12
Matthew Polly
And she’s gets that seat. When he pulls up in it, she gives him a look like, what are you doing.

00:35:13:16 – 00:35:36:27
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Right. Yeah yeah. Which leads into another aspect of it because the implication I got from from that side was they may have had financial troubles, but maybe Bruce didn’t really know about that. It I guess the impression I got was that Linda. Linda knew about it. She kept track of the finances, but Bruce went off and bought this expensive car.

00:35:36:27 – 00:35:42:12
Dan LeFebvre
And when they when they need the money, was that kind of that dynamic between the two of them?

00:35:42:15 – 00:36:01:25
Matthew Polly
No. He knew about all the financial difficulties. There’s letters where he sends home. He sends letters. He had to borrow money from friends. And so he was like, writing letters, saying, I’ll get you your money. Now, or I’m really sorry I’m late with the money. So, No, but one thing that did happen was when, it.

00:36:01:25 – 00:36:22:04
Matthew Polly
Right at this period when he had, the house that was too expensive. And the Porsche, that’s when he injured his back. And he could and he couldn’t work for six months, and he was making his money teaching martial arts to Hollywood stars like Steve McQueen, who were paying him the equivalent of $1,000 an hour. And he could no longer teach them.

00:36:22:06 – 00:36:43:27
Matthew Polly
And that’s when their financial difficulty got much worse. And so Linda had to take a job, which she had never done before because it was very 1950s. She looked after the kids. He brought in the money. And so she did have to support the family during his period of convalescence. So I don’t want in any way underplay her importance to Bruce Lee’s success.

00:36:43:29 – 00:36:49:23
Matthew Polly
It’s just they they polish it up and turn it kind of 1990s version.

00:36:49:25 – 00:37:11:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that touches on something else I want to ask you about. And that is the overall way that Bruce is portrayed in the movie as a family man. And in the movie, we see Bruce Lee. It seems like he, you know, he loves Linda and his two kids. He’s a workaholic. But it looks like throughout the movie, he’s really just trying his best to provide for his family.

00:37:11:22 – 00:37:25:14
Dan LeFebvre
Toward the end of the movie, he says something along the lines of, I just want to spend more time with my kids and stop breaking my wife’s heart because, you know, I’m I’m working all the time. What was the Lee family dynamic like?

00:37:25:16 – 00:37:53:23
Matthew Polly
So. And certain ways. That’s very true. Which is he did love his wife. They were great friends. He adored his children. And he was a workaholic. But he was also a Hollywood actor. And the era of free love and, his friends are like Steve McQueen. And so, he had a little things on the side here and there, that no one ever reported before.

00:37:53:23 – 00:38:14:08
Matthew Polly
I wrote my biography about him. And, for him, he didn’t I it was just that, you know, he was a Hollywood actor in the late 60s. They all cheated. And he did as well. That didn’t mean he didn’t love his wife. It just he was doing what they all did. But the movie comes out and makes him the perfect family man.

00:38:14:11 – 00:38:46:04
Matthew Polly
And maybe that’s what a 1969 perfect family man look like. But that’s not what we think a perfect one does. And so they whitewashed his history in order to to make him, you know, it was Linda’s book that they turned it into. They didn’t want to get into it. And, you know, what’s interesting is in the original screenplay, they had a scene where he’s in Thailand filming the movie, and there’s an actress who’s hitting on him, and he’s awful tempted, but at the very end he says, no, I can’t because I love my wife too much.

00:38:46:06 – 00:39:02:28
Matthew Polly
And they ended up feeling that was too racy and they cut even that suggestion that they’re a hint that he might have been tempted away from, you know, heart and home. And the truth was, he he had multiple affairs over, over the years. Once he became a Hollywood actor.

00:39:03:00 – 00:39:07:12
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Yeah. That’s a that’s a little bit of a different dynamic than we see in the movie then.

00:39:07:15 – 00:39:26:00
Matthew Polly
Yeah. Very much. It was he was much more like Mad Men, you know? Okay. Like when you think about Mad Men, you think about these guys who loved their wives, came home and whatever. But when they were off at work, they did. They had sex with the secretary or whatever, and it just didn’t interfere. And that’s that double standard was what he grew up with.

00:39:26:03 – 00:39:32:23
Matthew Polly
And so it’s just a different dynamic than those of us who grew up kind of post 80s, where that’s just not acceptable.

00:39:32:25 – 00:39:54:20
Dan LeFebvre
That’s a that’s a good way to phrase that in another, another TV show example. Yeah. Another theme throughout the movie that I wanted to ask you about was this concept we see of the demon. It starts at the very beginning, right at the very beginning of the movie, with Bruce as a child, all the way to what I thought was a very specific date.

00:39:54:22 – 00:40:24:12
Dan LeFebvre
The 32nd day of shooting Enter the Dragon near the end of the film, and then, it’s during that last vision that Bruce sees his own grave. And on the grave is the date July 28th, 1973, engraved on it. Can you give a little more insight into the historical accuracy of this idea of the demon that Bruce Lee how if he’s hallucinating or how he’s seeing these visions in the movie?

00:40:24:14 – 00:40:30:16
Dan LeFebvre
But then how well did the movie do depicting the end of Bruce Lee’s life?

00:40:30:18 – 00:40:52:23
Matthew Polly
So they took again, they took some element of truth, and then they, they, they ran with it, which is, before Bruce was born, the first male child, that his parents had did die, I think, before was one year old. And in Chinese culture, that’s considered a bad omen. And so it’s a kind of superstition.

00:40:52:25 – 00:41:11:13
Matthew Polly
Any child, any male child born after that is supposed to be given a female nickname, and dressed up in female clothes. And so they didn’t do that with Bruce Lee. In fact, they even pierced his ear and gave him an earring when he was a little baby. And so this is a, Chinese custom from that period of time.

00:41:11:15 – 00:41:32:24
Matthew Polly
But that’s it. Like, that’s that’s the end of the demons. He never he never came up again. Bruce Lee never had visions of a demon. His father never warned him that the demon was going to get him. So you’d have to run off to America. And, Bruce probably had some bad dreams every once in a while, but it wasn’t of a demon.

00:41:32:27 – 00:41:57:08
Matthew Polly
And that was the one you interviewed. The director’s been interviewed, and he said I wanted to, you know, use that artistic license to speak about his inner struggle. But they also had another problem, which is, how to deal with Bruce Lee’s death. And Bruce Lee died in another woman’s bedroom. That’s that’s how we know that he wasn’t a purely faithful husband.

00:41:57:10 – 00:42:25:16
Matthew Polly
And when that scandal, when that came out, it was a huge scandal and ongoing press, and it was very tough on Linda. And so one of the things that she wanted to make sure in the years since is that no one really dug into this situation involving Bruce Lee’s death. And so any Bruce Lee estate product, any anything that comes that’s associated with the Bruce Lee estate pretty much avoids the the gritty details of his death.

00:42:25:18 – 00:42:40:23
Matthew Polly
And so using the demon was another way for them to kind of skedaddle by what actually happened, which was he was spending the afternoon with his mistress. And for some reasons that are still under debate, he ended up dying in her bedroom.

00:42:40:26 – 00:42:47:29
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, well, I could I could see that then, because that would go against the family man that they set up throughout the entire movie.

00:42:48:01 – 00:43:10:28
Matthew Polly
Yeah, it it would just I mean, this is really the version they’re doing. It’s Bruce Lee, the Family man, but also the romance. And I think they do a wonderful job of getting that part of it. But he was a more complicated person, with more flaws. And they just decided to, you know, scrub those away. And the death obviously would make that much more complicated, a storyline.

00:43:10:29 – 00:43:31:18
Matthew Polly
So him dying in that sort of almost mythical way is a way for them to escape that. But, you know, one of the things that was spooky about the movie is that, they had asked Brandon Lee if he wanted to play his father, Brandon being Bruce’s son. And he said no. He took the part in The Crow.

00:43:31:21 – 00:43:50:12
Matthew Polly
And that last scene, Bruce is fighting the demon, and then the demon goes after his son. And Bruce has to kill the demon in order to protect his son. And within a year, Brandon had died. Actually, six months, I think, had died on the set of The Crow Under, like, really weird circumstances.

00:43:50:12 – 00:43:57:11
Dan LeFebvre
That was like a blink or something like that, wasn’t it? That that I don’t remember the specifics of. But I remember when that happened. Yeah.

00:43:57:13 – 00:44:19:20
Matthew Polly
Yeah, yeah. Very creepy. And so this movie came out and it’s got this whole demon thing about a family curse, and then Brandon dies. And so in the public’s mind, there is this idea that somehow Bruce’s family has actually been cursed. I’ve actually had producers in Hollywood call me and say, we’re doing the curse. The Lee family.

00:44:19:21 – 00:44:38:13
Matthew Polly
Will you participate in that? And I’m like, no. Oh. However, because it there’s no curse on his family, but they’ve had two really tragic deaths, the father and the son. And part of the reason people believe this is because, unfortunately, they use this demon sort of, mythos in the movie itself.

00:44:38:16 – 00:44:50:23
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we’ve talked about some of the, the big myths that come out of the movie. Are there any other major myths about Bruce Lee that people believe because of Dragon, the Bruce Lee story?

00:44:50:25 – 00:45:10:25
Matthew Polly
I think we had the main ones. I was rewatching it this afternoon, and, he never drove a motorcycle. That’s not a big myth. But it is funny, because all of his friends said he was a terrible driver, like he was. He was like, he drove too fast. He scared the heck out of them.

00:45:10:27 – 00:45:36:12
Matthew Polly
So they, the idea of him on a motorcycle, is kind of foolish. I think the biggest myth that the movie sets up, which is because they start with him training with it, man, they make it seem as if he was a martial artist who accidentally became an actor. You know, so his whole everything up to this moment where he’s fighting Jackson, he’s just this martial artist.

00:45:36:14 – 00:45:59:27
Matthew Polly
And then accidentally, Hollywood discovers him. Actually, Bruce Lee’s father was a famous, opera singer, which they mentioned in the movie. But Bruce Lee was also a child actor and appeared in 20 Cantonese movies before the age of 18. And he was kind of like the Macaulay Culkin of Hong Kong. And so when Hollywood called, he was ready.

00:46:00:00 – 00:46:21:02
Matthew Polly
Like he already knew how to act. And that’s why he succeeded, because he was a great martial artist who also had a strong background in acting. And most martial artists who get cast like Chuck Norris don’t know how to act. Bruce Lee is the only one who could do both, and that’s why he succeeded as a star, because he was an actor.

00:46:21:04 – 00:46:44:19
Matthew Polly
And then he became a martial artist, and then he combined the two. And this movie sets up the idea of Bruce Lee, the pure martial arts genius, perfect father. And he’s actually like an actor who became a martial artist who was not perfect. But combine those two skills. And I think if they had just had one scene where they showed him as a child actor, it would have filled out his story much more.

00:46:44:21 – 00:47:06:18
Dan LeFebvre
I’m wondering, just as you’re saying, that it it lends back to watch something that you mentioned earlier where he kind of thrown into, well, this has to be a kung fu movie because it’s about Bruce Lee. And so if he was an actor, would he know how to fight the four cooks in the alleyway? And, you know, the sailors and, you know, all these scenes that we have to set up for him?

00:47:06:20 – 00:47:23:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, he has to be a martial artist then at that point, because he already know how to fight. And so I’m wondering if that’s kind of how they why they why they did that in order to, tell the story, but mix up quite a few things along the way to do that.

00:47:23:08 – 00:47:45:18
Matthew Polly
Yeah. You know, that’s part of the issue. And to be fair, I, I’ve seen much worse biopics than this one. Like, as biopics go, it’s a perfectly decent version. It’s a huge inaccuracies, but that’s sort of part of the part and parcel. Part of the reason, though, is I think this it’s based on Linda Lee’s book.

00:47:45:20 – 00:48:03:12
Matthew Polly
And for her, she fell in love with Bruce Lee when he was a martial artist, and she fell in love with her martial arts teacher. And I think for her, that’s the most important aspect of him. And I don’t believe she was ever particularly happy with him when he went back to being an actor.

00:48:03:14 – 00:48:08:06
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think some of the affairs had something to do with that? I mean, that’s part of that lifestyle or.

00:48:08:08 – 00:48:26:04
Matthew Polly
I think the lifestyle. Yeah. And so after he died, very interestingly, she never she pulled away from it. She kept her kids away from it. She didn’t want her son to be an actor. She was a quiet person who never cotton to that world. And I think this was Bruce Lee’s dream to be a great star.

00:48:26:12 – 00:48:46:14
Matthew Polly
Her dream was to marry a guy who had the McDonald’s chain of kung fu studios. And so I think those two aspects of Bruce Lee, what’s interesting is when you hear her versions of the story, she recognizes he was both, but she emphasizes the part that she loved that she fell in love with. And this movie does as well.

00:48:46:16 – 00:48:54:25
Matthew Polly
And that’s created this image of Bruce Lee is this kung fu master and that sort of accidental actor, when it’s actually the opposite.

00:48:54:27 – 00:49:06:10
Dan LeFebvre
Now, if you kind of put yourself in the director’s chair for a moment, if there was one thing you wish that was in the movie and they didn’t put it in there, what would that be?

00:49:06:12 – 00:49:40:01
Matthew Polly
It would help if they just showed. I think Jason Scott Lee did a good job of catching Bruce’s emotional range, like his charm and his anger. But they should have showed his flaws, and they should have had one scene where he was not the perfect husband. They still had one affair, because I think that would have shown a more complex adult version of him and allowed us to appreciate, you know, the fact that he was a flawed human being who was also able to achieve greatness and that would have made it less a child story and more an adult story.

00:49:40:04 – 00:50:08:19
Matthew Polly
And every time someone, you know, there’s recently been a documentary that came out, ESPN is doing and again, they skipped the death. And they, they skip the affairs and they focus on Bruce Lee’s accomplishments only, and they turn him into a saint and almost a demigod. And I and I really think it’s important for us to appreciate him as a human being because as a flawed human being, his successes are more impressive.

00:50:08:21 – 00:50:27:13
Matthew Polly
But if you treat him as a demigod, then, you know, of course he can beat 50 people from the get go. He never lost a fight. He was perfect. And this, this. I don’t know why we feel the need to treat Bruce Lee as perfect. We have movies about other iconic figures where, you know, Martin Luther King had affairs like it’s not.

00:50:27:18 – 00:50:41:10
Matthew Polly
These aren’t things that we can’t deal with as a culture. So that’s the thing that annoys me about these films in general, which is this, this desire to make Bruce Lee a saint. He wasn’t a saint. He was a great man, but he wasn’t a saint.

00:50:41:12 – 00:50:59:16
Dan LeFebvre
Was a human. I think you put you you said it really well, like, I mean, we’re all human. We all make mistakes. And they’re going to, I mean, perhaps be different mistakes and the ones that he made. But, I think that would make for a lot more, a lot more character depth there and a lot more relatability to it.

00:50:59:19 – 00:51:10:00
Dan LeFebvre
I can’t go out and do what Bruce Lee did by any means, any way you look at it. But, you know, I guess more human relatable ends up being a much more relatable character on screen.

00:51:10:02 – 00:51:26:28
Matthew Polly
I think so, and so I’m hopeful that someday they will do a more human version of Bruce Lee on screen. And this was I feel like this was the kind of the kids starter version of the Bruce Lee story, where they mix a bunch of stuff up and unfortunately, no one else is correct in it.

00:51:27:00 – 00:51:46:01
Matthew Polly
And so when I wrote the biography, I felt in many ways I felt like this movie was the thing I was writing against because there were so many things that were wrong that I didn’t know when I started, because the movie’s been reinforced by magazine articles, etc. and so while it’s a perfectly fine movie, it’s, it’s it is pretty terrible history.

00:51:46:08 – 00:52:07:08
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned your biography, and hopefully at the end of the day, everybody listening to this realizes that it is a movie. It’s going to be a movie. It’s not going to be historically accurate. So with that in mind, anyone listening to this that wants to learn the true story, can you share some information about your book and where they can get a copy?

00:52:07:10 – 00:52:29:08
Matthew Polly
So the title of the book is Bruce Lee A life, by Matthew Polley. It’s available everywhere, so you can get it on Amazon. It’s in most bookstores. Still paperback versions come out. It’s being adapted into a documentary. It may be a movie someday. We’re working on that. So who knows, maybe we will get the story straight and, in Hollywood.

00:52:29:11 – 00:52:34:15
Matthew Polly
But until that day, the books, books there, and it’s, available everywhere.

00:52:34:17 – 00:52:37:00
Dan LeFebvre
Thank you again so much for your time, Matthew.

00:52:37:03 – 00:52:43:28
Matthew Polly
I really appreciate it.