You are watching a master at work.
Bruce Lee:
Five feet, seven and a half inches tall, 135 pounds of martial art dynamite.
Hong Kong, in February of 1973, is a bustling island...
...of modern industry and commerce that plays against...
...a backdrop of culture and tradition that has remained...
...largely unchanged for over 1,000 years.
The biggest news coming from within the city these days...
...is the rapid growth of its motion picture industry.
Formerly an enterprise of no consequence to anyone but local theater owners...
...the Hong Kong movie industry is now attracting the attention...
...of the most powerful film studios in the world.
The reason for this sudden surge in interest is the meteoric...
...rise to fame of a 32-year-old man named Bruce Lee.
Lee's dynamic on-screen presence, coupled with an audience empathy...
...that cuts across all cultural boundaries...
...have resulted in his films shattering box office records.
Producers the world over have come to see in Lee the key...
...that will unlock the door to the future of the industry.
They begin to flood the young artist with offers that a year ago would've been...
...impossible for him to have imagined.
After years of battling against cultural and professional bigotry...
...economic and emotional hardship, and the exhausting effort required...
...to sustain the integrity of his art...
...Lee's perseverance has finally been rewarded.
He has become the most sought after motion picture actor in the world.
With such power now at his disposal...
...Lee could easily choose to rest on his laurels and play it safe by making...
...the kind of formula pictures that are now being offered him on a daily basis.
But the very notion of formulas and methods...
...hold no appeal whatsoever for this young man.
Instead, Lee is presently in the midst of filming The Game of Death...
...what he terms a multi-level film, in which his personal philosophy...
...of martial art is being presented for the first time.
He's returning to this film after a brief hiatus...
...having spent the fall of the previous year filming three sequences...
...the finale, it turns out, of the film.
Lee performs the work and assumes the responsibility of eight people...
...in the creation of this film.
He's the director, the producer, the choreographer and screenwriter.
In addition to having a hand in set design, cinematography and lighting.
And, of course, he's the leading actor.
Martial artists who are not accustomed to the camera must be taught how to sell...
...a strike or a reaction for optimal dramatic effect.
Again, this falls to Lee to look after.
Take after take of precision martial art choreography is performed.
Lee will spend, in some instances, up to four days filming...
...what will turn out to be only a five-minute fight sequence.
Lee is most demanding of himself.
In this shot, involving his handling a nunchaku...
...an ancient Oriental weapon that was originally used as a rice flail...
...Lee will shoot no less than 10 takes to capture one small sequence...
...that will appear on screen for a mere 3.5 seconds.
He wants his films to have the stamp of realism and believability.
Filming of The Game of Death is suspended in October of 1972 when word reaches...
...the set that Warner Brothers is now interested in co-producing his next film.
It will mark the first time in the history of East-West relations that a Chinese...
...and American film studio work together on a motion picture.
Lee views the co-production as a step toward raising global understanding...
...of Chinese culture...
...and of having Chinese films accepted into the international market.
Did you look at many Mandarin movies before you started...
...playing in your first one? - Yes.
What did you think of them when you saw them?
Quality-wise, I have to admit that it's not quite up to the standard.
However, it is growing and it is getting higher and higher and going toward...
...that standard which I would term quality.
Lee and his business partner, Raymond Chow...
...fly to Los Angeles in November of 1972...
...to complete negotiations with Warner Brothers for what will prove...
...to be Lee's last and biggest film, Enter the Dragon.
January to April of 1973, Lee gives over to the filming of Enter the Dragon.
Again, he will oversee every aspect of its production and post-production.
By the time his schedule allows him to resume working on additional ideas...
...for The Game of Death, it's mid-July of 1973, the final week of his life.
July 20, his last day on Earth, he will spend discussing script ideas for the film.
On this fateful day, Lee will, in characteristic optimism...
...look ahead to September 20, 1973.
He will write in his daytime diary for this date...
...of his intention to resume filming The Game of Death.
These will prove to be the last words he will ever write.
Lee's passing hits the residents of Hong Kong like a tidal wave.
Disbelief, shock, anger.
There was so much more the young man had to accomplish.
So much he had to live for. And now, nothing.
Upon Lee's passing, so too...
...passes the movement towards realism in Eastern cinema that he had pioneered.
Almost immediately, action films will revert to being unbelievable and hokey.
Ironically, during an audio dictation that Lee makes only weeks prior...
...to his passing, he comments on this distinction between his films...
...and those made by other, less dedicated production companies.
I can tell you that as more Bruce Lee films are shown...
...the audience will soon realize...
...not only in acting ability but in physical skill as well, they will see the difference.
Five years after his passing, excerpts from the film Lee had worked so feverishly on...
...during the final months and hours of his life, are edited into...
...a film featuring Lee's title, The Game of Death.
But the film bears no comparison to Lee's original multi-level vision.
Without Lee's choreography notes, script-outline and motif...
...the producers are uncertain what to do with the 100 minutes of footage...
...they have in their possession.
Moreover, they discover that Lee was such a perfectionist that...
...of the 100 minutes of footage they have in hand, two-thirds turn out to be...
...outtakes and retakes, shots that Lee himself had discarded...
...for sequences in the film that he felt were beneath his standard of quality.
They deem only 11 minutes and 7 seconds...
...of the footage to be worthy of inclusion in their film.
The rest, approximately 21 minutes worth, they discard.
Intercutting actual footage of Lee into fight sequences involving lookalikes...
...and even using cardboard cutouts of Lee's head, the end result is...
...viewed by many as an exploitive and grotesque joke...
...played on the great artist's legacy.
By now, even Lee's most zealous fans...
...are beginning to believe that the original footage is gone.
And that it will never be possible to see the footage Lee shot in its entirety...
...nor to ever learn what his original storyline for the film was.
In the fall of 1994, during research conducted for a multi-volume book series...
...based on Lee's surviving writings, Lee's original script...
...and choreography writings for The Game of Death are recovered.
The writings confirm what had long been suspected...
...that Lee had shot considerably more footage for The Game of Death...
...than had been seen to date.
Another unexpected surprise is discovered among his choreography writings.
His hand-written storyline, 12 pages in length...
...and containing all scene breakdowns and select dialogue passages...
...the original storyline stands in sharp contrast to the one presented in...
...the film released under the same name.
After the discovery of Lee's script notes...
...a search to find the missing footage is launched.
It will last some six years, but then the miraculous happens.
The original 35mm film footage is located.
After having been separated for over a quarter of a century...
...Bruce Lee's original footage and script notes are finally reunited.
Over the course of this film, you'll see this footage as Bruce Lee...
...had intended for it to be shown, and you'll also come to...
...understand the struggle he had to undergo in order...
...to bring it to the big screen.
And perhaps along the way, you'll come to know the real Bruce Lee...
...the man behind the legend, a little better as well.
Water is the softest substance in the world...
...but yet it can penetrate the hardest rock...
...or anything, granite, you name it.
Water, also, is insubstantial.
By that I mean you cannot grasp hold of it. You cannot punch it and hurt it.
Every gung fu man is trying to do that...
...to be soft, like water, and flexible and to adapt himself to the opponent.
It is February of 1965 in Los Angeles, California...
...where a 24-year-old Bruce Lee is in the midst of auditioning for...
...a TV series that will never be made.
In 19 months, he will be known to American audiences as Kato...
...from The Green Hornet.
In five years, he'll discover a truth that will forever alter...
...the course of martial art history.
And in eight years, he'll be the most famous motion picture actor in the world.
But that's all in the future.
Today, he's unknown.
- You went to college in the US? - Yes.
- And what did you study? - Philosophy.
Bruce Lee's interest in philosophy, defined by the Western ethos as love of wisdom...
...is a passion that will remain with him for the remainder of his life.
Lee has been teaching Americans about...
...Chinese philosophy and culture for six years, lecturing in the Pacific Northwest...
...on the subtleties of Chinese thought.
His great passion, however, is gung fu, an ancient Chinese fighting art...
...unknown in the America of 1965.
Lee's scrapbook from this period of his life reveals brief descriptions of many...
...of the arts and traditions of the venerated masters of gung fu.
America's only knowledge of the martial arts in 1965 are judo and jujitsu...
...two Japanese arts that were taught to her servicemen during the Korean War.
Lee regards himself as an ambassador for Chinese martial art...
...teaching all who'll listen about the ways of the Chinese masters.
You told me earlier today that karate and jujitsu are not the most...
...powerful or the best forms of Oriental fighting.
What is the most powerful or the best form?
It's bad to say the best...
...but in my opinion gung fu is pretty good.
Would you tell us a little about gung fu?
Gung fu originates in China.
It is the ancestor of karate and jujitsu.
It is more of a complete system and it's more fluid.
By that I mean, it's more flowing, there is continuity in movement...
...instead of one movement, two movements, and then stop.
I see. What's the difference between a gung fu punch and a karate punch?
A karate punch is like an iron bar, "whack."
A gung fu punch is like an iron chain with an iron ball attached to the end...
...and it goes "whang," and it hurts inside.
Okay.
Lee has studied a system of gung fu for the past nine years called wing chun...
...and is considered one of the art's most talented and articulate exponents.
His teacher in this art has been an elderly Hong Kong Chinese master...
...by the name of Yip Man.
Despite his proficiency in this style of gung fu...
...his study of philosophy has caused him to question.
And now, he begins to question why most martial artists...
...Chinese and otherwise, seem more concerned with...
...preserving tradition, than with looking more deeply into the matter...
...to penetrate through to the ultimate truth of martial art.
Moreover, Lee has begun to develop his own method of gung fu...
...which he describes as, "non-classical in nature" and which takes as its core...
...the principles of economy of motion, simplicity and directness.
All right, for instance, you will read it in bulk...
...in a magazine and everything, that when somebody grabs you...
...you will first do this and then this and then and then...
Thousands of steps before you do a single thing.
Of course, these kinds of magazines would teach you...
...to be feared by your enemies and admired by your friends.
But in gung fu, it always involves a very fast motion.
Like, for instance, a guy grabbing your hand...
...it's not the idea to do so many steps. Step right on his instep, he'll let go.
This is what we mean by simplicity.
Same thing in striking and in everything.
It has to be based on a very minimum motion...
...so that everything would be directly expressed. One motion...
...and he's gone. Doing it gracefully, not yelling...
...and jumping all over him, but to go...
Excuse me.
Both the American and Chinese martial art communities resent his iconoclasm.
For such a young man to stand up against thousands of years...
...of tradition and venerated authority, is considered a direct threat...
...to the status quo and its entrenched power base.
Prior to Bruce's coming to this country...
...gung fu was alive in most, all the Chinese communities...
...but there was nothing taught to outsiders.
Bruce came along, and with that basis of trying to...
...create equality amongst all people regardless of race...
...he chose to let anybody into his school regardless of what color or race they were.
As long as he knew that what was in their heart was good and positive...
...he took them in.
When he was in San Francisco, where the Chinese community...
...was much more like being in China...
...they took exception to it.
He had to fight his way out of it.
In Oakland, he received a challenge...
...from the San Francisco Chinese martial arts community.
And the challenge read that...
...Bruce, if he were to be defeated in this challenge...
...would have to cease teaching Caucasian or non-Chinese students.
And the Chinese martial artist came over from San Francisco...
...to Bruce's studio in Oakland and a very formal challenge took place.
I was present there.
In fact, I was eight months pregnant with Brandon.
James Lee was there.
This fight with this Chinese martial artist lasted about...
...three minutes.
It consisted of a lot of running, where the Chinese martial artist...
...took off and started running around the room, and Bruce was pursuing him...
...before Bruce finally got a hold of him...
...and took him down to the floor and made him give up.
After the challenge ended with the Chinese martial artist...
...being soundly defeated and they all went away...
...Bruce won the right to teach anyone he wanted to.
By February of 1967, Lee has three schools operating in Seattle...
...Oakland and Los Angeles that teach his own interpretation of gung fu...
...based on his own investigations into the ultimate truth of unarmed combat.
However, by now the young man is openly critical of the traditions...
...and limitations he sees as inherent in the martial arts...
...as they're currently being practiced in America.
He believes they lack a solid grounding in reality...
...consisting of rehearsed self-defense routines that are employed...
...and predictable in patternized rhythms.
He notes that real combat is spontaneous, not rehearsed...
...and is made up of irregular or broken rhythm a martial artist cannot anticipate...
...only respond to.
Even the championship karate tournaments of the era are non-contact affairs...
...settled not on knockouts but on an accumulation of points...
...awarded for blows that never touch an opponent.
A victory is determined by a team of judges...
...who conclude which combatant would probably have hurt...
...the other combatant the most, had contact been allowed.
Lee has no use for such styles of pseudo-fighting...
...which he calls, "organized despair" and "dry-land swimming."
Lee's criticism of the arts can be attributed in part to his background in Hong Kong...
...which consisted not of non-contact karate tournaments...
...but full-contact street fights and challenge matches...
...fought on Hong Kong rooftops.
When not fighting against proponents of different styles...
...of gung fu on rooftops...
...Lee had also fought frequently against...
...opponents who had been armed with knives and chains.
In such real-world encounters, referees and judges were not necessary.
Rather than participating in non-contact karate tournaments...
...which he considers little more than glorified games of tag...
...Lee instead devotes himself to devising...
...a more scientific approach to unarmed combat.
His research leads him to the science of Newtonian physics...
...and the techniques and principles of European fencing and Western boxing...
...where efficiency, not tradition, are the touchstones of both disciplines.
Lee's research causes him to understand that the only litmus test...
...of a combative technique's worth...
...is whether or not it can be landed effectively on an opponent.
Anything that's ornamental is discarded from his style.
He retains only those techniques...
...that he himself has determined to be practical in real self-defense situations.
Lee is the first martial artist in North America, if not the world...
...to have his students don boxing gloves...
...headgear and body protectors and spar all out.
Nothing is rehearsed, no punches are pulled...
...and full-contact, reality-based martial art is the order of the day.
In 1967, Lee introduces the concept of full-contact sparring...
...at the International Karate Tournament in Long Beach, California.
Defense is not emphasized in his new reality-based method...
...as this would be allowing one's opponent to set the tone and tempo in a real fight.
Instead, the focus of Lee's new approach to combat is on attack...
...or more precisely, on intercepting the opponent's attack...
...with an attack of one's own.
By midsummer of 1967...
...Lee has determined the defining attribute of his new approach to martial art:
The principle of interception.
As the Cantonese term for unarmed combat is typically represented...
...by a character indicating a fist...
...Lee christens his new approach, jeet kune do...
...the way of the intercepting fist.
Now what is this thing you do?
In Cantonese, jeet kune do, the way of the intercepting fist.
- Intercepting fist? - Or foot.
Come on, touch me, anywhere you can.
To reach me, you must move to me.
Your attack offers me an opportunity to intercept you.
In this case, I'm using my longest weapon, my sidekick...
...against the nearest target, your kneecap.
This can be compared to your left jab in boxing...
...except it's much more damaging.
I see. Well, speaking of a left jab...
This time I intercept your emotional tenseness.
You see, from your thought to your fist, how much time was lost.
Before long, word is out concerning Lee's art...
...and he begins to attract the attention of America's top martial artists...
...as well as many prestigious Southern California actors and athletes...
...Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar among them.
Bruce was an iconoclast and a rebel...
...in that he thought the traditional martial arts...
...were way too bound by tradition.
People who were not really that effective at martial arts...
...really were not promoting martial arts but their own nationalistic brand...
...of martial arts and their view of the world...
...more so than a realistic martial art fighting system.
He wanted to get to the pure essence of the art.
Lee's Los Angeles school, located in the heart of Chinatown...
...and without any advertising, pulls in not newcomers to the martial arts...
...but seasoned black belts...
...all of whom now look upon Lee's art as revolutionary.
And upon his talent as otherworldly.
In the Sportsweek of the Washington Star...
...printed in Washington, D.C. On August 16, 1970:
"Three of Bruce Lee's pupils, Joe Louis, Chuck Norris, and Mike Stone...
"...have between them won every major karate tournament in the United States.
"Joe Louis was grand national champion three successive years.
"Bruce Lee handles and instructs these guys...
"...almost as a parent would a young child.
"Which can be somewhat disconcerting to watch.
"It's like walking into a saloon in the old West...
"...and seeing the fastest guy in the territory...
"...standing there with notches all over his gun.
"Then in walks a pleasant little fellow who says:
"'How many times do I have to tell you...
"'... you are doing it all wrong? '
"And the other guy listens intently."
With the top actors and martial artists in America...
...now coming to his home for private instruction...
...Lee is the toast of the martial arts world.
However, by the end of 1969...
...Lee is growing concerned that his students are looking to his art...
...as containing a secret way, special techniques that alone are responsible...
...for success and ability in combat.
To Lee, there is no such thing as a magic system.
The only secret to martial art success being a willingness to train hard enough...
...to cultivate one's own innate abilities.
Taking matters into his own hands...
...Lee now does something that is unheard of in martial arts circles.
In January of 1970...
...at the very height of his popularity and reputation in the martial art world...
...he closes all three of his jun fan kung fu schools.
When Bruce closed the schools, he felt he was unburdening himself...
...of having to prove through his students...
...that his system had merit.
He didn't want to get into that.
He wanted them to evolve and teach, but it was not a thing where...
..."you have to teach what I taught.
"You have to teach what you learned"...
...and that's going to be more than what he taught, hopefully...
...for those students that understood what he was doing.
Lee's going to teach me all this.
I cannot teach you.
Only help you to explore yourself, nothing more.
Lee now trains only a handful of students privately.
As his art is about personal growth, he feels he must come to know...
...each student thoroughly in order to assist the student in developing...
...the skills and confidence required to free him from the chains of limitation...
...whether of physical or psychological origin.
What is your instinct?
To pray.
In this position, your arms are useless.
Yeah.
Can you kick or stomp me?
No.
Then if you wish to survive, what do you do?
I don't know.
Bite.
Bite?
Are we not animals?
You all right?
I can't find much evidence to the contrary, Lee.
Bite?
Biting is efficient in close quarters...
...but don't make a plan of biting.
That is a very good way to lose your teeth.
There's so much to remember.
If you try to remember, you will lose.
Empty your mind.
Be formless...
...shapeless, like water.
Now, you put water into a cup...
...it becomes the cup.
Put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now, water can flow or creep or drip or crash.
Be water, my friend.
Yeah. Why don't I stand in front of Paul and recite that to him.
Maybe he'll faint. Or drown.
When is it?
Tomorrow.
You are not ready.
I know.
Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win...
...but never do accept the way to lose.
To accept defeat.
To learn to die is to be liberated from it.
So when tomorrow comes, you must free your ambitious mind...
...and learn the art of dying.
I remember he said, for me...
...if I were going to use, let's say, judo style.
Imagine me trying to get my hips underneath him...
...to throw him, for a hip throw.
"You're going to try and do that while I beat you down?
"You'll be trying to do something else."
You know, he was absolutely right.
Lee is his own best example of the potency of his beliefs.
He's detected his own weaknesses and limitations and by the application...
...of intellect and dint of hard work, he alone has overcome them...
...raising his physical ability to a level that borders on the phenomenal.
He routinely performs one-finger pushups on one hand...
...executes elevated V-sits for extended periods of time.
He can cannonade an opponent...
...several feet back from a punch he delivers from only one inch away.
And his sidekicks have so much power that, in the words of one recipient:
"They feel like being hit by a car."
He trains hard, six days a week...
...pushing to discover the outer limits of expression for the human body.
He finds out with disastrous consequences...
...on August 13, 1970.
As a result of an improper warm-up while lifting weights...
...Lee severely strains the fourth sacral nerve in his lower back.
It's an injury that will continue to plague him for the remainder of his life.
The injury leaves Lee virtually bedridden for a period of six months.
His doctors tell him he may never be able to kick again.
For Bruce to be lying down in bed 24 hours a day...
...for approximately six months...
...was an impossible thought.
You cannot contain him like that.