ENTER THE DRAGON [165 a 170]

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ENTER THE DRAGON 

I didn’t know it at the time, but while I was going through my first disastrous experience as a martial arts actor, something important was happening in the world of Hong Kong cinema. 

 

Then, in 1971, something really big arrived. That October, the stunt community buzzed with the news about a new guy Chow had hired—and for the biggest money anyone had ever heard of, despite the fact that he’d never starred in a movie, here or in the West. 

He was a U.S.-born Chinese whose supporting role in a popular American TV series had made him a cult figure, both there and in Hong Kong. The word was that he talked big. The word was also that he could back up everything he said. 

His name was Bruce Lee—Lee Siu Lung, or “Little Dragon” Lee, in Cantonese.

In the few years he lived, he hit Hong Kong’s film industry like an earthquake.

Just a few months after his being signed to Golden Harvest, the studio released his first movie—a picture called The Big Boss. The film showed a different kind of hero and a harder, faster, and more exciting kind of martial arts fighting—as quick and lethal as a cobra strike, pared down to the bare essentials.

Unlike the stiff, stilted combat of the swordsman movies that had made the Shaw Brothers rich, it looked rough, nasty—and painfully believable. And Lee’s hero wasn’t a stoic, noble soul, living his life in search of honorable revenge. He was a street brawler, a juvenile delinquent, sent away from home because of his love of fighting. 

In short, he was a real guy. 

When my brothers and I went to see the film, we found ourselves in a huge crowd of people who’d waited hours to get tickets. We wouldn’t 

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have gotten in at all, if it wasn’t for our sneakiness and acrobatic abilities (the former led us to an open back window to the theater; the latter enabled us to vault up and into the packed house without causing a disruption, though no one would have noticed anyway). 

Despite the fact that we hadn’t paid to get in, we were prepared to hate the film. We really wanted to. After all, this overseas Chinese guy had come in out of nowhere, was making hundreds of times our salaries, and had Hong Kong eating out of the palm of his hand. 

We wanted to, but we couldn’t. 

The film was everything the movies we were making weren’t. And even though The Big Boss may not seem very impressive today, for us then, it was a revelation. 

“Just what I said,” shouted Samo on the way out of the theater, pumping his fist in the air. “Real fighting. Real hero. I like it.”

“Ah, he ain’t nothing,” I said. “If you think it’s so real, how come when he fights a whole crowd of people, they only attack him one at a time?” 

“Yeah, that doesn’t happen in real life,” chimed in Yuen Biao. We all had bruises to prove it. 

Samo shook his head and waved us away. “You guy don’t know what you’re talking about. I bet this is the beginning of something big, and if I’m wrong, I’ll eat my shoes.” 

“Probably do it anyway when you get hungry enough,” I muttered. 

And then, as usual, the chase was on.

                       

As it turns out, however, Samo was right. The Big Boss was a big hit—a blockbuster not just in Hong Kong, but throughout Asia. Its success turned the man called Dragon into Hong Kong’s hottest star, and Golden Harvest from an upstart into a contender. 

In the process, it turned the Hong Kong movie industry upside down. You see, the Shaw Brothers had always been the undisputed kings of Hong Kong cinema. They were almost like a monopoly. They had the biggest actors, the top directors, and the most money to throw around—not that they ever spent more than they had to. 

But by losing Bruce Lee to Golden Harvest, the giant had stumbled, and now the industry realized that Shaw could be beaten. Everyone knew that Lee had gone to Shaw Brothers first and been offered a standard minimum contract—barely enough to live on, and certainly not worth moving to Hong Kong.

Lee would pay Shaw back for that insult millions of times—once for every box office dollar he put in Golden Harvest’s bank account.

And meanwhile, every independent producer, studio executive, and wannabe movie mogul in Hong Kong was scouring the sidewalks for martial artists who looked, talked, acted, or fought like the Dragon—hunting for the next Bruce Lee. 

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It made for very exciting times for us stuntmen. Exciting, and just a little bit frustrating. When we gathered in the evenings  to drink and talk, the conversation always ended up turning the same way: what did Lee have that we didn’t? What was he secret of his success?

Is it any wonder that all of us wanted to see this man, this phenomenon, for ourselves?

It wasn’t long before I got my chance.

As usual, it all started with a call from Big Brother. 

“Hey, Big Nose,” said Samo, “have I got an offer for you!”

Samo was calling from the offices of Golden Harvest, where he was now a resident stunt coordinator.

I listened with growing excitement as Samo told me about a new film project being developed at Golden Harvest. Set during the Japanese occupation of China, Fist of Fury was a story of rivalry and revenge between two competing martial arts schools, one Chinese, one Japanese. There were dozens of stunt parts available. 

“And you can have one,” said Samo, “if you want one.” 

Before I could even say yes, Samo added, almost as an afterthought: “Oh, yeah—the star of the movie is Bruce Lee.” 

I shouted a curse over the phone, and Samo laughed in response. 

“I guess that means yes, huh? Well, show up at Golden Harvest at the crack of dawn tomorrow. If you’re late, you’re out of luck, so don’t screw up. And don’t forget you owe me a big one.” 

I knew that Samo would lord it over me the whole time I was on the set—he never missed an opportunity to make me kiss his butt when we worked together—but if there was ever a time when it was worth it, it was now. 

I’d watch, and listen, and learn. 

And if I got the chance, I’d show the little Dragon what a Shandong boy can do. 

When I walked onto the set the next morning, I realized that just about every stuntman with any kind of reputation had been hired onto the project. A shout of hello got my attention, and I saw Yuen Biao, standing off to one side with his hands in his pockets. Next to him was a lanky young man whom I soon recognized as my Big Brother Yuen Wah. It turned out that Yuen Wah had been cast as Bruce’s own stunt double—partly due to his impressive skills, and partly due to the fact that his body type matched Lee’s lean, whip-quick physique. 

The resemblance in their build was even more obvious when Lee 

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burst onto the set, shaking his head in barely disguised fury. What Yuen Wah couldn’t match was Bruce’s intense personal magnetism: even when he was just walking, the Dragon seemed to crackle with electricity.

The reason for his anger was soon apparent. Ho on Bruce’s heels was the heavy, bespectacled figure of the film’s director, the famous filmmaker Lo Wei. 

Lo had made a number of successful movies, including Bruce’s debut, The Big Boss, and often bragged of being Hong Kong’s first millionaire director. Stuntmen who’d worked with him had a slightly different opinion of his skills; for all of his boasting, he was best known for falling asleep in his chair on the set. Even worse, Lo was a hard-core gambler who favored horse racing; while scenes were being shot, he’d turn on the radio to listen ten to the post-to-post coverage from the Happy Valley Racetrack, utterly unconcerned about the action going on around him. In fact, if someone dared to interrupt the post-to-post coverage, he’d unleash his famous temper, shouting the wretched individual off the set so he could follow his ponies in peace.  

It was clear that Bruce had nothing but contempt for the man who called himself “the Dragon’s mentor.”

“The quote was out of context,” harrumphed Lo at Lee’s back. 

“It’s in the paper, isn’t it?” said Bruce, a lethal edge in his voice.

“I never said I taught you how to fight,” said Lo, waving his hands in an attempt to reassure his star. “I only said I showed you how to fight for the cameras. The skill, the talent, that’s yours, Bruce. At most I, ah, gave you a little polish—” 

The rest of us were watching this scene with discomfort, unsure of whether to get involved. It seemed pretty likely that something nasty was about to happen, but after all, we were just stunt players. What right did we have to get involved in a confrontation between the movie’s director and its star?

If there was even going to be a movie, that is. The black, enraged look on Lee’s face suggested that Lo’s days might be numbered. 

Just as it seemed like the situation was about to explore, a petite hand reached out to touch Bruce’s shoulder. It was Liu Lianghua, the director’s wife. “Please, Siu Lung,” she said. “Don’t take what my husband says so seriously. There is no insult in his words. Everyone knows that you are the master, and we are all just students!”

Bruce put down his fists and allowed his shoulders to untense. Lo casually took a sideways step that put his bulk behind the slim body of his wife. 

“All right, Madame Lo,” Lee said finally. “Out of respect for you, I’ll forget that this happened. But if your husband ever talks to reporters about me again, I’ll give him a lesson on how to fight.” And Lee walked off to the side of the set, shaking his head. 

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Lo blanched. “Was that a threat?” he shouted, waving anxiously at the rest of us. “Did he threaten me? All of you are witnesses!”

We stuntmen had watched with distaste as Lo hid behind his wife’s skirts, and we had nothing to say to him now. As Lo stared at us, his face betraying a mix of fear and annoyance, we turned away and went back to our idle conversation. 

“Okay, people, we have a movie to make!” bawled Samo as he walked onto the set, the cameraman a few steps behind him. “Quit jawing and look lively!”

When Samo and the cameraman arrived, we suddenly jumped to our feet and fell into a loose line, our faces alert and our bodies at attention. 

I think our attitude toward our new director was pretty clear, don’t you?

People always ask me about Bruce Lee. And why not? He was the biggest star Hong Kong cinema ever had at the time, an icon when he was alive and a legend after he died. He brought the martial arts movie to the attention of the world—and without him, I don’t think that anyone would ever have heard of Jackie Chan. 

I learned a lot from watching him, both in Fist of Fury and later, in Enter the Dragon. People have said enough about him to fill a thousand very thick books, and it still doesn’t do him justice. He had enormous charisma—a physical presence you couldn’t ignore. If he was in the room with you, it was impossible to ignore him, and difficult to pay attention to anyone else. He was an amazing martial artist, every bit as good as people have said. I don’t think I could have beaten him in a fight, and I wouldn’t have been dumb enough to try. (Believe it or not, Samo did! One day, he ran into Bruce in a hallway at Golden Harvest, and they got to talking about kung fu, and right then and there, they had a little match. Samo says it was even, but there were no witnesses, so who can confirm or deny?)

But the thing that was most obvious about Bruce when you met him was that he was a driven man, obsessed with perfecting himself, determined to achieve his goals. On the set, he worked like he was ten men, choreographing fights, instructing us individually in what he expected of us, and even looking through the camera to make sure that what ended up on screen was exactly what he imagined in his brain. Lo Wei might have been the director of the movie, but Bruce Lee was in charge, and everyone on the set knew it. Lo was perfectly content to let him take over. It meant less work for him. And besides, after the ugly incident at the beginning of the production, Lo wasn’t about to get into a fight with his very dangerous, very temperamental star. 

Still, if you ask me what I learned from the time I spent with Bruce, I would say I learned two things—both of which have been very important to me. 

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The first is that great success comes only with great ambition. As a child, I never had any interest in going into the movies. As a teen, more than anything else, I wanted the freedom to play and eat and sleep and live as I chose. I would have been very happy to be a stuntman for the rest of my life—or, if I ever thought about the future at all, maybe a stunt coordinator. 

But in Bruce, I met someone who wanted to change the world, someone whose idea of success was to be admired and loved and remembered by millions. And in a career of less than a decade, in the space of just five films, he achieved his goals. 

I guess maybe that’s when I first realized that the horizon of what was possible was bigger and grander than I’d imagined. After all, if Bruce could do it, why couldn’t I?

Because—and this was the second lesson I learned from being with Bruce—the Dragon was not a fairy tale, not a god. He was a man. He was someone you had to admire, but not someone you needed to worship. When we were on the set, he was always surrounded by people trying to get close to him, all of whom were telling him, “Bruce Lee, you’re the best, you’re the greatest.”

I was in awe of him as much as anyone else, but I could never bring myself to join that crowd. I’d stand a hundred feet behind his followers, watching at a distance and feeling a little sick that even stuntmen with decades of experience were kissing his feet. After all, we’d all felt his punches and kicks by that time, and they were strong and skillful—but I knew people who were just as strong, or strong, and just as skillful, or even more so. 

It didn’t matter. Bruce was Bruce, and for that reason alone, he was the best. 

Bruce didn’t demand that kind of treatment. He was smart enough to know how empty all of the praise was, how dependent it was on his staying at the top, and making money for the studio and all of its flunkies. 

Later, after I had risen to success myself, I grew to understand the position Bruce was in. When you’re a “superstar,” whatever that means, there will always be people who treat you like you’re no longer a human being. In remembering him, I don’t make that mistake. To me, he is not and was not Bruce Lee, the mighty Dragon. He was and will always be Bruce Lee, a great teacher, a kind person, and a good man. 

And you know what?

I hope that’s how I’ll be remembered myself.