Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (6 page)

Tang Lung repeatedly stymies the Mafioso’s takeover attempts, so the big boss decides to fight fire with fire — calling in one Japanese and two American martial artists. Two of them, played by Wang Ing-sik
and Bob Wall
, pretty much take care of the restaurant employees. The final American is flown in especially to take on Tang Lung. It is Lee’s old California friend Chuck Norris
, in his first major screen role. The two face each other in the Roman Coliseum, using their real skills, with all the graciousness and solemnity of honor-bound warriors, in the most realistic empty-handed martial art fight ever filmed to that date.

Lee smartly infuses this serious, yet exciting, scene with small humorous touches, supplied by a mute kitten that witnesses the fight, and Norris’ own abundant body hair. Another change in Lee’s approach is in the ending — he is neither arrested nor killed. Instead, it looks as if he will settle down with the romantic lead (played in all three Lee films by the lovely Nora Miao
), only to suddenly pack up and go.

“In this world of guns and knives, wherever Tang Lung may go, he will always travel on his own,” is the last line. And travel Bruce Lee
did. All the way back to America. There, two projects were being created just for him. One was
Enter the Dragon
(1973), produced by Fred Weintraub
, who had seen some of the those “swingy-arm” kung fu films, and “loved the last ten minutes, when the hero would take on an army of crooks and defeat them all bare-handed. I was certain a hugely successful American movie could be made.

“I went to Hong Kong and saw Bruce’s films,” he told me, “and brought one back to show Ted Ashley
[then chairman of the board at Warner Brothers]. If it wasn’t for Ted, the movie would have never gotten made. I had half the money, but everybody else had turned me down — including other executives at Warners. But Ted asked me what I needed, and then said, ‘Go ahead.’”

Weintraub and co-producer Paul Heller
cut a deal with Lee’s Concord Productions
, then worked with Lee and novice screenwriter Michael Allin
on the script. Robert Clouse
was chosen as director on the strength of the thrilling, brutal fight scenes in the otherwise mishandled
Darker Than Amber
(1970), and, because, in Weintraub’s words, “Nobody else wanted to direct the picture except him.”

The story was James Bond
by way of Fu Manchu
. An unnamed espionage agency asks a Shaolin Temple teacher named Lee to compete at a martial-arts tournament in order to infiltrate an island off Hong Kong lorded over by a Shaolin renegade. Lee goes to the island in the company of Williams, a cocky black fighter, and Roper, a gambler — both of whom are in trouble with the law. Once on the island, they face the evil Han (named after Han Ying-chieh
, perhaps?) — a stereotype with a fake, interchangeable hand, a small army of guards, and a jail filled with drug addicts, slaves, and white slavery victims.

To put it mildly, the script was makeshift. Han is hardly more than Dr. No, and even has a white, long-haired cat like 007’s main nemesis, Ernst Stavros Blofeld. The only place the movie excels — in fact, the only place the movie is unique — is in its kung fu and its star. Not surprisingly, getting the project started in a city known for its standard operating racism was no easy task.

Darker Than Amber
(1970)
star Rod Taylor
was considered for the integral role of co-hero Roper, but the versatile John Saxon
, an actor who had been toiling in B movies since the mid-1950s, shared equal billing with Lee. Rockney Tarkinton
was cast as Williams … at first.

“Jim Kelly
was a last-minute replacement,” Weintraub revealed. “He came on the night before the picture was to start. At the last minute Tarkinton said I was taking advantage of him. I disagreed, and that was the end of that. At two o’clock in the morning, I went to see Kelly and said, ‘You’re hired.’”

Weintraub had Saxon, Kelly, and Bob Wall
ready to go. He had also hired Shih Kien
, famous as Huang Fei-hong’s most consistent adversary, and the “Queen of Kung Fu,” Angela Mao
, to play Bruce’s sister. To give the American audience a henchman they could understand, he cast Yang Sze as the muscular bodyguard Bolo (a name and physique which stuck with him, despite the fact that he was a skilled taichi
fighter). What he didn’t have, at first, was Bruce Lee
.

“For the first three weeks, we shot around him,” Weintraub maintained. “Linda Lee
, his wife, was the one who kept things going when he wouldn’t show up on the set. I think he was nervous. It was his first big film. And he was fighting with Raymond Chow
at that time. He was fighting with me, too, but not as much. It was just that he was so nervous. On the first day, he had a facial twitch. We needed twenty-seven takes to get the shot. But then he settled down, and we made the film.”

Things ran relatively smoothly, and word started getting around that Weintraub might have a tiger by the tail. “Once we started,”
the producer told me, “everybody thought Bruce was going to be something, and started sending me scripts in the middle of shooting. There was a man at Warner Brothers named Dick Moore
who understood the market, so we worked up a script with Ed Spielman
and Howard Friedlander
and showed it to Bruce. We tried to do it as a movie first.”

That movie was called
Kung Fu
and
took place in the Sierra Nevadas of 1868. It tells of the Chinese “coolie” laborers building the transcontinental railroad. Among them is Caine, a half-breed. Almost immediately, the movie flashes back to Caine’s training by Shaolin Temple monks, culminating in a final test that has him in a booby-trapped hall blocked by a red-hot cauldron. He escapes the corridor by lifting the cauldron with his forearms, which leaves tattoos of a dragon on one arm and a tiger on the other.

From there Caine travels to Peking, where his blind sifu, Po, stumbles into a royal guard. He’s shot for his mistake, and Caine kills the guards and, of all people, the prince. Then he escapes to America and gets a job on the railroad. From there, the script degenerates into a western
Big Boss,
but with one added twist. After Caine leads the coolies in a revolt against their corrupt masters, another Shaolin monk appears to challenge him. It seems the temple was destroyed as retribution for Caine’s act, and the monk wants revenge. Caine kills him, bows farewell, and disappears down the road.

“Tom Kuhn
, who was in charge of Warner Television at the time, said, ‘Why don’t we try this as a series?’” Weintraub said. “I said, ‘Great. Bruce would be perfect.’ We designed the series for Bruce.”

According to the “official” network story, Bruce Lee
ultimately turned down the offer to star in the series, thinking he wasn’t ready yet. Weintraub doesn’t remember it that way. “When he didn’t get the part,” he recalled, “I was stunned. Bruce was heartbroken, and I couldn’t blame him.”

The late Harvey Frand
, who told me that he was the executive who was actually given the unenviable task of telling Bruce in person, didn’t remember it the network’s way, either. “Ted Ashley
wanted Bruce,” he said, “but the network wanted someone like William Smith
[who, ironically, played the
Darker Than Amber
villain, and was considered for John Saxon
’s role in
Enter the Dragon
]. We felt that casting David Carradine
made for a good compromise. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think Lee’s English was strong enough yet.”

But his kung fu certainly was. In a vain attempt to try to convince the executive what they were missing, Lee kicked a feather off the bridge of Frand’s nose without touching his skin. It still wasn’t enough. Carradine got the part in the series that ironically succeeded because of
Enter the Dragon
.
And
Enter the Dragon
succeeded because of Bruce Lee
.

Comedian Margaret Cho
concurs. She has always felt that the TV series should have another name. “I hated that show, because the lead actor, David Carradine
, wasn’t even Chinese,” she said in her comedy act. “That show should not have been called
Kung Fu.
It should have been called
That Guy’s Not Chinese.
”

Lee’s Chinese contribution to
Enter the Dragon
, however, was telling. Bruce starred essentially as himself, and supervised all the kung fu — using many of the same stuntman he had worked with on
Fist of Fury
, including, most notably, the pre-superstar Jackie Chan
(Jackie had stunted the
Fist of Fury
villain who was kicked across a stone garden, and, in
Enter the Dragon
’s subterranean fight sequence, memorably gets his neck broken by Lee). This was Lee’s showcase, and its every fault only served to bolster Bruce’s participation. He was truly the best thing about the movie. In that respect, it could not have been a better vehicle for him.

To top it off, he also gave the entire film a heart most weren’t aware of. “I don’t think anyone else knows this,” Weintraub told me back in 1984, “but when
Enter the Dragon
was finished, I completely reedited it. When it was initially done, it was a linear story that started in the United States. But Bruce went back and did the Shaolin Temple sequence. That was his. He did that without me, and I loved it. I took that and opened the film with it. Then I went onto the boat and did flashbacks, which everybody thought I was crazy to do.”

For that memorable, important, prologue, Lee introduced the world to Stephen Tung Wai
, who played the young man Bruce was teaching. The child actor grew up to be one of the industry’s most promising new kung fu choreographers. But back at the time, Lee also called upon his friend Sammo Hung
Kam-po, whom he had met when first coming to work for Golden Harvest
. At that time Sammo had been the studio’s top action director, so he had listened to all the stories about how great Bruce was with some skepticism. On his first day back in Hong Kong from location shooting, Sammo visited the studio offices.

“I walked around the corner, and there he was,” Sammo told me. “I said ‘You’re Bruce Lee
?’ He said, ‘You’re Sammo Hung
. Wanna fight?’ I said, ‘Sure!’ So we set up right there in the hall. We’re getting into position, then suddenly he relaxes, leans over, and asks, ‘Ready?’ I said “Yeah!’ … and the next thing I know, I’m flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling. Bruce leans over and asks, ‘How was that?’ I gave him a big thumb’s up and said, ‘Great!’ And we were friends ever since … until….”

The “until” was that
Enter the Dragon
prologue. “I was working in Thailand
, I think, and I hear from Bruce,” Sammo recalled. “He was wondering if I could do him a favor. So I fly all the way back to Hong Kong, and do the fight scene with him.” Sammo played Lee’s adversary in the sequence. But, with the scene over, Bruce, according to Sammo, drove him back to the airport. “And there he hands me around two hundred (Hong Kong) dollars [the equivalent of about twenty-five bucks],” Sammo said. “I said ‘What’s this? I was doing you a favor. Why are you treating me like this?’” Sammo rejected the token payment and returned to his set, bewildered. It was his first sign that Bruce Lee
was changing. “We didn’t really talk after that,” Sammo admitted.

Bruce, meanwhile, returned to Hong Kong to a tumultuous reception. It was months before
Enter the Dragon
would premiere, but just the very fact that he had starred in an international film after having attained star status from his first three movies put him in superstar category. After years of being ignored and diminished, his every word and deed in Hong Kong was being received with devoted worship. It would seem that Bruce Lee
had the last laugh. Weintraub and he were already discussing a second American movie, for which he would receive a million dollars. He supposedly was on the verge of signing a contract with the Shaw Brothers
studio to do a period piece; photos to that effect were taken.

But first he wanted to do a project he called
Game of Death
.
Lee had been planning it for some time. He had copious notes and already secured much of the cast.
Initially it seemed to be a sequel to
Way of the Dragon
.
In the company of two friends, Tang Lung is forced to travel to Korea, where he must secure a treasure at the top of a pagoda, guarded by a different type of martial artist on each level. Under grueling, non-air-conditioned, conditions in the dog days of a Hong Kong summer, Bruce filmed three fight scenes — one with Daniel Inosanto
, one with Chi Hon Joi
(a hapkido
fighter), and one with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
.