He's universally recongnized as the king of martial arts movies after making only one Hollywood film.
He died young, aged just 32.
And went on to become the biggest movie star in history.
And he influenced popular culture more than anyone, before or since.
Bruce totally inspired me, and made me... and made me dream,
made me realize that I want to be a film maker.
He definitely inspired me to, to want to do more with my life.
I know that Bruce Lee is the best.
Bruce Lee changed the world.
He resonated not only with Asian,
but resonated with the black community, the white community.
He was a hero for a... an entire culture that had no heros.
Bruce Lee is the father of mix martial arts.
Bruce Lee isn't just a fighter, he's, he's a thinker.
And Bruce he, he traded his book to the guidelines that's transferable to anything in life.
He's smart enough to create this very simple iconic image
that was endlessly reproducable.
He is everywhere.
We need emotional content.
Don't think, feel.
That's it.
Bruce Lee, actor, icon，and skilled martial arts.
A man able to perform super human feats that have yet to be equalled,
such as a two-finger push-up and a lethal blow called the one-inch-punch.
As well as he's a skilled martial artist, Bruce Lee was a writer, philosopher and film maker.
He was the first person to use his phenomenal kungfu skills on screen
without the aid of special effects.
Bruce Lee totally revolutionized the way, eh,
on combat which would be presented on screen.
But he wouldn't live to see his global impact.
He died suddenly in Hong Kong aged just 32 have been starring only 4 kungfu films.
His biggest film, "Enter the Dragon" was released on August 19th, 1973, 4 weeks after his death.
It was an instanty,
creating a super star whose influence would change the world forever.
"Secret chambers of Han's evil empire..."
For many people, "Enter the Dragon" was their first glimpse of this new Asian super star.
The movie left profound and lasting impression,
influencing and inspiring people around the world,
like rapper and actor LL Cool J.
From the first time I saw him on screen,
you know, I just thought he was eletrifying.
He had a lot of charisma.
He was magnetic, so fluid.
And his movement was so cat-like.
It was just really really exciting for you.
A lot of speaking he did through movement,
through posture, through looks and glances.
I mean there were certain scenes where he didn't even have to say anything.
LL Cool J is the first rap artist to amass 10 consecutive platinum-selling albums.
He's moved on to his successful acting career,
with more than 30 films under his belt.
Bruce Lee influenced me because Bruce Lee made me wanna make movies.
He was a powerful human being and, you know, that in a power that resonating.
He jumped off the screen and touched you personally.
It's not just actors Bruce Lee has inspired.
His influence can be felt in people from all walks of life.
Any people came into the martial arts film world,
whether they met him or not, Bruce Lee was the prime influence.
More interesting is the way that people in other areas poped the culture.
The Rappers, the musicians, the film makers,
directors, cinema photograghers,
they all have been influenced by Bruce Lee.
Hollywood film director, Brett Ratner says Bruce Lee is his biggest influence.
He's dircted 8 feature films grossing over one and a half billion dollars.
And he's best known for the "Rush Hour" triligy
starring Jacky Chen and Chris Tucker.
First Bruce Lee's film was the "Enter the Dragon"
and I became absessed with them.
I think I watched it more than any other movie
I've ever watched my entire life.
That just completely blew me away.
Yeah, such a unique persona, such a unique style and individuality
that he made fighting entertaining.
He made it fun.
He made it dramatic.
He made it emotional.
Actor Eddie Griffin's first experience of Bruce Lee
was watching his second film "Fist of Fury" also known as the "Chinese Connection".
It was released in 1973 made in Cantonese adapted into English.
Why did you kill my teacher? Why, why, why, why...
Then we were at a driving theater Kansas, Missouri.
It's one of those movie theaters what we have 2 screens, one over here, and one's there.
And we were watching "Fist of Fury".
And there's a porno playing on the other.
Tell ya how good Bruce Lee is, nobody was watching the porno.
We fight alone or all together?
It all just take me to show you.
Blown away then we came out of the place.
And nearly everybody thought is emulating Bruce.
Do that kick, such little brothers you know, and big brothers, you know, ah.
And yeah, been hooked in the dude ever since.
Fellow comedian and actor Margaret Cho
first saw Bruce Lee when she was 8 years old,
watching his film with her family.
He was like a beautiful, beautiful man
but also some... something that was not human.
I think his influence for me personally was really huge
and watching him as a child
made me see or gave me the notion that I could do whatever I wanted.
I don't know how I got the idea that I can be a comedian
and be in the movies and be in the TVs,
I just still don't know.
But I realize it was because of Bruce Lee.
So I feel, I feel like eternal indebted to him
that I gotta fight, somehow.
Many did just that.
Going on to become champions in their own field.
Sugar Ray Leonard is widely regarded as one of the best fighter of his generation,
earning an impressive 6 world championship titles in 5 weight classes.
I've told people all over the world that Bruce Lee was one of my idols.
Mainly because of his... of his mental stability, because of his fighting spirit
because it was more... it was more mental than just physical.
What's more interesting is to meet people whom you would not imagine like Carlos Santana
whom you would not think was a Bruce Lee's fanatic.
And he came to Hong Kong, the first thing he said was
"where is the Bruce Lee Memorial?
I want to go and pay respect to the spirit of Bruce Lee".
So it's all pervasive and I have been counting it again and again during my world.
Athletes, actors, artists and musicians
all said Bruce Lee is an influence.
So how did a skinny kid called Li Xiao Long rise from a backstreet of Hong Kong
to become the global icon known as Bruce Lee?
And why, 35 years after his death,
is his popularity and influence stronger than ever?
The water can flow or creep or drip or crash.
Be water, my friend.
Bruce Lee's philosophy has spotted an unususal following across European cities.
This is free running.
The art of expressing yourself physically as you move across urban spaces.
Free running is an offshoot of discipline that first emerged in France, known as Parkour.
It took Bruce Lee's philosophy of developing instinctive movement
and applied how a body can move across an urban space
as freely and directly as possible.
The ultimate goal of free running to... to be fluid, and... and to be flow.
Bruce Lee said that you must move like water to... to flow, to adapt to any given situation,
so you never stop at obstacles.
Just keep moving and find a way around them.
Bruce Lee has been a big influence of Parlour field.
Because of his philosophy, these arts also have philoslphy.
It's not just simple movement.
There's actually a method through it.
There's like ways of intercepting the obstacles with calculating being assessed to environment
and, ultimately altering your awareness.
So you become more into yourself in your environment.
It's a philosophy that can be adapted to many disciplines and situations.
Bruce Lee isn't just a fighter, he's a thinker
And Bruce he, he created his book and the guidelines
that's tranferable to anything in life and especially anything involves using your body.
And you think fight is one blow? one kick?
Until you can put combination to get out without even thinking,
and you learn to keep it moving and to endure,
You've got to listen.
Bruce Lee's philosophy is absolutely
as fresh as when it was illuminated in... in 1970's.
Adopt what is useful, reject what isn't useful,
and create what it specifically your own, which you gonna apply to anything.
I might do that as film-maker.
You might do that as documentary film-maker.
Someone else might do that as musician, sculptor, dancer, whatever.
Everybody can adapt that philosophy to their areas by expertise.
Bruce Lee's introduction to philosophy started early at 13
when he began studying kungfu under the guidence of the legendary master Yep Man.
He taught Bruce Lee that the martial arts involve much more than just the physical.
When he came to the U.S. at the age of 18, Bruce Lee majored in philosophy,
studying all types, eastern, western, ancient and modern.
So that he could blend physical and philosofical in his martial art of Jeet Kune Do.
He summed up his philosophy of being flexible, fluid
and not sticking into one particular style in a television interview in 1971.
Empty your mind.
Be formless, shapeless, like water.
Now you put water into a cup.
It becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle.
It becomes the bottle.
Now you put it in a teapot.
It becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or it can crash.
Be water, my friend.
The Pirre Berton interview was one of the few Bruce Lee did in English.
And it allowed him to communicate his thoughts to an audience outside of Hong Kong.
So in this interview he was able to communicate all those thoughts.
And do it in such a way that was not just physical also philosophical,
and a way to conduct one's life.
That's why I think this interview is more meaningful
than many of the other that concentrate only on Bruce's physical ability.
His philosophy, his work ethic, his cultrual kind of background,
to interpret that into a kind of cinematic world where it's believable.
You have an actor who really believes his way of life.
He was a real thing.
He compares kungfu to water, that kungfu has the continuity of movement.
Where, you know, it's... it's constantly moving.
Water, you can not grab, right?
And water can go through solid, you know, can go through rock.
Philosophical but at the same time simplistic.
And it could be understood by a young child or... or... or a master.
Bruce Lee's philosophy, recouted in his book the "Tao of Jeet Kune Do",
was apparent in some of his earliest TV appearences
where he would include his teachings in the script.
You must free your ambitious mind
and learn the art of dying.
He quoted from the "Hagakure", the Japanese way of the warrior,
to learn to lose, to learn to die.
It's been liberated from.
I mean it's just amazing to think of like geting that kind of information,
that kind of philosophy on a main-stream television show.
Bruce Lee changed philosophy by modernize it and make it main-stream.
He embrace the notion of self-help years before it became popular
and show that philosophy could be part of everyday life.
Bruce Lee had his own philosophy.
And that philosophy ultimately was finding yourself, in my opinion,
truthfully expressing yourself and putting on no pretence.
Being able to be who you are is a hard thing without putting on the show.
So his goal was too just being.
Bruce Lee's philosophy is still being picked up and taught by people around the world.
Shi Fu Shi Yan Ming is a 34th generation Shaolin monk who defected from China to the U.S. in 1992.
and opened up a Shaolin Temple in Manhattan.
He teaches Chan Philosophy also known as action meditation.
Tell you about Bruce's philosophy.
His philosophy was fantastic, just like...
I'm teaching the Chan Buddhism, Chan C-H-A-N, Buddhism, the philosophy knowledge.
Nothing can be everything. Everything can be nothing.
Sifu Shi Yang Ming credits Bruce Lee has being the main influence on his life
and believes he should be recognized as one of the world's great philosophers.
Bruce was authentic martial artist, also he was a philosopher.
If he wasn't great martial artist,
he will be the greatest philosopher without a question.
I read the Bible and the Koran sometime.
It mentioned that there are major prophets and there are minor prophets.
The major prophets we all know... Moses, Jesus, Abraham, Mohammed
I believe that Bruce Lee was a minor prophet, you know man.
Because what he brought to martial arts, what he brought to American society.
What he brought to the Asian culture in the American society to be accepted by all people.
It is something that prophet do.
Bruce Lee's philosophy has been adopted by people in numerous fields.
His belief that success flowed from dedication and self-knowledge
helped prepare him to become the first Asian super star
and was changed forever the way Asians were seen in west.
Bruce Lee exploded onto American cinemas screen in August 1973 in "Enter the Dragon".
For many Asian Americans, he was a revolution,
the first Asian hero they had ever seen on the screen.
Usually you will be seeing white actors playing Asian roles,
like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
So the appearance of Bruce Lee was... was quite revolutionary
because people of the actual race were playing that race...
he brought Asian faces to American cinema.
For many Asian people around the world, Bruce Lee became an instant role model.
We connected to him because he was the first one that came on and said
"Look, I'm Chinese, I was yellow skin. You know, I can do everything else everybody else can."
For myself going up to America, I can totally relate to him.
You know, coming to America as an immigrant... being an minority in a dominant white world.
And the things that he wanted to achieve in life.
I... I believe that's why other minority races,
they can relate to that, especially the urban minorities.
They can feel the same passion that Bruce Lee wanted to bring for his own race.
Before Bruce Lee, the majority of the Asian characters in western films were limited to
being evil master minds like Fu Manchu, subservient labors or commic fool.
Bruce Lee really changed the way Asian's actors were seen in the west.
I think that's something you've given a lot of credit for.
For Chinese people around the world and also for minorities around the world living anywhere
where they're sort of oppressed, beating down, have a qualmish job.
This was huge, this was someone with nonwhite skin,
who was not aren't-Asian, this was someone standing up and... and sticking up for themselves.
And it was not just Asians who connected with this new nonwhite hero.
He was a hero for an entire culture that had no heros.
Bruce came along in Kato
as first time that you've seen an Asian guy in control.
Everything on the table where we can all see it.
In African American, that was the first time I saw someone
who seem darker to me doing something like that.
A guy I've never seen that before.
It was the first hero that I ever saw that wasn't a white person.
Prior to making his four kungfu films,
Bruce lee was cast as the crime fighting chauffeur in Kato
in the 1966 TV series "The Green Hornet".
...protect the rights and lives of citizens rise the Green Hornet
He got the part after being spotted at a Karate tournament in California
It was this screen test that was to lead to his first US television role.
My last name is Lee, Bruce Lee.
It was also Bruce Lee's first chance to demonstrate his formidable kungfu skills on screen.
...straightly gone or come up
Or if I can back a little bit, step back then come back.
- All right. - He's kind of worried.
While playing Kato, Bruce Lee experienced at first hand
the attitudes that has consigned the Asian actors to cliche or minor roles.
He was filming "The Green Hornet"
and he was still in his Kato uniform and the producer came on and said "Boy".
He said "where's your car?"
He said:"you need to pick up Soders, the actor right now."
He said "Excuse me, boy?" And so Soders who is this actress says..."
"You know who he is?"
He said "This is Bruce Lee. He is playing Kato on 'The Green Hornet'."
And they just shunt him away like it was no big deal.
So this was mentality at that time.
An Asian man in a chauffeur uniform, he just serve it.
You know, while Bruce Lee told Soders Brant next
kind of dictate the way his whole philosophy was.
She said "Did that bother you?"
And He said "Did that bother me?"
He said "If I let it bother me, I wouldn't be Bruce Lee."
But Bruce Lee he was,
and after making a only handful of screen appearances,
he changed the ways Asians were before treated on screen forever.
One man, not a whole group of people,
but one guy turned the imagine of a Chinese guy
from a little guy with bud teeth and weary glasses who's on the content
to the imagine of the fighting philosopher, a peaceful warrior.
The film that prepare this fighting philosopher into public's consciousness was "Enter the Dragon".
It was the 4th and last film that Bruce Lee made
and the first coproduction between the Hollywood and an Asian film company.
"Enter the Dragon" is maybe the ready for Bruce Lee on the world stage.
And the reason for that is purely it's in English.
A lot of people saw Bruce Lee movie, otherwise didn't have done so.
But you look at the movie as a whole,
and the performances, the... the writing, the cermotography
and everything is great about "Enter the Dragon" and Bruce Lee is in the great movie.
It not just half passed picture with Bruce Lee elevating it,
So a lot of credits were wrong about the "Enter the Dragon",
overtime this has been repraised.
It's an extraordinary film as it is.
"Enter the Dragon" was also the first martial art film with mass corporal pin.
Culturally exposed to everybody, you know,
you've got Jim Kelly in there, representing African Americans,
you've got John Suces representing Europeans and you have Bruce, representing Asians.
So culturally I mean was real rounded.
But an English language martial art film has never been made.
So Bruce Lee and his Hollywood partners had no idea if anyone in the west would care.
It was unique and very risky.
It was a hugely stressful time for Bruce
because he wanted so much for it to be a wonderful fabulous entry for him into the American film market.
He was very perfectionist about how he wanted the descript to be
and who he wanted to be in it and have the choreography of the fight scenes and all that.
So he was involved into every aspect of that film.
Actor John Saxon had no idea of the film's impact until the premiere.
I was in the back of a limo and peered out the window, and I saw a line of people.
And the car kept moving, and I kept seeing that the line was extended and extended and extended,
and finally, passing the block, I saw that it went down the street,
and I said, "What the hell's going on there?"
They said "That's your film."
I said "My film?" and it hit me.
The film was phenomenal success, taking in 3 million dollars in its first seven weeks.
Costing less than $1 million and generating $200 million,
Bruce Lee's breakthrough film went on to become one of the most commercially successful films ever made.
# Everyone was kungfu fighting #
# Those cats were fast as lightning #
"Enter the Dragon" was not just a financial success.
It also became a cultural phenomenon.
When it opened in 1973, it started a craze for a new form of martial arts known as Gongfu in Cantonese but kungfu to everyone else.
After "Enter the Dragon", everybody wanted to be a Bruce Lee,
and you had a martial arts studio opening up almost on every corner.
In the east coast, the west coast, around the world, everybody wanted to be a Bruce Lee.
They were seeking that.
They wanted to be that.
My wife's brother was opening up a martial arts gym in Knoxville, Tennessee.
So I went there to talk.
There were mothers, children with five-year-olds and so on bringing these five... girls as well... to me.
"This is Mr. Saxon."
And I said, "Yes, that's right. That's right."
"Did your mother make you come here?"
"What made you come here and do this?"
Saw "Enter the Dragon".
Hi ya!
Soon everybody was kungfu fighting across the globe,
and pop stars from Donnie Osmond to the king of rock and roll himself were showing off their kungfu kicks.
Without Bruce Lee and "Enter the Dragon", it might have been years and years and years
and maybe not at all that martial arts as a genre would have become available.
Bruce intellectualized the art form,
and his persona in films brought it to the world.
It brought... it brought martial arts to the world.
It brought kungfu to the world.
But it also brought Asian cinema to the world.
As well as introducing the world to kungfu,
Bruce Lee also introduced another new word to the west:
the name of a little-known Asian weapon called the nunchuck.
His use of weaponry and his skill with the weaponry,
I mean, you could see that the guy didn't... it wasn't... it wasn't tricks.
It wasn't just, okay, camera tricks.
He would probably spend hundreds and thousands of hours practicing with the numchucks,
you know, and... and he barely blinked.
I mean, he was a master over the medium and over his artistry.
It looked like he was almost breakdancing with the nunchucks and rolled around on the floor,
hitting everyone's ankles with the nunchucks.
Bruce Lee was really ahead of his time
in terms of figuring out how to create unique iconic
emblems or things that would be uniquely Bruce Lee.
What he did was, he chose as his signature weapon, the one, the nunchaku.
The signature you see is that you see... that weapon, you think Bruce Lee.
The kungfu Bruce Lee demonstrated on-screen was all about realism,
much like his own creation known as Jeet Kune Do.
It was a revolutionary approach to fighting
that would change the world of martial arts forever.
Bruce Lee not only introduced the world to martial arts,
he also reinvented it, creating his own, called Jeet Kune Do,
being practiced here in Hong Kong.
It's the forerunner of the mixed martial arts scene in UFC.
Its key principles: simplicity, economy, and being as direct as possible.
Jeet Kune Do is called the way of intercepting fist.
Actually, Bruce Lee has a explain: his Jeet Kune Do as the art of fighting without fighting.
So that means if we don't allow our opponent to start the fight,
then there will be no fighting,
and that is the highest technique and ultimate aim.
In a fight situation, Bruce Lee's ultimate aim was to take his opponent out
before he had a chance to attack, using any means necessary.
In Jeet Kune Do, we can sum it up in three important words:
simple, direct, and non-classical.
By simple, it means the techniques we go for simplicity.
It is not adding on but taking away.
The less technique you have, the better you are.
By direct, you don't go things here and there but direct to the point.
Non-classical, that means you don't follow the old ways of doing things.
It's simple concept, but the theory behind it took Bruce Lee many years to develop.
Hong Kong in the 1950s was a tough place to grow up.
Thousands of Chinese had flooded into the city to escape the communist regime on the mainland,
leading to overcrowding and unemployment.
Youths would organize into gangs to protect themselves and their territory,
and the young Bruce Lee was no exception.
Despite coming from a relatively well-off family,
the teenage Bruce Lee was often involved in gang fights.
You have one clan against another clan.
You have the wing chun clan against the choi lei fut clan.
And there was a lot of battles in the streets.
And, you know, Bruce was very sure of himself and knew he can handle himself,
so, you know, the Gongsau matches, which are the roof-top fighting matches, happened a lot,
and Bruce Lee was part of that.
After getting beaten one time,
Bruce Lee decided to learn a martial art that could be used in real-life situations.
He began by learning Wing Chun,
and by the time he arrived in Seattle in 1959, he was a competent teacher.
Taky Kimura was one of Bruce Lee's first students and closest friends.
This young man at 18 was a holy terror, and athleticism.
I mean, he... he was all Hong Kong Champion Cha-Cha dancer.
His brother was all Hong Kong Champion fencer, so he became avid fencer and of course he did a lot of boxing in the streets, you know, in fights and things.
He had a pretty good hold in boxing, and so, this guy, when he came over, he was... he was, he was an all-around athlete.
Taky Kimura was one of a small but dedicated group of followers who Bruce Lee began teaching in Seattle.
Another of his first students was his wife-to-be, Linda.
You would just pass through a doorway here, and it would go down the stairs into the basement,
and it was just a plain room with concrete walls, and a swinging light-bulb,
and he had, oh, maybe 10 or 12 students at the most at one time in the class.
In 1966, the couple moved to Los Angles for Bruce to start work on the Green Hornet.
He opened up gym in Oakland and also began teaching private students, including actors Steve McQueen and James Coburn.
It was during this period that he began mixing different fighting styles to develop his own martial arts of Jeet Kune Do.
He was frustrated by the limits of traditional martial arts.
So if you did karate, you didn't do any ground fighting, or you didn't do any throws.
If you did judo, you didn't do any punching or kicking.
You know, if you did kungfu, you had to stand a certain way and strike a certain way and do set combinations and moves,
and he thought all of that was just getting in the way and being impractical.
You have to be adaptable, because fighting can go anywhere.
Fighting wasn't contained by rules.
If someone's gonna attack you, who knew what they'd do?
So you had to be ready for anything.
So that was... that was quite a revolutionary way of thinking.
Since creating Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee's martial art has spread as far a field as Scotland.
This is Glasgow, one of the violent cities in Europe.
More people die of assaults here than almost any other European cities.
Tommy Carruthers was a former club doorman who turned to Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do to protect himself from violent attack.
I would say the preferred weapon in Glasgow would be the knife.
There's more stabbings here than anything else.
Since taking up Jeet Kune Do, he's become one of the top practitioners and one of the few people in the world qualified to teach it.
He uses his Jeet Kune Do to train people in self-defense so that they can use it if attacked on street.
We're really trying to take the stuff and apply it to real-life situations, 'cause the guys are here, really, to know how to fight.
Tommy Carruthers reveals the key to Jeet Kune Do:
its simplicity and economy, making it useful in a real attack.
In some martial arts, an arm grab might entail a series of complicated moves, but not in Jeet Kune Do.
Traditional martial arts is... seems to be a long-winded affair of it going from point A to point B,
there's many ways we could show you to give you an example.
If you look at Bruce's idea,
and it's really just based on what would to be closest and where your hands and feet are in relation to the opponent.
I just feel, in this situation here
that because my leg is near his knee but the groin feels an easy target.
So if I was grabbed, I feel as if groin shot would be easier.
This would be a better set... a better move than just doing this.
And again, we could punch.
Bruce Lee's revolutionary approach to fighting has been adopted around the world and sports
such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Violent and competitive combat using mixed martial arts.
He was always trying to figure out the science of fighting,
and the reality is, you have to have a little piece of everything to be a complete fighter
That's what makes mixed martial arts is, and Bruce Lee is the father of mixed martial arts.
Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon, has come to Las Vegas to see her father's influence in action.
Talked about Kenny Florian.
My dad would have really enjoyed UFC.
I think he was, eh, very into real combat.
His art is all about being a complete fighter and being able to handle any situation you find yourself in.
And so this is really the closest you can get to it.
Mixed martial art is now one of the fastest growing sports in the world.
This UFC heavyweight title fight where Randy Couture famously lost his crown to Brock Lesnar
was one of the biggest pay-per-view events of the year.
It attracted more than a million viewers and generated more than 50 million dollars in sales.
Bruce Lee's influence on the sport is acknowledged by many of the fighters.
I've been watching his movies, studying his martial art and philosophy since I was like 8 to 10 years old.
And it completely changed my entire aspect on fighting.
Once again it's Bruce Lee's focus on economy, simplicity, and directness that clicks with UFC fighters.
What Bruce Lee used to do was work on circular movement.
So if that jab came, he'd work things like this so he's opening up targets here.
In kickboxing nowadays, or MMA, we're doing the same kind of motions, only we're just limiting here so that we're... our body is still open.
So I can do things like taking people down, or I can parry that punch to throw a kick.
But it's the same basic principle of redirecting motion.
He said that if you can't do something live, it's pointless.
So what I need to do is taking those tactics and those techniques,
remove them, and put them in a live training scenario, sparring.
And you have to learn what is gonna work in these different scenarios,
and be able to employ that right away, without thinking, muscle memories.
In Enter the Dragon, the first scene in the movie, they have mixed martial arts gloves.
Those are almost exactly the same kind of gloves we fight in today.
So the gear he used back then is the same year we use today.
And you see Bruce Lee hit it takedown in go into to an arm bar,
which, before UFC, the general public didn't know what arm bar is.
But now looking back, 30 years back, 40 years back, we're seeing before anyone really knew what it was, he was employing these tactics.
And while Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do revolutionized the world of martial arts,
his approach to health and physical fitness would change the way other athletes and sports people train their bodies forever.
Martial artists and sportsmen admired him for his physical dexterity, power and speed.
Philosophers respect him for bridging the philosophical divide between east and west.
But here at Gold's Gym in Venice Beach, California,
are another group of people who hold Bruce Lee up as inspiration for their community: the bodybuilders.
Gold's Gym is the Mecca of bodybuilding.
It was here Arnold Schwarzenegger trained, and where many of the world's champion bodybuilders come to hone their physiques.
Flex Wheeler was one of the most successful body-builders of his generation,
winning numerous titles before retiring in 2002.
Probably two of the biggest things that Bruce Lee was known as far as his physical attributes,
one would be his lats, 'cause he has incredible lats, and then also his abs.
Another thing also would be from the rear, his back.
In body-building, we call it Christmas tree.
So for a person, you know, having a Christmas tree back in that area is just profoundly unknown or unheard of.
Other body-builders such as Lou Ferrigno, Lee Haney, Dorian Yates, as well as Mr. Schwarzenegger
have all expressed all their huge impact of Bruce Lee's physiques had on them.
There are a surprising number of professional bodybuilders who were Bruce Lee's fans, and really, it comes down to Bruce Lee's abs.
He has legendary set of abs, deep cuts, incredible serratus of muscles.
And I think body-builders admire that.
In the body-building world, I think Bruce Lee came in and really was one of first proponents of definitions as opposed to just sheer bulk,
'cause if you look at the bodybuilding champions of that era, they were all this massive. They were just huge.
And it was him who really came in and said symmetry, definition, you know, getting cut was the big thing.
But that was the first time... it was really with Bruce Lee that that became something to aspire to.
As well as inspiring bodybuilder, Bruce Lee was quick to use their techniques in his own work-outs.
He was kind of pioneer in a number of different things, whether it was just dieting or extra training.
But he was one of the first that I knew of that actually incorporated, you know, bodybuilding and bodybuilding type movements into his regime as a... as a martial artist.
Back then, even now, they felt that in training and weight lifting,
it's gonna restrict your ability to punch or your speed or make you kind of slow or stuff like that
where I think he took it to a different level,
and he made it more sports specific on his actual movements that he did in the gym.
They were actually to enhance his ability as a fighter.
The spur for Bruce Lee to start weight training came after a fight in San Francisco in 1965.
He'd just started to teaching kungfu.
When a traditional practitioner of the art heard Bruce Lee was teaching westerners, he challenged him to a fight.
A pregnant Linda Lee was there to witness it.
It lasted about 3 minutes.
Bruce got the fellow down to the ground and said, " Do you give up? Do you give up?"
And he said I give up.
So they went back to San Francisco.
However, it upset Bruce mightly that he had not dispatched that man in under 3 minutes.
And he began... that's when he began to question his physical fitness and his way of martial arts.
Bruce Lee decided to reexamine both his fighting and training methods
and began an intensive program of physical conditioning.
He had a program for every single day.
So he did aerobic-type things.
He rode his bike, he rode a stationary bike.
He ran.
He jumped to rope.
All those kind of things for aerobic conditioning.
And then he did sit-ups forever, he had the wonderful washboard abs.
And he did strength exercising with weights all the time.
And he was very specific. He read books on kinesiology so he would know how to develop his body.
As well as studying the science of human movement, Bruce Lee also designed his weight equipment built by a close friend.
George Lee made a couple of things for him that were specifically to develop grip strength and the size of Bruce's forearm.
Bruce thought that that led to an increasing in punching power.
But one was a grip that you clench fist open shut to work to forearm muscles.
It's actually a lot like the stuff you see in sporting goods stores now.
Bruce Lee's training regiment helped him reach high level of stamina, speed and agility.
It allowed him to perform feats of superhuman strength
such as two-fingered push-ups seen here in rare archive footage from a karate tournament in 1967.
He also perfected a super fast and powerful blow, known as the one-inch punch.
This guy was... was probably the fastest person I've ever seen,
and he had that strength that, I mean, you... the one-inch punch, for instance.
He will knock you clear across the room.
Lee's speed was legendary.
Even when slow down to 1/4 speed, his strike is still hard to capture on camera.
He could stand 5 feet away from you and leap in there and tap you on your face and be back here standing
before you could move, before you could intercept it.
And every time, they'd say, "well, wait a minute. I wasn't ready."
And he'd do it about two more times, and they'd say, "Oh, hell!" You know, "I can't put up with that," you know.
I think a lot of the speed and timing that Bruce Lee had was,
a, from the conditioning and strength and the way his body worked.
He was very, very concerned with his fast-twitch muscles.
The one-inch punch that he developed, one of the fastest strikes and, and still use today.
And that transfers over obviously into the boxing side.
This ability to pack a punch has been acknowledged by some of the world's best boxers.
That was the most amazing thing about Bruce, was the fact
that he could generate so much speed and velocity in his punches,
short punches that he used his body and his... and his... the type of leverage he was able to gain
because he knew... he understood the mechanics of the body.
Bruce Lee didn't just confine himself to exercising his muscles.
He was also concerned with the fuel he was putting into his body.
He began experimenting with high-protein drinks
that he blended himself and supplemented with ginseng, royal jelly, and massive doses of vitamins.
He was very known for taking vitamins and minerals and stuff like that,
and he had to go on find these various difference ones and put them together,
where now we can just walk into any store and be able to buy certain supplements like that.
So a lot of the things he was doing as an athlete back then is things that we incorporate now bodybuilding.
Bruce Lee's approach to high-protein drink was revolutionary and shocked some of his colleagues when he returned to Hong Kong.
At that time, when we are not making movies, we would go to his house.
He showed us how he ate beef, raw beef from the U.S.
He put the raw beef into the blender and added mil, seven eggs, and then... wow.
But I think that his... his place was,
We were terrified.
It was amazing.
And it wasn't just his high-protein shakes that shocked his friends.
Sometimes he used electric current.
It was really mad, giving himself electric shocks voluntarily.
He was fighting with electricity.
Of course, we could not do it.
I do not know how many volts the electricity was,
but he was challenging the electricity.
You know, it's really funny that nowadays if you go to
any professional sports or thopedist place or physical therapist,
you go in there and you see them using the electronic stimulation machines
to rebuild muscles to help damaged areas.
But way before that was employed in any physician's room,
you saw Bruce Lee doing that at home on his own.
He was just a truly a pioneer and way ahead of his time.
Revolutionizing attitudes towards health and physical fitness
is just one of the many ways Bruce Lee changed the world.
But while the West has been quick to recognize his achievements,
it's only recently that China and Hong Kong
have begun to embrace their best-known son.
It's been more than 35 years
since the man universally hailed as the king of martial arts movies
died after making just four kungfu films.
Since his death,
Bruce Lee has been recognized as a visionary
who changed not just action movies and martial arts
but also philosophy, music, and pop culture.
Almost 50 years after Bruce Lee arrived in Hong Kong to make his first kungfu movie,
his daughter, Shannon, is returning.
She's here to meet former friends of her father's
and to promote the Bruce Lee Foundation that she now heads.
Film producer Raymond Chow was Bruce Lee 's friend and business partner.
As head of Golden Harvest studios,
he was the biggest film producer in Hong Kong.
Now aged 80, he stopped doing interviews some time ago
but has arranged to make an exception for Shannon, the daughter
of a man he first saw on a television talk show nearly 40 years ago.
It's a fateful evening that I watched that,
so I decided to call him first thing in the morning.
And I would say that's the beginning of something important in the movie industry.
Bruce Lee changed the way actors were treated by studios by negotiating his own contract
and taking a creative role in the writing, producing, directing, and choreography of his films.
You and my father had kind of an interesting and
revolutionary relationship for the Hong Kong film industry, right?
Yes.
I think that's the only fair way to do it,
and it avoid a lot of problems of negotiating things,
and Bruce and I were... relationship was so close.
He didn't want to have that.
I didn't want to have that.
The first film Bruce Lee made with Raymond Chow was the Big Boss,
about the struggle of the Chinese community in Bangkok.
Remember your promise.
You're on your own from now on.
You know, boy, a woman can be a blessing or a ruin to a man.
The Big Boss was a classic example of the way a Hong Kong movie ran at the time,
which was fast, cheap, and a little bit out of control.
Having left America to make his name in the East, it was an important film for Lee.
It was made on a shoestring budget,
and he struggled to turn an incomplete script into a coherent and captivating story.
Knowing that the film could make or break him,
Bruce Lee sat nervously with his wife, Linda, at the premiere.
When the film was over, it was perfectly quiet.
You could hear a pin drop in that theater,
and Bruce is like,
"oh, my gosh, do I make for the excellent or not"
and then all of a sudden, it started, the clapping, the cheering.
They loved it.
They were... they were thrilled, and Bruce was thrilled.
It was wonderful.
They escorted him outside.
They raised him up on their shoulders,
and he was their hero from then on.
Also in the audience was a 24-year-old assistant director
who was yet to make his first feature film.
John Woo would go on to become
one of the most influential action movie directors of his generation,
responsible for films such as Broken Arrow, Face/Off, and Mission: Impossible II.
When the people watched the movie,
they didn't know how to react,
because, you know, it's so new.
It's so different.
It's so different from other martial arts movie.
You know Bruce performance too powerful.
And then after the final reel fade,
and then they're all very happy,
and they all cheer and clapping, you know.
I think, at that moment... I mean,
at that night, we find our true hero.
And from that night, Bruce Lee became a legend.
Despite costing less than $100,000,
the Big Boss smashed all local box office records.
But even before the premiere,
Bruce Lee had already started working on his next film, Fist of Fury,
a film that would help create a sense of patriotism in Hong Kong.
At the beginning of the film,
the sign saying "Dong Ya Bing Fu", "Sick Man of Asia" and he comes back, there's this whole thing where they give him
and he says, "Hong Kong people"...
Chinese people are not the sick man of Asia,
and I think Hong Kong people were like, "Hong Kong people are not sick man",
they took the message...
they took that message to heart, and they cheered him on.
He was really like the prodigal son returning back
to be embraced by Hong Kong as a community.
But I think that his... his place was,
he was part of a movement to create an indigenous identity
for Hong Kong people, and I think that identity continues to this day.
China in the early 70's was caught up in the Cultural Revolution,
which was a hideous, hideous bloody interlude in modern Chinese history
where hundreds of thousands of people died.
Children turned on their parents.
It was awful.
And you had people running away from China,
fleeing to Hong Kong and saying, "our country is drowning in blood"
people couldn't be proud of that China.
So instead they were proud of this mythological China,
and the place that mythological China came from were movies.
It was like buying a ticket to a movie theater
was like getting a passport to what you knew was... in your heart was the real China.
And that was one of the things that Bruce Lee saw.
For many Chinese people, the strong character
played by Bruce Lee was both revolutionary and inspiring.
We were so weak, and we had been looked down by so many.
So after Fist of Fury,
they feel they are not sick anymore,
and they become strong, and all because of Bruce Lee.
We are not sick men.
As in the Big Boss, Bruce Lee played a nationalist hero.
The character struck a chord with Chinese audiences,
so with his third film Way of the Dragon,
he played on the same themes.
This fight scene with karate champion Chuck Norris in the coliseum in Rome
is celebrated by martial arts fans as an all-time classic.
Once again, Lee plays an upstanding and understated Chinese character
that defeats his non-Chinese foe.
It also had influenced me to make my own film with the real Chinese spirit.
You know, that's how I got influenced.
And also make me believe, if you work hard,
you will success, you know, same as Bruce Lee.
Today decades after becoming an unlikely star in Hong Kong,
Bruce Lee is now embraced as an icon for all of China.
In recognition of his contribution to Chinese culture,
the authorities there are opening a $25 million memorial park
near Bruce Lee 's ancestral home of Shunde.
You know, it is the ancestral home of my family,
so I've always wanted to go and...
and see that just from a historical point of view.
And it's a very interesting trip for me,
because I've never actually crossed the border from Hong Kong into China.
So this is my first time going there,
traveling by bus, and I'm just really excited to see it.
Also to see what they have, you know, from my father there.
Before Shannon visits the memorial park,
she's been invited to see her grandfather's house
to take part in a traditional incense burning ceremony.
Word has spread of Shannon's visit, and the whole town turns out to welcome her.
Thank you so much.
Complete with a nunchaku-spinning Bruce Lee look-alike.
The park is spread over 1.9 million square meters.
As well as a museum, it will eventually host an 18-meter high statue of Bruce Lee.
For decades, the Chinese government banned Bruce Lee 's films.
But as attitudes towards free enterprise and individualism have softened,
they've realized that Bruce Lee is an ideal icon for the new China.
His spirit is the same as that of the Chinese people,
which is never say die, be unyielding, and keep striving,
values which are promoted in China nowadays.
The museum in China looks set to be followed by one in Hong Kong,
where they intend to turn Bruce Lee's former house into a museum as well.
Bruce moved into this house in 1971
and lived there until his death in 1973.
This is the first time Shannon has been back since.
I lived here from the age of two to the age of four.
You know, it... it looks very different than it did before.
It was much more of a home.
There was grass, and so it's a little different.
But it's very nice, very reminiscent for me to be back here.
Yu Panglin is a billionaire real estate and hotel owner
and one of China's most generous philanthropists.
He's agreed to donate the house to the government
so long as they let him expand the building to include a cinema, shops, and a library.
I think it's such a natural fit.
I mean, my father, though he was born in the United States,
he grew up here.
His family lived here.
Shunde is just... very near to here,
so it seems really natural for there to be a museum here.
But, you know, Hong Kong is a... is a hustling, bustling, ever-changing place.
It's hard to find a dedicated space for such a thing.
And so, you know, now that he's willing to donate, this just seems like such a natural idea,
so I think it just makes all the sense in the world.
The news of this museum coincides with another sign of the Chinese government's relaxing attitude
with the broadcast of a 50-part television series
on the state-run channel called the Legend of Bruce Lee.
Wah!
Hoo! Wah!
Yah!
Hoo!
It's not available on Hong Kong TV, so tonight will be the first time
many fans of Bruce Lee here will get to see it.
That was just pretty... pretty amazing,
and it kind of gives you a whole new understanding of how cool he is as...
you know, as a martial artist person and as a family man, and, you know, as a professional.
I think it's pretty amazing that China has... has wanted to embrace my father in this way.
You know, I think they look at my father as somebody who influenced the world.
He sort of bridged the gap, as you will, between East and West, and he did it 35 years ago.
And now here... here's China coming out to the world,
essentially having a coming out party to the world,
and so I think they see him as a metaphor in a way for...
for themselves, and they really are embracing that.
It's taken China more than 35 years to embrace its most famous son.
The mammoth series has become the most watched TV drama in the channel's history,
and incredibly, the techniques used in the filming and fight scenes
were those pioneered by Bruce Lee more than 35 years ago,
when he changed the way action films would be made forever.
Hong Kong has for many years been the action movie capital of the world.
Bruce lee returned here in 1970 to make his four kungfu films
and revolutionized the way fight scenes in movies were filmed.
You want to fight?
I'll take you on.
Cut!
Stunt Coordinator Thomas Sinn is a kungfu master
who took up martial arts after seeing Bruce Lee.
The thinking, fighting, and pictures in his movies are still innovative today.
He just advanced dozens of years ahead of us.
Today he's practicing wire work,
where a stunt double is attached to wires to mimic the appearance of flying.
It's a technique that's been used in Hong Kong filmmaking
for almost 50 years and is best known from films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Despite having free rein to use special effects,
it was something Bruce Lee avoided.
For Lee, realism was everything.
The portrayal of his martial arts had to be as close to real life as possible.
When you look at the guys who came before him,
especially in Hong Kong cinema, these movies contained
very little authentic martial arts at all.
It's mostly a lot of trampolines and wire stunts.
Look at the Chinese boxer, the fight scences are terrible.
It's a lot of swinging your arms and people falling over
and then some very obvious and awkward wire work
when people shoot straight up into the air or do flips off trampolines.
Donnie Yen is one of the biggest name in Hong Kong cinema.
He's appeared in more than 30 action movies in both Hong Kong and Hollywood,
including Shanghai Knights with Jacky Chan and Hero.
Bruce Lee believed in having an authentric martial arts,
being an authentric martial artist
to be a martial art actor who was very first came and said:"
look, you have to be a real.
When you kick, when you punch you have to be real."
Bruce Lee was renowned for doing his own stunts
but would fight against stuntmen in his films.
Jackey Chan began his film career as a stuntman in Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon.
He found that Lee's quest for realism came with a price.
He threw one stick right on, right on my head.
I just ... Aah, I do the reaction drop, do nothing and bang, fall down,
but he just bang, do whatever he liked to do, finished it, run away then cut.
Bruce Lee was uncompromising in his attempts to get realistic fight scenes.
But he was sympathetic for his stuntmen.
I just hear 'oh my god' and probably some dirty word some like a shoo, you know.
Drop the stick, run to me and pulled me up 'I'm terribly sorry'.
I said 'I'm okay, I'm okay.
You know I'm okay.
I'm a stunt guy, never say hurt.
I'm okay, no, no, no.
And he touch me, kiss my face, you know he just do whatever but I really get hurt.
Lee's use of real martial arts
combined with the speed and director's eye was groudbreaking.
Bruce Lee totally revolutionalized the way emm...
unarmed combat would be presented on the screen or Bruce Lee had done
because he worked in Hollywood with so many qualitied film makers.
He came back he learned which lens to use,
how to move the camera, how to ... where to edit.
These'are ... What makes his fight so remarkable,
the technique sometimes was really quite basic.
The way he shot them was revolutionary.
Yeah, his action is a kind of new-way of action.
You know he, emm... he changed the whole thing.
You know, emm... 'cause we have never seen a fighting like that.
The whole sort of, like fast and slow thing he did with the tension and then release.
The scenes would move then stop, then move again.
Bruce Lee really made that stylized,
really built that up and turn that into something that...
I think that's the influenc for western movies.
He made fighting entertaining.
He made it fun.
He made it dramatic.
He made it emotional.
And he really brought martial arts to the rest of the world.
But Bruce Lee disappeared almost as quickly as he emerged on July 20th, 1973,
dying of a brain edema just weeks just before Enter The Dragon was released.
The cause was put down to an allergic reaction to a painkiller.
His death sent shock waves around the world,
prompting the biggest public gathering in the Hong Kong history.
He was laid to rest in Seattle
with former students Steve McQueen and James Coburn as coffin bearers.
I had decided to sent Bruce's body back to Seattle.
It was not a popular opinion emm... in Hong Kong because,
they thought Bruce's their son in Hong Kong, but that's what I decided.
Bruce Lee's sudden death left vacuum
as the world clamoured to see more of this new Asian superstar.
A rash of Bruce Lee look-likes in copycat films emerged,
inspiring a wholly film genre, known as Bruceploitation.
The whole Bruceploitation genre really took off after his death in the 70s
as film producers in Hong Kong were desperate to find,
you know, someone else to make some money off.
And right after he died was Bruce Lao, Bruce this one,
Bruce jump over the fruit, Bruce Jakson from Compton,
you know it was all these Bruce.
There's only one.
They gotta be over fifty to a hundred titles of movies,
where Bruce'name was in it, that they had no Bruce Lee.
They had been at least dozens or more Asian actors
that was called Bruce Lee by the advertisers.
They didn't even known about it
because those movies were made in Hong Kong and then set out to the world.
Bruce Lee had been working on his fifth film when he died called Game of Death.
He'd filmed what would amount to eleven minutes and seven seconds of edited footage
as he fought three types of martial artists on his way of up a pagoda.
What Bruce was trying to convey in the Game of Death was how to deal with different forms.
Aah. One martial artist going against people using different fighting styles,
emm... has overcome each of them.
So in order to do that, you have to be versatile.
You can't just take the same approach to dealing with different problems.
But the footage presented the studio with a major problem.
How to finish the film without Bruce Lee.
Years go by, Bruce's passed away and then the Hong Kong film studio Golden Harvest
wanted to do something with the film that existed from Game of Death.
And I believe they made two films,
and spliced together another actor and parts Bruce and parts this other actor.
And it looks spliced together.
It looks like a joke.
It looks like a gag
because the attempts to make it look like Bruce in the early part of the movie.
Emm... I felt laughable. There was a scene in which the face of the body double
is obscured by sticking a photo of Bruce on a mirror.
Among the many Bruce Lee's imitators that appeared after his death,
a few actors emerged who began to establish themselves
with unique talents in their own right.
Two of the most successful were former stuntmen
and members of the Peking Opera school: Sammo Hung and Jacky Chan.
Really the guy who was smart about it was Jacky Chen
when he finally got to have some sort of say in the direction of his career,
stopped trying to imitate Bruce,
and you know the spirit of Bruce, found his own part by doing kungfu comedies.
After Bruce Lee, Jacky Chen is the biggest name in kungfu and action films.
Nowaday to be found in Beijing more than Hollywood,
he long had the struggle against being hailed as the next Bruce Lee.
Nobody can be a Bruce Lee.
There is only one Bruce Lee.
But all director... martial art director
want every actor becoming a second Bruce Lee.
The way... the way you point, the way you fight.
Nobody can do it for them.
But the audience know he's the best.
Bruce Lee is the best.
Jacky has appeared in over a hundred films,
but is best known in the west for his appearance alongside Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour trilogy,
playing a very different role to Bruce Lee.
Bruce Lee is very strong, he is a very, like a iron guy.
Nobody can beat him.
I want to be an underdog, everybody can beat me.
Emm... and when Bruce Lee punch like this, me, after punching, aah, hurt.
I wantta be a real human. "Aah, it's broken."
As well as he opens the doors for action stars like Jacky Chen,
Bruce Lee has also been the inspiration for many others.
I did a movie called Mindhunters,
and I had a scene where I had to walk with a gun down this...
it's, like, a dark military facility and.
I really thought about Bruce Lee,
really thought about the way he approached things
when I was going through that scene and just my movements that...
And when it... when it played back on tape it looks so fluid,
'Cause I really thought about, you know the way he approached things,
so he definitly is very influential.
Like L Cool J,
Eddie Griffin says Bruce Lee inspired him professionedly
and made him want to take up martial arts.
I did this movie called Undercover Brother,
and you know it's about this brother who... rather than use a gun，
undercover brother solves it with his hands.
He's a Bruce Lee fanatic.
From the time I could remember, I loved Bruce Lee.
He's the reason I got into the art.
As well as the multitude of Bruce Lee inspired actors that emerged after his death,
many film makers sought to pay homage to him
by referencing him in their movies.
Brett Ratner is one such director,
duplicating the fightings from the Game of Death
as well as the openning shot from Enter the Dragon.
I found that exact location that they shot it.
I had someone take me there worked on the movie.
and that's where I shot the openning shot of Rush Hour.
Emm... in Rush Hour three I did a kind of reverse.
You had the Chinese guy Bruce Lee was actually fighting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar，
but we reverse it and I had a black guy fighting the Chinese gaint.
You know, I said to my producer "find me the largest Chinese man "
And he happened to be the second largest man in the world,
which is Sun Ming ming, who's 7'9".
So yes，so those Bruce Lee's movies had tremendous influence on the choice on me.
I'm sorry! I'm sorry, man!
Bruce Lee has been endlessly referenced in Hong Kong movies, Chinese movies, Japanese movies even, Canadian movies.
But he's also been endlessly referenced in Hollywood movies.
Aah... You've got him in the yellow tracksuit from the Game of Death.
You've got him right there in Kill Bill,
Quentin Tarantino's film with Uma Thurman.
In Rush Hour you have uses of his yells, and his cries just over there.
Anytime someone gets a yell in western movie, it's a Bruce Lee thing.
Whoo! Runnin' for your lives.
Filmmakers and actors across the globe cite Bruce Lee
as their guiding influence to want to make movies.
And despite only making four action films, his influence has been felt to this day.
His profound legacy is that
he created on the worldwide stage, emm... Asian action cinema.
And in the wake of that, you have the success of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
and Matrix and Jacky Chen movies and Jet Li movies and all that you've had.
And you would not have that without Bruce Lee.
Bruce Lee changed the worlds of film, philosophy, martial arts and physical fitness,
but he also has profound effect on the creative arts,
influcencing music and musicians around the world.
So what we are doing right now, we're in the studio with the Rza.
Got my crew in here,
and we're working on a project called Afro Samurai starring Sam Jackson and Lucy Liu.
It's called You Already Know.
Check it out.
Robert F. Diggs Aka Rza is working on his latest film score.
He's prestigoust music producer, rapper and sometimes actor.
He is also the mastermind of the hip-hop band Wu-Tang Clan.
And a devoted fan of Bruce Lee.
You know, when I think about, you know, Bruce Lee and martial arts and things and their influence on me,
it's been a strong influence on me.
Look at my first album.
It's called Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers.
That's basically taking the title of of Enter the Dragon,
you know I mean, and putting it... and applying it to ourselves.
The group's 1993 debut Enter The Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers
was the first album to mix rythms with dialogues
sampled for underground Hong Kong movies.
The band had sold nearly 6 million albums
all featuring snippets from producer Raz's personal collection of action imports.
One, two, three...
Add the pianos.
Do the four piano chords.
As well as being influenced by Bruce Lee and kungfu movies,
Raz says there are also parallels between the improvisational nature of rapping and martial arts.
I come from the era of hip-hop where people would battle each other
on the subway trains, in the school bathrooms, on the street corners,
and it's almost like a martial art fight, you know what I mean?
It's like a martial art fight, actually,
because you're flowing.
You're throwing your best weapons, which are your lyrical weapons,
and you're trying to defeat this guy by saying the most wittiest thing.
Bruce Lee has a tremendous influence on... on the culture of, like, hip-hop,
because it's just... it's really taking an ethnic icon
reappropriating this ethnic icon to your own ethnicity and to your own sort of outsider culture.
Bruce in the martial arts world is a... you know, a virtuoso.
He's constantly improvising.
It's like Miles Davis with his hands and feet.
And that's what hip-hop does, is improvise.
You free styling on the mic.
Improvisation in Jeet Kune Do can be mirrored by broken rhythm,
and this also reflects in rap music, jazz music, all sorts of music, rock music.
Improvisation lives at the core of Break Dancing,
where dancers are continually adapting their moves.
This Brooklyn-based New York dance group specialize in a dance form called Uprocking,
which mixes Salsa, the Hustle, and action moves,
which were added to imitate a fight against an opposing dancer.
The leader of the crew is Ralph Casanova, also known as King Uprock.
He says Bruce Lee was a big influence on their dance style.
Rocking started in Brooklyn where a lot of guys were gang members,
and B-boying was really popular in the Bronx,
where they were doing more of the backspins and stuff like that, acrobatic moves.
See, everybody was watching Bruce Lee and taking...
learning different dances that they took something of him
and added in the flavor of the dance they were doing.
After the launch of Enter the Dragon in the 1970s,
dancers were quick to replicate Bruce Lee's kungfu moves
and incorporate them into their dances.
Across america, numerous different dance styles emerged
known to most today simply as Break Dancing.
And a lot of karate moves have, like, windmills and,
you know, backspins, which... they didn't call it that,
but we just watched all these moves and just take whatever we saw
and add into Breaking or Rocking and other dances.
The man responsible for creating the music for the film
that first inspired these dancers is composer Lalo Schifrin.
As well as Enter The Dragon,
he received six Oscar nominations for classics
such as Mission Impossible, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, and Dirty Harry.
He believes there are parallels between how he approaches composing
and how Bruce Lee approached his own martial art.
He said to me, "martial arts started in India 5,000 years ago,
and there were traditions, so I broke the traditions."
And I said, "you know something?
We have something in common,
because 2,000 years of tradition of European classical music, I learned it.
I studied too.
And I broke the rules.
I broke the traditions.
We got something in common."
and he was very happy.
The sound track to Enter The Dragon sold more than half a million copies,
earning Lalo Schifrin a gold record.
It also went on to inspire Hollywood director Brett Ratner,
who vowed to use Lalo for his first film after hearing the sound track.
I had the idea of working with Lalo because of the theme of Enter The Dragon,
the way that he put Bruce's voice and his... his yelling.
The mixture between the Chinese instrumentations and the urban cool grooves,
which if you think about it,
it's like Asian music and kind of black urban music combined to make that theme,
and that's really what gave me the idea of Rush Hour.
Like Brett Ratner, Quentin Tarantino was another high-profile Hollywood director
that has been inspired by Bruce Lee.
When he wanted someone to do the sound track for the movie Kill Bill,
he approached Rza to draw on his vast knowledge of Bruce Lee films.
Doing music for Kill Bill was something that was a great opportunity for me.
I'm... I'm a hip-hop producer,
and Tarantino was a Wu-Tang fan,
asked me to become the first composer he ever hired.
And we actually met like two guys throwing out baseball cards, naming kungfu films,
who knew the most films, and we became friends.
Like Rza, Damon Albarn from the British band Gorillaz
saw Bruce Lee at an early age and was blown away.
His band has sold over 15 million albums, and their latest project,
a circus opera called Monkey Journey To The West has been staged around the world.
When creating the music for the opera,
Damon Albarn drew on the soundtrack to Enter The Dragon.
I definitely thought about that when I was doing the music for...
for the monkey opera, the strong use of orchestra,
and it's just really exciting.
It never became dull, you know?
Bruce Lee's influence has been apparent in much of the Gorillaz's work
since they launched in 1998 as the world's first virtual band.
You always say that too.
They created their own Game of Death animation
and dressed monkey in Bruce Lee's signature yellow tracksuit.
You put me monkey in a Bruce Lee...
Yeah, well, exactly, monkey has a Bruce Lee tracksuit.
Yeah, you can't really... it's so iconic.
The Gorillaz aren't the only artists to capitalize on Bruce Lee's image.
The international appeal and strong brand identity is
something advertisers and marketers have also been keen to exploit,
creating a wave of Bruce Lee inspired commercials, comics,
and video games around the world.
When Bruce Lee emerged in the early 1970s,
he looked and acted like no one before
A larger than life super hero who could never be beat.
Stan Lee is the creative force behind Marvel Comics
and is responsible for creating hundreds of super heros,
including Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, and the X-men.
He immediately saw the comic book potential in Bruce Lee.
You might say he was a super hero without a costume,
and his super power was really his agility
and the fact that he fought in a way that we were not used to seeing.
A year aftert Enter The Dragonwas released,
Marvel Comics created the character iron fist, based on Bruce Lee.
Further Bruce Lee inspired characters followed,
including Shang Chi and the Hands Of kungfu.
I'm quite sure we would not have done that book had their not been a Bruce Lee.
I think that any character who in any way was a martial artist,
you'd have to say that they owed their origin in some way to Bruce Lee,
because he was the first one to make westerners aware of that type of fighting
and that type of a way of life.
With the advent of video games in the 1980s,
designers were quick to pick up on the same characteristics
that had made Bruce Lee translate so well into comics.
In 1984, the Bruce Lee video game was released, followed by a slew of others.
These included Dragon, the Bruce Lee Story and Bruce Lee Quest Of The Dragon.
As well as numerous other games which took their inspiration from the King of Martial Arts.
Be water, my friend.
One thing we can definitely give Bruce Lee credit for is,
you know, his inspiration into the martial art video game.
You will notice that there's not one martial art video game
that doesn't have a Bruce Lee character in it.
If you even go back to the Street Fighter series or to Mortal Kombat.
Mortal kombat was one of the biggest arcade games to come out, and who they got?
They got Liu Kang, looking just like Bruce Lee,
"wah," bouncing on his feet, looking like Bruce Lee.
Ralph Lammche is a senior games producer at the telecommunications giant Nokia.
When the company wanted to develop a martial arts inspired video game for their N-gage platform,
they turned to Ralph.
I love Bruce Lee.
That was the inspiration for the whole thing.
I wanted always to do a martial arts game,
because I want to do something Bruce Lee-like.
But translating Bruce Lee's dynamism and fighting style into a game is no mean feat.
To get the most realistic fighting simulation possible,
Ralph decided to use a technique called motion capture,
where human movement is filmed then digitally recreated.
After an extensive search,
Ralph found the man he thought best captured Bruce Lee's speed and fighting style,
a Jeet Kune Do instructor from Glasgow named Tommy Carruthers.
And he's just Jeet Kune Do guy around the world.
I mean, his speed, his power, and his precision, it's just unmatched.
I just love looking what he does, you know?
We shot, I think, seven days of motion capture
and doing all the footwork, punches and kicks,
and we done the stunt work and the fight choreographer,
which was pretty hard work and pretty good... exciting and something different.
I've never done anything like it before.
The characteristics that have made Bruce Lee translate well into video games and comics
have also been a gift to advertisers.
Partly because he was smart enough when he was alive to actually create aspects of his screen persona
that are so identifiably Bruce Lee.
You don't even need the name Bruce Lee.
You don't even need to hear his voice to think, "oh, that's Bruce Lee"
And with this instant recognition comes a set of values
that people associate with Bruce Lee.
Bruce Lee defines kungfu.
If you want to reference sort of strength and sleekness and speed and power,
Bruce Lee is shorthand for all of those things.
What they're trying to sell is an image of perfection.
All right, here's a guy who's really good at what he does,
so my product is that good.
So I can understand what they're doing.
The Bruce Lee brand can represent many things.
There are many characteristics that he had, many aspects to his personality.
It can represent purity, health, confidence, speed, even tragedy.
Ari Merkin is the CEO of the New York advertising agency Toy.
As well as being one of the most awarded creative directors in the world,
he's also a huge fan of Bruce Lee,
using him as the inspiration for many of his commercials.
Bruce Lee influenced me tremendously.
Creativity is... is about sort of spitting out what you've got inside,
you know, the things that have influenced you,
the images that have stayed in your mind.
Bruce Lee and all of the things that I took away from his movies always stayed in my mind.
Bruce Lee's image has been used in hundreds of advertisements around the world
to sell everything from cars by BMW, Levi jeans, and confectionary.
Well, that's funny.
Bruce Lee's image to this day is still used by many advertisers from so many diverse companies,
from Mars Bars to drinks in Japan to candy to many other things,
because Bruce Lee sells.
In this Mars Bar ad, a Bruce Lee look-alike is being attacked,
but instead of using nunchucks, he opts for a far less threatening weapon.
Wah!
It's a very effective ad.
It does step a bit into the parody territory.
It pays tribute to the man and the brand
with its signoff, which is, "a delicate version" of the classic.
The ad manages to acknowledge Bruce Lee movies as classics,
thereby elevating the brand, thereby elevating the product.
It's a win-win for both.
The Mars Bar ad is one of a long line of commercials that pokes fun at Bruce Lee's image.
It's become okay to make fun of Bruce Lee a little bit.
So when you get advertisements like the Brisk ice tea commercial,
you know, which he's fighting the karate kid,
I don't think anybody's offended by that.
It's fun.
That's Brisk, baby.
Wah!
One of the latest campaigns to use Bruce Lee's image is one for the Nokia N96 mobile phone
that features Bruce Lee playing ping pong with nunchucks.
Since it first appeared in China,
it's had more than a million hits on YouTube across the world.
People are still finding ways to put Bruce Lee into new context
like the recent commercial in which someone dressed as Bruce in the inevitable tracksuit
is playing ping pong using a pair of nunchakus.
It all just adds to his legacy in its own way and,
you know, sort of passes it on to the next generation.
It's been more than 35 years since Bruce Lee's death,
but there appears to be no letup in interest,
with numerous projects in the pipeline.
These include Hollywood remakes of the Green Hornet,
and the '80s cult classic The Last Dragon,
as well as a broadway musical and a computer-generated Bruce Lee film
in development from Spider-man creator Stan Lee .
It's a fictional action movie in which we found a way to have Bruce Lee appear in this movie.
It's Bruce Lee's legacy that was foremost in people's minds when they gathered in Seattle
for the 35th anniversary of his death.
He's buried alongside his son,
Brandon, a rising actor who died in a tragic accident on the set of the film The Crow.
Bruce Lee's grave has become a Mecca for fans,
with thousands turning up each year to pay their respects.
Linda and Shannon have returned to celebrate the life of a devoted actor, husband, and father.
They're joined by more than 400 people
who have traveled from as far a field as Lee's ancestral home of Shunde in China.
We are so proud of him, 'cause he's Chinese.
It's a weekend dedicated to Lee's teaching
as top Jeet Kune Do experts perform demonstrations.
It's also a chance for Shannon and Linda to discuss
how they are keeping the legacy alive
with plans for the first Bruce soil in Seattle known as BLAM.
That's the Bruce Lee action museum.
So she wanted it to represent movement and action and taking action
and make it also about community, research, philosophy, education, foundation, all of those different things.
It's July 20th, the day of Bruce Lee's death,
and Linda, Shannon, and many of Bruce Lee's family and friends
have gathered at his graveside to pay their respects.
This is Bruce's grave stone.
In front of that is a book,
and on the book, it says, "your inspiration continues to guide us toward our personal".
It's the journey that's important.
It's not the destination.
Bruce Lee is also being remembered in other ways,
with statues being erected to him in China and Los Angeles
to follow those unveiled in Hong Kong and Bosnia,
where he was chosen as a symbol of the fight against ethnic divisions.
A spokesman said, "We will always be Muslims, Serbs, or Croats,
but one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee."
It's been more than 35 years since the death of the man
universally hailed as the king of martial arts movies;
a man who changed the worlds of film, philosophy, physical fitness, music, and the arts;
a man who died aged 32 before seeing the impact he created;
a man who changed the world forever.
His impact was so incredibly powerful.
I mean, you know, he just really hit popular culture in the Solar Plexus
with the biggest right hand a man could throw,
and I think we're still reeling from the blow.