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A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Hey, you know how a few times of the year we come to you on air and ask you to donate to our pledge drive and you may say, geez, why don't you just take a pint of my blood already? Well, guess what? WNYC is teaming up with the New York Blood center for a one day blood drive. It's happening on Tuesday, December 9th from 9 9:30am to 2:00pm did you know one pint of blood can save up to three lives? Sign up to donate by going to nybc.org wnyc that's NYBC New Yorkbloodcenter.org wnyc It will be held downstairs in WNYC's green space at 44 Charlton street in Lower Manhattan. Again, it's happening on Tuesday, December 9, September. Sign up at nybc.org WNYC and thank you. Now let's get this hour started with author Jeff Chang. Today is our final installment of Full Bio, our book series where we spend a few days with the author of a deeply researched biography. To get a fuller understanding of the subject, we have been speaking with Jeff Chang, the author of Water Mirror, Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. The last part of that title is important, the Making of Asian America. The 540 page book also looks at what was going on culturally when Bruce Lee was making his way as an adult. From 1959 when he came to the States, at 19 to 1973 when he died, Bruce Lee became a cultural icon. During the 60s and 70s when Asian Americans were becoming politically active, the Asian American movement drew upon black power, the black power movement and the two showed solidarity. As you'll learn here, this applied to Bruce's following in both community. But first he had to get his big break playing second fiddle in a Batman spin off called the Green Hornet. He was cast in the role of Cato, a martial arts whiz who was a man servant to the publisher Britt Reed. Here's chef. Here's Jeff Chang, the author of Water Mirror Echo. In 1965 there was a passage of an immigration act, the Hart Celler Act. How did it change the makeup of America?
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B
It changed America forever because, you know, up until this time you had restrictions placed on folks coming from non white countries that were severe. It began with the Chinese Exclusion act in 1882 and it continued in increasing, you know, increasingly restrictive measures directed at Asian Americans and at other immigrants of color all the way through 1965. And so when in 1965, the Hart Celler act reverses and gets rid of these racist quotas. The doors are open for a large scale change and shift in the immigration policies. And at this particular point, that's when we see many more communities of color being able to come to the US.
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A
The following year, Bruce gets his big break in the TV show the Green Hornet. Brit Reed. It's a. He's a wealthy newspaper publisher who secretly fights crime with his sidekick Cato. Ultimately, what did Bruce think about the role of Cato?
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B
Well, I think at first he thought, this is amazing. I'll be able to get in there and show him what I can do and, you know, we'll have a lot of fun doing it. And I think what he learns very quickly is that that's not how they see the role for him. He's given no lines. And Bruce comes to realize, oh, he's a sidekick, he's a number two. He's not a main character. He's somebody who is the cook to Britt Reed. He is the driver for Britt Reed. He's the, he's the manservant for Britt Reed. And when he puts on the mask, he's the guy that goes and saves the Green Hornets butt. Because Britt Reed is not necessarily the best fighter in the world. He has a lot of gadgets, but it's really Kato that knows how to use his hands and his fists or his hands and his legs. So it's. What's interesting is that because Cato has to go and save the Green Hornet's butt in every episode, the kids are starting to identify with Cato. You know, about halfway through the season, they look at the numbers and they're like, wow, the Cato, the Cato doll is selling just as much or even more than the Green Hornet doll. Maybe we should actually flesh out this character. And at that point, they go from like giving him no lines to like, Bruce produces a script, first of all, he's written a script, he's ready to go. They're like, no, no, you don't have to do that. But we do want to have more of what it is that you have to offer. And so they, they work him more into the scripts and he's able to introduce Kung Fu and to talk about even some of the philosophical ideas behind Kung Fu. And so by the time that the show is canceled, it only lasts one season. There's a lot of intrigue, there's a lot of fans who are like, we want to see more of this. We want to See more Asian fight fighting arts. We want to see more Asian philosophy. And the fan mail continues to pour in, but Hollywood still doesn't see him in as a main character.
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A
Yeah, you write that ABC had no precedent for a campaign around an Asian actor. What was something that Bruce Lee was doing different from the way Asian actors had been played?
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B
Well, I mean, up to this point, you only had roles that were subservient. These are basically minstrel type characters. They're Amos and Andy type characters. They're Hap Singh and Bonanza, for instance, where you have these accomplished actors who are American born Chinese, right. And they're being given this fake like Hollywood Chinese accent, you know, this sort of chop suey accent. And they're being made to be, you know, the laughingstock of the show. Their characters to laugh at. And Bruce, he's a number two character. He is a man servant and a cook, but he's kicking butt. And I think that that's fulfilling both one, the desire that Asian and other racialized minority communities are needing to see folks who are not white be heroes on screen. He's fulfilling that, but he's also like tickling this little bone, right, that we're talking about this fascination with the other side of Asia at this particular point. The US has been engaged in wars in Asia and the Pacific for two generations. And the peace movement is shining a light on, you know, these other types of ways in which being Asian is interesting and different and intriguing. And so Bruce is just the beginning of a taste of that when he's appearing on the Green Hornet as Cato.
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A
A lot has been written about the series Kung Fu, a role that Bruce Lee auditioned for, but it went to a white actor basically doing yellowface. And some say the idea was stolen from Lee. Where do you come down on that?
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B
I don't think that the idea was stolen. I think it was one of these classic sort of Hollywood moments where they're looking at Hong Kong and they're seeing Asia and even Europe is now taking in these kung fu movies and that these are the box office winners and, and that maybe there's a future for that in, in Hollywood. Maybe there's a way that they can take a kung fu movie and make, make it in the US and, and make a lot of money. So what we do know is that the Kung Fu TV series was written by two Jewish American men from New York City, that that was purchased by Fred Weintraub at WB at Warner Brothers Movies to be made, and that Fred Weintraub wanted Bruce to audition for the part. We know that the. The movie was ultimately nixed and that that went to Warner Brothers tv, that Bruce auditioned for the part. The audition, the story of the audition is a lot of fun, and that ultimately they chose to go with David Carradine, slant his eyes up, make him crouch a little bit and dress him up in oriental clothes and have him play the role in yellowface. And that this crushed Bruce. Right, we know all that. We also know that Bruce actually had been developing his own TV series that has now come to be surfaced as Warrior, which has played now, of course, for three seasons on Cinemax, HBO, and now Netflix, and that there were differences between the two series, major differences between the two series or similarities as well, and that this was really never taken up by anybody seriously in Hollywood. So I think it was a. It was a story of these two different treatments moving at the same time and Bruce going out for the audition. And what complicates it is that Bruce was asked to give notes on the kung fu pilot. And in fact, I think that they had adopted a lot of Bruce's stuff into that pilot. I mean, we can actually note just in the opening sequence all these ideas that had been in previous scripts that were written for Bruce and that Bruce was actively working at the time. So. So for those who say, well, you know, some of the. Some of the ideas were taken from Bruce. Absolutely true to say that the entirety of the pilot was taken from Bruce. More complicated. But I think the. The big thing to say about this is this is what convinced Bruce that he was not going to be able to make it in the US simply by his sheer will. It was the culmination of four years of him trying so hard to have Hollywood take him seriously as a main character. And this is the moment at which he realized, oh, no, that's just an illusion. They just see me as another Chinaman.
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A
Let's talk a little bit about his films. Originally, Bruce Lee made his money in Hollywood as a teacher of martial arts. One exec said he should raise his rates because it would be better for his brand. And he began to teach something called jeet kune do. Did I pronounce that correctly?
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B
Jeet kune do.
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A
Jeet kune do, yes. How was that different from other martial arts?
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B
Jeet kune do is Bruce's name for what he's beginning to develop, Right. Which is this martial art that is rooted in practice and is developed through trial and error by mixing all of these other types of martial arts that are out there. So, you know, what he's learned from judo, what he's learned from karate, what he's learned from boxing, what he's learned from fencing, and of course, what he's learned from kung fu and jiu jitsu and all these other types of martial arts, even European, you know, savate and other. Other forms. He's, he's. What he's done is he's taken these different types of techniques from these different martial arts, and he and his friends have tested them on each other and they've taken out the stuff that feels like fluff, that doesn't work in a street fight, and they've kept the stuff that. That works. And what jeet kune do is to Bruce at the beginning is sort of a mixture of specifically like fencing, kung fu, boxing, some stuff that he's learning from aikido, all these, all the others, all these other types of things. But it begins to evolve into something else which is more of a philosophy of you've got to get beyond this sort of black belt mentality. You got to get to an idea of what is it that works for you and your body. You got to get to learning all of these different types of schools and styles and learn what it is that your body does best in reaction to somebody else's attacks on you. And so jeet kune do is called, you know, the art of the intercepting fist, or the way of the intercepting fist. It. It means that somebody comes at you and you are responding to that. You're not being the aggressor, but you're responding to that with everything that you've got. And what he's saying is, is you should be banking in yourself all of these different types of things that you've learned about yourself and about your body. That all knowledge is, is self knowledge. Right? And that's the core thing that you need to be able to do. So eventually he actually even abandons the Jeet Kune do schools because he doesn't think that it could be taught anymore. He thinks that. He thinks that this is something that people have to find for themselves. And so he. He can't really work through that contradiction in his own mind. And he moves towards trying to become an actor full time.
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A
When he was teaching, he was teaching people like Vic Damone, Roman Polanski, Blake Edwards, Steve McQueen, the King of cool at the time, Julie Andrews as well.
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B
Mary Poppins.
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A
And Mary Poppins, right?
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B
Yeah, he's teaching them all.
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A
How would you. How would you describe his relationship with Steve McQueen? Because that's the one that stood out the most to me.
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B
I think it's interesting because, you know, Steve is he. Bruce is looking at Steve and understanding what it means to be a star. And in fact, not just a star, but a superstar. There's a difference between a star and a superstar. And Steve is that superstar. He's in that untouchable kind of ascendant type of category of stardom. And so, you know, Bruce is learning from Steve, you know, what it is that the star commands, what the star can do, how the star continues his stardom, which is to, like, insist on artistically what it is that he needs. And all of this comes into play when he goes to Hong Kong later. It allows him to become a maverick of sorts. And so, you know, that's. I think, what he's seeing from Steve. Steve is getting old and he's wondering if he still has it, you know, and what he gets from the younger Bruce is a sense of how to actually, you know, remain in the game, so to speak. How to be forever young in a way, you know, how to be continually on the top of it, how to be a man, a young man again is what he's getting from Bruce in some ways. So it's a very, very interesting relationship. And I think that out of all of this, Bruce gets the template for what it takes for him to become a superstar in Hong Kong.
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A
Before we talk about Hong Kong, I did want to talk about his relationship with Kareem Abdul Jabbar. He was a big believer in Bruce. How did the two help one another?
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B
You know, I think Kareem and Bruce got along immediately because they could see each other. You know, both of them were child stars in a way, right? Kareem on the basketball court, Bruce, you know, in the hot house. That was Hong Kong film. And so they understand each other in a sort of deep kind of a way. Kareem is incredibly principled. He's deep in the black power movement at this particular point. He is maybe the representation, self proclaimed, of. Of black power, the new generation of black power athletes that are coming of age. And he teaches Bruce, I think, a lot about American racism and European imperialism. I mean, you know, Bruce is over there confiding in Karim. Hey, man, they don't see me the way I see myself. They. They only see me as a minor character, as somebody who is less than, who can never play a lead. Kareem's like, I get that. And I can see you as a main character, you know, so he encourages Bruce in that and at the same time, you know, all of this stuff is happening around them. The Vietnam War, again, black power, the students uprisings are happening on campuses all across the country. The Third World Liberation movement is establishing ethnic studies across the US And Karim is giving Bruce that. Bruce is learning from Karim that there are actually parks in China where Chinese could not go. And of course, this turns out later in his films in Fist of Fury, but he's getting books from Kareem on British imperialism and Bruce is giving Kareem books on martial arts.
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A
Yeah, it was interesting at this time in the late 60s. It's a time when black Americans and Asian Americans were finding common ground.
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B
Absolutely. And I think in the relationship of the two, this very organic relationship, like neither of them, I think, came into it as this is like a friendship formed out of political activism. Not at all like Karine thought of himself as an activist, but Bruce certainly did not. But they are sort of united in this cause of kind of exposing the power structures that be and trying to, in their different kinds of ways, resist them. And so Bruce is intent upon breaking through the bamboo ceiling in Hollywood. And, you know, Kareem is intent upon using his platform in sports to be able to call out racism as he's seeing it.
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A
Coming up after the break, Bruce Lee goes back to Hong Kong, where he will become a superstar. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's get back into full bio. We've been speaking with Jeff Chang, the author of Water Mirror Echo, Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. In 1973, kung fu movies took in more than $11 million in the U.S. that's about $80 million today. And three of Bruce Lee's movies account for two thirds of the kung fu market. According to our author, there were the Fissafiry, the Chinese Connection, and Enter the Dragon. Now, what would have been next for Bruce Lee will never be known. He died when he was 32 years old, leaving behind his wife Linda and children Brandon and Shannon. Officially, he died of brain swelling after complaining of a headache. He took a nap and died in his sleep. But that is, there's still dispute among fans. There's a lot of rabbit holes you can go down about what killed Bruce Lee, as you will hear. But he left behind a legacy that continued for years after creating a particular type of cinema. This is Jeff Chang, author of Water Mirror Echo. Let's talk about when Bruce went back to Hong Kong. He started his own production company. Tell us a little bit about It. And what were his plans?
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B
Yeah, again, this is something I think he saw from Steve. Right. He's seeing Steve with his own production company, like, making the movies that he wants to make, having complete artistic control around it. So what happens in Hong Kong is he leaves Hollywood because he realizes that Hollywood's never going to see him as a main character. And he blows up in Hong Kong as he imagined that he would. He's playing somebody who is literally defending the underdogs. In his movie Big Boss, he's defending these laborers against a foreign boss. And this gives him, I think, the kind of credibility, the box office kind of cachet, to be able to negotiate an equal partnership with the person who is funding his movies, Raymond Chow. And so they negotiate this unprecedented deal in Hong Kong, which is still working on a very archaic studio system. But he's an equal partner in this. And they form Golden Harvest and they begin to make movies together in which he's going to earn, you know, half the profits as well. So he establishes himself as the biggest artist, not just in Hong Kong, but in all of Asia. Very quickly, in playing these roles again, where he's representing sort of this angry. A young generation that's trying to overthrow their old masters, whether they be colonial masters or whether they be even the studio masters.
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A
Can you give me an example of the kind of movies that are released during this time that are now classics?
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B
Sure. I mean, he makes the Big Boss, in which, again, he plays this laborer who finds that he has to avenge his fellow workers who are all killed at the hands of this big boss who is dealing drugs through his factory, through his ice factory. Then he goes on to make an explicitly anti colonial film. And it's a film that basically portrays Shanghai during the Japanese occupation. And this becomes a sensation because young people all across Asia and the US as well, are sort of throwing off, you know, the colonial rule. And so this movie, even though, you know, it's specific to the Chinese situation in the early 20th century, becomes sort of an allegory for these uprisings all around the world. So he then is able to make the movie that he wants to make on his own. He writes and directs this new movie, the Way of the Dragon, in which he plays somebody who goes to Italy to defend Chinese restaurant workers who are in danger of being swallowed up by a mob boss that wants to gentrify the neighborhood. And. And that culminates in a scene which is staged in the Coliseum, where he fights Chuck Norris and defeats Chuck Norris and famously kills him at the end and, and so, you know, with these three movies, he's on top of the world. And I think that this is what gives him the juice to start making Game of Death and also to begin negotiating a movie that will bring him back to break in Hollywood, which I think is really his ultimate goal. He wants to come back to Hollywood as a star.
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A
In January of 1973, Newsweek had him listed as Asia's first superstar. But you mentioned a little bit earlier in the book that some of the press, they called him Mid Pacific man. And that's a loaded term. Why is that?
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B
It's a loaded term because it, it suggests that somebody is either Asian or American. Right. And I think by this time, you know, he had already moved way past that old dichotomy. You know, just to digress for a little bit, I think everybody who's of Asian or Pacific Islander descent in the US at some point in, in their experience has been asked the question, do you feel more Asian or do you feel more American? Yeah. And it's one of those things that's just sort of, it's, it's, it can be aggravating. Right. I think the, the, the Mid Pacific man thing is kind of, it's a misnomer. Right. You're never one or the other. I think by this time, Bruce had spent most of his, like, very important years in the U.S. he had really come of age in the U.S. and so he learned what it means. He learned what it meant to be an Asian living in America. And I think when he comes back to Hong Kong, people can't quite place him. You know, he's got a white wife, he has mixed race kids, he has a different way of looking at the world than folks in Hong Kong do or folks in Asia do, and that white folks in the US do. And so you can see him sort of chafing a little bit at this in interviews that he does through this whole period. And again, I think that the best way to understand the choices that he made is not to class him as Asian or as American, but to understand that he was both, that he was Asian American.
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A
Bruce Lee died suddenly at the age of 32. He was found unresponsive after taking a nap. As you know, there are so many theories about how he died. One trip down one Reddit rabbit hole. I'll give you some of the lists. Intense exercising, lack of sleep and rest, high stress, sweat glands removed from your reporting. When and what was the cause of death of Bruce Lee?
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B
Alison will never know. We will never know. We're just not going to know. And I think that because we're now more than 50 years away from the situation, there are a lot of disclosures that came out in the inquest and the. And the whole inquiry into his death. And I just think that we'll never know. You know, we've got theories now that compound upon theories that contradict theories that take us all the way around in circles. And all of them maybe have some merit to it, and none of them do in some ways, you know. And so I just. I think that one of the things that I wanted to reckon with in this book is that just the focus on his death is an indication of. Of a melancholy that's never been. That's never been cured and maybe can't be cured. You know, I think the. The flood of Bruceploitation movies right, in the 1970s, where there was Bruce Lee and Bruce Lee and Bruce Leong and Bruce Leroy, like, I think that was an indication a little bit of that melancholy, you know, And I think especially for those of us who are Asian and Pacific Islander descent in the continent, in the US it's especially melancholic because it's taken us more than 50 years to be able to get to the next stage after Bruce broke through the bamboo ceiling, you know, to be able to see representations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the US In a broad array of different kinds of strokes in all of our humanity. In Michelle Yeoh winning the Oscar for Everything Everywhere all at Once. And so I didn't answer your question at all, but I really honestly don't think that we'll ever know. And we might have to just get used to that.
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A
My guest has been Jeff Chang. The name of his book is Water Mirror Echo. Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. Thank you so much for giving us so much time.
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B
Thank you, Alison. This was so much fun.
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A
Tomorrow would have been Bruce Lee's 85th birthday. Thanks again to Jeff for the time. The book has so many stories and details in it, so if you are a Bruce Lee fan, you want to check it out. Full Bio is produced by Jordan Lof, engineered by Jason Isaac and written by me.