PIERRE BERTON: You came back to Hong Kong,
and suddenly, on the strength of one picture,
you become a superstar. Everybody knows you.
The word "superstar" really turns me off,
and I'll tell you why.
Because the word "star," man, is an illusion.
It's something, what the public calls you.
You should look upon oneself as an actor, man.
I mean, you would be very pleased
if somebody say, "Hey man, you are a super actor."
It is much better than, you know, "superstar."
♪ (WESTERN MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
(SWORD RINGS)
BRUCE LEE:
SHANNON LEE: The Big Boss was shot in Thailand,
and my father was really at the stage
of being very passionate
about injecting himself creatively into the process.
At the time, the martial arts films
were fantastical, flying through the air,
swordplay types of films.
Fight scenes are choreographed in the moment,
and sometimes they didn't even have scripts.
In the movies, maybe the dialogue
is pretty stilted, anyway.
Yeah, I agree with you.
I mean, uh, see, to me, a motion picture is motion.
He really wanted the martial arts
to have a sort of realism that did not exist
in Hong Kong films up to that point.
Quality-wise, I mean, I have to admit
that it's not quite up to the standard.
However, it is growing,
and it is getting higher and higher
and going toward that standard that I would term "quality."
SHANNON: When it came to the martial arts,
he was fighting every single day with the director
to say, "This is how this needs to be."
And he was right,
because it broke all previous box office records.
Once The Big Boss came out, and it was so successful,
for the second films Fists of Fury,
they gave him a little bit more creative control.
It was his idea to have it be this cultural tension
between the Chinese and the Japanese
'cause that was something that was very true to the time
because of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong
during World War II.
And, again, that film broke
the box office records for Big Boss.
BRUCE:
So, he did these first two films.
They were hugely successful.
For his next film, which was Way of the Dragon,
he wrote it, he produced it,
he starred in it, he choreographed it.
He really wanted to focus on
the experience of the Chinese in a foreign place.
The film takes place in Rome.
He was really good at being able to tap
into the storytelling for the audiences of the day
and what would resonate with them.
(CLAP)
You could see in his films,
his philosophy just, it just effervesces.
You know? It just bubbles out of the screen.
It's like, "fight the oppressor."
And I think that's what everyone latches onto.
(GRUNTING)
It really shows the closest representation
of what my father was like.
(SPEAKING CHINESE)
SHANNON: He loved to tell jokes.
-BRUCE: -SHANNON: He loved to have fun,
and Way of the Dragon is full of those types of things.
Watching Bruce Lee on TV was sort of like
this transformative moment for me,
and I just watched this guy and his confidence
and the way he moved
and the speed with which he moved...
(BRUCE SHOUTS)
Then the part where he fights Chuck Norris in the Coliseum,
and it was just sort of like
having discovered a whole new world
and I became obsessed with him after that.
JUSTIN LIN: Seeing Bruce Lee, it really was empowering.
It felt like, "Wow, this is-- there's somebody out there
that can just do whatever he wants."
And it allowed me, as a kid, to think, "Why can't I do that?"
SHANNON: These films that he did,
there's a transmission of his energy in them.
He worked on himself and cultivated that energy
and infused that into everything that he did.
The idea that if we do that for ourselves,
that we can create impact,
is a beautiful message.
If I were born, let's say, uh, 40 years ago...
INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
If I have a thought in my mind, I said, "Boy, I'm gonna star
in a movie, or star in a television series in America,"
well... (TSKS)
that might be a vague dream. But I think right now...
maybe, man.
(SWORD RINGS)