In the 1993 biopicDragon: The Bruce Lee Story, our titular hero and his then-girlfriend Linda catch a screening ofBreakfast at Tiffany’s, which infamously features the non-JapaneseMickey Rooneyplaying a caricatured Japanese man. The theater erupts in laughter at this depiction –one the film’s director and Rooney himself would later regret– but Bruce is visibly uncomfortable. As depicted in the movieDragon: A Bruce Lee Story, after Bruce Lee impresses Bill Krieger as Kato on the set ofThe Green Hornet, he walks and talks him through the Warner Bros. back lot with a pitch for a TV show. “How about the Wild West?” Bruce says. “Okay, great,” Bill responds, rolling with the idea of a Western starring a Chinese immigrant wandering the land solving problems each week “with no gun, just his hands.” He’s searching, not for his father but his brother, Bill says. Later, a bump on the road of development has Bruce joking, “Who else are they gonna get? Mickey Rooney?” When Bruce and Linda tune into the premiere of the show, it’sKung Fustarring the non-ChineseDavid Carradineas the Chinese immigrant.
Bruce Lee has been a pop culture icon since the early 1970s, and that’s plenty of time for falsehoods to be mixed in with legends. Establishing the definitive account of the martial arts star has required debunking or clarifying popular myths, like his feud withBob Wallor his fight withWong Jack-man. Bruce Lee’s connection toKung Fuis no different, with Warner Bros. stealing his show and casting a white lead being the logical, Occam’s razor scenario. However, it’s been disputed, naturally, by Warner Bros.,leading to decades of confusion. What is known is that Bruce Lee had shopped around anoriginal television showentitledThe Warrior, orAh Sahm. Had it been produced and broadcast, it would have told the story of a Chinese immigrant in the Old West. Around the same time, a pair of writers namedEd SpielmanandHoward Friedlanderwere shopping around an original movie entitledThe Way of the Tiger, The Sign of the Dragon.
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Does ‘Kung Fu’ Have a Chinese Connection of Its Own?
According toMartial Journal, Spielman, a Jewish writer, was passionate about Asian cultures, especially Japan and China. He was one of five students at Brooklyn College’s Chinese language department and studied karate and kung fu. At its earliest stages,The Way of the Tigerfollowed the historical figure Miyamoto Musashi, and saw him learn kung fu from a Shaolin monk. It was his writing partner Friedlander who suggested the Old West setting, giving us our convergent evolution. Truthfully, with their mixture of genres and even real-world people, neitherAh SahmnorThe Way of the Tigeris necessarily original.The Way of the Tiger, transformed into the television showKung Fu, was a pretty standard western of the era, with weekly stories and a “cowboys and Indians” setting. The one twist is that its lead character was a half-Chinese monk. By imparting Eastern wisdom to Americans, David Carradine’s Kwai Chang Caine is effectively building the 36th chamber of Shaolin. In that kung fu classic,Gordon Liu’s character ends the film by teaching students beyond the temple walls.
This is where convergence begins to feel actionable, however, as Bruce Lee also dispenses wisdom, in the form of memorable movie quotes like, “Don’t think, feel! It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory,” and “Bullshit, Mr. Han-man!” Actually, that one was fromJim Kelly, but memorable nonetheless. Like Spielman and Friedlander, Bruce Lee was influenced by the martial arts cinema that came before him. Together,Kung FuandEnter the Dragonwere the breakthrough moment for the genre on the world stage. After the success ofKung Fu, Warner Bros. started importing actual Hong Kong films, beginning withFive Fingers of Death, and helped create the market that allowedEnter the Dragonto smash the box office.
Should Bruce Lee Have Starred in ‘Kung Fu’?
That’s history as it happened, but an alternate history has Bruce Lee starring as Kwai Chang Caine, being mixed-race himself. In reality, he auditioned forKung Fubut was passed over alongside several other Asian actors considered, includingMakoandGeorge Takei. While the reasoning is theoretically sound, that none of these actors fit the character, it’s unfortunate that whitewashing was also, at the time, sound. And so, David Carradine shaves his head and tapes his eyelids back, and it’sBreakfast at Tiffany’sfor a new generation. The difference between what is and what might have been is in the performance, as Bruce Lee was an outsider and Carradine wasplayingan outsider. All acting requires imagination, but in this case, it’s the imagined foreigner. Carradine imbues the character with an essential strangeness that may very well come from a place of empathy, but in the first episode, he tames a horse by closing his eyes and waving his hands around.
Moving from the pilot to the series proper, Carradine grows out his hair and loses the tape, but maintains the stoicism. In this way, Caine differs from the typical Bruce Lee character, who’s so loud and aggressivein films likeThe Big BossandEnter the Dragon. Caine never makes those whooping noises in a fight, and neither, for that matter, did martial heroes in the 1960s. Bruce Lee was defining a new paradigm, and it was a kind of showy self-empowerment that didn’t become the norm for Asians in Hollywood going forward. Instead, we chose Caine, quiet and non-disruptive until absolutely necessary, like a model minority action hero.
The Legend Continues with ‘Kung Fu’ and ‘Warrior’
Bruce Lee’s showiness is sometimes construed as arrogance, another mythical aspect that’s remained in dispute. Through the years, his stated goals and philosophies have been diluted by endless reinterpretation, to the point where his 1993 biopic canonizes what turns out to be a conspiracy theory, to say nothing of the Brucesploitation subgenre and later films likeBirth of the Dragon. In 2019, Bruce’s daughterShannon Leerestored the originalAh Sahmtreatment asWarrior, starring half-white, half-JapaneseAndrew Kojiin the lead role. Despite the show being even pulpier thanKung Fu(and far, far bloodier, creatively driven byJonathan Tropper), it builds a world that can best express Bruce Lee’s experiences in America, while exploring the Ah Sahm character in a way more curious about the human psyche than fascinated by a foreigner’s magic tricks.
A more literal revision of history comes with the CW reboot ofKung Fuin 2021. It’s a slight departure from the original story, being set in the modern day, but the protagonist still imparts Shaolin wisdom in a battle against injustice. Crucially, the Chinese American protagonist is played by the Chinese American actressOlivia Liang. WhileDragon: The Bruce Lee Storyembellished to make its point, part of that point is difficult to argue with — that Hollywood has thisgreat difficulty with casting Asian actors. One’s bargain bin DVD collection —21,Aloha, the AmericanGhost in the Shell— is another’s clarion call. TheKung Fureboot andWarriorare much-needed correctives, and they foster an environment where Carradine’s yellowface can be recontextualized as history rather than a reminder of how far we haven’t come. Easier to look back on, it’s a good performance despite the mysticism, and a pretty good show. To be fair, it had good source material, whatever that may be.
