DragonMaster
Das sogenannte “Lost Interview” wurde am 9. Dezember 1971 im Studio von dem Fernsehsender TV-B in Hong Kong aufgezeichnet und Anfang 1972 im kanadischen Fernsehen ausgestrahlt. 1993 erschien das Interview erstmalig auf Videoand und wurde im gleichen Jahr im britischen Kampfsport-Magazin “Martial Arts Illustrated” abgedruckt. Leider wurden in diesem Magazin Wörter hinzugefügt bzw. weggelassen; das gleiche hier zu findende Interview wurde in seiner Originalität belassen, einschließlich der menschlich-lingualen Ausdrucksweise von Bruce Lee.
• EINLEITUNG
"It’s the Pierre Berton Show. The program that comes to you from the major capitals of the world. This edition comes to you from Hong Kong and Pierre’s guest is the man who taught Karate, Judo and Chinese Boxing to James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin and James Coburn, the newest Mandarin superstar known in the west for his appearances in Batman, The Green Hornet, Ironside and Longstreet, his name is Bruce Lee and he doesn’t even speak Mandarin." And here is Pierre.
• DAS INTERVIEW
Pierre Berton: Well how can you play in Mandarin movies if you don’t even speak Mandarin, how do you do that?
Bruce Lee: Well, first of all I speak only Cantonese, so I mean there is quite a difference as far as pronunciation and things like that go.
PB: So somebody else’s voice is used, right?
BL: Definetely, definetely.
PB: You just make the words, doesn’t that sound strange when you go to the movies, especially in Hong Kong in your home town, and you see yourself with somebody else’s voice?
BL: Well, not really, you see because of the Mandarin pictures done here are dubbed anyway.
PB: They’re dubbed anyway?
BL: Anyway, disregard, they shoot without sound so it doesn’t make any difference.
PB: The lips don’t make the right words, do they?
BL: Well that’s where the difficulty lies. In order to … because the Cantonese have a different way of saying things, you know, different from the Mandarin, so I have to find like something similar to that and keep a kind of a feeling going behind that, something that’s matching the Mandarin deal … that sounds complicated.
PB: Sounds like the silence days, like the good old silent days. But I gather in the movies the dialogue is pretty stilted anyway.
BL: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, to me motion picture is motion, I mean you got to keep the dialogue down to the minimum.
PB: Do you look at many Mandarin movies before you started playing in your first film? What do you think of them when you saw them?
BL: Yes! Quality wise 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 towards the standard which I could call quality.
PB: They say the secret of your success in that movie The Big Boss - which was such a success here it rocketed you to stardom in Asia - was that you did your own fighting, as an expert in the various martial arts of China. What do you think of the fighting you saw in the movies you studied before you became a star?
BL: Well, definetely in the beginning, I had no intention what so ever that what I was practising and what I am still practising now would lead to this to begin with. But martial arts has a very, very deep meaning as far as my life is concerned, because as an actor, as a martial artist, as a human being all these I have learnt from martial arts.
PB: Maybe for our audience who doesn’t know what it means, you might explain exactly what you mean by martial art?
BL: Martial art include all the combative arts like Karate, Judo, Chinese Gung-Fu or Chinese boxing, what ever you call it, all those, you see like Aikido. I can go on and on and on, but it is a combative form of fighting. I mean it’s not some of them became sport, but some of them are still not … I mean they’re used for instance kicking to the groin, jabbing fingers at the eyes and things like that.
PB: No wonder successful Chinese movies are full of this kind of action anyway, they need a guy like you (Bruce lacht).
BL: Violence man.
PB: So you didn’t have to use a double when you moved into the motion picture roll here, you did it all yourself? Can you break five or six pieces of wood with your hand or foot?
BL: I’ll probably break my hand and foot (Bruce lacht).
PB: But tell me a little bit, you set up a school in Hollywood didn’t you for people like James Garner, Steve McQueen and the others, why would they want to learn Chinese martial art, because of a movie role?
BL: Not really, most of them. You see to me at least the way when I teach it, all type of knowledge ultimately means self knowledge, so therefore they’re coming into I mean and ask me how to teach them, not so much of how to defend themselves or how to do somebody in rather they want to learn to express themselves through some movement be it anger, be it determination or what so ever. So in other words what I’m saying therefore is that he is paying me to show him in combative form the art of expressing the human body.
PB: Which is acting in a scene isn’t it?
BL: Well …
PB: Or it would be a useful tool for an actor to have.
BL: It’s … I might, or it might, sound too philosophical, but it’s unacting acting or unacting if you …
PB: You have lost me.
BL: (lacht) I have, so what I’m saying actually, you see, it’s a combination of both. I mean here it is that natural instinct and here is control, you are to combine the two in harmony, not if you have one to the extreme you would be very un-scientific, you have another to the extreme you become all of a sudden a mechanical man, no longer a human being, so it is a successful combination of both. So therefore it is not only, I mean, so therefore it’s not pure naturalness, or un-naturalness, the idea is un-natural naturalness or natural un-naturalness.
PB: Ying / Yang, Ah!
BL: Right, man, that’s it!
PB: One of your students, James Coburn, played in a movie called Our Man Flint in which he uses Karate. Is that what he learnt from you?
BL: Eh, he learnt it after!
PB: Oh learnt after he played in Our Man Flint?
BL: You see, actually I do not teach, you know, Karate because do not believe in styles any more. I mean, I do not believe that there is such thing like Chinese way of fighting or the Japanese way of fighting, whatever way of fighting, because unless human beings have three arms and four legs we will have a different form of fighting. But basically we have two hands and two feet, so styles tends to not only separate men because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrines become the gospel truth … you know, that you cannot change, you know, but if you do not have styles if you just say here I am as a human being how can I express my self totally and completely, now that way you won’t create a style because style is a crystallisation, you know, that way it’s a process of continuing growth.
PB: You talk about Chinese boxing, how does it differ from, say, our kind of boxing?
BL: Well first we use the feet, and then we use the elbow.
PB: Use the thumb too? (beide lachen).
BL: You name it, man.
PB: You use it all?
BL: You have to see, because I mean that is the expression of the human body. I mean, everything, I mean not just the hand, and when you’re talking about combat, well I mean if it is a sport now you’re talking about something else, you have regulations you have rules. But when you’re talking about fighting as it is with no rules, well then baby you better train every part of your body, and when you do punch I am leaning forward a little bit, hoping not hurt any camera angle (Bruce demonstriert zwei schnelle Schläge mit viel Ausdruckskraft), you got to put the whole hip into it and snap it and get all your energy in there and make this into a weapon.
PB: I don’t want to tangle with you in a dark alley (Bruce lacht), you came in pretty fast there! What is the difference between Chinese boxing and what we see these young men doing at eight o’clock every morning on the roof tops and parks called shadow boxing which they’re always …
BL: Well actually, you see that is part of Chinese boxing, there are so many schools.
PB: Everybody here seems to be, you know, going like this all the time … (Pierre macht einige Bewegungen in Form von Kampfkünsten).
BL: Well that’s good. I mean I’m very glad, I’m very glad to see that, because at least somebody is caring for their own body, right that’s a good sign. Well it’s a kind of a slow form of exercise which is called Tai Chi Chuan, I’m speaking Mandarin (Bruce lacht) just now, in Cantonese "Ki Koo-Kune", okay, and it’s more an exercise for the elderly not so much for the young.
PB: Give me a demonstration, show me, can you do a little bit of it?
BL: Hand wise very slow and you push it out, but all the time, you are keeping the continuity going. Bending, stretching, everything, you know supposed, I mean, you just keep it moving.
PB: It looked like a ballet dancer there!
BL: Yeah it is, I mean, to them you see the idea is running water never goes stale, so you got to keep on flowing.
PB: Of all your students famous, James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, James Coburn, Roman Polanski, which was the best, who adapted the best to this oriental form of exercise and defence?
BL: Well, em! Depending, okay, now as a fighter, Steve, Steve McQueen, now he is good in that department because that son of a gun got the toughness in him and he would say alright baby here I am, man, and he will do it. Now James Coburn is a peace loving man.
PB: I’ve met him.
BL: Right, you’ve met him, I mean he’s really nice and super mellow and all that, you know what I mean? Now he appreciate the philosophical part of it therefore his understanding of it is deeper than Steve, so it’s really hard to say. See what I’m saying now, I mean it’s different depending on what you see in it.
PB: Interesting. We don’t in our world and haven’t since the days of the Greeks who did combine philosophy and art with sport, but quite clearly the oriental attitude is that the three are facets of the same thing.
BL: Man, listen, you see really, to me, okay, to me ultimately martial art means honestly expressing yourself, now it’s very difficult to do. I mean it is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be flooded with a cocky feeling and then it feels pretty cool, and all that, or I make all kinds of phoney things, you see what I mean, blinded by it and show you some really fancy movement. But to express myself honestly, not lying to oneself and to express myself honestly, now that my friend is very hard to do and you have to train, you have to keep your reflexes so that when you want (Bruce schnippt mit dem Finger) it it’s there.
When you want to move you’re moving, and when you move you’re determined to move not taking one inch, not anything less than that. If I want to punch I’m going to do it, man, and I’m going to do it you see, I mean, so that is the type of thing you have to train yourself into it, to become one with the … (Bruce schnippt mit dem Finger) you think.
PB: This is very un-Western this attitude. I want to ask you about your movie and T.V. career but first we will take a break and I’ll be back with Bruce Lee.
- WERBEPAUSE
PB: I’ve been talking to Bruce Lee mainly about the Chinese martial arts which include things like Chinese boxing, Karate and Judo, which is what he taught when he was in Hollywood after he left the University if Washington where he studied, of all things, philosophy, if you can believe that. He did, but perhaps you understand why the two go together for the first half of this programme and you can perhaps understand how he got into films and knew a lot of actors, but I’m told that you got the job on the Green Hornet where you played Kato the chauffeur mainly because you’re the only Chinese looking guy who could pronounce the name of leading character Britt Reid.
BL: I made that up as a joke of course (beide lachen darüber) … and it’s a heck of a name, man, every time I said it at that time, I was super conscious, I mean, really that’s another interesting thing, let’s say if you learn to speak Chinese, and it’s not difficult to learn and speak the word, the hard thing, the difficult thing it’s behind what is the meaning, what brought on the expression and feelings behind those words. Like when I first arrived in the United States and I look at a Caucasian, and I really would not know whether he was putting me on or is he really angry, because we have different ways of reacting, see those are difficult things.
PB: It’s almost as it you came upon a strange race where a smile didn’t mean what it does to us, in fact a smile doesn’t always mean the same, does it?
BL: Of course not.
PB: Tell me about your break when you played in Longstreet, I must tell the audience that Bruce Lee had a bit part, or a supporting role, in the Longstreet series and this had an enormous effect on the audience. What was it?
BL: Well, you see, the title of that particular episode Longstreet is called "The way of the intercepting fist", now I think the successful ingredient in it was because I was being Bruce Lee, myself, right! And did that part and just expressed myself, like I say honestly express myself at that time, because of that I brought, you know, favourable mentioning in the New York Times, which said like the Chinaman who incidentally came-off quite convincingly enough to earn himself a television series, and son and so on.
PB: Can you remember the lines by Sterling Silliphant, the key lines?
BL: He was one of my students.
PB: Was he, too! (Bruce lacht vehement). But you had some lines which expressed your philosophy, I don’t know whether you remember them or not?
BL: I remember them, this is what I said, okay?
PB: Right, you’re talking to Longstreet, played by James Franciscus.
BL: I said: “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup and it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle, you put it into a teapot and it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash, be water my friend.” Like that.
PB: I see, I get the idea, I get the power behind it. So now two things have happened, first there is a pretty good chance that you will do a T.V. series in the States called The Warrior. Is that when you use the marial arts in a western setting?
BL: Well, that was the original idea. Now, Paramount, you know, I did Longstreet for Paramount and Paramount wants me to be in a television series, on the other hand, Warner Brothers wants me to be in another one, but both of them, I think, they want me to be in a modernised type of a thing, and they think that the western idea is out. Whereas, I want … you see I mean, how else can you justify all this punching and kicking and violence, except in the period of the west. I mean, nowadays you don’t go around the streets kicking people or punching people, because if you do (someone will pull out a gun and "bang"), that’s it. I don’t care how good you are.
PB: But this is true also of the Chinese dramas, which are mainly costume dramas. They are all full of blood and gore over here.
BL: Unfortunately, you see, I hope that the picture I’m in would either explain why the violence was done, whether right or wrong or whatnot. But, unfortunately, pictures most of them here are done mainly for just the sake of violence, you know what I mean, fighting for thirty minutes - get stabbed fifty times (Bruce reißt sich an dieser Stelle sein Mikrofon ab).
PB: Well, I’m fascinated. Let me give you your microphone back. I’m fascinated that you came back to Hong Kong on the verge of success in Hollywood and full of it, and suddenly on the strength of one picture you became a superstar. Everyone knows you, you have had to change your phone number, you get mobbed in the streets, now what you gonna do, are you going to be able to live in both worlds, are you going to be a superstar here, or one in the States or both?
BL: Well, let me say this, first of all, the word "superstar" really turn me off, and I will tell you why, because the word "star", man, is an illusion, is 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", therefore I …
PB: But you must admit that you are a superstar - if you are going to give me the truth?
BL: I am, no, I am honestly saying this, okay. Yes, I have been very successful, okay, but I think the word Star is … I mean, I do not look upon myself as a star, I really don’t, I mean, believe me man, when I say it. I mean, I’m not saying it, because … (Pierre unterbricht ihn)
PB: What are you going to do? Let’s get back to the question, are you going to stay in Hong Kong and be famous, or are you going to the United States and be famous, or you trying to "bake your cake and have it too"?
BL: I am going to do both, because, you see, I have already made up my mind that in the United States, I think there is something about the oriental, I mean the true oriental should be shown.
PB: Hollywood sure as heck hasn’t?
BL: You’d better believe it, man. I mean it’s always the pigtail and bouncing around chop chop, you know, with the eyes slanted and all that, and I think that is very out of ….
PB: Is it true that your first job you had was being cast as Charlie Chan’s number one son?
BL: Number one son, yes (beide lachen).
PB: Were they going to make a movie?
BL: No, no, no, they were going to make it into a new Chinese James Bond type of a thing. Now that, you know, the old man Charlie Chan is dead, Charlie is dead and his son is carrying on.
PB: But they did not do that?
BL: No, Batman came along, you see, because and then everything was started to go in that kind of thing.
PB: Which you’re in?
BL: By the way, I did a really terrible job, I have to say.
PB: Really, you didn’t like yourself in that? Well I didn’t see it.
BL: No.
PB: Let me ask you, however, both the problems that you face, as a Chinese hero in an American series, have people come up in the industry and said, well we don’t know how the audience are going to take a non-American?
BL: Well, such questions have been raised, in fact it is, it is being discussed, and that is why The Warrior is probably not going beyond, you see, because unfortunately such things does exist in this world, you see, like I don’t know certain parts of the country right, well like they think that business is a risk and I don’t blame them … I don’t blame them. I mean, in the same way it’s like in Hong Kong, if a foreigner came in and became a star, if I were the man with the money, I probably would have my own worry, whether or not the acceptance would be there, but that’s all right, because if you honestly express yourself it doesn’t matter.
PB: Are you on the other side of the coin, is it possible, as you are very "hip" and fairly Americanised, are you now too Western for oriental audiences?
BL: The old man like me - how - I’ve been criticised for that, oh definetely. Well, let me say this, when I do the Chinese film I’ll try my best not to be as American as I, you know, have adjusted to over the past twelve years in the States, but when I go back to the States it seems to be the other way around.
PB: You’re too exotic, ah!
BL: Yeah, man. I mean, they are trying to get me to do too many things that are really for the sake of being too exotic. You understand what I’m trying to say?
PB: Oh, sure.
BL: So it’s really, I mean, it’s …
PB: When you live in both worlds here there it brings its problems as well as its advantages and you’ve got both.
Time to go to a commercial, we’ll be back in a moment with Bruce Lee.
- WERBEPAUSE
PB: Let me ask you whether the change in attitude of the part of the Nixon adminstration towards China has helped your chances in starring in an American T.V. series?
BL: Well, first of all this happened before that, but I do think that things of Chinese will be quite interesting for the next few years, I mean not that I’m politically inclined towards anything. But I mean, once the opening of China, you know, I mean that it will bring more understanding, more things that are, hey like different you know, and maybe be in the contrast of comparisons some new thing might grow. So therefore I mean it’s a very rich period to be in. If I were born let’s say forty years ago, if I have a thought in my mind and I said boy I am gonna star in a movie, or star in a television series in America, well that might be a vague dream but I think right now, maybe?.
PB: You still think of yourself as Chinese or do you ever think of yourself as North American?
BL: You know what I want to think of myself, as a human being, because I mean I do want to sound like, as Confuscious say, but under the sky, under the heaven, man, there is but one family, it just so happens, man, that people are different!
PB: Okay, we got to go, thank you Bruce Lee for coming here. Thank you for watching.
BL: Thank you.
You have been watching Bruce Lee on the Pierre Berton Show, a half hour programme of conversation opinion and debate.
This is Bernard Gowan speaking.
• EINLEITUNG
"It’s the Pierre Berton Show. The program that comes to you from the major capitals of the world. This edition comes to you from Hong Kong and Pierre’s guest is the man who taught Karate, Judo and Chinese Boxing to James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin and James Coburn, the newest Mandarin superstar known in the west for his appearances in Batman, The Green Hornet, Ironside and Longstreet, his name is Bruce Lee and he doesn’t even speak Mandarin." And here is Pierre.
• DAS INTERVIEW
Pierre Berton: Well how can you play in Mandarin movies if you don’t even speak Mandarin, how do you do that?
Bruce Lee: Well, first of all I speak only Cantonese, so I mean there is quite a difference as far as pronunciation and things like that go.
PB: So somebody else’s voice is used, right?
BL: Definetely, definetely.
PB: You just make the words, doesn’t that sound strange when you go to the movies, especially in Hong Kong in your home town, and you see yourself with somebody else’s voice?
BL: Well, not really, you see because of the Mandarin pictures done here are dubbed anyway.
PB: They’re dubbed anyway?
BL: Anyway, disregard, they shoot without sound so it doesn’t make any difference.
PB: The lips don’t make the right words, do they?
BL: Well that’s where the difficulty lies. In order to … because the Cantonese have a different way of saying things, you know, different from the Mandarin, so I have to find like something similar to that and keep a kind of a feeling going behind that, something that’s matching the Mandarin deal … that sounds complicated.
PB: Sounds like the silence days, like the good old silent days. But I gather in the movies the dialogue is pretty stilted anyway.
BL: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, to me motion picture is motion, I mean you got to keep the dialogue down to the minimum.
PB: Do you look at many Mandarin movies before you started playing in your first film? What do you think of them when you saw them?
BL: Yes! Quality wise 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 towards the standard which I could call quality.
PB: They say the secret of your success in that movie The Big Boss - which was such a success here it rocketed you to stardom in Asia - was that you did your own fighting, as an expert in the various martial arts of China. What do you think of the fighting you saw in the movies you studied before you became a star?
BL: Well, definetely in the beginning, I had no intention what so ever that what I was practising and what I am still practising now would lead to this to begin with. But martial arts has a very, very deep meaning as far as my life is concerned, because as an actor, as a martial artist, as a human being all these I have learnt from martial arts.
PB: Maybe for our audience who doesn’t know what it means, you might explain exactly what you mean by martial art?
BL: Martial art include all the combative arts like Karate, Judo, Chinese Gung-Fu or Chinese boxing, what ever you call it, all those, you see like Aikido. I can go on and on and on, but it is a combative form of fighting. I mean it’s not some of them became sport, but some of them are still not … I mean they’re used for instance kicking to the groin, jabbing fingers at the eyes and things like that.
PB: No wonder successful Chinese movies are full of this kind of action anyway, they need a guy like you (Bruce lacht).
BL: Violence man.
PB: So you didn’t have to use a double when you moved into the motion picture roll here, you did it all yourself? Can you break five or six pieces of wood with your hand or foot?
BL: I’ll probably break my hand and foot (Bruce lacht).
PB: But tell me a little bit, you set up a school in Hollywood didn’t you for people like James Garner, Steve McQueen and the others, why would they want to learn Chinese martial art, because of a movie role?
BL: Not really, most of them. You see to me at least the way when I teach it, all type of knowledge ultimately means self knowledge, so therefore they’re coming into I mean and ask me how to teach them, not so much of how to defend themselves or how to do somebody in rather they want to learn to express themselves through some movement be it anger, be it determination or what so ever. So in other words what I’m saying therefore is that he is paying me to show him in combative form the art of expressing the human body.
PB: Which is acting in a scene isn’t it?
BL: Well …
PB: Or it would be a useful tool for an actor to have.
BL: It’s … I might, or it might, sound too philosophical, but it’s unacting acting or unacting if you …
PB: You have lost me.
BL: (lacht) I have, so what I’m saying actually, you see, it’s a combination of both. I mean here it is that natural instinct and here is control, you are to combine the two in harmony, not if you have one to the extreme you would be very un-scientific, you have another to the extreme you become all of a sudden a mechanical man, no longer a human being, so it is a successful combination of both. So therefore it is not only, I mean, so therefore it’s not pure naturalness, or un-naturalness, the idea is un-natural naturalness or natural un-naturalness.
PB: Ying / Yang, Ah!
BL: Right, man, that’s it!
PB: One of your students, James Coburn, played in a movie called Our Man Flint in which he uses Karate. Is that what he learnt from you?
BL: Eh, he learnt it after!
PB: Oh learnt after he played in Our Man Flint?
BL: You see, actually I do not teach, you know, Karate because do not believe in styles any more. I mean, I do not believe that there is such thing like Chinese way of fighting or the Japanese way of fighting, whatever way of fighting, because unless human beings have three arms and four legs we will have a different form of fighting. But basically we have two hands and two feet, so styles tends to not only separate men because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrines become the gospel truth … you know, that you cannot change, you know, but if you do not have styles if you just say here I am as a human being how can I express my self totally and completely, now that way you won’t create a style because style is a crystallisation, you know, that way it’s a process of continuing growth.
PB: You talk about Chinese boxing, how does it differ from, say, our kind of boxing?
BL: Well first we use the feet, and then we use the elbow.
PB: Use the thumb too? (beide lachen).
BL: You name it, man.
PB: You use it all?
BL: You have to see, because I mean that is the expression of the human body. I mean, everything, I mean not just the hand, and when you’re talking about combat, well I mean if it is a sport now you’re talking about something else, you have regulations you have rules. But when you’re talking about fighting as it is with no rules, well then baby you better train every part of your body, and when you do punch I am leaning forward a little bit, hoping not hurt any camera angle (Bruce demonstriert zwei schnelle Schläge mit viel Ausdruckskraft), you got to put the whole hip into it and snap it and get all your energy in there and make this into a weapon.
PB: I don’t want to tangle with you in a dark alley (Bruce lacht), you came in pretty fast there! What is the difference between Chinese boxing and what we see these young men doing at eight o’clock every morning on the roof tops and parks called shadow boxing which they’re always …
BL: Well actually, you see that is part of Chinese boxing, there are so many schools.
PB: Everybody here seems to be, you know, going like this all the time … (Pierre macht einige Bewegungen in Form von Kampfkünsten).
BL: Well that’s good. I mean I’m very glad, I’m very glad to see that, because at least somebody is caring for their own body, right that’s a good sign. Well it’s a kind of a slow form of exercise which is called Tai Chi Chuan, I’m speaking Mandarin (Bruce lacht) just now, in Cantonese "Ki Koo-Kune", okay, and it’s more an exercise for the elderly not so much for the young.
PB: Give me a demonstration, show me, can you do a little bit of it?
BL: Hand wise very slow and you push it out, but all the time, you are keeping the continuity going. Bending, stretching, everything, you know supposed, I mean, you just keep it moving.
PB: It looked like a ballet dancer there!
BL: Yeah it is, I mean, to them you see the idea is running water never goes stale, so you got to keep on flowing.
PB: Of all your students famous, James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, James Coburn, Roman Polanski, which was the best, who adapted the best to this oriental form of exercise and defence?
BL: Well, em! Depending, okay, now as a fighter, Steve, Steve McQueen, now he is good in that department because that son of a gun got the toughness in him and he would say alright baby here I am, man, and he will do it. Now James Coburn is a peace loving man.
PB: I’ve met him.
BL: Right, you’ve met him, I mean he’s really nice and super mellow and all that, you know what I mean? Now he appreciate the philosophical part of it therefore his understanding of it is deeper than Steve, so it’s really hard to say. See what I’m saying now, I mean it’s different depending on what you see in it.
PB: Interesting. We don’t in our world and haven’t since the days of the Greeks who did combine philosophy and art with sport, but quite clearly the oriental attitude is that the three are facets of the same thing.
BL: Man, listen, you see really, to me, okay, to me ultimately martial art means honestly expressing yourself, now it’s very difficult to do. I mean it is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be flooded with a cocky feeling and then it feels pretty cool, and all that, or I make all kinds of phoney things, you see what I mean, blinded by it and show you some really fancy movement. But to express myself honestly, not lying to oneself and to express myself honestly, now that my friend is very hard to do and you have to train, you have to keep your reflexes so that when you want (Bruce schnippt mit dem Finger) it it’s there.
When you want to move you’re moving, and when you move you’re determined to move not taking one inch, not anything less than that. If I want to punch I’m going to do it, man, and I’m going to do it you see, I mean, so that is the type of thing you have to train yourself into it, to become one with the … (Bruce schnippt mit dem Finger) you think.
PB: This is very un-Western this attitude. I want to ask you about your movie and T.V. career but first we will take a break and I’ll be back with Bruce Lee.
- WERBEPAUSE
PB: I’ve been talking to Bruce Lee mainly about the Chinese martial arts which include things like Chinese boxing, Karate and Judo, which is what he taught when he was in Hollywood after he left the University if Washington where he studied, of all things, philosophy, if you can believe that. He did, but perhaps you understand why the two go together for the first half of this programme and you can perhaps understand how he got into films and knew a lot of actors, but I’m told that you got the job on the Green Hornet where you played Kato the chauffeur mainly because you’re the only Chinese looking guy who could pronounce the name of leading character Britt Reid.
BL: I made that up as a joke of course (beide lachen darüber) … and it’s a heck of a name, man, every time I said it at that time, I was super conscious, I mean, really that’s another interesting thing, let’s say if you learn to speak Chinese, and it’s not difficult to learn and speak the word, the hard thing, the difficult thing it’s behind what is the meaning, what brought on the expression and feelings behind those words. Like when I first arrived in the United States and I look at a Caucasian, and I really would not know whether he was putting me on or is he really angry, because we have different ways of reacting, see those are difficult things.
PB: It’s almost as it you came upon a strange race where a smile didn’t mean what it does to us, in fact a smile doesn’t always mean the same, does it?
BL: Of course not.
PB: Tell me about your break when you played in Longstreet, I must tell the audience that Bruce Lee had a bit part, or a supporting role, in the Longstreet series and this had an enormous effect on the audience. What was it?
BL: Well, you see, the title of that particular episode Longstreet is called "The way of the intercepting fist", now I think the successful ingredient in it was because I was being Bruce Lee, myself, right! And did that part and just expressed myself, like I say honestly express myself at that time, because of that I brought, you know, favourable mentioning in the New York Times, which said like the Chinaman who incidentally came-off quite convincingly enough to earn himself a television series, and son and so on.
PB: Can you remember the lines by Sterling Silliphant, the key lines?
BL: He was one of my students.
PB: Was he, too! (Bruce lacht vehement). But you had some lines which expressed your philosophy, I don’t know whether you remember them or not?
BL: I remember them, this is what I said, okay?
PB: Right, you’re talking to Longstreet, played by James Franciscus.
BL: I said: “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup and it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle, you put it into a teapot and it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash, be water my friend.” Like that.
PB: I see, I get the idea, I get the power behind it. So now two things have happened, first there is a pretty good chance that you will do a T.V. series in the States called The Warrior. Is that when you use the marial arts in a western setting?
BL: Well, that was the original idea. Now, Paramount, you know, I did Longstreet for Paramount and Paramount wants me to be in a television series, on the other hand, Warner Brothers wants me to be in another one, but both of them, I think, they want me to be in a modernised type of a thing, and they think that the western idea is out. Whereas, I want … you see I mean, how else can you justify all this punching and kicking and violence, except in the period of the west. I mean, nowadays you don’t go around the streets kicking people or punching people, because if you do (someone will pull out a gun and "bang"), that’s it. I don’t care how good you are.
PB: But this is true also of the Chinese dramas, which are mainly costume dramas. They are all full of blood and gore over here.
BL: Unfortunately, you see, I hope that the picture I’m in would either explain why the violence was done, whether right or wrong or whatnot. But, unfortunately, pictures most of them here are done mainly for just the sake of violence, you know what I mean, fighting for thirty minutes - get stabbed fifty times (Bruce reißt sich an dieser Stelle sein Mikrofon ab).
PB: Well, I’m fascinated. Let me give you your microphone back. I’m fascinated that you came back to Hong Kong on the verge of success in Hollywood and full of it, and suddenly on the strength of one picture you became a superstar. Everyone knows you, you have had to change your phone number, you get mobbed in the streets, now what you gonna do, are you going to be able to live in both worlds, are you going to be a superstar here, or one in the States or both?
BL: Well, let me say this, first of all, the word "superstar" really turn me off, and I will tell you why, because the word "star", man, is an illusion, is 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", therefore I …
PB: But you must admit that you are a superstar - if you are going to give me the truth?
BL: I am, no, I am honestly saying this, okay. Yes, I have been very successful, okay, but I think the word Star is … I mean, I do not look upon myself as a star, I really don’t, I mean, believe me man, when I say it. I mean, I’m not saying it, because … (Pierre unterbricht ihn)
PB: What are you going to do? Let’s get back to the question, are you going to stay in Hong Kong and be famous, or are you going to the United States and be famous, or you trying to "bake your cake and have it too"?
BL: I am going to do both, because, you see, I have already made up my mind that in the United States, I think there is something about the oriental, I mean the true oriental should be shown.
PB: Hollywood sure as heck hasn’t?
BL: You’d better believe it, man. I mean it’s always the pigtail and bouncing around chop chop, you know, with the eyes slanted and all that, and I think that is very out of ….
PB: Is it true that your first job you had was being cast as Charlie Chan’s number one son?
BL: Number one son, yes (beide lachen).
PB: Were they going to make a movie?
BL: No, no, no, they were going to make it into a new Chinese James Bond type of a thing. Now that, you know, the old man Charlie Chan is dead, Charlie is dead and his son is carrying on.
PB: But they did not do that?
BL: No, Batman came along, you see, because and then everything was started to go in that kind of thing.
PB: Which you’re in?
BL: By the way, I did a really terrible job, I have to say.
PB: Really, you didn’t like yourself in that? Well I didn’t see it.
BL: No.
PB: Let me ask you, however, both the problems that you face, as a Chinese hero in an American series, have people come up in the industry and said, well we don’t know how the audience are going to take a non-American?
BL: Well, such questions have been raised, in fact it is, it is being discussed, and that is why The Warrior is probably not going beyond, you see, because unfortunately such things does exist in this world, you see, like I don’t know certain parts of the country right, well like they think that business is a risk and I don’t blame them … I don’t blame them. I mean, in the same way it’s like in Hong Kong, if a foreigner came in and became a star, if I were the man with the money, I probably would have my own worry, whether or not the acceptance would be there, but that’s all right, because if you honestly express yourself it doesn’t matter.
PB: Are you on the other side of the coin, is it possible, as you are very "hip" and fairly Americanised, are you now too Western for oriental audiences?
BL: The old man like me - how - I’ve been criticised for that, oh definetely. Well, let me say this, when I do the Chinese film I’ll try my best not to be as American as I, you know, have adjusted to over the past twelve years in the States, but when I go back to the States it seems to be the other way around.
PB: You’re too exotic, ah!
BL: Yeah, man. I mean, they are trying to get me to do too many things that are really for the sake of being too exotic. You understand what I’m trying to say?
PB: Oh, sure.
BL: So it’s really, I mean, it’s …
PB: When you live in both worlds here there it brings its problems as well as its advantages and you’ve got both.
Time to go to a commercial, we’ll be back in a moment with Bruce Lee.
- WERBEPAUSE
PB: Let me ask you whether the change in attitude of the part of the Nixon adminstration towards China has helped your chances in starring in an American T.V. series?
BL: Well, first of all this happened before that, but I do think that things of Chinese will be quite interesting for the next few years, I mean not that I’m politically inclined towards anything. But I mean, once the opening of China, you know, I mean that it will bring more understanding, more things that are, hey like different you know, and maybe be in the contrast of comparisons some new thing might grow. So therefore I mean it’s a very rich period to be in. If I were born let’s say forty years ago, if I have a thought in my mind and I said boy I am gonna star in a movie, or star in a television series in America, well that might be a vague dream but I think right now, maybe?.
PB: You still think of yourself as Chinese or do you ever think of yourself as North American?
BL: You know what I want to think of myself, as a human being, because I mean I do want to sound like, as Confuscious say, but under the sky, under the heaven, man, there is but one family, it just so happens, man, that people are different!
PB: Okay, we got to go, thank you Bruce Lee for coming here. Thank you for watching.
BL: Thank you.
You have been watching Bruce Lee on the Pierre Berton Show, a half hour programme of conversation opinion and debate.
This is Bernard Gowan speaking.