MOVIES

BRANDON LEE: ESSENTIALLY, YOUR OWN

Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee, and The Crow

By Carina Espudo

Here he comes

At 13, I felt a changed after watching The Crow—as if I had left home for a long time and returned a different person. Since then, the film has become a familiar friend. Many of the stories and details in what follows are from Shannon Lee’s podcast; I am thankful for her sharing them. My intent is to honor the fullness of Brandon Lee’s life and his being beyond the character of Eric Draven. For his work’s contribution to my life, this is my tribute to him—my ‘thank you’ letter.

Carina Espudo 

February 1st, 1965. Brandon Lee is born with straight black hair that all falls out and grows back blonde. Decades later his sister, Shannon Lee, jokes that Brandon didn’t know which genes he wanted to go with. The son of Bruce Lee, a Hong Kong American martial artist and Linda Cadwell, a European-American teacher, his hair will gradually darken and wave with age.

*****

196X. Brandon invites a friend over to play, but the friend says no. Linda calls the boy’s mother and asks what’s wrong. The mother says he’s afraid because there’s always grown men in his backyard fighting and breaking things!

Learning from the best

He trains diligently, routinely logging how many miles he’s biked and how many side bends he’s done (7 sets on March 28th, ‘68!). He shows his son the basic moves of jeet kune do in the backyard and brings the family to the IMB Academy where they can watch.

A happy family

“That was just how we played at my house, yanno?” Brandon smiles wide as he speaks to an Australian interviewer 19 years later. “My mom gave me some video tapes, yanno, some old black and white super-eight things transferred to video of me when I’m just a tiny little kid working out with my dad, so, it was a good time.” He shrugs slightly with one shoulder and nods.

*****

1966-67. Bruce works hard to understand and evolve his physical abilities. He has developed his own form of martial arts and has named it jeet kune do, “the way of the intercepting fist.” Starring in both Chinese and American martial arts films, his combat skills have circulated like wildfire, burning borders and barriers. Bruce played Kato on The Green Hornet (1966-67). It was the first major network show to portray Asian martial arts. For many Americans, it was the first time they’d seen anything like it. Bruce’s fighting style is not classical in form— it’s minimal in movement and graceful in execution. Having been a street fighter, he removes unnecessary extravagance to get to the essence of the art. Through an awareness of his limitations and shortcomings, he works to overcome them. He directs his students inward, emphasizing personal growth and a knowledge of one’s own authentic self.

The Coolest

*****

August 13th, 1970. Bruce strains the fourth sacral nerve of his lower back while lifting weights. The doctor says he may never be able to kick again. After his initial distress, Bruce reflects on what he needs to do to heal himself. He realizes he must rest. Bedridden for six months, he either lays flat on his back or sits in a chair and rests. He buys numerous books on back pain and slowly tests his ability to move. He chooses to exercise his mind while his body is immobile by reading books about hand-to-hand combat, philosophy, and motivational psychology. He fills himself up with words from Laozi, Buddha, Alan Watts, Carl Rogers, Frederick Pearls, Daisetz Suzuki, and perhaps most influential, the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. Bruce fills seven volumes of journals with his own ideas.

In a black moleskin journal, he writes, “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is essentially your own,”—a credo Brandon will later quote in multiple interviews when asked about his father.

*****

1971. Bruce makes a full recovery and resumes his film career, starring in an episode of the detective series Longstreet, “The Way of the Intercepting Fist,” where Mike Longstreet enlists the teachings of Li Tsung (Lee) to learn to defend himself despite his blindness. In the episode, Lee’s character makes a poignant statement that reflects his philosophy:

“I cannot teach you. Only help you to explore yourself. Nothing more.”

*****

1973. Bruce directs, produces, choreographs and stars in his latest film, The Game of Death, a Hong Kong martial arts film. For four days he films a move that lasts only seconds on screen. Motivated by his awareness of how cameras angles capture movement, he shoots take after take for the perfect series of shots.

Cool again

In The Game of Death’s original plot, Hai Tien (Lee) is a retired champion martial artist who’s threatened by Korean gangs. In unseen footage, Lee dresses in a yellow bodysuit with black stripes that run down his arms, sides and legs. In the midst of a fight he remarks to his opponent, “It’s difficult to have a rehearsed routine to fit in with broken rhythm… rehearsed routines lack the flexibility to adapt.” His adversary advances and Bruce adapts like water poured into a cup. With swift grace, he deflects and disarms the man in a matter of seconds.

*****

July 20th, 1973. Bruce plans to meet with actor George Lazenby. Before the meeting, he discusses The Game of Death with producer Raymond Chow. They drive to the home of his colleague Betty Ting Pei, a Taiwanese actress to go over the script before Chow leaves. Betty gives Bruce Equagesic for his headache, a painkiller which contains aspirin and the tranquilizer meprobamate. Chow comes back to the apartment when Bruce misses their meeting and finds that he is unable to wake him. Bruce passes away at Elizabeth Hospital from a cerebral edema. He is 32.

Bruce is buried in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery. Linda, Shannon, and Brandon move from Hong Kong to L.A. Brandon is eight. For a while, he stops speaking.

*****

197X. Brandon builds a fort in his backyard, constructed with plywood and it even has a lock. While the children are at school, Linda hears a meow from inside the fort. Because she has a key, she can enter. Inside is a kitten. When the kids come home from school, Linda asks, “What are you doing with a kitten in your fort?” Brandon replies, “Oh my god mom you're never going to believe it. I was walking home from school and I found this kitten and it was near death. It was in the gutter. It was all dirty. It had ants crawling on it. I didn't know if it was gonna live, so I brought it home and I just cleaned it up.” Brandon replies.

Linda, moved by her son’s determination to nurse a kitten back to health, lets him keep it. They name him Samson for his tremendous strength. A few years later, Linda finds out his friend’s cat had had kittens and he wanted one. Brandon loves to weave stories.

*****

1979. Brandon’s eighth grade teacher wants each of her students to write a graduation speech. In an excerpt of his assignment, Brandon writes:

To me, my educational career thus far seems to resemble, in a way, the myth of Sisyphus, who was forever condemned to push a boulder up a steep hill in Hades. But ere he reached the top, the boulder would slip from his grasp. The more we learn, the more we are forced to realize we do not know. As Socrates said, “I am the smartest man in all Athens because I know how ignorant I am.

A cool young man

*****

1982. Linda took Brandon and Shannon camping many times and he developed a love for nature. In high school he takes Outward Bound trips. He can read a topographical map and even use a compass. At seventeen he rides his Harley into the woods, hoping to glean something of life’s mysteries. He takes a journal with him—a practice he had been previously skeptical of. Brandon ends up in a meadow during a rainstorm. Water finds its way through the holes in his tent. In his journal he writes:

Day 5: … I’m in the woods now, alone. Right now, I wish I had some other people around. This small blue tent has become a prison of sorts. Outside it's raining and if it rains much harder, I am going to die. Literally. I am far from help and it is cold and wet. Never have I been alone for this long. The tent is sagging around me, and a flood of water is rushing into the meadow. I want to go home. If the weather doesn’t improve tomorrow, I may snap.

Day 6: … The day began with rain. There was a brief period of sunshine which induced me to begin packing up. I was in high spirits but then the crafty rain caught me just as I was taking the tent down and utterly soaked both it and me. I set the tent and huddled with it. This brief period, while I sat in a waterlogged tent which bore a new rip made by my careless step, was in a sense my catharsis. I was truly fearful with that gut fear one may experience after losing large sums of someone else's money. But I do not believe I was fearful for my life. No. I was fearful for my ego, for my comfort. The rain eventually stopped and the sun actually shone intermittently. With a zeal born of fear, I rushed forth, took down the dilapidated tent, packed my bags and set off at what can only be described as a dead run. The meadow had seemed to have acquired evil. Bad karma… Through some sort of grace, the good karma of affirmative action, it did not rain again. In fact, I had the distinct impression that I was the storm front. For the small patch of blue sky through which the sun peeked occasionally seemed to center itself directly above my head and follow me as I walked.

Despite being athletically gifted, Brandon’s second love is the literary arts. He writes word-for-word episodes of The Twilight Zone and stages scenes at his school. He reads and reads. He keeps a dictionary on hand for when he comes across a word he doesn’t know the meaning of, cataloging definitions left and right. Brandon receives a perfect score on the verbal portion of his SATs. He also gets kicked out of school a few times for “having a bad attitude towards the educational process and being a poisonous influence upon the minds of fellow students.” He receives his GED from Miraleste High School and goes to Emerson College, but he spends most of his time travelling to New York City. He majors in theater and then drops out after one semester. For a bit, he attends acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute.

Linda tells Brandon if he wants to pursue acting, he must do it on his own. So, he does. He lives in his own ramshackle apartment, joins theater groups, and acts in plays.

*****

1985. Home Sweet L.A. Brandon is back in the city he grew up in. He’s doing coverage for a producer, reading scripts, and writing synopses of them. He successfully auditions for the television movie of the week, Kung Fu: The Movie, a sequel to the 70s series Kung Fu. It’s his first credited acting role. A year later, the film airs on ABC; it’s Brandon’s 21st birthday.

A goof!

*****

1991. Brandon auditions for Showdown in Little Tokyo, an American action film starring Dolf Lundgren, a Swedish actor and martial artist. Brandon gets the part of Johnny Murata, a half white, half Japanese officer who becomes Chris Kenner’s (Lundgren) new partner. Together they must avenge the deaths of Kenner’s parents at the hands of a member of the Yakuza, the famed Japanese organized crime syndicate.

Some nice moves

In behind-the-scenes footage, Brandon smiles and says, “The Martial Arts genre is special to me because it’s always been more interesting, in my opinion, to watch two men who are possessed of skills fight each other than to watch people shoot at each other, because as my father said in Enter the Dragon, ‘Any damn fool can pull a trigger.’” On screen, Brandon concocts the character of Johnny Murata out of sly smiles and indignant gestures. He moves swiftly from one fight move to the next, disarming Yakuza members with chairs. Under the neon city lights of “Little Tokyo,” Murata is both comic relief and a dependable partner. The film is released direct-to-video in 1992.

*****

Still 1991. Brandon comes home and finds a man robbing his house. The window is wide open, there’s stuff all over the floor. He jumps through the window and the man is standing in the bedroom with the VCR in his hand. Brandon starts chasing the burglar through the house. The man grabs a knife in the kitchen and they square off in the living room. He manages to disarm him and calls the police. The man gets two years for breaking in and attempted robbery. Brandon is unscathed except for a scar on his thumb from the knife. He wonders what the burglar thought of the numerous large photos he has on the walls of him and his father.

*****

1992. Brandon lands his first leading role in Rapid Fire as Jake Lo, a young college student burdened with the memory of his father’s death during the Tiananmen Square Massacre. At a party, Jake accidentally witnesses a murder at the hands of a mafia drug lord.

A big break in Rapid Fire

To prepare for the role, Brandon weight trains for “purely aesthetic reasons” because his character will be without a shirt in numerous scenes. However, his main focus is directed towards cardiovascular work. He jumps rope, runs, rides a LifeCycle, and gets into using a Stairmaster. When exercising, he pushes himself to reach the point of exhaustion. For the film’s fight choreography, he works with friend Jeff Amada with whom he studied jeet kune do under the guidance of Don Inosanto. If there’s something he feels is camera dependent, he videotapes it and then brings it to the director for modification.

In a behind-the-scenes interview, Brandon looks down in thought before he speaks about his father’s legacy:

"It’s certainly not any kind of flattery to just imitate someone, yanno, and I would never want to do that and I don’t think my father would of wanted anybody to do that, much less me, yanno. I mean the man was a very original, creative man.” Brandon sits in a chair, white sleeveless shirt on, and a smudge of dirt- possibly fake blood- on his left cheek. He continues the interview, “I’m 26, and so now that I’ve reached an age where I would consider having children myself, I just feel like if I had a child and then for some reason I weren’t around to take care of my child, I would want whatever I had accomplished with my life to be of a benefit to him, yanno? And once I got around to thinking about it that way I realized that my father would want what he had accomplished with his life to be of a benefit to me. So looking at in that spirit, I try and accept whatever help that gives me as gracefully as I can, yanno, and work real hard to live up to it. And that’s about it."

On set, Brandon breaks his toe and the shooting schedule has to be moved around. With his foot the size of a grapefruit, he must film his first on screen love scene—Hardline’s “I Can’t Find My Way” plays in the background.

******

August 1992. Rapid Fire is released. Brandon’s movements on screen are accelerated compared to Showdown—graceful and precise in their execution. The choreography is detailed, glass shattering, and cabinet bursting. In a scene where Jake Lo must kill a man in self-defense, his mouth opens in a mix of dread and ragged breath. The camera lingers on Jake for a mere few seconds, but the desperation and regret from having killed a man is palpable through the screen. Memory scenes of Jake's father being crushed by a Chinese military tank don’t play in rapid succession across the screen, but the connection is evoked in the minds of the viewer by the helpless furrow of Jake’s brow.

*****

Still 1992. On a promotional tour for Rapid Fire, Brandon is asked if he accepts the coroner’s report on his father’s death. Brandon patiently directs the interviewer to his mother’s books on the subject of Bruce’s passing. The interviewer alludes to the rumors of Bruce being killed by Chinese gangs, to which Brandon states the rumors “are on the level of people talking about Elvis still being alive” and “I really, honestly don’t keep up with them.”

A young man in charge

When asked about his interest in pursuing films, Brandon explains, “Well, I always wanted to go into films, I didn’t really plan necessarily in going into martial arts films and this film Rapid Fire ‘s my first time out of the box in a leading role. So, um, I don’t mind doing them but I’d like to be able to have the versatility of somebody, you know, like Mel Gibson for example, who gets the chance to do a big action film but then also step off and do, yanno, Hamlet finally one day.”

The interviewer wonders if Brandon is worried about typecasting. Brandon states, “I’m not that worried about that, I’m just really not, I think that the work will end up speaking for itself, you know, and if with the work that people see you doing in the community you can start to attract the attention of some real class directors and cinematographers and such. I think you’ll get the chance to work, yanno.”

*****

Still 1992 II. Brandon is set to marry his girlfriend Eliza Hutton, whom he met over a year prior when she was the assistant to director Renny Harlin. They live in a two-bedroom house in Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills.

Brandon signs on to play the role of Eric Draven in The Crow, a dark action film adaptation of the comic by James O’Barr. O’Barr wrote the comics after his girlfriend was killed by a drunk driver. The story is about a man who comes back from the dead a year after he and his fiance are murdered. Draven seeks vengeance the night before Halloween—Devil’s Night. O’Barr didn’t think that Brandon was right for the part and was put off by the idea of The Crow becoming another kung fu action movie. The role is offered to Christian Slater and Brad Pitt; both turn it down because it’s not enough money. O’Barr meets Brandon and changes his mind.

*****

1993. Brandon begins a strict diet weeks before shooting the film. He wants to lose the bulk of an action guy and take on the guise of an androgynous rocker. He weighs the food he eats and uses the Stairmaster to focus on cardiovascular work. To elongate his muscles, he does repetitions with lighter weights and aerobics to lose body fat at a faster pace. One evening, Shannon comes around the corner and Brandon’s in the kitchen shoving a quarter pounder in his face! He has had it… for the moment.

He convinces the team to hire Jeff Imada as stunt coordinator. Together they decide the martial arts moves should be non-traditional in form, as Draven is not a trained martial artist. Rather, he’s a man resurrected by a supernatural crow whose bestowed him with supernatural abilities. They add aerobics to Draven’s fighting style. Brandon is glad to add martial arts to the film without it being the center of the story. He is enthused by the lyrical dialogue but wants Draven’s lines to be purposeful instead of aimless. Brandon focuses on the rhythm of his speech because he wants Draven’s voice to feel purposeful, menacing even.

The film shoots in North Carolina during an infamous storm. Despite being in very little clothes six days a week, very little wet clothes, Brandon buys bags of ice to immerse himself in before his resurrection scene. Brandon imagines that Draven would feel cold while coming back to life. He soaks his shirt before his rain scenes to adjust to the cold shirtless attire he’s about to experience. He does most of his own choreography—except for jumping off buildings because the film's insurance won’t cover that. During long days of shooting, he loses 20 lbs. His manager calls to complain about the harsh conditions. Brandon continues to remain in good spirits, smiling all the while.

*****

March 31, 1991. Two weeks prior, a prop guy loads a prop gun with a makeshift blank bullet. A dummy round with a lead tip is lodged into the barrel. Two weeks later, the same gun is used for a scene where Michael Massee’s character, Funboy, is set to kill Eric Draven. Brandon is accidentally shot. He’s rushed to New Hanover Medical Center. After surgery is performed for six hours, Brandon passes away. He is 28. 

It’s a family curse, the superstitious claim. It's the Chinese Mafia, conspiracy theorists surmise. They shroud the reality of Brandon and Bruce’s passing in mystery, like a child who becomes a ghost with a bedsheet. Brandon is buried next to his father in Lake View Cemetery, Seattle on April 3rd, 1993.

 *****

May 13th, 1994. The Crow is released using stuntman Chad Stahelski and CGI effects for the few scenes Brandon hadn’t completed. Shannon picks out a fancy movie theater to watch her brother in the film he was very proud of.

A huge opportunity

On screen, O'Barr’s dark vision comes to life. Draven is six feet tall but slouches in the cold. His wiry frame finds a leather coat, leather pants. If it weren’t for the tie at the waist, the coat would engulf him. He paints his face joker white. Black eye shadow slits his eyes and elongates his mouth. He touches objects of his former life and relives memories, both sweet and terrible. Draven moves with stunning coordination through the damp streets of Detroit, on the hunt to avenge the death of his wife Shelly Webster. He is half mad but wholly devoted. Through the cracks of the monster Draven must become, trickles of light filter through. He looks at Sarah, a little girl he and Shelly used to look out for, and protects her. He exclaims “Boo!” when Sgt. Albrecht asks if he’s a ghost, mocking his own phantom persona and at the same time saying no, I am tangible, I am human. He lays flowers down on Shelly’s grave, lays his head against her headstone in the rain-soaked mud. He reminds Sarah “It can’t rain all the time.”

*****

1982 again. In the Men’s bathroom where Brandon has hidden from an onslaught of rain, he concludes his journal entry:

I am no longer alone for I have as company now, myself. After you have been away from other people long enough, there's nothing to do but be with yourself. Your ego, which operates solely for others, is gone. Hopefully I will make it to a town tomorrow where it is my fervent desire to check into a hotel. This tent has had it anyway. An interesting note, my flashlight batteries just died very slowly. Good thing I have more. I am happy.

©Carina Espudo and the CCA Arts Review