What Quentin Tarantino Got Wrong About Bruce Lee
The martial arts star was deeper and greater than the director suggests
I’ll never forget the first time I watched martial artist Bruce Lee (1940–1973) being interviewed.
In a sepia-toned, black-and-white 1971 television interview, host Pierre Berton asked the action star about whether American movie values surpassed the quality of those in Hong Kong, whose movies Bruce hoped to introduce to the world scene.
The star’s relaxed response, offered with an easy smile and pensive tone, was humility itself: “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 toward that standard, than what I would [now] term quality.”
I never forgot it. Although I am not a martial artist, I learned more and more about Bruce as a person: his interest in the unclassifiable spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986); his dedication to the motivational classic Think and Grow Rich (a personal favorite of mine)…
