Remembering the Dragon - Bruce Lee 40 years on

The first time I saw him was the last scene he filmed before he died. Bruce Lee came and went before I had ever heard his name. The early eighties saw an explosion in home video, with film rentals becoming the new big thing. The Rediffusion shop in Worthing (Sadly now long departed) – I think its a Subway now – rented my Mum (Sadlier now also long departed) a Ferguson VideoStar – a video machine, a front loader, no less!. This marvel of technology required several things of us to assume it's proper place of honour and reverent awe in our lounge; a telly, a telly – video stand and... video cassettes. In the Netflix era, with digital surround sound and widescreen the standard the Video Home System must seem like something from a Soviet pirate station in the sixties, but back then sound was Mono and screens were square. Ish.

Just getting a film wasn't even that easy – older readers may remember the more recent Blockbuster video shops where you went in, selected your DVD of choice and rented same. Before that, you rented a VHS film. And before that, well, you came round our house to see one we had rented. As well as machines, Rediffusion rented tapes... but only to customers. My Mum, bless her controlled the membership card, which I would take down to the shop and rent one of the movies from the selection available – about thirty films in total. Lucky for me, Mum liked detective flicks, so if it was, say Dirty Harry I could rent it, bring it home and we'd watch it. You had to be creative with the truth to be me aged fourteen; if I wanted to see a movie, I'd be ok so long as I used the phrase; 'It's a detective film, Mum.' This creativity was never more stretched than when I came home with Enter The Dragon clutched in my eager little hands. I can't remember the exact wording, but I would have had to go with something along the 'He's a Chinese detective, who has to nick some drug dealers and bust Mister Big' lines to sell this one to the old girl.

So, this film starts with a girl being forced to commit suicide rather than be disgraced, with her Brother demonstrating his acrobatic skill at the Shaolin Monastery before coming to avenge her death and take down the Drug Lord who employed the man who would have disgraced her. All my mates wanted to see this one, which was hard to get, the few copies the shop had being much in demand. After seeing it, I bought every book Bruce Lee ever wrote, watched all his films and even bought a pair of kung fu trousers, slippers and a pair of nunchaku. Worthing's answer to the Little Dragon. What a tit. Long years later, I'm still a fan, though I know more about this enigmatic young man who died before I knew his name...

Above: The last scene Bruce Lee filmed. He was at his fittest, but was to die in mysterious circumstances at the house of an actress, Betty Ting Pei.

Above: How it began. Wing Chun Kung Fu Master, Yip Man of Hong Kong taught the young Bruce Lee the art. He would go on to create his own style, Jeet Kune Do - The Way of the Intercepting Fist.

The Green Hornet - the Sixties TV show was one of several Lee appeared in. Added to his schools, which catered to celebrities such as Steve McQueen and James Coburn, his star was on the ascendant.

Above: The Movies - starting with low budget films such as The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, both released in 1971, Bruce Lee exploded onto the scene. The films were instant hits, paving the way for the two best martial arts films yet made...

Above: Bruce with his son Brandon. Tragically, Brandon Lee was himself killed in an accident on a movie set. Below: The one-inch punch. Lee demonstrated his extraordinary abilities to astonished crowds, including the power of a punch delivered from just an inch from the target. The subjects were invariably flung backwards as if kicked by a horse. (Inset) Bruce Lee doing one finger push-ups on the set of Game of Death.

Above: Bruce Lee believed the key to winning a fight was fitness. He pioneered the art of training, inventing his own equipment as required.

The Way of the Dragon - filmed in Rome this was the film that sealed Lee's reputation. Set around a fairly standard B-movie chop-socky plot, the martial arts scenes were spectacular. The film culminates with a fight set in the Coloseum - with Bruce Lee fighting Karate Champion Chuck Norris.

Above - an incredible side-kick from Way of the Dragon.  Below - the fashions of the time were questionable, but with the money starting to come in, Bruce Lee was finally living the life of a star.

 Below; Enter the Dragon, released in 1973, the film was a sensation. The first American-Chinese martial arts film owed more than a little to James Bond.

Above; Lee with Enter the Dragon co-star John Saxon, himself a karate black-belt.

Above; The Nunchaku. Bruce Lee was proficient in a range of martial arts weapons, but his scenes with these, originally rice flails, are legendary.

Below; Game of Death. Intended to be his next film, Lee never completed it. The footage he had filmed was later released as a shoddily produced movie, using lookalikes to stand in for him. 

Below: Gone, never forgotten, Bruce Lee, founder of Jeet Kune Do.

Below: The statue of Bruce Lee that stands in Hong Kong harbour.

At Last! - The Charity Shop Book Review...

...Yes, the Charity Shop - or 'Goodwill Shop/Thrift Shop' for those of you from the US of A; thanks in part to our 'Economic Recovery' (Spelt D.i.s.a.s.t.e.r.) they are springing up everywhere. Staffed by kindly-intentioned old ladies and invariably the haunt of the, shall we say, socially-bereft? (In England we call them 'Fiddlers' - you know, the kind of person, usually male, that is of a certain age range and sporting a breathtakingly bad selection of clothing, glasses (held together with tape), dubious personal hygiene and a court order restricting their proximity to primary schools. To narrow this down, think of a startled mother clutching her frightened child and then imagine the person causing their discomfort and unease. Hey-ho, it takes more than that to scare us... right?. Anyways, despite the drawbacks, there remains a lot to be said for these domains of the desperate; they raise cash for worthy causes, they provide the less well-off with cheap clothes and crockery and, lets face it, they are always good for a laugh-a rinse round these places and you are left with a rather-too-accurate picture of the taste of the average Briton (Just how many wooden clogs from Amsterdam and porcelain thimbles marked 'A Souvenir from Blackpool/Made in China does one country need?)AND, (At last, a point...)then there's the books.

Books, remember those?, yes, spool back to, say 1980 BK (Before Kindle) and you'll find there were loads of these papery delights around - and thats the main reason I visit these places; once in a while, after wading through piles of Sharon Osbourne and Jordan biographies you come across a gem; Our first example shall be...

BRUCE LEE - Fighting Spirit by Bruce Thomas (ISBN 0-330-34930-9) Pan Books, 1997 Edition/Paperback.

The last person you'd expect to write a biography of a dead Martial Arts star would be the bassist from Elvis Costello's band The Attractions. Or, possibly, Torquemada from the Spanish Inquisition (Well, nobody expects them...). Well, he did; The bass player, that is. A Martial Artist himself (He studied Kung Fu from the late, legendary Derek Jones in London), Thomas was obviously unhappy at the previous treatments given to this phenomenal man - Bruce Lee biogs tend to lean towards drugs, mafia plots and sinister kung-fu masters bent on poisoning the man who dared expose their secrets... well, thats what I found when, in the eighties I found a book by Alex Ben Block on the late star.

Why this book?; well, several reasons, but mainly the fact that, whatever your level of interest this book has it; facts about Lee's life and films for the fans, plus plenty of insight into the philosophical aspects of both Lee's life and martial arts for those seeking to either develop personally generally or through the medium of martial arts. Yep, deep. Illustrated with black and white photos, the book really is a gem. Apart from re-discovering the whole Bruce Lee 'thing' that so captivated me that (here goes) I bought a kick/punch-bag, all the Bruce Lee fighting style books I could find and even black satin kung-fu trousers and slippers. Can I just point out that at no point do I claim that aged sixteen I was ever in danger of having a clue?.

Jeet Kune Do - Translated as 'The Way of the Intercepting Fist', this is Bruce Lee's own name for his art. Roughly stated, Lee took Wing Chun style Kung Fu (He pronounced it GUNG-Fu), a style he had been taught in Hong Kong as a boy and from it developed a fighting 'method' incorporating the best elements and moves from Boxing, Karate, Ju-Jitsu, Thai Boxing etc. etc. There are - despite the many 'experts' offering classes - no set moves or patterns in Jeet Kune Do; it simply is down to the individual to develop their own Jeet Kune Do. The only common denominators are hard physical training, mental preparation and the self-motivation and discipline required to both seek out different Martial Arts and then extract what is useful. The way to the freedom of expression Lee achieved is not an easy path, but a rewarding one.

I learned a lot from this book - and I value my copy dearly. (The following pictures are 'rinsed' from kungfucinema.com - an amazing site full of rare and interesting pictures from various martial arts stars; I also include pictures of my copy of Fighting Spirit for reference.)  

PS-These pictures are NOT in the book Fighting Spirit - they are here purely because they are A;Cool, B;'cos they are...