Bruce Lee’s daughter still doesn’t know what Quentin Tarantino’s problem is
Shannon Lee has long been frustrated with Tarantino's portrayal of her father as "the asshole" in 2019's Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood
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Shannon Lee—the daughter of actor and martial arts master Bruce Lee—is still not taking Quentin Tarantino’s portrayal of her father as “the asshole” in Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood lightly. In a controversial scene from the 2019 film, a mostly fictionalized Lee (played by Mike Moh) is challenged to a fight by Brad Pitt’s protagonist, stuntman Cliff Booth. Lee comes off as severely arrogant and cocky in the scene, and while the fight eventually ends in a draw (at the rest of the cast’s behest), Lee certainly does not come out of the movie looking good.
Shannon has been vocally opposed to Tarantino’s portrayal of her father as “an arrogant asshole who was full of hot air” since the movie came out. Now, all these years later, she still can’t figure out why the director had such a bone to pick. “I’ve never met him. I don’t know what his issues are with my father,” she recently told The Telegraph. “Clearly, he thinks my father is cool, because he has borrowed from him quite a bit. But at the same time, I think he has been told a lot of stories by people who have encountered my father and had a negative reaction.”
“They found him to be overly confident or arrogant,” she continued. “I have to say, in my experience, the stories are mostly from white men. I think Quentin may have been told a lot of those stories and believes them. I think a lot of people looked at my father as uppity, you know?”
For his part, Tarantino “can understand his daughter having a problem with it. It’s her fucking father. Everyone else: go suck a dick,” as he shared on a 2021 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. This dismissal is in line with the attitude the director has always taken to the portrayal, which is that “Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy,” as he told the press in a 2019 junket. At the time, he explained that he “didn’t just make a lot of that up” for the movie, and that Lee’s wife Linda had written similar things “in her first biography I ever read.”
Of course, none of this has impacted Shannon’s opinion of the man she knew. “At the end of the day, I feel very confident about who my father was and who I am, and that, on the whole, his presence on this planet has been extremely positive and had a great impact on a lot of people,” she told The A.V. Club in 2020. “I feel like I’m doing my work to put out a portrait of the person I know.”
122 Comments
Again with this? It’s Cliff Booths daydream. Yea Quentin wrote it but it’s fiction.
Exactly how I took the scene
I really don’t understand how people could interpret it any other way.
This seems …odd. That it is a memory is the default assumption, no? At the very least you should understand that people who weren’t thinking about it too much would interpret it the straightforward way. I know I don’t watch movies assuming all flashbacks or memories are instances of an unreliable narrator. I also don’t know why he’d be day-dreaming about the time he got fired.
I’m not sure that I buy that it’s supposed to be Cliff’s daydream. The purpose of that scene is to further establish that Cliff is a top-shelf bad-ass, not to show that he’s self-deluding.
The scene doesn’t exist to make Booth look badass, the scene exists to underline why he’s on Rick Dalton’s roof fixing his TV antenna and not working on a movie set.
It does that, too, but the entire film is building toward why this is the guy who can undo the entire Manson tragedy. It’s another Tarantino revisionist revenge fantasy and about the power of movies to rewrite reality to provide catharsis. The point of the scene, along with Cliff’s Spahn Ranch scene, is: this old school real man is the wrong guy to fuck with and the right dude to change history.
I think you’re over-centering the movie onto Pitt’s shoulders. As Tarantino’s depiction of the Manson cult shows, these are dumb, drug-addled kids who got lucky. Almost anyone with a lick of sense who happened to intercept them could have taken them out.If anything, the movie’s about what happens when a monster runs into a bigger monster.
But part of what I think Tarantino sees as one of the great injustices of the Manson family is that they were a bunch of whacked out, bungling hippies who managed to do so much damage, both literally and to the American psyche. It’s not that Cliff needs to be a bad-ass war hero/stuntman to necessarily take these guys out (although, honestly, if three people armed with a gun and knives invade your home, the odds are against you.) It’s that Tarantino thinks it’s glorious that they stumbled into a lion’s den and are so mismatched.
Cliff is definitely a seriously morally murky character, but I still think Tarantino absolutely positions him as a wish fulfillment character. He’s Hal Needham crossed with Steve McQueen and he’s packaged in Brad Pitt. Despite being a probably wife-murdering dude who’s living in a trailer in Van Nuys, he’s still supposed to be an aspirational figure–or at least the guy we wish we had watching our backs.
Tarantino should team up with Mark Wahlberg for a 9/11 movie.
I read it as a memory: Bruce could be full of himself, but he was well-liked by the cast and crew. Cliff decided to be a jerk and a bully for his own sake that dayy, and that cost him that job and many more in the years since. (Also, because everybody on set knows he is a murderer.)
If I recall the novel correctly, it’s definitely a memory and not a fantasy.
And we all understand that memories are 100% accurate.
It’s a memory from an unreliable narrator, but daydreaming includes memories/reminiscing. There are multiple touches in the scene that heighten the dream-reality of it, most notably as the onlookers get fewer and fewer throughout.
Exactly. It’s not completely fabricated, but it’s definitely a Rashomon type of deal.
The film also shows Sharon Tate gleefully practicing martial arts with Bruce (which she actually did, in reality) during one of the pure joy moments in the story, the montage as she’s watching her own performance. So we get memories of Bruce from two of the three main characters. The one where Bruce comes off as cocky AND mildly impressed with Cliff and his notoriety is, within the film narrative, an unreliable memory that makes Cliff look kind of cool but also like a self-sabotaging idiot, which is exactly what Cliff thinks with his “Yeah, fair enough” aside to himself on the roof.Meanwhile Sharon’s recollection was much different. We only get a glimpse, but it’s a glimpse rooted in reality. I think that’s the “real” Bruce of the film.My read has always been that we’re supposed to take Cliff’s memory scene with massive grains of salt, as evidenced by the crowd shrinking and other touches.
I would just say that there’s no reason both Bruce Lees can’t be the same guy. People can be kind sometimes and somewhat dickish at other times or to other people.
Yes, it was a flashback, a memory of the time that Cliff Booth basically torpedoed his career over an impromptu fight with Bruce Lee.It also reinforces the point that Booth, a war veteran, had little or no time for some halfwit actor/stuntman pontificating about what “true combat” really is.
He didn’t write it as a daydream. Tarantino’s choice of defence of his creative decision and the novelisation he wrote both make it clear that (a) It’s supposed to be a memory and (b) one based in what Tarantino believes is a fair judgement of the real-life Bruce Lee.You might have been able to write this off as Cliff’s arrogant, self-aggrandizing daydream when the movie first came out, but since then Tarantino himself has put too much work into proving his detractors right.
“Tarantino’s portrayal of her father as ‘an arrogant asshole who was full of hot air’”So Tarantino put his own personality into his Lee character?
No, he put Lee’s personality into Lee’s character.
You’ve never done or made a single thing of significance in your entire life and Tarantino has made some of the most significant films of the 20th and 21st centuries. Consider not talking. I know it’s tough. But you’re an idiot.
Tarantino should probably get therapy, but I don’t know if he’d want to foot the bill.
If there’s any footing involved, he’ll be there.
It’s true. He has some sole searching to do.
These puns are really toeing the line.
oops, sorry
Don’t worry. A lot of people are stepping on each others puns here today
You know, these days they have a lot of digital options for therapy… XD
That’s the sole reason they’re here.
It’s okay. We can see you didn’t mean to step on anyone’s toes
They’ve ingrown on me, for sure.
You hit the (toe)nail on the head.
He definitely should stop toeing the line.
None of this is too surprising, we all know Tarantino loves to play the heel.
He is planning to direct The man from ankle
I’d jump in to the pun thread … but I’d feel like a heel.
That little piggy should just go Whee Whee Whee all the way home.
Knock if off with these foot puns, unless you want to make an arch enemy out of me.
This thread is so corny.
You nailed it!
He needs to go back to making movies like Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Everyone likes him when he sticks to killing fasciitis.
You nailed it XD
Oh lort! Here’s your star.
If you want Tarantino’s penis to get erect, show him some videos or photos or feet, amiright? Huh? Because he likes feet.
SO many arch comments from celebrity relatives these days.
Yeah, that’s definitely his Achilles’ heel…
I appreciate where she’s coming from, but Bruce Lee died when she was three years old, maybe just turned four.
Breaking news: Arrogant man was nice to his daughter.
Also breaking news: someone who is basically at the top level in the world at whatever they do might be super cocky. And Bruce Lee was absolutely the top martial arts movie star in the world. I mean the phrase never meet your heroes is a saying for a reason.
Yeah, I’ve heard Muhammad Ali was a bit full of himself.
And Brad Pitt couldn’t have beaten him up either.
Well, it depends, Bruce Lee was a highly adept martial artist but he wasn’t a military trained killer either. They don’t necessarily fight according to tournament rules for starters.
It was terrible for Will Smith to portray Ali as a guy who liked to brag a lot and sometimes mocked his competitors. Also, Smith suggested that Ali punched people a lot, really hard, and was proud of punching people really hard.
I too have watched an enjoyed The Sopranos.
“I feel like I’m doing my work to put out a portrait of the person I know.” She was four years old when he died. she didn’t know him.
More than one thing can be true at the same time
1. White men could have said those things because you know…white men
2. BL could have been an asshole
There is also the idea that these white dudes of that era were assholes to him and he was just giving what was received.The article makes it sound like Lee tried to kick the Pope’s ass on Palm Sunday because he didn’t like his hat. I guarantee all those dudes were assholes too.
Oh, I’m 100% certain Bruce Lee was known for being arrogant. But there’s a huge difference between being arrogant, and being a blowhard. Like mentioned above, Muhammed Ali was also considered arrogant, but he was certainly no blowhard. He tore apart some of the toughest guys on Earth.
So when Bruce Lee came from Hong Kong, where every one in that city knew his name and face, came to Hollywood and got treated like just another “dink,” of course he came off as arrogant to every white tough guy in town. He wasn’t gonna put up with their shit—he could kick the ass of guys three times his size. Didn’t they know who he was?? If they didn’t they could f*k around and find out.
First off, I think Tarantino is overrated (not that anyone cares what I think, nor should they). His movies are good, sometimes great, but there isn’t one of them in my top 5 picks to watch tonight – maybe not even top 10. I’ve heard him on podcasts and interviews, he comes across like a coked-out Roger Ebert, with half the IQ.I’ve only seen 4 or 5 of his movies, and Once Upon.. isn’t one I’ve seen, so I don’t know how Lee was portrayed first hand.QTs only source of the stories are from a bunch of alleged assholes, that say Lee was full of hot air/of shit or a blowhard, so of course he thinks it’s straight up factual. Never let the truth get in the way of a middling story propped up by reputation. I’m sure if you go back and ask non-hollywood people that worked with Lee what he was like (I’m sure there are plenty on you tube) you would get a very different answer than QT put in his movie.
Yeah I’d take Jackie Chan’s opinion on what Bruce Lee was like over Tarantino. Jackie WORKED with Bruce, and Tarantino…read a book. Personally, I think Tarantino wrote Bruce Lee as a reflection of himself.
I’ll watch Pulp Fiction repeatedly but that’s it. I wish I’d never heard of him, tbh.
Totally agree—he’s good, but not great. Because of his dialogue-heavy scripts and the way he frames shots, he’s put up as some fancy-ass auteur, but it’s nothing more than borrowing technique from other directors in the past that nobody does any more, and therefore it seems fresh to modern eyes.
What about “white men”? Casual racist bs needs to stop.
But is there any evidence that Bruce Lee was an asshole that comes from anyone besides white men?
I made a joke above about may Carradine told QT this and Tarantino took is as fact. Granted how can anyone not realize Lee was right that it was a joke that Carradine got that role over him in Kung Fu. Anway as a POC I wish I could like your post 100 times.
Soooo do we get to hear the things from “similar things” that wife Linda wrote about? No? Okay. Just thought it was a news article.
Ha, “news”, that’s a good one.
Look, no one who writes for this website is going to find and read an old book. Bless you for still having hope.
Again with this? I heard stories about Lee’s arrogance and cockiness decades before the movie was made. Tarantino didn’t make it up. The story the scene is loosely based on has also been out for years.Lee was very charismatic…he was also a bit full of himself.
Right like I thought it was pretty well known he was kind of cocky, that doesn’t mean he was a dick or an asshole but when it came to martial arts he had every right to be cocky.
If you watch his interviews, he definitely comes off as cocky. He may have been different among family and close friends, but this portrayal in OUATIA was really consistent with how he appeared on those interviews and demonstrations.
Yeah that’s kind of what I was getting at, he was well known to be cocky and full of himself, not necessarily in a bad way just that he was confident, and he was a celebrity the public and private persona’s were probably pretty different. I remember the stink when the movie first came out, and I saw it and it tracked with how I am sure Lee was in real life with strangers and co workers.
I supposed, but I get his daughter’s point. You could definitely see an Asian movie star in the early 70s being anything other than deferential to the point of obsequiousness getting tagged as arrogant. Kinda like how a lot of actresses have undeservedly gotten the label of “difficult” for standing up for themselves.
Fair point, and obviously I am not saying she is wrong, but even looking at some of his old interviews through 2023 eyes he seemingly comes across as cocky and arrogant, but she is 100% allowed to have her opinion on how he was portrayed. That said he did die when she was like 4, so you could argue she never really knew him all that well to begin with. Either way I will still always love Lee and it’s sad we lost him to soon.
I don’t think people today are aware of the layers of racism Asians and Asain Americans had to deal with in the 70s.
“Full of yourself” and “cocky” are often applied to confident, non-white individuals.
Also often applied to confident white individuals.You would have to have those qualities to evangelize Jeet Kune Do as hard as he did. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just an aspect of his personality. You do know how he made his rep, don’t you? He would go around town and challenge the “Masters” of other martial arts schools to a fight. You don’t think that’s cocky and arrogant?
“Full of yourself” and “cocky” are often applied to confident individuals.
Was just going to say this. As Shannon reiterates, POCs have been called “uppity” since forever.
unless Bruce lee is portrayed as a perfect human being, a jesus meets keanu reeves if you will, its an insult to all people of colour everywhere, clearly
So true. See also: “uppity”.
The funny thing is that his confidence is part of what made him so cool and so much fun to watch. Bruce Lee is a personal hero of mine and Tarantino may be my favorite director. I have no issue with the scene in the movie. Bruce was never a saint and it’s just a movie. Tarantino was trying to set Cliff up as the ultimate badass. I don’t think anyone would be complaining about the scene if Bruce had won the fight handily.
Being confident in your abilities and driven to succeed is far different from being arrogant and cocky. Big difference. Huge.
Yeah, given that Lee’s own daughter acknowledges that there are “a lot” of stories circulating about Lee being arrogant, even if she discounts those stories, it seems fair for Tarantino to present Lee as arrogant.
Best not to dwell on whatever is going on in his big, hammy head.
Gosh, I hope it didn’t impact her merch sales
“Bruce Lee’s daughter still doesn’t know what Quentin Tarantino’s problem is”Kind of sounds like she knows exactly what his problem is, based on this quote: “Clearly, he thinks my father is cool, because he has borrowed from him quite a bit. But at the same time, I think he has been told a lot of stories by people who have encountered my father and had a negative reaction.”
WhAt a MySTerY!!1!!!
I always read that scene as Brad Pitt’s take on it, so like he would have remembered Bruce Lee as a dick but that’s not really how any of that actually played out. If that were actually the case it def could have been more clear.
Ms. Lee was 4 when her father died. I’m sure she has fond memories, but it’s hard to say she knew him outside of what people have told her.Regardless, it’s almost certain she’s not going around picking a fight; a reporter brought this up for a cheap headline.
People probably held back when talking to her about her father too. I mean an ex-co worker or even relative probably isn’t going to tell her about bad experiences they had with Lee, or if they do they will sugar coat it. So of course she’s only going to have a positive picture of him. Anyway I do feel for her but when your father is Bruce Lee’s level of fame he belongs to the world.
Especially since he died. Would be a dick move to tell her oh your dad was a real asshole.
Enter the drags on …..
“I have to say, in my experience, the stories are mostly from white men.”Has she talked to the Chinese community at all? He was pretty divisive and he pissed off – rightly or wrongly – a lot of people during the years.But hey, let’s take a swipe at “white men” which, apparently, Quentin Tarantino – who has Italian, Irish, and Cherokee heritage (all of whom have been historically discriminating against, to put it mildly) – gets to be lumped in with.Shannon, your Dad was awesomesauce but was also known to be an arrogant-dick at times. Deal with it.
We’ve all heard that Bruce Lee could be arrogant, right? Or at least boastful. But… jesus, didn’t he have a reason to be? He could do stuff that no one could, was in fact a badass motherfucker, and maybe mentioning it a time or two was forgivable? And yes, the fight in the movie was a draw, and/or a daydream of Cliff’s, so narratively several takes will work. By design; Tarantino is a lot of things, but not a bad filmmaker generallly.
He was right about just about everything and could back up all his talk. Again, if he had clearly won the fight in the movie nobody would be complaining. It is the fact that he lost (maybe) that made him come off as a blowhard.
“All these years later” usually connotes more than, I don’t know, 4 years.
Is she STILL crying about this who the hell keeps asking it over and over since her opinion is already said 5000 times already
The problem is not that Lee was arrogant and cocky. He absolutely was. That was what made him awesome. The problem is that in the movie he isn’t able to back it up. That’s the part that is disrespectful.
You are correct sir. If he had clearly won the fight people would not be complaining about the portrayal.
“I don’t know what his issues are with my father”Could it be, just maybe, that Tarantino doesn’t really give a shit one way or the other, and just thought it made for an entertaining scene?
Or she could deal with that there are literally hundreds of stories of Bruce being an asshole and picking fights, and that Tarantino did a REALLY LIGHT pass on that, and get wayyyyyy over herself.
Hundreds of stories? I am a huge Bruce fan and I have only heard stories about other people picking fights with him. Do you have a source for these hundreds of stories?
Well if anyone would know arrogance it would be Q. But his version of Bruce Lee was really lame.
Lee is challenged to a fight by Brad Pitt’s protagonist, stuntman Cliff Booth. Lee challenged Cliff
Oh come on, I don’t buy it for a second. Are we supposed to believe a young martial artist, literally the greatest in the world, in peak physical condition — he wouldn’t have even a little bit of an attitude? We think of him as this wise, all-knowing teacher — but he was an actor. Managing his image was a part of the job.And yet with all of that, I don’t doubt that he was a good person and a good father — as Shannon remembers. Our kids push us to be better people and to grow beyond the follies of our youth. But even though those follies don’t necessarily define us, they’re still a part of us — they just set the stage for what comes next.Tarantino didn’t claim Bruce Lee was a terrible person — just that he may have been a bit of a jerk once. I’d believe that in a heartbeat, especially about any of the ‘nice’ celebrities the media’s in love with. And honestly, most good people are jerks sometimes. It’s just what it means to be human.
I encourage anyone with 1. ears 2. eyes and 3. a brain (that’s the hard part..) to watch any old interview with Lee and then come back here and tell us all how he wasn’t a tad cocky or arrogant.If you do, be prepared to be called a liar or stupid, or maybe both.
Is she still going on about this? Anybody who watches Enter the Dragon, and then watches Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, will primarily be amazed by Bruce Lee’s athletic grace and charismatic screen presence, and then kind of chuckle at the fictional portrayal of Lee unexpectedly playing against type. Tarantino’s portrayal doesn’t diminish his legacy in any way. It’s funny *because* Bruce Lee is awesome. This cameo is no different from having Mr. Rogers walk out of a whorehouse in the background of a movie about 1970s PBS.But that said, how does Shannon Lee know what her father was like on the set of Green Hornet? She wasn’t even born yet. My dad is still alive and I would never presume to say with any confidence what he was like before I was born, because I wasn’t there. Bruce Lee died when she was 4! She really needs to let this go, for her own happiness.
Important thing to know. This woman was I believe 4 when Bruce Lee died. Can you really say you know anyone at that age? I certainly can’t. My memories of anything at that age is vague and blurry and honestly quite unreliable. Im not saying he was a bad guy, far from it. But I am sure he had an ego.
Maybe it’s because Tarantino heard stories from David Carradine about Lee and he took them as the truth. Shame we can’t ask Carradine, I wonder if he just hanging around somewhere. :)Anyway, if that was the case Carradine was the one Lee and people who loved Lee buried for getting that role in Kung Fu over Lee (which lets be real is stupid).I seriously wonder if that’s the case, QT just sticking up for his buddy after hearing some stories. Anyway Lee>Qt and his werido fans. I kid I Kid, I know how nuts some of you 40+ year olds get about QT.
Her father is portrayed as being a really nice, supportive guy in another scene, the one told from the point of view of Sharon Tate. Maybe Cliff is the asshole?
How is any of this a Tarantino problem and not a Shannon Lee problem?
The shit you people get worked up about. Goddamn.
Did she even see the part where Lee was training Tate for the movie and everything was fine?
better headline Bruce Lee’s daughter still trying to get press coverage from years old “controversy”
It’s one mildly negative depiction in a five minute scene which presents Bruce Lee as a bit arrogant and pompous, and in which he gets knocked down once in a fight that, in the film, ends pretty much inconclusively. Amid a general cultural reputation which largely venerates the man.I mean, I get that she’d be defensive of her father’s memory, but it really doesn’t seem like this needs to be the major cultural flashpoint people seem to want it to be.
I’m waiting for the day he’s held accountable for being Harvey Weinsteins co-conspirator/enabler.
Naturally Tarantino hasn’t met with anyone in Bruce Lee’s family. Tarantino is a hack who rips off superior artists and smashes it all together and people think he’s brilliant. He’s not. He sucks.
The Uppity comment hits home. Lee was in a spot similar to Poitier. They had to act hyper masculine and overly confident just to appeal to enough white men to survive in hollywood. Then they get accused of being uppity by those same white men.
That scene in OUATIH was clearly a case of unreliable/biased narrator; IE retired stunt-man buzzed on hot roof, remising about the time he managed to hold his own in a fight w Bruce Lee, and also Bruce Lee was the one who started it. Did him throwing Bruce into a car door and destroying it not sell this as fantasy?
You have to be cocky to become the legend that is Bruce fucking Lee!
a famous actor comes off not looking good in a fictional film?
its amazing that the sun somehow still finds a way to rise