His legend has steadily grown, especially in Asia, where his life and mysterious death have become a small industry, celebrated in a barrage of novels, comic books, television programs, video games and movies.

On this side of the Pacific, what is being widely touted as the latest manifestation of this phenomenon is the emergence of Lee's 27-year-old son, Brandon. His first major Hollywood film, a kung fu action piece called "Rapid Fire," opens Aug. 21.

But anyone expecting this Son of Bruce to be a rip-off or a clone is due for a big surprise. The BRANDON LEE who returned to Seattle recently to promote "Rapid Fire" is taller (by 5 inches), a better-trained actor and probably even a better martial artist than his famous father.

It is also clear two minutes into a conversation with him that he has no intention of trying to follow in his father's foot kicks.

"I think what my father did for the movies was great, but I basically take acting more seriously than he did. If there is a career I'd like to emulate, it would probably be someone like Mel Gibson, who broke in with action movies and still does action movies, but also does 'Hamlet'."

Lee said he was born in Oakland, but his first memories are of the eight years his family lived in Hong Kong, where his father - who had lived in Seattle for many years and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in philosophy - had returned, and was establishing himself as an international superstar in a series of Hollywood-financed chop-socky films like "Fist of Fury" and "Enter the Dragon."

Brandon was 8 when his father died in the Hong Kong apartment of his leading lady, under circumstances that have given life to much speculation and rumor over the years. His body was brought back to Seattle for burial and the funeral became a media event, attended by stars like Steve McQueen and James Coburn. (Brandon is seen as a teary-eyed little boy in newspaper photos of the time.)

His upbringing after the funeral was as hectic as it had been before. "My mother, sister and I moved around a lot in those years. I still don't exactly have it straight. There were a couple of years in Calgary with my mother's family, and then we were back in Seattle for a year or so. Everett, I think. Then we finally moved down to L.A., where I went to high school."

Actually, he went to three high schools and was expelled from all three. "I guess you could say I had a rebellious streak. At the last one - a private school - I was the student-body president, and the day John Lennon was shot I called everyone in the senior class and - without any authorization, I admit - took it upon myself to cancel classes for the next day."

After he finally made it through high school, he settled down considerably at Emerson College in Massachusetts, where he majored in theater. "It's funny, but all my life I've known I wanted to be an actor. I've never had the slightest doubt or even considered a fall-back profession. And the ambition has never been for movie stardom, particularly. I'm much more comfortable playing character parts on the stage."

Since graduating seven years ago, Lee has more or less been paying his dues as a working actor. He has appeared in several Equity productions in New York, made his television debut in "Kung Fu: The Movie" in 1986, and he had co-starring roles in a Hong Kong kung fu movie called "Legacy of Rage" and a Hollywood film called "Showdown in Little Tokyo."

Lee said he has taken the ancient Chinese method of self-defense very seriously since his father started training him as a toddler, and his prowess in the two films was impressive. So impressive that Hollywood has been expecting him to emerge as an action-movie star since the late 1980s.

But he has approached the job offers "very cautiously." He said Universal offered him the plum lead role in the Bruce Lee BIOGRAPHY it is shooting, but he turned it down. "Maybe if I were more established I would have taken the part. But as it is, it seemed too risky, both psychologically and professionally."

Instead, he chose "Rapid Fire," a hard-driving, martial-arts movie in which he plays a cynical young Eurasian who runs afoul of both the Asian and Italian underworlds in contemporary Chicago. "I basically like the movie. It's not great art by any means, but it's not mean-spirited, and it's exciting. It does its job well." He also thinks the film is a good showcase for him as an actor and as a personality distinct from his father.

He is also set to play the lead in "The Crow" ("if the final deal can be made"), in which he will play a rock star obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe. But before that, he will return to the rented house in the Hollywood Hills he shares with his girlfriend, come down from a public-appearance tour all over the United States and Asia, and see what kind of reception "Rapid Fire" has when it opens Aug. 21.

Lee said the Asian leg of his promotion tour did not represent a happy homecoming for him ("the Hong Kong press are just vultures!"). He speaks Cantonese ("well enough to get along") but he feels no particular affinity for Asia and does not want to live there. "The trip reinforced my suspicions that, despite my Pacific Rim heritage, I'm about as American as you get."

As for the inevitable questions about those unending rumors that his father's death was drug- or gang-related, Lee said they don't particularly bother him. "When I was a kid, I read those (tabloid) stories and, I'll tell you, they didn't do me any good. But I went to my mother and we talked about it and I know there's no truth in them. I now put them in the same category as Elvis sightings."

by William Arnold
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 13, 1992

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