Here we have a documentary about Bruce Lee, which features stories from from family, friends, and former students. The thing I like about this documentary is that it relies more on interviews and less on clips and footage of Bruce. Some documentaries just show clips from Bruce's movies with some boring watered down information about Bruce that everyone already knows. Most of the people appearing in the documentary are people Bruce got to know when he was in the States. We don't hear from anyone from the Hong Kong/Asia scene except for Brother Henry who was Bruce's elementary school teacher in HK and Bolo Yeung. Family members who speak of Bruce include his brother Robert and son Brandon.
A few interesting things were when friend and former student Richard Bustillo spoke. He showed some old resistance training equipment of Bruce's as well as demonstrated some techniques. Also there was some talk about Bruce's one inch punch. James Coburn with cigar in hand tells some good and humorous stories like only James Coburn can.
Now if you've seen Bruce Lee, The Man, The Myth you know of the infamous penny snatching scene. When Bruce was a student at the University of Washington, Bruce impresses a group of students by snatching this penny out of a guy's hand. When I saw it I laughed and found it quite amusing. Chris Sato a former student of Bruce's tells a story of Bruce snatching a penny from a guy hand AND replacing it with a dime. I was like "Whoa!", that actually happened.
Well the rest of people interviewed include friends and former students Taky Kimura, Roy Hollingsworht, Herb Jackson, Bob Bremer, Ted Wong. Lee's co-stars on the Green Hornet, Van Williams and Wende Wagner. Stuntman Gene Le Bell who worked with on the Green Hornet. This dude looks rough, I'm sure he took more than a few shots to the old melon. From the TV series Longstreet we hear from Peter Mark Richman and from A Man Called Ironside, Barbara Anderson. Also people from Bruce's movies like Paul Heller(Enter the Dragon producer), Russell Cawthorne(prez of Golden Harvest), Jackie Chan, and Jim Kelly. I almost forgot Jon Benn and Anders Nelsson from Way of the Dragon. Benn also appeared in The Clones of Bruce Lee as the mad Professor.
Okay I liked this documentary, it kept me interested, which can be a hard thing to do sometimes. I liked the stories and only a couple of the people featured annoyed me. The one set back was that they should have talked with more non-American friends of Bruce's. But in the end watch this documentary, you find a worse way to waste 70 minutes, ex. My Name Called Bruce.
"Reviewed" by Keith.