Shannon Lee says she is ‘fucking tired’ of white men’s portrayals of her father, as the filmmaker once again defends Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s depiction of the late action star
Bruce Lee’s daughter has responded after Quentin Tarantino said critics of his depiction of the late action star in his 2019 film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood could “suck a dick”.
Last week (June 29), the filmmaker appeared on The Joe Rogan Podcast to promote his new novelisation of the movie. When asked about the controversy surrounding his portrayal of Lee, Tarantino said: “I can understand his daughter having a problem with it, it’s her fucking father, I get that, but anybody else… go suck a dick.”
Writing in the Hollywood Reporter on Friday (July 2), Shannon Lee said of the comments: “While I am grateful that Mr Tarantino has so generously acknowledged to Joe Rogan that I may have my feelings about his portrayal of my father, I am also grateful for the opportunity to express this: I’m really fucking tired of white men in Hollywood trying to tell me who Bruce Lee was.”
She continued: “I’m tired of hearing from white men in Hollywood that he was arrogant and an asshole, when they have no idea and cannot fathom what it might have taken to get work in 1960s and 70s Hollywood as a Chinese man with (God forbid) an accent, or to try to express an opinion on a set as a perceived foreigner and person of colour.”
Shannon also condemned Tarantino’s “continued attacks, mischaracterisations, and misrepresentations” at a time “when Asian Americans are being physically attacked, told to ‘go home’ because they are seen as not American, and demonised for something that has nothing to do with them”.
Speaking on the podcast, Tarantino also asserted that the stuntmen on the 1966 Bruce Lee-starring series, The Green Hornet, “hated Bruce”, and that Lee “had nothing but disrespect for American stuntmen” – two facts he supposedly gleaned from biographer Matthew Polly’s 2018 book, Bruce Lee: A Life.
Acknowledging this accusation on Twitter, Polly said: “My biography of Lee DID NOT say that ‘Bruce had nothing but disrespect for American stuntmen’. What I said in my book is that Bruce wanted to change American fight choreography so that the blows would miss by millimeters rather than by feet (AKA the John Wayne punch) in order to better sell the technique.”
He continued: “But in the process, Bruce did bang up some of the stuntmen on The Green Hornet, which pissed them off. So they asked Gene LeBell to settle Bruce down. It wasn’t an issue of disrespect, but a difference in fight choreography, philosophy, and style.”
In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Lee’s character – played by Mike Moh – challenges stunt double Cliff Booth (portrayed by Brad Pitt) to a fight on the set of the TV show they’re filming. Following the film’s release, Shannon criticised the depiction of Lee as an arrogant man who claimed he could “cripple” boxer Muhammad Ali. Tarantino quickly responded, standing by his portrayal and asserting that Lee was “kind of an arrogant guy”. Last year, Shannon revealed that Tarantino never reached out to her about the criticisms, and said that his portrayal has created a lasting negative impression of her father in the minds of a new generation.
Watch Tarantino discuss the controversy on The Joe Rogan Podcast above.