Posted in: Movies, Sony | Tagged: bruce lee, Mike Moh, once upon a time in hollywood, quentin tarantino, shannon lee

Shannon Lee to Quentin Tarantino, "Stop Mansplaining Bruce Lee"

While promoting the novelization of his latest film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, director and writer Quentin Tarantino doubled down on Bruce Lee's antagonism against American stuntmen on Joe Rogan's Spotify podcast. The director also maintained his fictional version of the actor, who died in 1973, as played by Mike Moh, was consistent with how he actually was. Writing a column for The Hollywood Reporter hoping to close the chapter of her ongoing feud with the director, the actor's daughter Shannon Lee openly questions Tarantino's motives for continuing to evoke his name, asking if he genuinely hates him or is he just trying to sell books.

Tarantino acknowledged Lee's own feelings on the podcast, "I can understand his daughter having a problem with it — it's her fucking father, I get that" before dismissing those who agreed with her. "Why does Quentin Tarantino speak like he knew Bruce Lee and hated him?" Lee wrote. "It seems weird given he never met Bruce Lee, right? Not to mention that Mr. Tarantino happily dressed the Bride in a knock-off of my father's yellow jumpsuit and the Crazy 88s in Kato-style masks and outfits for Kill Bill, which many saw as a love letter to Bruce Lee. But love letters usually address the recipient by name, and from what I could observe at the time, Mr. Tarantino tried, interestingly, to avoid saying the name Bruce Lee as much as possible back then."

Lee continued wishing Tarantino would stop mentioning him. "You can imagine by now that I am used to people only seeing one facet of my father and blowing that up into a caricature," she said." That has been happening since shortly after he passed. But usually, somewhere in that caricature is some sort of nugget of love for the man and his work. Not so with Mr. Tarantino. As you already know, the portrayal of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Mr. Tarantino, in my opinion, was inaccurate and unnecessary, to say the least. (Please, let's not blame actor Mike Moh. He did what he could with what he was given.) And 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."

The former actress explained that her uphill battle to maintain her father's integrity was something she had to deal with all her life beyond her current feud with Tarantino. "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 the 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 color," she explained. "I'm tired of white men in Hollywood mistaking his confidence, passion, and skill for hubris and therefore finding it necessary to marginalize him and his contributions. I'm tired of white men in Hollywood finding it too challenging to believe that Bruce Lee might have really been good at what he did and maybe even knew how to do it better than them."

For more on the Lee's battle with ongoing misconceptions concerning her father and her hopes to move on, you can check out THR.

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