I spent a bunch of time last week putting together this WN article (with video clips) about Justin Lin's new movie, Finishing the Game, and all the fake Bruce Lees and the real Bruce Lee:
Bruce Lee died in 1973, midway through making Game of Death, the only film in which he was the writer, director, producer and lead. Rather than bag the project, Hollywood moviemakers continued filming with a cast of stand-ins -- Asian men with only a passing resemblance to Lee. The film led to an entire genre of Bruce Lee films (sans Bruce Lee). For the next 10 years, actors with names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le and Lee Bruce starred in dozens of low-budget, badly dubbed kung fu flicks that mirrored many of Lee's original films.
There's supposed to be a video clip from Lin's movie embedded in the story, too, but for some reason it got omitted when it was published. Anyway, it's on YouTube, so I'm embedding here so you can see it here until they sort it out.
Nice article.
My old roommate was a martial artist, and he used to say that Bruce Li was pretty good but ruined his career with the BS Bruce Lee knock-off stuff.
Posted by: amida23 | March 26, 2007 at 05:15 PM
That clip is hilarious.
Posted by: vagrant | March 27, 2007 at 01:17 PM