Stuff You Should Know - How Bruce Lee Worked

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Bruce Lee may have introduced more Westerners to Asian culture than any person in history. And, because he died young just as he became an international superstar, he’s become a legend. Josh and Chuck try to uncover the man underneath. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry Rowland and this is Stuff You Should Know. I couldn't think of any

non-problematic nicknames for us to use. Well, you could probably just go, that's what I'm talking about. Is that problematic? I'm sure, yes, we would probably hear about that. No, man. You watch any great kung fu movie and they all make that great, great sound after a good death punch. Did you ever take kung fu when you were young or any kind of martial arts? No, I'm notoriously having zero interest in martial arts and my biggest fear is that my daughter's going to want to do it. Oh, really? Well, I mean... Will you tell her to sweep the leg at a tournament? Is she ever does? Yeah, sure. I mean, I wanted to be able to protect herself. So that sounds like a very selfish thing,

but as far as going to martial arts tournaments, I kind of like just kill me now. You should get her interested in wielding a knife or something. That'd be really cool. Or just being a good person so people don't pick fights with her. Yeah. Is that how things work? No, not at all. So I'll tell you, somebody who liked to pick fights, not just would get into fights and accept the challenge, would actually pick fights. And it turns out that person also happens to be the person we're talking about today, when Mr. Bruce Lee. Yeah. Bruce Lee, I mean, I'm sure like me, you spent the past couple of days watching a lot of

Bruce Lee stuff. But my question is, were you into this? Did you watch kung fu movies and Bruce Lee movies? Only in so far as like the whole 90s like throwback thing, you know, I would have them on every once in a while and watch them, but I was never super into them. I had friends that were super into them. I remember, of course, I underwent extensive ninja training under Sensei Tommy Roper as a much younger person. This is in the 80s. But I was never really into kung fu or martial arts movies outside of that. I will say though, watching Fist of Fury last night, I was just absolutely blown away. Did you watch the whole thing? Yeah, the whole thing. I think BlackBeltKarate.com pirated the movie and put it on YouTube, the whole thing. And it is just really good. Like the fighting

in there is astounding. And it gives you like a really good appreciation. It's hard not to appreciate what you're seeing with Bruce Lee when you watch it. Yeah, I have still not seen many of those movies, but for a movie crush episode, one of my guests, Stuart Wellington of the Flophouse podcast, one of my favorite other podcasts on movies, he had me watch his favorite movie, which is Ricky O colon, The Story of Ricky. And dude, you have to see this movie. It is the gory over the top crazy martial arts movie to beat all over the top gory crazy martial arts movies. It is nuts. When was it made? Well, 91, but it seems like 78. It's amazing. Is there a shot where some guy jams his fingers into his opponent's

testicles and then they cut to a view from inside his scrotum and you see the fingers wiggling. Did that happen? Because I saw a martial arts movie that had that and I was like, well, there it is. No, but it's got a lot of stuff like that, but I don't think that was from Ricky O, but it's okay. You're on the right track there as far as, you know, it's not for everybody. I got to check it out, man. It's pretty fun. You have me at you're on the right track there. Yeah. So Bruce Lee movies were not nearly as violent, but for the time they were exceedingly violent, it seems like. And Bruce Lee laid the foundation that people said, well, I want to top that. I want to top that. And while maybe gore, there was plenty of blood in Fist of Fury,

at least in other movies that he made, but it wasn't anything like what we just talked about. But the, I think the larger point for Bruce Lee is that he, he laid this foundation. Like, he introduced the United States and the West to the idea of not just Kung Fu movies, but of like Asians being heroes, like, like protagonists, like, like tough, you know, because up to that point, not necessarily exactly up to that point, but awfully close to it, especially in the West, the people from China, Japan seemed very docile, cerebral, I saw, not at all like Bruce Lee. And Bruce Lee changed all of that basically single-handedly, especially as far as America's concerned. Yeah, with a single one-inch punch. Basically. So let's talk a little bit about

his early life, because he had a pretty interesting background, pretty interesting genetic family tree, because, you know, we all think of him as Chinese, and he was certainly, he certainly was Chinese, but if you, if you poke around his lineage and you will learn that his maternal great grandfather was Dutch Jewish, which is really interesting. He was a merchant. His name was Moses with a Z, Hartog Boseman, and he went to Hong Kong in the 1850s as part of the Dutch East India Company, became the Dutch ambassador to Hong Kong, had six kids with his concubine, and then one of those kids, one of his sons, Ho Kam Tong, he became a very rich man. He had a wife, 13 concubines, and a British mistress, and then he had a daughter with a British mistress, and that was Bruce Lee's

mom. Yeah, that sounds more confusing than it is. Yeah. Yeah, so Bruce Lee was part Jewish, part British, and lots of Chinese mixed together. His father was 100% Chinese, Han Chinese, and his father was born poor, but he actually worked his way up to a fairly sizeable celebrity in Hong Kong, or was it China? I don't remember if Bruce Lee's father lived in Hong Kong or China. Well, it was kind of both. He was a Cantonese opera star and an actor, and then I think eventually they did settle in Hong Kong. Okay, all right. So, but he was like very well known, like he was in movies, he was on TV, like he was a pretty famous guy. He was probably, I would liken him to Jerry Orbach. He was the Jerry Orbach of his time and place. Jerry Orbach, the singer? No, but he was

like everywhere. He was in everything from dirty dancing to murder, she wrote. He was all over the place, and he was multi-talented too. Okay. Don't try to tell me Jerry Orbach is not multi-talented because he is. Sure, but he was no opera star. You don't know that. You're right. You're right. I could be a martial arts expert. Jerry Orbach could be an opera star. Right. We could be whatever we want to be in our mind's eye. But so Bruce Lee's father was the Jerry Orbach of his time and place. That's right. So, he was touring the U.S. when Bruce was born. He was born in San Francisco in 1940, and his parents named him Lee Jun-Fan. And apparently a nurse said, you should call him Bruce for his English name. They said, what? What did you just say? Exactly. Did you hear what we named

them originally? Yeah. She's like, yeah, Bruce. Right. Lee Jun-Fan, Bruce. They moved back to Hong Kong when he was a baby, and he grew up there, but he grew up with going to English schools, English language private schools. Yeah. So, he always kind of had this, I don't want to say split identity, but his identity, his sense of self was definitely divided between America and I believe the UK to an extent, and also obviously Hong Kong, and then of course his ancestry in China. He seemed to have not necessarily felt spread all over the place, but in a different sense, he was more open to influences wherever he found them. I saw somebody say that Bruce Lee learned from everybody, everyone that he came in contact with, including people who he had to fight, who fought of different

styles. He was always open to learning something. He was very cocky. He was very arrogant by a lot of people's estimations, but he also was humble enough to want to learn wherever he thought he could learn something new. And I think that according at least to a guy named Matthew Pauley, who's known as one of his better biographers, that really kind of underscored that his personality, just kind of being divided among different places around the world and having different influences. Yeah, so we'll take a little break here and we'll come back and talk about some of the early formative years of young Bruce Lee right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest

thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. And so my husband, Michael, and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say

bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology,

my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So little Bruce was born not only in the year of the dragon, but the day of the dragon. And his nickname was Little Dragon when he became a child actor. If you only know Bruce Lee from his martial arts work, his kind of short career in martial arts films, he was actually on screen as a baby. But his real first kind of role was, I think,

when he was like 10 years old. Yeah, he was in a movie called The Kid. Yeah, which I watched some clips of this. I'm sure you did too. It's, you know, it's cute little Bruce Lee. He does, he kind of throws a lot of child abuse in it. Was it really? Yeah. He's like, he offers, he has some money, so he offers to help his uncle out. And his uncle just basically defends him in one ear. Well, yeah, I didn't see that clip. I would call that child abuse Chuck. No, I would too. I didn't see that clip. You're like, yeah, well, I guess if that's your definition of child abuse. No, no, not at all. I just didn't see that one. I just saw the one where he was kind of did that famous Bruce Lee sort of, you know, thumb across the nose and throw

his little shirt open. I know. That's crazy that like he was that young, 10 years old, and he's already like laying the groundwork for the things that we're going to make him famous in the future. Yeah. And he was a little guy. He, I think he, you know, as a full grown adult, he reached five, seven, about 130 pounds. He was not very big. When he was a kid, he was very small. He was fairly weak because of food rations because Hong Kong was occupied by Imperial Japan at the time. And they were rationing food out. There was a cholera epidemic. He had one leg shorter than the other. He had an undescended testicle, which actually ended up keeping him out of Vietnam. Oh, I didn't know that. A little bit of silver lining there. He had glasses. He had acne.

I think his biographer said that he, and this is the only person I really saw say that, but he said he'd probably be diagnosed with ADHD today. I looked for other places to find that and no one, I don't think it's on record of saying that, but it did seem like that could be possible because he was very active, had trouble with focus, but could also hyper-focus. Like you said, he would pick fights with people because he was a little kid. A lot of times, little kids will do that if they want to prove that they're strong and have value. They'll pick fights and try and beat people up. Not the way to do it, though, kids. No, but he was well-known in Hong Kong as being this local tough who would start fights and

frequently won them, but sometimes would lose them too. But there was one fight in particular that he lost around the age of 15 or 16 to a kid who had been studying a kung fu style called Wing Chun. Yeah, Wing Chun. That is where his famous one-inch punch comes from, that style of fighting. It's really good for close quarters type fighting where your opponent's right in front of you and coming at you. Wing Chun's very good for that. That was the kind of dude that Bruce Lee was even back when he was a little hot shot 15-year-old. He lost a fight to somebody and he wanted to know how that person had beat him, so he went and learned it. And that actually formed the basis for his formal education in martial arts, was entering into the Wing Chun

school at age 15. Yeah, and I looked a little more into Wing Chun to see what it was kind of all about. And apparently, there's two main tenets, which is the centerline theory and then stand and guard. And the centerline theory is basically you draw a line from the center of your body to your opponent's body, and that is the quickest route to strike. So if you've got someone coming at you, like, you know, if you go throw a punch like American boxing style, like a haymaker, you're going up and around toward the jaw to the side of the jaw. If you're practicing Wing Chun, you are standing right in front of that person. And as you're throwing your haymaker, you've gotten a very quick straight punch to your solar plexus. Right. And you're like, what just happened?

That is basically the essence of Bruce Lee's style. Super lightening fast would take advantage of you while you thought you were about to strike him. He used that against you, whatever flaw there was in what you were doing to hit or kick him or come at him, he would take advantage of it and hit you within that time. And like, if you watch any of his movies, you can see it quite clearly, but he'd been working on that. I didn't realize that that was necessarily Wing Chun. I thought that was his own style, but it would make sense because again, that was Wing Chun is the foundation for his style of kung fu that he ended up coming up with. Right. So like we said, his dad was fairly famous. Bruce is in the Jerry Orbach level famous, don't forget. Bruce is in this movie when

he was 10 years old called The Kid. That was a big success. And then they said, hey, let's sign this kid up to do some sequels. And his dad said, no, no, no, no, no, my kid's not going to be an actor. He's going to be a doctor or a lawyer or something like that. And he's always in trouble in school. So I'm not going to let him be in sign this contract. He ended up being in some movies kind of off and on. I think he ended up being in about 20 different movies that before his kung fu movie days, but it was never like he never turned into the big kid star that they were trying to get him to be with that first contract, I think. Yeah, apparently he would have been had his father not directly intervened to make sure that didn't happen, which is pretty interesting. But

he was 10. He can't sign a contract without daddy saying so and mommy saying so. Well, yeah, you definitely need to have your parents support like that for sure. But so his father like stepped in and said, no, you're going to do something else. And that was at age 10. I don't know. I think at least 18 at the latest, but at some point he had kind of gotten, like I said, he had a reputation as like a local tough street fighter in Hong Kong. And I guess he fought another kid and beat him quite badly. And the kid turned out to be the son of a local mob boss. I don't know if he was a boss or a connected mob guy, but a member of the triad. It does sound like a movie.

And between that and the Hong Kong police basically saying like, look, your kid is totally on our radar and it's a real problem. And he's going to end up in jail or dead if he keeps this stuff up. And by the way, the local mob now wants to kill him because he beat up one of the bosses sons. His father said, you're out of here. You're going to America. Which again, this wasn't like a complete out of the blue place to send Bruce Lee. This was the land that he was born. He had an American passport. He was an American by birth. And he also had family there too. But this is the first time that he was living on his own. From what I saw, his father gave him $800, which was pretty substantial back then. He said, here are the

addresses of some family in the Pacific Northwest, head on out to San Francisco. And he started in San Francisco and ended up in Seattle pretty quickly, I believe. Yeah. Seattle in college, he went to UW and that money obviously would run out. So he had to get a job. He worked as a bus boy in a Chinese restaurant, actually lived in the restaurant in kind of a closet type of deal. And everyone started hearing about his martial arts skills and the fact that he was pretty good at this stuff. So he started teaching a little bit on the side in that Wing Chun style. And he met Linda there, who would go on to be his wife. She was a fellow student of his. Linda got pregnant and they got married. They were very young. They were still in college and they had little Brandon

Lee. We'll talk about him later on. And then a daughter named Shannon. Yeah. So all of a sudden, Bruce Lee, who is a bus boy at a Chinese restaurant and also teaching Kung Fu on the side, has a family, a wife, kid, then kids. And he needs money now more than he ever did before. And he has a pretty good idea. He's going to start opening a franchise of martial arts studios. Because martial arts was already known in the United States, but typically it was kept within the whatever Asian community that practiced it, right? So like if it was Kung Fu, you would find almost entirely Chinese people learning it. You know, immigrants to the country or the children of immigrants. Taekwondo, it would be like Korean families. And Bruce Lee said, you know what? I

want to kind of explode that. There's a lot of talk about whether he was the first person in the United States to come along and open up martial arts to anybody who wanted to learn of any race, any ethnicity, women, men. From what I saw, that's not necessarily true. But that is often credited as evidence of just kind of how cocky and unconventional and disrespectful, I guess, of norms and traditions. Just for the fact, you know, or just for norms and traditions sake. And I don't know if he was the first person to teach just anybody who wanted to learn, but it definitely fell within his persona, his outlook of martial arts, which is, you know, I'll learn whatever I can and put it into my fighting style so that I survive. And that would

make sense to kind of flip it on the other way and say, well, you know, I'm going to teach this fighting style to whoever wants to learn it. Yeah. And it turns out it was just as he ended up learning Wing Chung because of a fight he had early on. He also expanded his fighting style because of another fight, which this sounds like it. I mean, I think there are a lot of legends and tall tales around Bruce Lee as well. This story, this story sounds a little dubious, but maybe it's true. It's not dubious. It definitely happened, but it was close to the public and there were only three eye witnesses there and two, one gives a conflicting report from the other two to large degree, but it's been so thoroughly studied and researched by some people like

that Matthew Pauley guy spent a year just researching this fight alone. There was another guy named Charles Russo who wrote a book called Striking Distance. He spent a decade on that book and he interviewed a hundred people just for that fight alone because it's one of the most legendary fights that's ever happened in the history of the world and only three people were there to see it besides the fighters. Yeah, they interviewed a hundred people about what they heard what happened. Basically, yeah. I mean, that's as close as they could get aside from the people who are there who were again saying, you know, this is kind of conflicting. But overall, what seems to be the the ultimate upshot of it is that it was at least a draw. It seems like it was a draw.

Yeah, he thought a man named Wong Jack Mann and apparently it was a pretty brutal fight, like you were saying, very legendary. And yeah, conflicting reports. Let's just call it a draw. Let's be magnanimous here. But at the end of this, you know, the sort of upshot is it was that Bruce was like, I have limits now with Wing Chun and I need to like I need to be able to best larger opponents because I'm a small guy. I need to I need to really kind of ramp up my study if I'm especially if I'm a teacher and and kind of get better basically. So he came up with his own jam. And that's called Jeet Kune Do, the way of the intercepting fist. And this was a little bit, he was a really, really good boxer. I don't think we've mentioned that yet. If he had only

boxed and dedicated himself to being a boxer, he probably could have been like a belt holding boxer and like an Olympic champion. So he incorporated elements of boxing, he incorporated all the Wing Chun that he had learned. And then fencing, which his older brother did, which is, you know, when you're lunging at your opponent, but instead of a foil, he would use his fist. And if you, you know, I mentioned the one inch punch earlier, there was also the six inch punch, there's tons and tons of videos and breakdowns of what that is. But that's what he was really famous for, which is basically, and then Tarantino kind of, you know, borrowed for the Kill Bill movies. You know, you put your fingers on like the sternum of a human and that's how far you punch

from. Like you don't rear back and swing or anything. You just use your hips and your legs and you focus your energy and all your momentum to just very, very quickly punch and push somebody. And even from one inch, you can knock somebody backwards like seven feet. So, and that's super helpful if you can do that. But what that one fight with Wong Jack Mann taught him, Wong Jack Mann kept moving away from him. And if your fighting style is entirely about fighting in close quarters with your opponent coming at you, if your opponent is getting away from you, you're just kind of up the creek. And that's what really kind of opened his eyes that he needed to expand it. And so like you said,

he incorporated boxing and he incorporated fencing. He also realized that he needed grappling too. He didn't have any grappling moves. And apparently that came into focus when he was on set for a TV show that he would end up being on for a season called The Green Hornet, which we'll talk about in a second. And apparently on the set of The Green Hornet, he became quickly known for actually beating up the stunt doubles. Rather than pulling his punch and just not making contact or just barely making contact, he was punching these guys and kicking these guys. And they apparently brought in a ringer named Judo Jean LaBelle, who was a very tough stuntman, a two-time judoku champion, and brought him in as a stuntman. And the first day on the set, he picked up Bruce Lee

out of nowhere, put him in a fireman carry like on his shoulder. And Bruce Lee had, he couldn't do anything. He was just so mad, but there was nothing he could do to get out of this. And he realized he needed to incorporate grappling. And he ended up training with Jean LaBelle for a year and expanded his fighting style even further. And that fireman carry, that meeting, that fight basically on the set of The Green Hornet is what Quentin Tarantino was recreating in that movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when Cliff Robertson, Brad Pitt, fights Bruce Lee on the soundstage in the parking lot. And a lot of people were very upset because he took tremendous liberties with that fight. But it was based on this kernel of history that had a much better outcome than

what Quentin Tarantino showed. Yeah, Cliff Booth, by the way, Cliff Robertson was a real actor. Oh, was he? Wait, I thought he was the basis for Metallica. No, that was close somebody else, I think. Okay. Yeah, I mean, Tarantino, we should kind of talk about that for a second because he was taken to task by a lot of people, certainly people from Bruce Lee's own family for that scene. And they were like, this is not what Bruce Lee was like, his daughter especially. It's like, this is not what my dad was like. He was not cocky. He was not arrogant. He was confident and he was a good teacher. But Tarantino then fired back in some interviews, like he was arrogant and cocky. He was known as this guy. And apparently the people closest to him said he wasn't at all.

This is a misconception by white people. And Tarantino took a lot of grief and sort of argued back. And then she finally in an interview in Variety Magazine was like, he should just kind of shut up about this and say, I'm making fictionalized movies and not purport to know what my dad was like. Yeah, when it's coming from the daughter, it seems like you should probably just shut up for sure. Probably so. And we'll probably get an email from her too because you said he was cocky and arrogant. Yeah, right. Yeah, I was thinking back to that, flashing back. I guess one thing I saw to kind of that gives weight to the idea that he had a certain amount of arrogance or cockiness, or I can understand how some people would take him that way or portray him that way,

is he was well known for going around publicly insulting established martial arts schools. Like one of the first things he did where he made a name for himself among the martial arts community, especially in the Bay Area, that some people say led to that fight between him and Wong Jack Mann, was to insult basically every established martial arts school in America and say that they were taught by old tigers with no teeth. Basically, if they were misguided and that they were just wrong and that his way was the right way. And it wasn't that he had it out for the old establishment just because they were the old establishment. But what he had decided with Jeet Kune Do is that it didn't make any sense to train and train and train to know exactly

where your feet are going to go and exactly where to put your fists or that kind of thing, because all that stuff dissolves in a real fight. And so to Bruce Lee and his fighting style, the whole point is to survive the fight. And so you use whatever you can get your hands on, whatever technique, whatever style is going to work. And that really doesn't jibe with the idea of an established rigid school. So he certainly ran afoul of some of the established martial art groups. And I think that that has kind of contributed to this idea that he was cocky in real life. I'm not his daughter, so I certainly can't say, but that's what I was basing my interpretation on. Yeah. My read is that he was a business person and that he was trying to make some money because

his idea was that he wanted to open up a chain of kung fu schools. He goes back to LA to give a demonstration at a karate tournament to try and make a little headway there with maybe getting investors or getting people interested. And it worked. He met a TV producer there and that is how he got the role on the Green Hornet, which like you said, ran for a single season. And he stayed in Hollywood though. And he really got the acting bug, I think. He was in a few kind of smaller parts over the next few years. He played Winslow Wong in the movie Marlowe in 1969. And then he, like you mentioned kind of at the beginning, he was trying to do something that didn't exist yet, which was become an Asian and at least an Asian American hero because

they just didn't do that. They were like, you can play this kind of role. You're probably going to come in as the bad guy or something. You're going to show off some of your kung fu skills, but you're not going to be the star of the movie. And he said, all right, I'll hang around here. I'll start making a ton of money teaching the Hollywood elite my fighting style and ended up making some really, really close friends. Notably James Coburn and Steve McQueen ended up being two of his closest friends over the years until his death. They were Paul Bearers too. Yeah, along with Chuck Norris of course. Yeah. He was a Paul Bearer. I also saw Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate were two of his students too. Yeah, Roman Polanski tried to sleep with him.

No, Bruce Lee lost his glasses. Roman Polanski found some glasses like his at the murder scene and Roman Polanski was very suspicious of that. And apparently he went so far as to take Bruce Lee to get a prescription made to replace the glasses that were broken and then wanted to get his hands on that prescription and compare them. And apparently they didn't match. So he backed off. He suspected Bruce Lee and the Manson family murders? The Tate-Labyanka murder scene? I don't want to put any words in Roman Polanski's mouth, but I'm telling you what happened, which is that he found these glasses and had them checked out. Wow, that's a Hollywood nugget, Chuck, that you just put that jewel in your crown right there.

Well, I didn't discover it. I mean, I just read it. Yeah, but I mean... I mean, it's well known. Oh, okay. Well, whatever. You can wear the crown around me and I'll just be like totally earned. He got really into health and fitness. This was a time in the 1960s, kind of before the big exercise and weightlifting boom and stuff that happened. He was eating protein shakes and lifting weights kind of before a lot of people were. And, you know, he wanted to get his body in the best shape possible. And if you've ever seen Bruce Lee's body, then he, you know, he did exactly that. Yeah, mission accomplished for sure. And I mean, again, he was a little guy. Like he weighed 130 pounds, but he was just as lean as they come and totally chiseled. Like he

was very, very strong for his size and stature and just lightning fast too. But none of this was amounting to anything as far as his film career was concerned. He was going quite far as a martial artist, martial arts instructor for sure. But clearly, I don't know if he felt like his calling was always, you know, the movies or TV or something like that. Okay. Well, then that would explain it. I had the impression that, you know, he just knew that that was something he could do, which he apparently was starting to accumulate some debt. And at one point, to keep his chain of martial arts studios open, he decided to go to Hong Kong and do some acting rather quickly and pick up some fast money. So I didn't know if he considered that like a step toward stardom,

or if that was just, he knew he could go make some money acting and come back and pour it back into the studios to keep them open. Do you know? I mean, I think the studios were making his living, but I think since he was 10 years old, he was bitten by the acting bug, which is why he went on to be in 20 more movies over the next eight years. Yeah, true. And I think that was his true, like, I think the Kung Fu studios in my reading was the means to get to where he wanted to be, which was a big Hollywood superstar. Well, it actually, it worked that trip. Like I was saying, he was just going for some money to keep the studios or his studios afloat or open. But it turned out to be the greatest move that any actor has ever undertaken, just going to Hong Kong and

trying to pick up some parts in martial arts films. And that's exactly what he did. And he blew up as a result. That's right. So let's take our final break here and then we'll come back and wrap it up and spank it on the bottom right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh,

man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately,

I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. So Bruce Lee goes to Hong Kong to make some movies, make a little dough. And he goes to Hong Kong and signs a two-picture movie deal with Golden Harvest Studios and signs on for his first movie, a little movie called The Big Boss, which originally in the United States was called Fist of Fury. A little confusing because then there was a movie called Fist of Fury that also had an alternate title. What's that? The Chinese connection. Yeah, the Chinese connection. But The Big Boss, a.k.a. in America at first, The Fist of Fury, or Fist of Fury, was his first sort of foray into those movies. And it was a big, big hit. It's hard to explain what happened. That first movie, The Big Boss, came out and basically

made Bruce Lee an overnight sensation in Asia as far as martial arts is concerned. That's just Hong Kong, Asia. He just became an absolute superstar. The Big Boss shattered the box office record. The previous Hong Kong box office record was held by the sound of music and it had made something like 800,000 Hong Kong dollars. The Big Boss made something like four times that in its box office run. And then as more Bruce Lee movies came out over the next couple of years, each one shattered the record of the previous Bruce Lee movie. So when something like that happens, you know you have something once in a lifetime basically on your hands. And he was right smack dab in the middle of that once in a lifetime thing. Yeah. And not only were these

movies making a lot of money, they were really cheap to make, which was like he was like the golden boy because I think Fist of Fury, the second movie, cost about $100,000 to make and made $100 million. I think The Way of the Dragon made $130 million and cost about $130,000. So he was making like huge, huge money. I mean, not personally, but the studios were making huge, huge money on very little investment. And the thing with Bruce Lee was he was, like you said, he was selling these fights better than anyone ever had. And his speed was really the key to it. And a lot of, if you watch a lot of older kung fu movies, and it looks like the action is sped up, it's because it is, they would speed up the camera or actually slow down the camera to make

the action appear faster, to make it more exciting. But Bruce Lee was so naturally fast, they had to tell him to slow down just so the camera could like record stuff accurately. So there were a few legends that grew up around his speed. One speed and strength, the one that he could steal a dime off of your hand, like if you're holding it in the palm of your hand before you could just close your hand, he could catch a rice grain that you would throw at him with chopsticks. And these are all, you know, maybe true or not, but I just love these legends. Wait, you would use chopsticks to throw a rice grain at him? No, no, no. You would throw a rice grain at him and he would catch it with chopsticks. That's way more impressive. So,

and then the last one was that he could, he could punch a hole through a can of coke with his finger. Wow. And I hope these are true because they're so great. Well, if they're not true, that's okay. Like you're not the first person to fall for some of the exaggerations. Like I saw Matthew Pauley was kind of not called out, but somebody may mention the fact that this is one of his top biographers, like one of the best biographers of Bruce Lee still said, you know, somebody got punched and they flew back six feet into the air. And it's almost certainly not correct. Like six feet is probably an exaggeration. But the fact that things like that get repeated and like, like smart people like say, like this, like this is what he was capable of. Like it,

at the very least goes to underscore his abilities, that they were so mind boggling that this is, it's possible that that's true. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's not like, oh, that's ridiculous. It's like, no, this is Bruce Lee we're talking about. I think I can explain the six feet thing. Okay. If he's, it might be an exaggeration that someone literally didn't touch the ground for six feet. But if you look at demonstrations of his, of the one finger punch, he can knock someone back six to eight feet very easily until they can like regain their composure. Like people are flying back six feet, but not necessarily not touching the ground in between. You know what I mean? I think this was quote, flying through the air. It sounds like a little writer's flourish.

Yeah. Yeah, maybe. But I mean, again, it comes like people are like, oh, that's cool. That's crazy because we're talking about Bruce Lee. If, if like my biographer said that, everyone would be like, stop the presses. Whoa, whoa, you got a biographer? I questioned every, I will eventually, I assume, but people would be like, I questioned everything that's in this book now with Bruce Lee. It's like, yeah, totally buy that, you know? So Bruce Lee is made a name for himself now. He is driving around in sports cars. He's wearing fur coats. He is a big, big pothead, which is something that you don't hear about a lot, but apparently after Carl Sagan, right? Yeah. But after Bruce Lee's training sessions, he would, he apparently had this wooden box just

full of joints. Also smoked a hash and got really into this sort of hippie lifestyle. Kind of grew his hair long for a little while. And I think it was wrapped up in this Hollywood hippie thing of the time, understandable. And his career is going along great. And it all culminates with a movie called Enter the Dragon in 1973. Big movie. Yeah, it was a huge movie. I think he wrote and directed that one. And I think the first one he wrote and directed was Way of the Dragon. But like by this time on his third movie, he was now writing and directing it. And certainly by his fourth one, he wrote and directed it. I saw that the Way of the Dragon, a quarter of the script, was just a couple of, like just a couple of fight scenes choreography took up like a quarter of

the script. And it was, this was the one that put him on the map as an overnight sensation in the United States in the West. Like the other two, the first two or three, yeah, his first three had made him an overnight sensation in Asia. This was the one that taught America what a kung fu movie was because we hadn't heard of it before. And now all of a sudden we couldn't get enough of Bruce Lee. Unfortunately, Bruce Lee had died a month before in one of the great ironic tragedies as far as like Hollywood stardom goes. Yeah, only 32 years old. If you look at Bruce Lee death, there's a lot of different stories and theories out there. He was, he had a mistress at the time named Betty Ting Pye. And apparently he had been on, and this

is the way Chuck Norris told it to, apparently he had been on back medication for a while because of a back injury. So pain meds for his back came home to his apartment in Hong Kong with his mistress complained of a headache. She gave him, I think a different kind of pain reliever. Although Chuck Norris said it was a, oh, what's, I'm blanking now. What's the thing you take to fight an infection? Antibiotic? Antibiotic, which I think he just misspoke because that wouldn't make any sense. But that's what Chuck Norris said. So it took another pain reliever, went down for a nap and died, never woke up. He, you know, there are all kinds of speculation about what happened. And it seems like it was just a reaction of these medications. Yeah. Some people say,

including the biographer, it was also had to do with a heat stroke because he had one 10 weeks before, right? Yeah. And he also a few months before he died had, he used to be very embarrassed about his underarms sweat. So he had the sweat glands removed from his underarms. What? And so apparently they said that could have contributed to the, you know, his body wasn't shedding sweat like it should. And that could have led to a heat stroke. I had not heard that before. That, that definitely crosses a couple of teas that I hadn't otherwise seen. Maybe, but I think it was like 10 weeks before he died, he collapsed when he was dubbing a movie in an, a room without air conditioning. It was really hot, got that heat stroke. And some people are saying this all

contributed with these medications to a brain edema. Yeah. But again, I mean, the fact that he died mysteriously, this guy who's like one of the fittest people on the planet. So it just dies after saying he has a headache and lies down and wakes up. That's just conspiracy theory fodder for Eon. Sure. It's still going on today. Like apparently the, he had a break with the director Low Way who directed the first two Bruce Lee films, the first two Kung Fu films he was in. He pulled a knife on him because the guy, the director had been taunting him and Bruce Lee was, there was a legend that like Low Way had, had him assassinated by ninja or something like that. But the, the upshot of it is, is however he died, he died like a month before he became

like world famous. And he's still world famous today. Like everyone knows Bruce Lee. He's one of the most famous people to ever live. And he died a month before that happened, which is, you know, you say that and you read it and you think it, it just doesn't quite sink in. And when it does, you're like, that is astounding that that happens. Just the timing of all that. Yeah. And then, you know, many years later, his son Brandon Lee would die very tragically on the set of a film because of an accident with a, a blank bullet, actually shooting a slug out of a gun onset of the crow, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think he was 28 and his father had died when he was 32. So a lot of people are like, well, that's clearly the Lee family is cursed.

Right. Which is nonsense. It's just, Yeah. I think Shane's, Accident and Tragedy. You should probably just shut up about that. Probably so. But one of the things that it's hard to overstate like the cultural legacy that he left, like he introduced the West to a completely different concept of Asian people. Like, like, oh, they can actually like star as action heroes. Like they're, they're not like, you know, valets or servants or

whatever. Like it just completely altered Americans understanding of Asian people. Like, it's really hard to understate that. And then the other thing too is, you know, we were kind of talking about whether he was, you know, whether he was an actor or a martial artist. And a lot of people are like, would, is Bruce Lee, would he actually, was he, were really a good fighter or was he like a movie fighter? Like Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal, who like in a real life fight, that would just be hopelessly lost, you know. And because Bruce Lee died at such a young age, like there's, there's not this, we don't know or a lot of people don't know. But if you talk to the people who trained with him, who worked with him, who were there, who actually physically interacted with

him, like it seems like completely understandable that he was, as everything you saw in film, he could do for real in real life. And you would never have wanted to fight Bruce Lee. So he wasn't just a fake movie martial artist. He was the real deal. And in a lot of ways, largely self-taught, which makes him all the more impressive. That's right. You got anything else about Mr. Bruce Lee, Chuck? I got nothing else. Maybe watch the classic 1982 farcical comedy they call me Bruce. Oh yeah, okay. I will check that out. One more thing, his death, his untimely death led to a whole genre of movies called Bruceploitation, which was basically fake Bruce Lee movies. They're trying to cash in on his fame. Yeah, I think he had a movie, another movie release after, is that

dude, didn't he, that they compile like footage and stuff? I believe they were filming it when he died and they didn't release it for another five years game of death. That's the one where he fights Karim Abdul-Dubar. That's fun to watch actually. And Chuck Norris is in it too, game of death. Yeah, that fight with Karim was pretty awesome because to see a man that tall be that live and that quick is pretty impressive. And he was one of Bruce Lee's like genuine students, one of his longtime students and he credits Bruce Lee with his longevity and the NBA. Totes. Yeah, so if you want to know more about Bruce Lee, just go out and start watching movies and videos and demonstrations of Bruce Lee. There's a lot worse things you can do with your time and thank us later. And since I

said thank us later, it's time for Listener Mail. Yeah, I'm going to call this return of Noah from Scotland. I'm pretty sure I read this on the air, but I told Noah to write in once a year. And here's the follow-up because Sarah, the amazing 11-year-old fan is now probably in college and has long since forgotten about us. So we miss Sarah. We've been ghosted. We've been ghosted years ago. But this is our new friend, Noah. Hey, it's me, Noah from Scotland. You told me to write in once a year, so this is my annual letter. In case you don't remember me, I've been listening since I was four and writing you a letter every year since I was five. I still live in Scotland and for most of the last year, my mom's been homeschooling me because of the

coronavirus. It's not always great, but when I'm doing my own topics, I can choose them based on your episodes. Nice. My favorite was space weather because I didn't know there was weather in space. My favorite fact that I found out was the most powerful northern lights can generate over one trillion watts of power, which is, I think, about 300 million solar panels. It was a hard sum, but I think it's right. If you're asking us about math and, Noah, we're just going to say, yes, you got it right. You just ran a circle around this. I don't want to be an engineer anymore, by the way. I really like chemistry now. I think the periodic table is interesting and I want to find a way to stop global warming using science. Man, this kid. I love it. I've asked for your

book for my ninth birthday in May and I hope to get it because I think it'll be interesting. I'm glad you're still podcasting. Love from Noah. This was sent through his moms. Rachel's email, of course, as always, and she added a very sweet note as well. Much love to Noah's family there. Yeah. Thank you very much, Rachel and Noah, and the whole fam for writing to us from Beloved Scotland. Keep us updated, Noah. Your progress is just fascinating. Yes, we love it. Happy early birthday, too, from Josh and Chuck. If you want to get in touch with us like Noah did, you can give it your best shot. You can send us an email. Send it to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.