Shannon Lee, daughter of the legendary actor and martial artist Bruce Lee, recently told The Telegraph that she remains unaware why Quentin Tarantino decided to portray her father as “the a-hole” in his 2019 movie “once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Shannon Lee spoke out against the film’s portrayal of Bruce Lee at the time, which led to a highly-publicized back and forth between her and Tarantino in many interviews.
“It’s interesting. I actually don’t know,” Shannon says now about the reasoning behind Tarantino’s controversial portrayal of Bruce Lee. “I’ve never met [Tarantino]. I don’t know what his issues are with my father. Clearly, he thinks my father is cool, because he has borrowed from him quite a bit. But at the same time, I think he has been told a lot of stories by people who have encountered my father and had a negative reaction.”
“They found him to be overly confident or arrogant,” she continued. “I have to say, in my experience, the stories are mostly from white men. I think Quentin may have been told a lot of those stories and believes them. I think a lot of people looked at my father as uppity, you know?”
“once Upon a Time in Hollywood” features a set piece in which Brad Pitt’s stuntman character, Cliff Booth, challenges Bruce Lee (played by Mike Moh in the film) to a fight on the set of “The Green Hornet.” Bruce comes off as cocky in the film, and the fight includes one moment where Cliff throws him into a car. Shannon Lee originallycondemnedTarantino for portraying her father as an “arrogant asshole who was full of hot air,” but Tarantinodefendedthe portrayal because it was a fictional account and “Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy” based on the research he did.
“It’s unfortunate because [Tarantino’s film] has started this narrative in some places where some people are saying, ‘Oh, Bruce Lee was an asshole,’” Shannon Lee later told the South China Morning Post. “Look, everybody can be an asshole sometimes. I can be arrogant and angry in my life — is that something I would say I am like generally? No, my father was not generally like that. He was extremely passionate and driven.”
As Tarantino continued to double down in the press about his portrayal of Bruce Lee, Shannon Lee spoke to PvNew and said, “He could shut up about it. That would be really nice. Or he could apologize or he could say, ‘I don’t really know what Bruce Lee was like. I just wrote it for my movie. But that shouldn’t be taken as how he really was.'”
Shannon Lee is currently making the press rounds to promote her new coffee table book “In My Own Process,” which is a collection of Bruce Lee’s letters, poetry and family photos. Shannon Lee, the Oscar-winning filmmaker Ang Lee and others wrote reflections on Bruce Lee for the book, which will be published in April 2024.
