Quentin Tarantino is a director known for an array of films, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which won two Oscars last year. Tarantino is currently promoting his new book, a novelization of the movie. The return of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has resurfaced the movie’s biggest controversy, which was its portrayal of Bruce Lee. Tarantino was accused of reducing the legend to a racist caricature and when the movie was released, Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, said Tarantino should shut up or apologize for the way he portrayed her father. During a recent interview with The Joe Rogan Experience, Tarantino opted to do neither of those things when the subject arose.
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“I can understand his daughter having a problem with it. It’s her f*cking father,” Tarantino told Rogan. “Everybody else: go suck a d*ck.” The director went on do defend the scene, saying it was “obvious” that Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth tricked Lee, which was how he was able to throw him against a car. “That’s how he was able to do it; he tricked him,” Tarantino explained.
The director stressed that the Lee scene is more fleshed out in his novelization, and doubled down on his belief that Lee had “disrespect for [American] stuntmen.” However, Lee biographer Matthew Polly previously denied those accusations. “Bruce was very famous for being very considerate of the people below him on film sets, particularly the stuntmen,” he told Esquire. “That’s just not who Bruce Lee was as a person,” he added of Tarantino’s description.
After Shannon Lee’s initial complaints about the movie, Tarantino became defensive rather than apologizing. Here’s what he said after originally being accused of making Lee seem like an “arrogant blowhard” in the film: “Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy,” he said at a press junket in Moscow. “The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that, to that effect. If people are saying, ‘Well he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali.’ Well, yeah, he did. Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read. She absolutely said that.”
When this was originally being stirred up, Variety included the passage from Linda Lee Cadwell’s book, Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew, that Tarantino was likely referring to. However, they reported that the quote was from a critic, not from Lee’s wife. “Those who watched [Bruce] Lee would bet on Lee to render Cassius Clay senseless,” it read.
Shannon Lee added, “[Tarantino] can portray Bruce Lee however he wanted to, and he did, but it’s a little disingenuous for him to say, ‘Well, this is how he was, but this is a fictional movie, so don’t worry too much about it.’”
How do you feel about Tarantino’s latest comments on his portrayal of Bruce Lee? Do you plan to buy his new Once Upon a Time in Hollywood book? Tell us in the comments!
