The Bruce Lee interview

Harry Mok
April 11, 2006

You've probably seen parts of this interview over the years. It's very interesting to hear him talk. I was too young to really remember seeing him when he was alive. I hadn't seen this entire interview before.

Oh, if only David Carradine had not come along.

Contributor: 

Harry Mok

Editor in chief

Editor in Chief Harry Mok wrote about growing up on a Chinese vegetable farm for the second issue of Hyphen and has been a volunteer editor since 2004. As a board member of the San Francisco and New York chapters of the Asian American Journalists Association, Harry has recruited and organized events for student members. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a graduate student instructor in the Asian American Studies Department.

Comments

Comments

danny wrote on Thu, 04/20/2006 - 10:57pm
thanks for the link. very enjoyable and will continue to be so. that cat comes off as being very bigoted, though. bruce seemed to have his old, crusty white ass under control throughout the interview which i was glad to see. add the fact that bruce was about 30ish at the time is truly amazing. Bruce was one svelte dude-in body and mannerisms.
denis wrote on Tue, 04/25/2006 - 5:52am
brilliant,just watched the film dragon about his life. it was exellent
Paul wrote on Wed, 05/17/2006 - 5:14am
Hi found this Bruce Lee site with loads of good info for ya http://www.tregg13.co.uk
Chao wrote on Tue, 04/11/2006 - 4:16pm
Thanks Harry! Awesome post. The man is inspirational in so many different ways.
Chao wrote on Tue, 04/11/2006 - 10:44pm
I found this cool video on Google Video searching for "bruce lee".
Frederick Lam wrote on Wed, 04/12/2006 - 12:10am
In the early 1970's our American pop culture had Elvis Presley, Mohammad Ali, Evel Knevel, and Bruce Lee. By the mid 1970's Elvis, Ali, and Knevel were three of my idols. Until in 1978, I saw a movie trailer of a double feature on tv promoting, "Return of the Dragon" and "Enter the Dragon." That was my first exposure to Bruce Lee and seeing him as one of the 1st Asian American men on film. But at the age of 7, I was unaware that Bruce passed away in 1973 while I was 2 years old and that was the 5th anniversary of his passing. This video of Lee's interview is a rarity. I have seen it in Bruce's documentary narrated by George Takei. This is a great video to watch in a Q&A session on Lee's career, accomplishments, philosophy, and personality. And for another rare Bruce Lee moment, rent his last movie "Game Of Death." Go to chapter select, click to "end credits," watch this montage moments of Bruce's earlier films with the credits rolling, and you will find a "kissing scene" with him and an Asian actress. He is still Kool Moe Dee! :)
seng wrote on Wed, 04/12/2006 - 1:28pm
That's such a cool interview- so much better complete than in snippets on various reissue DVDs. With his inside story about the casting of Kung Fu and the tales of Star Trek's original captain being a black woman (before she was demoted to space secretary Uhura), I wonder if that period of the entertainment industry was more open to breaking these ethnic boundaries and why. Even shows that made the mainstream like Good Times, All in the Family and its spin-off The Jeffersons seemed to deal more directly with issues of race and class. Are there similar things brewing these days that make it as close to production as Bruce's or are they killed much earlier (and how much of that is disenfranchisement)?
a questioner wrote on Fri, 04/14/2006 - 12:55pm
it was an interesting interview.As for the lack of 'adventure' in entertainment\TV today, i think part of the problem is that we have been conditioned to accept programming presented as opposed to pushing a constructive opinion on what we want to see back to the programmers. it used to be that there were very few options so you had to talk to the chef if you didn't like the menu. there are so many options today that if we dont like something or it makes us 'work' just a little too much, we flip and the show is quickly cancelled. we vote with our remote. i think it took awhile for Norman Lear's All in the Family to hit its stride and find a strong audience. The same is true for Star Trek. Back then, the powers that be could afford to give a program a longer time to take root. Now they cancel programs in 4 weeks - barely enough time to know that it's on. if it doesn't make a dent in the first 2 weeks, it's toast. so the result is lowest common denominator TV.