Brandon Lee


Brandon Bruce Lee was an American actor, and martial artist. Lee is also known for being the only son of Bruce Lee, and his accidental death during the production of his breakthrough film The Crow. Lee's father was an iconic leading man in martial arts films, who died in 1973. Lee followed his father into both of the fields, trained martial arts with some of his father's students and studied acting at Emerson College and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. In 1986, Lee made his screen debut opposite David Carradine in the television film , where he received second billing and starred in his first leading role in the Hong Kong action film Legacy of Rage.
Shortly after, on television, Lee played a lead in the pilot , and guest-starred in an episode of the television series Ohara. Following this, Lee was the lead in the low budget action film Laser Mission. In the 1990s, he started working with major Hollywood studios. His first American theatrical release was the Warner Bros buddy cop action film Showdown in Little Tokyo, co-starring Dolph Lundgren. It received poor reviews and was described as an overwhelmingly silly action film, but for the same reason some retrospective critics appreciate it. This was followed by a leading role in Rapid Fire produced by 20th Century Fox. Most critics didn't like the film, however they noted Lee's onscreen presence.
In 1992, he landed his most notable role as Eric Draven in Alex Proyas's The Crow, based on the comic book of the same name, which would be his final film. On March 31, 1993, only a few days away from completing the film, Lee was accidentally killed after being shot on the set by a prop gun.
The Crow was completed by re-writing the script, using early CGI technology and stunt doubles. It was generally well reviewed and considered to demonstrate Lee's dramatic abilities. It was a commercial success and is now considered a cult classic. Many saw parallels between Lee and his father comparing their careers as action film leading men who died young, prior to the release of their breakthrough film. He is buried alongside his father in Seattle's Lake View Cemetery.

Early life

Brandon was born on February 1, 1965, at East Oakland Hospital in Oakland, California, the son of martial artist and actor Bruce Lee and Linda Lee Cadwell. The Lees moved to Los Angeles, California, when Brandon was three months old. From a young age, Lee learned martial arts from his father, a major martial arts movie star. While visiting his sets Brandon became interested in acting. The family lived in Hong Kong from 1971 to 1973, after which his mother moved back to the United States following the death of his father, who became an icon of martial arts and action films built around them.
Lee started studying with Dan Inosanto, one of his father's students, when he was 9. Later in his youth, Lee also trained with Richard Bustillo and Jeff Imada. In his teens, Lee became rebellious. He was asked to leave the Chadwick School for "insubordination"—driving backwards down the school's hill. For a brief time afterwards he attended Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance.
Lee received his GED in 1983 at the age of 18, and then went to Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, where he majored in theater. That same year, struggling with his identity, he stopped training in martial arts but later resumed it under the guidance of Inosanto and others.
A year later, Lee moved to New York City, where he took acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. After his studies, Lee did local theater, joined the Eric Morris American New Theatre, and acted in John Lee Hancock's play Full fed beast.

Career

1985 to 1990: Early roles

Lee returned to Los Angeles in 1985 and worked as a script reader. During this period, he was approached by casting director Lynn Stalmaster and successfully auditioned for his first credited acting role in . It was a feature-length television movie that was a follow-up to the 1970s television series Kung Fu, with David Carradine returning as the lead. In the film, the show's hero, Kwai Chang Caine, is forced to fight his hitherto unknown son, Chung Wang. It aired on ABC on February 1, 1986, Lee's 21st birthday. Lee said that he felt there was some justice in being cast for this role in his first feature, since the TV show's pilot had been conceived for his father.
Lee got his first leading film role later that year in the Hong Kong action crime thriller Legacy of Rage, starring alongside Michael Wong, Regina Kent and Bolo Yeung in a small role. Lee plays Brandon Ma, a young man working two jobs to support his life with his girlfriend May and to save up to buy his dream motorcycle. His best friend, Michael Wan, is an ambitious and murderous drug dealer who eventually blames one of his crimes on him. Ma is sent to jail and vows vengeance on Wan. It was the only film Lee made in Hong Kong, made in Cantonese and directed by Ronny Yu. Lee was nominated for a Hong Kong Film Award for Best New Performer in this role. In May of the following year, it was a critical success at the Cannes Film Festival and commercial success in Japan.
Later that year, Legacy of Rage was released in the Philippines as Dragon Blood, keeping the number one spot in the country for its first five days and becoming a local success. Producer Robert Lawrence screened the film and saw Lee's potential to be an action leading man in Hollywood, so the two began working together. After Lee's death, the film was released directly to video in 1998 in the U.S. and Australia the next year. The film has been described as stylistic and fast-paced, with a good performance by Lee. It is considered to be his best genre film.
In 1987, Lee starred in the unsold television pilot . It aired on CBS Summer Playhouse, a program that specialized in rejected pilots and allowed the audience to call in to vote for a show to be picked up as a series. It was another follow-up to the Kung Fu TV series, moved to the present day, and centered on the story of the grandson and the great-grandson Johnny Caine of Kwai Chang Caine. While his father uses his fighting abilities to assist people in need, Johnny Caine chooses a life of crime. After being caught doing a robbery, Johnny is taken into custody by his father who tries to rehabilitate him, but Johnny is tempted to return to crime. The pilot was poorly received and not picked up as a series.
In 1988, Lee played a role in "What's In a Name", an episode of the American television series Ohara, starring Pat Morita. That same year the action film Laser Mission was announced. Shot mostly in South Africa, it was his first English-language film. It co-starred Ernest Borgnine who shot his scenes with him in Namibia. The plot concerns a mercenary named Michael Gold who is sent to convince Dr. Braun, a laser specialist, to defect to the United States before the KGB acquires him and uses his talents to create a nuclear weapon. In the United States the film was released to commercial success on home video in 1990 by Turner Home Entertainment. The film is generally panned by critics with a few finding it to be an amusing action B movie.
In the late 1980s, Lee and his mother had a meeting with Marvel CEO Margaret Loesch through comic book writer Stan Lee. Stan Lee felt that Brandon would be ideal in the role of super-hero Shang-Chi in a film or television adaptation.

1991–1993: Hollywood breakthrough

In 1991, he starred opposite Dolph Lundgren in the buddy cop action film Showdown in Little Tokyo. This marked his first studio film and his first American theatrical release. Lee signed a multi-picture deal with 20th Century Fox in 1991. In the film Lee plays Johnny Murata, a Japanese American police officer partnered with a sergeant named Kenner, on patrol in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Little Tokyo. They are sent to infiltrate a new Japanese drug gang, the Iron Claw. The movie faced largely negative reviews; some critics have retrospectively found it entertaining for its genre.
Lee was among the cameos in the Swedish genre film Sex, Lögner och Videovåld,
filmed between 1990 and 1993. The film was completed in 2000. During this time Lee was asked to play his father in the biopic . He turned the role down, finding it awkward to play his father, and too strange to approach the romance between his parents.
In 1992, he had his first starring role in the action thriller Rapid Fire, directed by Dwight H. Little and co-starring Powers Boothe and Nick Mancuso. Lee plays a student who witnesses a murder and is put in a witness protection programme. Lee was reportedly in talks with 20th Century Fox about making two sequels. Many of the fight scenes, choreographed by Lee, contain elements of his father's Jeet Kune Do fighting style. Most critics did not like the film, but many of them found Lee charismatic. A minority of critics found Rapid Fire to be slick, well acted, and a serviceable action film. Later that year, Lee landed the lead role in Alex Proyas' film adaptation of the underground comic book The Crow. It tells the story of Eric Draven, a rock musician raised from the dead by a supernatural crow to avenge his own death as well as the rape and murder of his fiancée by a dangerous gang in his city.

1994: Posthumous success

In 1994, after Lee's death, The Crow opened at number one in the United States in 1,573 theaters grossing $11.7 million, averaging $7,485 per theater. The film ultimately grossed $50.7 million, above its $23 million budget, 24th among all films released in the U.S. that year and 10th among R-rated films released that year. It was the most successful film of Lee's career, and is considered a cult classic. The film was also a success overseas.
The Crow has an approval rating of 82 percent on Rotten Tomatoes based on 55 reviews; critical consensus there is: "Filled with style and dark, lurid energy, The Crow is an action-packed visual feast that also has a soul in the performance of the late Brandon Lee." The Crow has a score of 71 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 14 critics, indicating "Generally favorable reviews". Reviewers praised the action and visual style. Rolling Stone called it a "dazzling fever dream of a movie"; Caryn James, writing for The New York Times, called it "a genre film of a high order, stylish and smooth"; Roger Ebert called it "a stunning work of visual style". The Los Angeles Times also praised the film. Lee's death was alleged to have a melancholic effect on viewers; Desson Howe of The Washington Post wrote that Lee "haunts every frame" and James Berardinelli called the film "a case of 'art imitating death', and that specter will always hang over The Crow". Berardinelli called it an appropriate epitaph to Lee, Howe called it an appropriate sendoff, and Ebert stated that not only was this Lee's best film, but it was better than any of his father's.
The film is dedicated to Brandon and his fiancée Eliza Hutton. Lee's mother and Hutton asked for the film to be complete, at the time director Alex Proyas was ready to abandon the project, as a testament to Lee's talent. It has retained a loyal following many years after its release. Due to the macabre nature of the film and Lee's fate it is often described as a goth cult film.
Some observers found that Lee never quite left the shadow of his father and that The Crow did not live up to Lee's full unexploited potential. Most critics agree that The Crow is a very good film and successful but an eerie conclusion to Lee's career, since he wanted to escape the action genre and move on to dramatic roles.

Death

On March 31, 1993, Lee was filming a scene in The Crow where his character is shot and killed by thugs. In the scene, Lee's character walks into his apartment and discovers his fiancée being beaten and raped. Actor Michael Massee's character fires a Smith & Wesson Model 629.44 Magnum revolver at Lee as he walks into the room. A previous scene using the same gun had called for inert dummy cartridges to be loaded in the revolver for a close-up scene: dummy cartridges provide the realistic appearance of actual rounds for film scenes that do not require the gun to be fired and use a revolver where the bullets are visible from the front.
Instead of purchasing commercial dummy cartridges, the film's prop crew created their own by pulling the bullets from live rounds, dumping the powder charge and then reinserting the bullets. However, they left the live primer in place at the rear of the cartridge. At some point during filming, the revolver was apparently discharged with one of these improperly deactivated cartridges in the chamber, setting off the primer with enough force to drive the bullet partway into the barrel, where it became stuck. The prop crew either failed to notice this or failed to recognize the significance of this issue.
In the fatal scene, which called for the revolver to be fired at Lee from a distance of, the dummy cartridges were exchanged with blank rounds, which feature a live powder charge and primer, but no bullet, thus allowing the gun to be fired without the risk of an actual projectile. Since the bullet from the dummy round was already trapped in the barrel, this caused the bullet to be fired from the barrel with almost the same force as if the round were live, and it struck Lee in the abdomen.
Lee was rushed to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina. Attempts to save him were unsuccessful and after six hours of surgery, he was pronounced dead on March 31, 1993 at 1:03 pm. Lee was 28 years old. The shooting was ruled an accident due to negligence. Lee's death led to the re-emergence of conspiracy theories surrounding his father's similarly early death. Lee's body was flown to nearby Jacksonville, where an autopsy was performed. He was then flown to Seattle, Washington, and buried next to his father at the Lake View Cemetery in a plot that Linda Lee Cadwell had originally reserved for herself. A private funeral attended by 50 took place in Seattle on April 3. The following day, 200 of Lee's family, friends, and business associates attended a memorial service at actress Polly Bergen's house in Los Angeles. Among the attendees were Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, David Hasselhoff, Steven Seagal, David Carradine, and Melissa Etheridge.
Lee's gravestone, designed by local sculptor Kirk McLean, is a tribute to Lee and Hutton. The epitaph reads, 'For Brandon and Eliza, ever joined in true love's beauty.' It is composed of two twisting rectangles of charcoal granite which join at the bottom and pull apart near the top. "It represents Eliza and Brandon, the two of them, and how the tragedy of his death separated their mortal life together", said his mother, who described her son, like his father before him, as a poetic, romantic person.
In an interview just prior to his death, Lee quoted a passage from Paul Bowles' book The Sheltering Sky which he had chosen for his wedding invitations; it is now inscribed on his tombstone:

Legacy

At the time of his death, the biopic was ready for release. It was released two months later, with a dedication to his memory in the end credits. Lee's mother and sister attended the premiere. His mother found the film to be excellent and a great tribute for her whole family.
Lee's on-set death paved the way for resurrecting actors to complete or have new performances, since pioneering CGI techniques were used to complete The Crow.
In 2020, Lee was added to the cast of the Quarantine Martial Arts Comedy 'Fists of Quarantine' via deep fake and archive audio. Brandon Lee played Gold. The film is available on YouTube.

Martial arts and philosophy

Lee was trained from a young age by his father in Jeet Kune Do. Martial artist Bob Wall, who had costarred with Lee in Enter the Dragon, observed that Lee hit with power and had good footwork. Following the death of his father, Lee was trained by Dan Inosanto, a friend and disciple of Bruce Lee. Lee said: "It's always been a part of the daily routine. After my father passed away I began working out with the man who was his senior student." According to Jeff Imada who at the time was helping with children's classes at Inosanto's Kali Institute, the fact that he was the son of one of its founders was kept quiet; Lee had difficulty focusing due to seeing his father's photos taking so much space in his studio. Imada said Lee stopped training in his mid-teens to play soccer. Richard Bustillo also trained Lee during his teens and said that Lee worked hard and was always respectful. Lee said that with his training Arnis with Inosanto he specialized in both Kali and Escrima and lasted three to four years.
In 1986, Lee said that he was training in Yee Chuan Tao, a relaxation-based martial art, with a trainer named Mike Vendrell. Lee said that it consisted of exercises such as slow sparring, Chi sao practice; they also worked on a wooden dummy, as well as Vendrell swinging a staff at him while he would duck or jump over. He said later that the exercise helped him be less tense.
Lee eventually returned to the craft with Inosanto as his main trainer and became proud of his heritage. Lee said he did a few amateur fights but did not seek to compete in tournaments. He would bring a camera to Inosanto's studio, both would choreograph fights for Lee's films and would allow him to see how various moves played out on screen. By his mid-twenties Lee was seen practicing regularly at the Inosanto Martial Arts Academy. In 1991, Lee was certified by the Thai Boxing Association. While his main goal was dramatic acting, credited the skill to have helped him to boost his career and become an action film leading man.
During the filming of The Crow, Lee said he did cardiovascular exercises to the point of exhaustion using a jumprope, running, riding a LifeCycle, or using a StairMaster, after which he would train at Inosanto's academy where he took Muay Thai classes.
According to Lee's mother, years prior his death Lee became consumed with his father's written philosophy, taking lengthy notes. When asked which martial arts he practiced, he responded:
In August 1992, Bruce Lee biographer John Little asked Brandon Lee what his philosophy in life was, and he replied, "Eat—or die!" Brandon later spoke of the martial arts and self-knowledge:

Personal life

Lee is the grandson of Lee Hoi-chuen, the nephew of Robert Lee Jun-fai, and the brother of Shannon Lee. Lee's paternal great grandfather was Ho Kom Tong, a Chinese philanthropist of Dutch-Jewish descent who was son of Charles Henry Maurice Bosman.
Lee's mother Linda Emery has Swedish and German roots. According to the book, Lee “proudly told everyone” about his newborn son Brandon’s diverse features, describing him as perhaps the only Chinese person with blond hair and grey eyes.
Actor and martial artist Chuck Norris, a friend and collaborator of Lee's father, said that when Bruce died, he kept in touch with Lee's family, and that his son Eric Norris and Brandon were friends at a young age.
Lee was a friend of Chad Stahelski, his double after his death during The Crow. The two had trained together at the Inosanto Martial Arts Academy.
In 1990, Lee met Eliza Hutton at director Renny Harlin's office, where she was working as his personal assistant. Lee and Hutton moved in together in early 1991 and became engaged in October 1992. They planned to get married in Ensenada, Mexico on April 17, 1993, a week after Lee was to complete filming on The Crow.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

Works cited