![]() ![]() "Man, I used to bang my hands on the wall trying to get iron palms, scrape my hands with beans," says the RZA. The Wu-Tang Clan's first album, one of the landmarks of hip-hop, was called Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in honor of Lee's last film. Lee's influence stretched beyond the screen. "Before then we hadn't really seen martial arts in that context in a Hollywood film." "You know, we take for granted now that Hollywood action movies, they have martial arts, they have fight choreography, they do all this amazing stuff," says Phil Yu, the writer behind the site Angry Asian Man. "Without Enter the Dragon most of the video games that we associate now with martial arts - certainly all of the television shows and films that have come afterwards. Without 'Enter the Dragon' most of the video games that we associate now with martial arts - certainly all of the television shows and films that have come afterwards. Lee was finally the heroic Asian star of a Hollywood movie. A co-production between Lee's Hong Kong studio, Golden Harvest, and Warner Brothers, it was the first martial arts film produced by an American studio. Which is where Enter the Dragon, well, enters. So Lee reached out to a producer he knew at Warner Brothers. He made three: The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon. ![]() He decided to make martial arts films for Hong Kong audiences. ![]() It had been over a decade since his last role in Hong Kong, but The Green Hornet had been playing there - except there it was called The Kato Show. He went back to Hong Kong to visit family and was greeted at the airport by producers eager to cast him. It was about this time Lee caught a lucky break. And both of these characters were played by white actors in multiple films during the '50s and '60s." There were only two types of roles - Fu Manchu, the villain, and Charlie Chan, the model minority. "What Bruce Lee wanted to do was to create a heroic Asian male character," says Matthew Polly, author of the new biography Bruce Lee: A Life. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Bruce Lee Subtitle A Life Author Matthew Polly ![]()
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