Brandon Lee
Brandon Bruce Lee was an American actor and martial artist. Establishing himself as a rising action star in the early 1990s, Lee landed what was to be his breakthrough role as Eric Draven in the supernatural superhero film The Crow. However, Lee's career and life were cut short by his accidental death during the film's production.
Lee was the son of martial artist and film star Bruce Lee, who died when Brandon was eight years old. Lee, who followed in his father's footsteps, trained in martial arts, including Jeet Kune Do, Wing Chun, Eskrima, Silat, and Muay Thai, and studied acting at Emerson College and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Lee started his career with leading roles in the Hong Kong action film Legacy of Rage, and the straight-to-video Laser Mission, which was a financial success on home video. Lee also appeared in two spin-offs of the 1970s series Kung Fu, the television film Kung Fu: The Movie and the pilot Kung Fu: The Next Generation.
Transitioning to Hollywood productions, Lee first starred in the Warner Bros buddy cop film Showdown in Little Tokyo, co-starring Dolph Lundgren. While it did not do well with audiences and critics upon its release, it later became a cult film. This was followed by a leading role in Rapid Fire, produced by 20th Century Fox. Lee, alongside Jeff Imada, is also credited for the fight choreography, which contained elements of Jeet Kune Do. Though the film was not well-received, critics praised Lee's onscreen presence.
After being cast to headline The Crow, Lee had filmed nearly all of his scenes when he was fatally wounded on set by a prop gun. Lee posthumously received praise for his performance, while the film became a critical and commercial success. His career has drawn parallels with his father's, both men having died young prior to the release of their breakthrough films.
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. From a young age, Lee learned martial arts from his father, who was a well-known practitioner and a martial arts movie star. Lee said the family lived between Hong Kong and the United States, due to his father's career. While visiting his father's sets, Lee became interested in acting. Lee's father died suddenly in 1973, leaving a legacy that made him an icon of martial arts and cinema. Grace Ho said that by the age of 5, he could kick through an inch board.Afterwards, Lee's family moved back to California. Lee began studying with Dan Inosanto, one of his father's students, when he was nine. Later in his youth, Lee also trained with Richard Bustillo and Jeff Imada. Imada said that when Lee was in his teens, he struggled with his identity, and having to train in dojos which included large photos of his father troubled him. According to Imada, this led Lee to leave martial arts in favor of soccer. Both would reconnect later in their film careers, with Imada working as stunt and fight coordinator in several of Lee's upcoming films. Meanwhile, Lee was a rebellious high school student. In 1983, four months prior to his graduation, Lee was asked to leave the Chadwick School for misbehavior. That year Lee received his GED from Miraleste High School.
Lee pursued his studies in New York City, where he took acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Lee went on to Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, where he majored in theater. During this time, Lee appeared in several stage productions. He was part of the Eric Morris American New Theatre, with them he 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 Kung Fu: The Movie. 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. On set Lee reconnected with his former instructor Jeff Imada who worked in the stunt department. Imada said Lee had to be talked into accepting the role, since the martial arts nature of the film did not appeal to Lee, who avoided any connection with his father's genre of film.' In the film, the character of Kwai Chang Caine has a conflict with his illegitimate son. Kung Fu: The Movie first aired on ABC on February 1, 1986. 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.That year saw the release of Ronny Yu's Hong Kong action crime thriller Legacy of Rage. This was Lee's first leading film role. Yu said that Lee and him did not get along during shooting. In the film, Lee plays a young man blamed for a crime he did not commit. It was the only film Lee made in Hong Kong, and in Cantonese. Lee was nominated for a Hong Kong Film Award for Best New Performer in this role. The film was a critical success at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, and was a commercial success in Japan.
In 1987, Lee starred in another spin-off of Kung Fu, the unsold television pilot Kung Fu: The Next Generation. On June 19, 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. The plot centered on the grandson and great-grandson of the main character from the original series. The pilot was poorly received and not picked up as a series.
In 1988, Lee had a role in "What's In a Name", an episode of the American television series Ohara, starring Pat Morita, He portrayed the main villain, the son of a yakuza. Jeff Imada, who worked as stunt coordinator, said that Lee was recommended not to do the role due to the nature of the character. However, Lee saw it as a chance to expand his acting range, and took the role.'
In 1990, Laser Mission was released. Filmed in Namibia, Lee stars as mercenary on a mission. Distributed by Turner Home Entertainment, it was a commercial success on home video. The film was generally panned by critics, although a few considered it an amusing action B movie.
In the 1980s, Lee started to train again with Dan Inosanto. Inosanto said that Lee would bring a camera to the training facilities to see which techniques looked good on screen. Also around this time, Margaret Loesch, Marvel's CEO from 1984 to 1990, had a meeting with Lee and his mother 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 to 1993: Hollywood breakthrough
In April 1991, Lee was in Universal Pictures' list of contenders to play his father in the biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. He turned the role down, finding it awkward to play his father, and too strange to approach the romance between his parents. Also, producer Raffaella De Laurentiis said he did not look Chinese enough and that she would have refused to work on the project if they had to resort to making Brandon appear more Asian. The role went to Jason Scott Lee, who said he was initially intimidated by his role as Bruce Lee but that he overcame his fear after speaking to Brandon. According to Jason, Brandon told him the following in regards to the role: "He said I wouldn't survive in this part if I treated his father like a god. He said his father was, after all, a man who had a profound destiny, but he was not a god. He was a man who had a temper, a lot of anger, who found mediocrity offensive. Sometimes he was rather merciless." Director Rob Cohen said he spent hours talking to Brandon during preparations.On August 23, 1991, Mark L. Lester's Showdown in Little Tokyo premiered, which Warner Bros. produced and distributed. Lee starred opposite Dolph Lundgren in the buddy cop action film. Lee secured his role on October 13, 1990, to make his American feature debut. It was meant to start shooting after his casting but was delayed until the following January. In the film, Lee and Lundgren play cops who are partnered to investigate yakuza. In the US, the domestic gross was $2,275,557. The movie faced largely negative reviews; retrospectively, however, some critics find it entertaining for its genre.
While visiting Sweden, Lee was among the cameos in the locally made genre film Sex, Lögner och Videovåld, filmed between 1990 and 1993. The film was completed in 2000.
Lee's next film was 20th Century Fox's Rapid Fire, which premiered on August 22, 1992, and was directed by Dwight H. Little. Lee plays a student named Jake Lo who witnesses a murder and is put in a witness protection program. The film came about when producer Robert Lawrence started working with Lee and noticed his potential to be an action leading man in Hollywood after screening Lee's earlier project Legacy of Rage. Lee was involved with the story development, and connected with the plot point where his character loses his father. Jeff Imada, the film's stunt coordinator, witnessed Lee bringing a book of work by his father to emotionally prepare himself in the scene where the character loses his dad. Imada also said Lee put on muscle for the role. Lee and Imada are credited for the fight choreography, the fighting style contain elements of Lee father's Jeet Kune Do. Lee was allowed to add some touches of his own humor to the script. On playing the character of Jake Lo, Lee said "I always saw that character as not being gung-ho to get himself involved in those situations. I wanted to keep that throughout the film, that sarcastic edge. So he's not just becoming Joe Action Hero." In the US, the film is debuted at No.3 at the box office, making $4,815,850. After its 19 weeks run in cinemas, it made a total of $14,356,479. 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. Also that year, it was reported that Lee signed a three-picture deal with 20th Century Fox and a multi-picture deal with Carolco Pictures. That year, according to John Lee Hancock, Lee read the first draft of The Little Things, and was interested to act in it.
In the fall, while doing publicity for Rapid Fire, Lee landed the lead role in Alex Proyas' The Crow, an adaptation of a comic book by the same name. 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. According to producer Jeff Most, Lee had good insight on the character and liked the lyrical lines within the script, but did not want the dialogue to spread aimlessly. Hence, Lee focused on the brevity and rhythm of the lines of dialogue to make the character threatening. In preparation for the fight sequence, Most said that director Proyas and Lee studied martial arts movies. Also according to Most, Lee did not want metaphysical characters besides his own in the film. Costumer Roberta Bile said that Lee modelled Draven after singer Chris Robinson. Lee convinced the team to hire Jeff Imada who became the stunt coordinator; he and Imada oversaw the fight choreography.
Imada and Lee agreed that the character of Eric Draven would not do conventional martial arts moves; his movements would be unique. He is a character without formal martial arts training who was given supernatural abilities upon resurrection. With this in mind, they added aerobics to Draven's fighting style. Both Imada and Most said Lee was pleased to incorporate his martial arts to the design of the character, without it being part of the story. Imada said that in order to look like a rocker and not an action hero, Lee went on a strict diet weeks before shooting in order to remove a lot of bulk, and would even weigh the food he ate. Lee also focused on cardiovascular exercise with a stairmaster, did repetitions on lighter weights to elongate and stretch his muscles, and did aerobics to lose body fat rapidly. During pre-production, Imada said that in order to get into character for the resurrection, Lee bought bags of ice in which he submerged himself, because Lee hypothesized that the feeling of resurrection must be freezing cold. The resurrection scene was shot the first night of production, during the winter. Imada was surprised that Lee requested the bags of ice because of the weather, and the fact that he was already barefoot and bare-naked. Key hairstylist Michelle Johnson said that in rain scenes Lee would soak himself prior to filming the scenes, where he would act without a shirt in cold weather. The film crew was impressed with his performance and dedication.