The Way of the Dragon
It’s not often that I link to National Review Online (in fact, I’ve never had), but this piece by John Derbyshire about his short stint as an uncredited thug in Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon (or Return of the Dragon) is really quite fascinating. This cranky reactionary, who once opined that “Pop Culture is Filth”, is more than respectful when recounting the pure star frisson and charisma of Bruce Lee in Hong Kong, and gives us a rare look into the slap-dash world of HK moviemaking in the early 70s.
You can see clips of Lee kicking Derbyshire in the face here (Derbyshire looks sort of like James Taylor in Two-Lane Blacktop).
Interestingly, The Way of the Dragon was the only film written and directed by Lee. You can see some of his cinematic handiwork here in his climactic battle with a very young and hairy Chuck Norris here (Lee was not immune to the overuse of the zoom lens either like many a low-budget filmmaker of that epoch).
Like the music? You can download the soundtrack at The Manchester Morgue