It doesn’t take long for the new trailer for “The Further Misadventures of Cliff Booth” to bring up the most controversial scene from “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” In fact, the very first words we hear are “Did you hear the story about Bruce Lee getting his ass kicked by a stuntman?” » Another reference to the Bruce Lee scene follows shortly after, long before we hear about Rick Dalton or any of the more important events of the first film.
The Netflix pseudo-sequel, directed by David Fincher and written by Quentin Tarantino, sees Brad Pitt reprise his Oscar-winning role as Cliff Booth. It’s billed as a separate adventure starring one of the film’s main characters – Leonardo DiCaprio is either completely absent or an incredibly well-kept secret, and Tarantino has said that the film shares more DNA with Elmore Leonard’s paperback detective novels than the Hangout film style that defined the first film. But the marketing had to remind audiences who Cliff Booth is, and it’s curious that the second trailer’s main point of reference is a scene more memorable for the controversies it stirred up than for its role in the film’s plot. No mention is made, for example, of Cliff’s role in dispatching several members of the Manson Family.
A quick recap for those lucky enough to have been offline during the original saga. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” features a scene in which Cliff has to hang out in front of a TV while DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton films an episode. While killing time, he finds himself in a fight with Bruce Lee (played by Mike Moh). Neither man is particularly polite to the other, with Cliff seeming more interested in Lee’s sidekick role in “The Green Hornet” than his more high-profile film roles, and Lee quickly challenges him to a fight. Each man wins a round of the fight before it is interrupted, ensuring that there is no clear winner – but the mere fact that Cliff was able to throw a martial arts legend into the side of a car is a feather in his cap.
After the film’s release, Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon publicly objected to the way the film portrayed her father.
“It’s unfortunate because it started this narrative in certain places where some people say, ‘Oh, Bruce Lee was an asshole,'” Shannon Lee said in 2020. “Look, everyone can be an asshole sometimes. I can be arrogant and angry in my life – is that something I would say I am in general? No, my dad generally wasn’t like that. He was extremely passionate and driven.”
She continued, “He could have a temper at times, but he didn’t challenge people to fights. Certainly not after he was a teenager. Regardless, he didn’t behave or boast that way… My father worked extremely hard and directly for the idea of authentic representation in Hollywood for an Asian man, so I don’t think he would have taken to beating up stuntmen and that sort of thing to further his cause.”
Tarantino has frequently defended the scene, saying he based his fictional portrayal on real anecdotes about Lee from people who knew the actor.
“Bruce Lee was a pretty arrogant guy,” Tarantino said at a press conference in 2019. “The way he talked, I didn’t make a lot of things up. I heard him say things like that. If people say, ‘Well, he never said he could beat Mohammad Ali,’ well yeah, he did. Right? Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read. She absolutely said that.
Controversy still arises sporadically. During a 2021 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience”, Tarantino told critics of the scene to “suck a dick”, making it clear that he understood why a daughter would object to any negative portrayal of her father.
By the time “The Further Misadventures of Cliff Booth” hits select theaters this month (and expands to Netflix in December), more than seven years will have passed since “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” premiered. Perhaps all parties have said all there is to say about the Bruce Lee scene. But given how deeply the trailer delves into the subject, we might be in for another round of arguments over representation.
Gn entert
