The Hollywood Reporter recently published an open letter written by Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon where she vented about her frustration with how white men in Hollywood have portrayed her father.
Her latest gripe lies with his erroneous portrayal in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which director Quentin Tarantino addressed yet again in his appearance last week on the Joe Rogan Experience. “Where I’m coming from is...I can understand his daughter having a problem with it, it’s her fucking father! I get that,” Tarantino said. “But anybody else? Go suck a dick.”
While Shannon appreciates Tarantino acknowledging why she would be bothered with her father being painted as “an arrogant asshole who was full of hot air,” she used the topic to speak about a larger problem that has gone on for much longer than the 2019 film.
“As you already know, the portrayal of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Mr. Tarantino, in my opinion, was inaccurate and unnecessary to say the least. (Please let’s not blame actor Mike Moh. He did what he could with what he was given.) And while I am grateful that Mr. Tarantino has so generously acknowledged to Joe Rogan that I may have my feelings about his portrayal of my father, I am also grateful for the opportunity to express this: I’m really fucking tired of white men in Hollywood trying to tell me who Bruce Lee was,” Lee wrote.
“I’m tired of hearing from white men in Hollywood that he was arrogant and an asshole when they have no idea and cannot fathom what it might have taken to get work in 1960s and ’70s Hollywood as a Chinese man with (God forbid) an accent, or to try to express an opinion on a set as a perceived foreigner and person of color,” she continued.
Lee’s original remarks two years ago touched upon her father’s plight as “someone who had to fight triple as hard as any of those people did to accomplish what was naturally given to so many others.” Shannon goes on to say that she’s tired of white men in Hollywood mistaking his “confidence, passion and skill for hubris,” refusing to believe that he was better than them, and arguing that he wasn’t really a martial artist.
While understandably frustrated with how Hollywood perceives Bruce Lee, Shannon concludes that she appears willing to move on from her ongoing feud with Tarantino.
Click here to read Lee’s open letter in its entirety.
