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Brandon Lee

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For other uses, see Brandon Lee (disambiguation).
Brandon Lee
Born
Brandon Bruce Lee
Other namesBrandon Bruce Lee
Years active1986-1993

Brandon Bruce Lee (李國豪; Cantonese: Léi Gwokhòu; Pinyin: Lǐ Guóháo; February 1, 1965 – March 31, 1993) was an American actor. He was the son of the late legendary martial arts film star Bruce Lee and Linda Lee Cadwell and the brother of actress Shannon Lee.

Early life

Brandon Lee was born in Oakland, California, son of the legendary martial artist actor Bruce Lee. Only a week after his birth, his grandfather Lee Hoi-Chuen died. The family moved to Los Angeles, California when he was three months old. When offers for film roles became limited for his father the family moved back to Hong Kong in 1971; Bruce Lee made three films there between 1971 and 1973.

When Lee was eight, his father died suddenly from cerebral edema. After her husband's death, Linda Lee moved the family (including daughter Shannon Lee (b.1969)) back to the United States. They lived briefly in his mother's hometown of Seattle, Washington, and then in Los Angeles, where Lee grew up in the affluent area of Rolling Hills.

He attended high school at The Chadwick School, but was asked to leave for insubordination three months before graduating. He received his GED in 1983, and then went to Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts where he majored in theater. After one year, Lee moved to New York City where he took acting lessons at the famed Lee Strasberg Academy and was part of the American New Theatre group founded by his friend John Lee Hancock. The bulk of Lee's martial arts instruction came from his father's top student, Dan Inosanto.

Career

Lee returned to Los Angeles in 1985, where he worked for Ruddy Morgan Productions as a script reader. He was asked to audition for a role by casting director Lyn Stalmaster and then made his acting debut in Kung Fu: The Movie, a feature-length television movie and a follow-up to the 1970s television series Kung Fu. The film aired on ABC on February 1, 1986 which was also Lee's 21 birthday.

In Kung Fu: The Movie, Lee played Chung Wang, the suspected son of Kwai Chang Caine (played by David Carradine). This seemed ironic at the time as Brandon's father Bruce Lee was originally intended to have played the leading role in the Kung Fu TV series as he had also come up with the original concept for the TV series, but in the end he was turned down for playing the lead in favor for Carradine.

Later that same year, Lee got his first major film role in the Hong Kong action thriller Legacy of Rage in which he starred alongside Michael Wong. This film also had a cameo by Bolo Yeung who also appeared in his father's last film, Enter the Dragon. The film was made in Cantonese, and directed by Ronny Yu. It was the only film Lee made in Hong Kong.

In 1987, Lee starred in an unsuccessful television pilot, another follow-up to the television series Kung Fu, titled Kung Fu: The Next Generation. In this film the story moved to the present day, and centered on the story of Johnny Caine (played by Lee), who is the great-grandson of Kwai Chang Caine. The pilot was not picked up for a series but aired on the CBS Summer Playhouse.

Lee then made a guest appearance in an episode of the short-lived American television series Ohara in 1988, where he played a villainous character named Kenji, opposite Pat Morita, who played the title role. In 1988, Lee also started filming his first English-language B-grade action film, Laser Mission, which was filmed cheaply in South Africa.

In 1991, he starred opposite Dolph Lundgren in the buddy cop action film Showdown in Little Tokyo. This was marked as his first studio film and American film debut. Lee signed a multi-picture deal with 20th Century Fox in 1991. He had his first starring role in the action thriller Rapid Fire in 1992, and was scheduled to do two more films for them.

In 1992, Lee landed the lead role of Eric Draven, in the movie adaptation of The Crow, a popular underground comic book. About his character, an undead rock musician avenging his and his fiancée's murder, Lee said, "He has something he has to do and he is forced to put aside his own pain long enough to go do it". It would be Lee's last film. Filming began on February 1, 1993, which was his 28th birthday.

Death

On March 31, 1993, while filming for The Crow, the film crew filmed a scene in which Lee's character walked into his apartment and discovered his girlfriend being raped by thugs. Actor Michael Massee, who played one of the film's villains, was supposed to fire a gun at Lee as he walked into his apartment with groceries.

Because the movie's second unit team were running behind schedule, it was decided that dummy cartridges (cartridges that outwardly appear to be functional, but contain no gunpowder) would be made from real cartridges. A cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in the pistol prior to the scene. It caused a squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it became stuck.

The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was used again later to shoot the death scene, having been re-loaded with blanks. Nevertheless, the squib load was still lodged in the barrel, and was propelled by the blank cartridge's explosion out of the barrel and into Lee's body. Although the bullet was traveling much more slowly than a normally fired bullet would be, the bullet's large size and the extremely short firing distance made it powerful enough to fatally wound Lee.

When the blank was fired, the bullet shot out and hit Lee in the abdomen and lodged in his spine. He fell down instantly and the director shouted "Cut!", but Lee did not respond. The cast and crew filming rushed to him and noticed he was wounded. He was immediately rushed to the hospital, Lee’s heart had stopped once on the set and once in the ambulance on the way. Following a six hour operation to remove the bullet and despite being given 60 pints of blood, it was too late. The damage the bullet caused was too great. He was pronounced dead at 1:03pm.

His funeral was held several days later; he was buried next to his father in Lake View Cemetery, Seattle. The following day, a memorial service was held in Los Angeles.

The shooting was ruled an accident, although many fans suspected foul play. The theory of the Lee "family curse" was also carried over from Bruce Lee's death to Brandon's, as he had died almost 20 years after his father and before the release of the film which could have potentially catapulted him to stardom.

Legacy

After Lee's death, his fiancée Eliza Hutton and his mother supported director Alex Proyas' decision to complete The Crow. At the time of Lee's death, only eight days were left before completion of the movie. A majority of the film had already been completed with Lee and only a few scenes had to be done.

To complete the film, stunt double Chad Stahelski, who was a friend of Lee's at the famed Inosanto Academy, was used as a stand-in; special effects were used to add Lee's face on to the stunt double. Another stunt double named Jeff Cadiente was also used to complete the movie. These scenes were filmed after Lee's death:

  • Eric Draven's death in flashbacks.
  • A scene with Eric walking into his apartment after returning from the dead was digitally composited from a scene of Lee walking into an alleyway with raindrops added (the rest of the scenes in the apartment were all done with the double);
  • Lee's face was digitally imposed onto the stunt double when Eric puts on make-up in front of a mirror and walks towards the broken down window of his apartment;
  • When Sarah (Rochelle Davis) visits Eric, his face is not seen as it is actually the stunt double.
  • When Eric plays his guitar on the rooftop, it is one of Lee's body doubles.
  • In the scene in which Eric Draven kills secondary villain T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly), he does not speak, nor is his face shown; the close-up of Draven's face was from a deleted shot.
  • A scene in which Eric Draven is running on the rooftops from the police after a shootout was filmed with a double, as was his escape in a police car.

The Crow was released in May 1994 and became a box office hit gaining a loyal cult following many years after its release. The film is dedicated to Lee and Hutton. They were to have been married on April 17, 1993, in Mexico. Lee is survived by his mother and sister.

The grave site of Brandon Lee and his father, Bruce Lee

- In an interview just prior to his death, Lee quoted a passage from Paul Bowles' book The Sheltering Sky that he had chosen for his wedding invitations; it is now inscribed on his tombstone:

"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless..."

The quotation is not attributed to Bowles in either Lee's final interview or on his tombstone, leading some fans to the mistaken impression that Lee composed the passage himself. The interview can be seen on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray releases of the The Crow. Seven years after Lee's death, a direct-to-video Swedish film titled Sex, lögner & videovåld (Sex, lies & video violence) was released in which Lee had a very brief cameo appearance. Lee had filmed his cameo appearance in 1992 at the time he was promoting Rapid Fire in Sweden, but the film was delayed for seven years finally releasing in 2000. It was dedicated to Lee during the end credits.

At the time of his death, his father's biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was ready for release. The film was released two months after Lee's death, with a dedication to his memory in the end credits. In the film, Lee was portrayed by child actor Iain M. Parker.

Personal life

In 1990, Lee met Eliza "Lisa" Hutton at director Renny Harlin's office, located at the headquarters of 20th Century Fox. Hutton was working as a personal assistant to Harlin, and later became a story editor for Stillwater Productions, in 1991. Lee and Hutton moved in together and became engaged in October 1992.

They were to be married in Mexico on April 17, 1993, a week after Lee was to complete filming on The Crow - just 17 days after he died. At the time of Lee's death, Hutton was working as a casting assistant and was on set of The Crow so much that she was later credited with being Lee's on-set assistant. After his death, Hutton petitioned to have gun safety regulations tightened on film sets.

Filmography

References


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