Bruce Lee does Kung Fu

Tyr

As I'm sure any fans of the man will know and many more people besides the TV series Kung Fu was the original concept of Bruce Lee however due to racism in the media the series eventually went through cutting him entirely out of his intended lead character role giving it instead to a white man (David Carradine which I probally spelt wrong).


So WI...The racist elements are defeated and the series goes through with Lee as the lead...
What happens next? Where does Lee's career go and the kung fu genre itself?
How does America react to a oriental leading man?
 
Redem

Redem

*shrug a bit*

Well according to IMDB. Kung fu went off the air cause David Carradine couldn't take it anymore and quit after so much injury maybe Bruce lee would have support it longer :D
 
Mr_ Bondoc

Mr_ Bondoc

Something Else...

-Well for one thing, this would serve as a major stepping stone for many Asian-American actors/actresses into the American mainstream. Just consider that in OTL, actors Keye Luke, Brandon Lee, Harrison Ford, and Jodie Foster all got their first jobs from the series.

-Second, this would have helped the Asian-American Civil Rights Movement in San Francisco, California and Los Angeles, California. Just remember that "bussing" of students and affirmative action were issues for Asian-Americans, as well as African-Americans during the 1970s.

-Third, this would have also helped Asian-American males by developing a role model early, showing that Asians could be sexy and display machismo. For many Asian-Americans, there were no male role models (except for George Takei in Star Trek) in American pop culture until the late 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of Jackie Chan and Jet Li...
 

Iñaki

Hmm, if Bruce Lee not dies in 1973 because his intervention in Kung Fu Series butterflies his dead, could be in the 1980´s we would have some interesting martial arts film with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan intervening together in some films ("Two Asian Tigers", "The Master and the Disciple", "The Two Inmortals"... ) and yes I like the Bruce lee Films:)
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Series would have failed. I don't see Lee as able to play the role properly. He was a good actor but the characters he played best were very intense, competitive and violent. (I would have loved to see them do him as a Mickey Spillane type detective, he would eat that role up)

Kung Fu was a hippie thing, it needed someone who could play serene very convincingly, otherwise, the contradictory nature of the hero ("a man of peace who can fight like ten tigers", as another character in the series once put it) would not have been believable. Also, Caine was supposedly a Eurasian, not a full Asian, so having the character played by an actual Asian would deemphasize his uniqueness
 
Aozhouhuaren

Aozhouhuaren

Banned
Well nor is Jackie Chan really if you look at his personal life, is known to get drunk from time to time, admitted to have had a daughter from an affair and admitted to marrying his wife only because she was pregnant. But I guess he balances that off with his hard working ethic, charity dedication and actually admits to all those flaws unlike many
 

Tyr

NapoleonXIV said:
Series would have failed. I don't see Lee as able to play the role properly. He was a good actor but the characters he played best were very intense, competitive and violent. (I would have loved to see them do him as a Mickey Spillane type detective, he would eat that role up)

Kung Fu was a hippie thing, it needed someone who could play serene very convincingly, otherwise, the contradictory nature of the hero ("a man of peace who can fight like ten tigers", as another character in the series once put it) would not have been believable. Also, Caine was supposedly a Eurasian, not a full Asian, so having the character played by an actual Asian would deemphasize his uniqueness
Click to expand...

Carradine was entirely white. Someone entirely Chinese can attempt to play a Eurasian just as well. Better probally since its a mainly white audience.
And the character was supposed to be entirely oriental at first, they just changed this to half Chinese so they could use a white actor.

I think he could do the role well, he could do the spiritual thing pretty well. Its just the films he got were for a action man. In Game of Death he was supposed to go more down the tao of his art route and bits of this can be seen in what he did get done.

If it fails it'd be due to a Chinaman having the lead or butterflies. Not Lee's inability to perform.


On rollmodels: hmm I never thought of that. True...It would give the world of today a entirely different image of oriental men to the nerd who is great at maths steryotype... which would be interesting.

Jackie Chan/Sulu as roll models: Sure their personal lives have bad points but for kids it's the character they play that they look up to.


Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan cross overs- I'm not so sure that'd happen. Jackie Chan may be stuck as a stuntman. His career certainly won't go the way it did as he got his first big break in Bruceploitation films.
 
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