If you’ve been reading The Playlist lately, specifically about Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” you know that there has been a back-and-forth between people associated with the film (Tarantino, actors, etc…) and Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce Lee, who feels that her father has been disrespected in the film. We thought that once Tarantino gave his side of the story, the discussion would end. Well, apparently we were wrong as Shannon Lee has some parting shots she’d like to aim at the filmmaker.
Speaking to Variety, she didn’t hold back in her response to Tarantino, who recently defended his usage of Bruce Lee in his film by saying that it’s partly based in fact but set in a fictional world.
“He could shut up about it,” she said. “That would be really nice. Or he could apologize or he could say, ‘I don’t really know what Bruce Lee was like. I just wrote it for my movie. But that shouldn’t be taken as how he really was.’”
Lee added, “One of the things that’s troubling in his response is that, on the one hand, he wants to put this forward as fact and, on the other hand, he wants to stay in fiction.”
Ultimately, what it all boils down to for Shannon Lee is that she believes that Tarantino is trying to have his cake and eat it too, by allowing him to base the interaction in the film off of “real life” (or at least how the filmmaker understands it) but also include Lee in this fictional situation that fits the whole fairy tale aspect of the film.
“[Tarantino] can portray Bruce Lee however he wanted to, and he did,” Lee said. “But it’s a little disingenuous for him to say, ‘Well, this is how he was, but this is a fictional movie, so don’t worry too much about it.’”
Well, the he-said/she-said of the Bruce Lee situation rages on. But right now, it would appear that the two sides are at a stalemate. Maybe now we can discuss other aspects of ‘Once Upon a Time?’