Bruce Lee's family calls 'Once Upon a Time' 'a mockery.' Is it insult or homage?
In Quentin Tarantino's Tinseltown fantasia "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood," Bruce Lee faces off with Brad Pitt's fictional stuntman Cliff Booth in a scene that some say makes fun of the martial arts icon.
In the cameo, Bruce Lee, played by actor Mike Moh, challenges Booth to spar outside the set of Lee's TV series "The Green Hornet." Lee is introduced holding court for everyone who will listen, bragging that he could beat boxing champ Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali, in a fight: "My hands are registered as lethal weapons."
But after talking a big game - and playing up his signature mannerisms and outsize confidence, knocking Cliff down in the first round - it's Lee who gets unceremoniously thrown into the side of a parked car by the stuntman before others intervene.
The scene has offended fans of Lee, and it has offended his family. Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, called the depiction "disrespectful" and "a mockery" of her late father's legacy.
"I understand this is a Tarantino film, that the movie characters are 'antiheroes' and this has his characteristic style and is another of his rage fantasies," said Lee after seeing the film Sunday. "While I understand that the mechanism in the story is to make Brad Pitt's character out to be such a badass that he can beat up Bruce Lee, the script treatment of my father as this
