Bruce Lee: “The Way of the Intercepting Fist” | Shannon Lee

thank you for joining us tonight for our celebration of beloved Global icon actor martial artist and philosopher Bruce Lee before we begin as a land grant institution the film a television archive at UCLA would like to acknowledge our presence on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Gabrielino and tongva peoples we are humbled to do work in this community we would like to thank the individuals and organizations who helped make tonight's screening possible all of the archive screenings in the Wilder are free thanks to a gift from an anonymous donor and we are grateful to their support and to the Hammer Museum for their wonderful partnership this greeting has been made possible by the John H Mitchell television programming endowment with special thanks to Our Community Partners the Bruce Lee foundation and the UCLA Asian American studies Center thanks to absolutely we also want to thank Sydney Wilson of the Bruce Lee Foundation Peter Murray of CBS Patrick Lockney at the Packard Humanities Institute and Etta Manriquez and Taylor Morales of the Academy film archive we'd also like to uh just let's please give those tremendous folks a round of applause some figures Loom large in Asian American culture and though Bruce Lee had passed away well before I was born his presence and impact were a formidable part of my childhood in contrast to representations of Asian Americans which always fell short was Bruce Lee I felt drawn to Bruce Lee and not just because my grandfather had given me his haircut but because there's a there's a real photo of that um but because I'll show you later um but because he was powerful sharp and Charming a true icon Bruce Lee's influence positively changed um Asian American um culture and history and I'm just so grateful um to that um so I want to also thank somebody who's special who's here today um Shannon Lee [Applause] Mark is going to introduce Shannon a little bit more later in the Q a but before we get started I'd like to share with you a little bit about Mark Quigley he's again our television curator and he's been the driving force of this amazing program so I want to thank him and bring him up on stage to introduce the rest of the evening thank you may and thank you Shannon Lee so much for being here uh executive producer of the television program Warrior founder and director of the Bruce Lee foundation and Keeper of the flame for Bruce Lee so we're just extremely grateful and honored to have you here um screen first tonight is the debut episode of the ABC detective series Longstreet titled the way of the intercepting Fist from 1971 which is a remarkable Prime Time showcase for Lee's deeply personal philosophies and his Charisma and prowess as an actor rather than screen from standard definition Network sources we are screening from an HD scan of the archive's imperfect 1971 Network print of an ABC rebroadcast from 1972 which has the bonus of original commercials this 60 millimeter print was completely color faded so special thanks to our digital lab team and Randy yunteck for their restoration efforts following Long Street we will ask Shannon to please join me on stage for discussion and Q a about tonight's screening selections and how they relate to her essential book be water my friend the teachings of Bruce Lee and her amazing work with the Bruce Lee Foundation and following the Q a after a brief intermission we will screen the 35 millimeter Technicolor dye print of the cult classic Enter the Dragon courtesy of our dear friends at the Academy film archive if you have never seen Enter the Dragon it is simply put one of the greatest martial arts films ever made and one of the best films made in the 70s and if you have seen the film before tonight we'll ask you to watch through a different lens beyond the action and towards the life lessons that Mr Liam Parts which I greatly look forward to hearing Shannon speak about and as a bonus feature we will start with a few brief but meaningful archival Treasures from Bruce Lee's TV career thank you so much Shannon for being here it means the world to us thank you all for being here and braving the rain and please enjoy the show please welcome to the stage executive producer author and co-founder and director of the Bruce Lee Foundation Shannon Lee [Applause] leaving things everywhere thank you again Shannon so much for being here it's so great to have you at the Billy Wilder theater oh my gosh it is absolutely my pleasure that was so fun to watch so good the um the writing credit is sterling silver who was an Academy Award winner for In the Heat of the Night but those words are your fathers and their philosophy is his shoulda had a writing credit for certain um and the origin or Bruce Lee's origin story those words go back to uh fateful boat ride that he had as a teenager yeah can we talk a little bit about that uh sure yeah um you know the be water quote as you know makes an appearance there in that um TV show and interestingly the origin of that and my father's relationship with water goes back to when he was a teenager in Hong Kong and he was a student of ipmans and um he was you know a rambunctious teenager as you can imagine and always trying to sort of do his best and win in in class and be very aggressive and enforce his own strategy uh when practicing and and sparring and all that kind of thing and um his teacher kept saying to him you know stop being so aggressive so much young not enough Yin not enough gentleness you know you have to go with your opponent and all this sort of thing and and uh you know that whole free or ambitious mind right um and my father just couldn't get it I mean as a teenager right and um so yipman said don't come back for a week don't practice just just go home which to my father is like you know death because he loved he was so active as a human being in general um so he did not go back to class but he did try to practice on his own and really tried to get what his teacher was saying and in about a frustration he went out in a boat on the Harbor and it was thinking about you know what was what am I missing what am I not getting any and he was so angry and he started punching the water and was right in that moment when he was like ah light bulb you know and and he wrote about it uh which I write about in my book but he wrote about it in an essay and he was saying you know and in that in that moment I realized this is what he's me he means to be like water I punched the water in the water moves out of the way of my fist I try to grab the water and it runs through my hands you know and so this is the place of gentleness this is me being present and actually following what my opponent is doing rather than being caught up in my own mind with my sticky thoughts of only myself right and that in fact in the next moment he saw this bird fly over and he saw Its Reflection on the water and he said um and then I saw this bird and Its Reflection and I realized that my thoughts and my emotions need to be like the reflection of the bird on the water when in my mind like I notice them they're there but I don't get stuck on them I let them pass through so and so much of that that you write about in your book has practical applications for how we live our lives in 2023 and so I think when we think of Bruce Lee we think about his physical abilities that are immeasurable but he worked his mind as hard as he worked his body right yeah that's that's exactly so you know the Bruce Lee Foundation which is our charitable arm of of what we do um has really started to make a real um um efforts toward youth mental Wellness in a mind-body spirit way through the teachings of my father and the reason for that is exactly that as my father trained his mind just as much if not more than he trained his body and we all know what his body looked like right so [Laughter] um and I always tell people the reason he made such impact the reason he was so unique the reason he had so much energy that just seemed to like pop off of the screen at you is because of that personal work you know that mental work that emotional work that he did on himself and that when you look at him you you see someone and you feel someone who's very vital and therefore very real and it gave him the strength the inner strength not the outer strength the Inner Strength to be able to do what he did in this life that's something you talk about in your book a lot is the idea of being real and how important that was to him but what is how can we bring these elements into our own lives so many of us are never going to be Bruce Lee and but no one is going to be Bruce Lee that's impossible to replicate but yeah some of his lessons have such practical application so this this idea that you come out in your book numerous times about being real how does that apply to us in this digital self-serving sometimes social media age [Laughter] well you know one of the things is that my father always talked about and I'm sure many of you know this is he would say don't go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate that but don't go for self-image actualization go for self-actualization start from the very root of your being and say to yourself how can I be me you know when I have struggled throughout my life with being Bruce Lee's daughter the thing I always remind myself is he doesn't want me to be him he wants me to be me and he wants all of you to be you and that by developing who you are you actually are developing and cultivating the most unique thing that you have because we're all slightly different right we all share a Humanity but the way we express who we are on the inside you know we're made up of all these different experiences you know we grew up in different places we have different um you know experiences throughout our life that shape us and so we're all slightly different in the way we view the world and the talents that we have you know the different things that that the different ways that we think and feel and that by cultivating that we're cultivating something 100 unique like he did for himself and in that way we can be real by being ourselves and embodied in that in that philosophy was the idea of going back to water of not being still of having action as a way of self-actualization yeah well I guess what I would say is he did sometimes talk about Stillness and he would say actually the real Stillness is the Stillness in movement so it's like we're living breathing organisms right like we're never truly still we're breathing our hearts are beating you know um but the Stillness that we want to have is inside we want to have a centeredness a certain amount of peaceful Reservoir that we can return to because when we hold that Stillness inside we actually are free to move and in any direction like you think about something that has momentum it's hard to get it to stop and change direction but if it's still it can it can move in any direction and so he would say you know we're sort of like that's what we what we strive for is in our being is to be this person that is doing and act and you know moving through different actions and things like that but from a place of peacefulness on the inside and as we all know it's hard to be peaceful on the inside um but that's where the work comes in right to sort of like uncover you know the cause of your ignorance as he said right the things you don't know the things you need to know about yourself and heal about yourself so that you can achieve that sense of calm and while the world is swirling around you you're centered and not reacting but living in the moment and being ready to accept the moment as it happens and spontaneity being such a big part of that too yeah definitely I mean in my book I talk about the difference between reacting and responding right like um language is such a such a difficult thing but the way that I differentiate between those two words is that a reaction is is an unconscious thing you know you immediately respond with whatever your pattern of resp of you know your habitual response is to something but when you can sort of step back moment and create that small amount of space that small amount of Stillness within yourself and be able to observe yourself as a human being then you in that moment can instead of react you can you can consider at lightning speed you know how you would like to respond and then respond in that way and this is completely tied also to his fighting style yes I mean we just watched a whole you know dissertation on it basically in that episode yeah you know it really is and and that's the thing about him is that he brought philosophy to his martial art he brought it to how he lived his life he brought it to everything that he did and that he wanted to move through the world and move through his art um in a way that was meaningful that had meaning for him which is where philosophy comes in and for his life him living his life as an artist but his life being his work of art yes and in fact you know he said himself in an essay that he wrote several drafts of called in my own process that he never published this was uh he wrote this essay in 1970 end of 72 beginning of 73 it was just um had been shooting game of death and was about to engage and Enter the Dragon and in that essay he said you know about being real that he really felt like one of the um greatest goals and accomplishments that he could ever have was for someone to look at him and say now there is someone real and I think that he did that and in that essay message he said I am a martial artist by choice an actor by profession but what I really am is an artist of life and within that is the idea of accepting other people as they are being open to people as they are and the entire idea of being present each day that this life isn't something the thing that we're building towards is something we're going to achieve tomorrow but living in today yeah I mean he had this great quote which is so simplistic on its face but he said the meaning of life is that it is to be lived you know and if you think about being your most alive right like you're really in the moment you're really present you're really engaged with what's going on you're sensing the whole room and your body and your feelings and your thoughts but rather than getting like all caught up in it you're just allowing the moment and being as natural as you can in that presence and that is being our most alive and something I think you describe as living in the void hmm [Laughter] yes my book gets sort of into as my dad did you know got a lot into we call it the living he called it the living void and that's sort of what I mean by that Stillness you know he would talk about emptiness right empty your mind and that emptiness is that Stillness is that void right it's like before there's something there's nothing but that doesn't mean that the nothing is literally nothing that it's empty in fact it's full of the possibility of everything and that's what the living void is it's like that place from which that spontaneity that creativity that moment that action comes from and so if we can be at one with that and be present with that and be in charge of what we're creating out of that then we can you know honestly express ourselves as he would say and so a 70s TV show has like certain pitch value to it uh for sure but when we're talking about uh the idea of an empty cup exactly what does that mean yeah I mean that's what it means it's like you know when he says empty your mind he's basically saying empty the cup of your mind don't don't walk through the world with your judgments your preconceived ideas your opinions but walk through the world with more emptiness so that you can experience what's actually happening and not just experience it through the lens of your your judgment you know because when you experience the world through which by the way we all do right we're all human beings um but when you walk through the world that way through the lens of your judgment you're limited in what you're actually experiencing because you're trying to make the world match your perspective and your point of view and your belief and your judgment and when you and when you hold on to that you're actually looking for evidence that you're right rather than just looking right so as your family's historian and archivist along with your mom you can trace your father's Ascent by his following his philosophies and adapting to the obstacles that were thrown in front of him so even to get to Long Street you know let's talk a little bit about his career at this point and how his philosophies shaped what would end up being some life-changing decisions that he made yeah so you know my father was struggling quite a bit in Hollywood he had done the Green Hornet as we all saw the the commercial for um and that show was canceled and he was really trying to get more roles but he didn't want to take roles that were demeaning or stereotypical which meant that there weren't very many and um you know he had all these great friends like Sterling Sullivan was his good friend and Ted Ashley who is the head of Warner Brothers and James Coburn and Steve McQueen and all these people right but um you know it was even with all that it was really hard for him to get taken seriously it was a time um where you know people were still performing um in yellow face in in film and television right um having Caucasians play Asians and um and so it was very hard for him to get good roles meaty roles um even though he tried and and he tried writing his own projects As We Know um the silent flute and the warrior and um just was not getting anywhere and so he left and went to Hong Kong to see if he could do something there and in Hong Kong um The Green Hornet was called the Cato show and he was you know Hometown kid made good in Hollywood because he was an actor when he was a child and so he had like you know in the minds of of of of his community he had gone to Hollywood and and made it right and so there was a desire to to have him be in films in Hong Kong and you know James Coburn was primarily um one of the people who advocated to him for doing that because you know like Clint Eastwood had gone and done the Spaghetti Westerns in Italy and been able to make a name for himself he thought well maybe I can do the same and so he had gone to do the first film Big Boss and off of the success of that um he was you know able to start getting a little bit more recognition and he was able to work with Sterling silicon to be able to do this episode of Long Street obstacles that Hollywood provided it didn't stop him from achieving stardom which was something that he had outlined in his goals that he was going to do and he managed to go around Hollywood are you anybody with eyes could see that he had the Charisma and the ability to be a star on American television but it was actually fortuitous in in some ways that that didn't happen yes no it's true I mean you know if you think about it if he had gotten the warrior made or Kung Fu or you know whatever um and starred in that show then he would not have been globally known right he would have been known in this country um on a TV show but he would not have had the global recognition that he ended up having because he went to Hong Kong to do those films and you know he employed his philosophy which was to be like water you know rather than just keep doing back banging his head against the wall and trying to make something happen that was clearly not happening he found a different path and in that path um will set up Enter the Dragon just a little bit um again finding resistance even among uh there was allies like Ted Ashley but there was people that needed convincing that the things that were most important to Bruce Lee which was thinking not just the physical abilities but the intellectual part of it that there was a part for that in Enter the Dragon yeah you know when he first got um the script for Enter the Dragon um which was called blood and steel um it was it didn't have any like any of the philosophical stuff as you can imagine that was in there and um but my father because he had this goal which he stated in the pure Burton interview and clearly in other ways um of of bringing an authentic representation of an Asian man to the west to Hollywood so when he got this offer finally from Warner Brothers to be able to do this film it it was really a huge it was the opportunity he'd been looking for but he wanted to make it the best possible opportunity that he could and in and in and so the way he wanted to do that was by making sure that some of his philosophy and some of his culture and some of his you know thoughts about martial arts and and all of that got its way into the film but you know initially they were like no just do the movie right and he worked tirelessly writing scenes didn't get a writing credit on that either by the way um and you know the producers were like yeah yeah it'll be fine we'll we'll put the stuff in and um when it came time to shoot he got the shooting script and none of this stuff that he had written was in the script and so he refused to go to set and uh and then he was um there was a standoff that took off that took place for a couple of weeks actually and it's funny I talked to my mom about it and I said was he really gonna just like tank that opportunity because you know we all live in Hollywood right it's like oh my gosh you think if I could just get my foot in the door right then maybe next time the the role will be better and um she said absolutely he was not gonna make that movie unless they put the things in that he wanted he was willing to let it go and so this standoff went on for a couple weeks they tried to shoot as much of at they know they had the whole you know crew and everybody there they shot everything they could without him and then um finally they had to concede and we have the film that we have today because of it and I think if the movie was just the fight scenes of course we'd still be talking about it today uh 50 some years later but the fact that it has these philosophical scenes makes you understand his character so much greater and there's such an insight into into him and his beliefs so let's without spoilers let's talk about we're going to be looking at the original theatrical version so the scene that was added for the 25th anniversary uh the scene with the Monk Is is a really important illustrative scene that's not going to be in what we see tonight but maybe talk let's talk a little bit about the parts in the movie to look out for sure um I mean there's the scene that I call Laos time right it's Laos time where he teaches the student that has the great you know finger pointing at the Moon don't concentrate on the finger um I love that scene um I do a whole breakdown of it in my book from a philosophical standpoint and what's so important about it into and how you can apply what he's talking about there to your own life and um I just that's so that's one scene that he wrote and I just think it's such an impactful scene it's so few words but it illustrates so much you know it's similar to Long Street but more refined because he's talking about you know relationship like when he kept saying to James Franciscus relationship it's it's you and me don't just you know hit like listen where am I be and it's this there's a same similar idea in that scene but it's done just so simplistically and yet so powerfully and it's also funny you know he's smacking the kid on the head and all that kind of stuff um so there's that scene there's the art of fighting without fighting there's that scene there's um the scene you know at the end with the mirror I don't know I think this print probably doesn't have the voice over in it either the which part are you referring to in the mirror the mirror yeah I don't think it does yeah I don't think it does either because that's from the beginning part with the monk right right so um you know and and just uh they're not you know a number of different um parts to it they also um hadn't the very opening scene the fight with Samuel Hong that had not been I mean that's not philosophical necessarily but that had not been um originally was not the opening of the film my father shot that and it was added in at the end um to be the opening of the film and um you know just him the whole scene with the sister and what that represented and and going to the grave site and talking to his father and all of that I mean all of those things were things that he incorporated into the film yeah and I think that's what makes the film for a certain so all of these philosophies that we see in Long Street in Enter the Dragon and also just in in a film like Vista Fury you know where he uh one of the most memorable scenes in his career where he kicks down a racist sign all of these things form the Bruce Lee that people love that's so far beyond his physical abilities so how big was his Library how big was his Library um so we just sent my father's books his cookbook collection up to the wing Luke Museum in Seattle we are up there and you get a chance to go I recommend it it was over 2 800 books um many of them underlined and annotated in as well and he liked to do what he called prescriptive reading so I want to say of the 2800 plus books there's like five novels [Music] um although interestingly quite a bit of poetry um because as we know he liked to write poetry himself and um but he called it prescriptive reading because he liked to read about the things that he wanted to know more about so there are many books on philosophy many books on I mean it is got to be the biggest collection of books on fighting Arts that one person has my father loved to browse the old bookstores the old used bookstores and look for out of print volumes he had every single manual from on training from every faction of the military the Boy Scouts like any book on training fighting combat all different styles all different things he had it and how much writing did he leave behind uh he wrote he he wrote um a lot amazingly and you know like for instance I I don't know if you all know the story that he injured his back quite seriously at one point um in 1969 he injured his back right toward the end of 68 69. um he injured his back working out and it was a very debilitating injury and he had to be on bed rest for a few months which for him is really difficult um but he you he always used his time that was the thing like and he would say you know if you love life don't waste time because time is what life is made up of and so he read a ton during that time and he wrote a ton during that time so many of the writings that we have are from that time when he was laying in bed and injured and uh to give you some idea of what it is like we have in our archive um seven volumes just on his thoughts and ideas on martial arts which ended up making up the bulk of um the Dao chicondo and Bruce Lee's fighting methods those books all those books were published posthumously um and that was just some of the writings on martial arts and then you know tons of philosophical writings um you know he used to carry affirmations in his pocket with him during the day you know like people think of like affirmations as kind of like this you know hippie thing that oh whatever people do well Bruce Lee did it he had these cards and he had beautiful penmanship where he wrote down how he wanted the sort of the mental the nutritious mental food that he wanted to feed his mind on a on a daily basis and he carried it in his pocket and he would pull it out and read it throughout the day this is how I want to remind myself to go through life and on top of everything else he had amazing penmanship he did he had beautiful penmanship my father was really a renaissance man like he was extremely creative um you know he wrote ideas for TV and film he wrote philosophical essays he wrote articles he wrote all about his theories of martial arts he could draw beautifully he drew you know fighting detailed fighting techniques but also beautiful images of dragons and you know all sorts of he wrote poetry he designed jewelry he designed some of his own jewelry he designed workout equipment that didn't exist that he wanted he had clothes made for him he used to shop but he used to shop at um Fred Siegel here in La which I think is still around was one of his favorite stores but he was always up on you know fashion and he was really like a renaissance man like creating himself and moving through life expressing himself and I think your book perfectly captures and traces not only your father's history and journey but your family's journey and your personal Journey through all of it um you you talk in the book that your dad did collect and read self-help books all kinds yep and the truth is as you know um all of that distilled into so much action that he was able to get out of it and I think your your book is a great distillation and has so much practical application um self-help book in the greatest possible away you know yeah thank you um yeah the whole reason I wrote the book is because my father's and really the whole reason I do what I do of looking after my father's Legacy and 2023 is 50 years since he passed so you know the reason that I do this is because his writings his words his teachings have helped me they have healed me you know I mean obviously I lost him when I was four and then I lost my brother right before my 24th birthday and um and I'm just a human being with you know trying to figure stuff out like we all are and it it was a lot and it was his writings that started to turn the switch on for me in terms of the idea that I could help myself and it was actually my favorite quote that um I was given uh copies of his writings which were probably like you know photocopied pages is all stacked up like this and I started sort of flipping through them and I'm like oh there's the Bee Water yeah oh there's that you know looking and I came across this quote that I had never heard before and you know this was probably a year or two after my brother had died and I was in a very dark place and um I came across this quote and it said the medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning but I did not take it my ailment Came From Within myself but I did not observe it until this moment and now I see if I am to find the light I must be like the candle and be my own fuel and there was just something about when I read that I think because it said the medicine for my suffering I was like there's medicine for my suffering like what what is it it's like what it's you have it it's inside of you you just have to find it and it just set me on a course and because I could see you know his legacy was living on perfectly fine without me and it would be living on perfectly fine without me but I could see that we were losing the philosophy you know was all like martial arts and action films which are awesome and which will go on forever but we were kind of losing like the foundation of it all which was his personal work which was what made his martial arts and his action films so great and so I've sort of made it my mission to make sure that that part not only survives but gets out there as much as possible and sharing it through the foundation [Applause] thank you and sharing it especially with children which is amazing because there's so much there to to get and to learn I think what we'd like to do now is take a couple of quick questions from the audience the audience a chance to talk to you so we're going to take just like one or two and I would love a question about philosophy if somebody had one about Bruce Lee's philosophy it's really hard to see up here so if you raise your hand really high and where's the microphones okay there we go um there's somebody that looks really uh eager in the front row here so let's let's go with this gentleman please and we're going to take one from the back after that hi I'm Pierre I'm an agent I bought a few clients here this is terrific um question because we were talking about the script and his philosophy and obviously Long Street was a was a television show that was written by a writer um how much of his own lines and script was from him and incorporated into the script so was there a collaboration between him and the writers I was just curious how that was about and my second question was about you you have this great style and the way you handle yourself and the way you talk did that just come from him or maybe how you develop that so those are my two questions thank you for your questions um yes the writer of Longstreet is a man was a man named Sterling silophon who was a friend and student of my father's so yes all of those lines of dialogue are really from my father um you know based on jikando I mean the sage condo in the show um which so it was all his beliefs and you know he has we have numerable numerous writings of a very similar nature in our archive because this was the kind of thing he was thinking about and writing about all the time and there was a project called The Silent flute that never got made that he wrote co-wrote with Sterling silophon also and James Coburn the three of them were supposed to do that together um so yes he worked very closely with the writer and they basically wrote that episode for him which was great um and thank you um you know I for myself um I am a person very much like my father I was I was saying this to Mark earlier uh yes I've studied martial arts but um where my father and I intersect the most is in the philosophy and not just philosophy per se in terms of like studying philosophy but in the in the way of personal growth and really trying to understand life and myself and how to move through life and be as alive and joyous and real and centered as I possibly can and in that way I think we shared that very much whether it's in the genetics or not I don't know but I've definitely spent a lot of time around found it so um you know and it's also a point of like my personal practices I want to try to feel well first of all I want to try to be myself whenever I can and in every situation and I also want to feel as comfortable as possible so my practice has become as I've gained in my own inner strength and confidence to actually really feel into the discomfort and where there is discomfort to really try to get to the root of it and say well what am I what is what is this really and how do I heal it so that I can become more whole and in that way more comfortable in my own skin [Applause] I don't want to be like an infomercial but I just I think the book is extremely helpful um and I'll just say that some of the lessons about spontaneity like I brought notes on stage but I also decided to go with some of the teachings in the book and I didn't look at my notes and wanted to see if we could have a conversation in the now and I think it worked out okay um so I'm happy about that take one way in the back there there's a hand that's really high thank you for being here I wanted to ask about Sterling were four episodes the total amount that was planned for your father to be on Long Street and secondly how did he respond to his uh American co-stars like James Franciscus and John Saxon and Van Williams and Wendy Wagner and Marlon Mason um it was not planned for him to be on more than one episode initially but his episode was very popular and so they wrote him into a few more which was great but then he really couldn't continue on because he was very busy as we know making other movies in Hong Kong at the time um you know my dad got along with he really well let me let me put it this way he really wanted to always be himself also and he was very charismatic and he loved to really connect with people like you know and um and he and he really liked the people that he worked with for the most part right I mean whether he liked them as like he would want them to be best friends and hang out at dinner and all that every day um I can't really say but I know that he really earnestly uh tried to connect with everyone that he encountered and um of all of those people I think he probably [Music] um I don't think you know I don't think he really hung out with James Franciscus much other than on the show um or any or any of those other people other than maybe John Saxon a bit but he'd only just gotten to know John um and enter the and Enter the Dragon and then he passed away you know before the film was even released so but they got on quite well and uh thank you yeah he got on with everyone he tried to so Shannon I'm going to give you the last word before we take a short break for Enter the Dragon what would you like to leave us with as we approach the next uh thing for Bruce Lee that you're going to do the next thing for Bruce Lee that I'm gonna do like what do you mean by that I mean moving forward like you've got your book and you're doing you're working with Foundation but what what do you see the future for you and Bruce Lee well um you know it's an interesting thing I think that there is so much good meaningful um good meaningful stuff when it comes to Bruce Lee you know like his philosophies his teachings who he was how he moved through the world how he tried to fight for representation and um and Harmony amongst our human family and I really hope to see that gain have him gain and even more in recognition for that um and I think it's kind of it's funny it's like a it's like a double-edged sword because Bruce Lee is so cool and he's so awesome and he's so badass and all that kind of stuff and all of the like really thoughtful intellectual stuff is kind of like the real secret weapon and um but sometimes people don't put those two together right they just think oh popcorn action movies Bruce Lee Kitsch whatever 70s but the people who really know they really know right and I'd really you know one of the reasons I wrote the book is because I really wanted him to be recognized for the philosopher that he really was I mean it's not just a handful of quotes y'all like it's a lot of writings deep thoughtful writings about how to live life you know and how to not just live life but how to be yourself at the deepest level and um and so I want to keep having fun because Bruce Lee's about having fun right and excitement and action like one of the things that I I love about my dad is that like I'll be wearing you know I'm not that recognizable out in the world so I'll be wearing a Bruce Lee t-shirt because I got a lot of Bruce Lee t-shirts foreign and and someone will come up to me wherever at the airport on the street and they'll be like oh my God I love your shirt and I'm like yes it's such a great feeling people who love Bruce Lee like the the feeling is uplifting and I want that to continue I think it's going to long after all of us in this room are gone please please thank Shannon Lee for joining us