Quentin Tarantino on Bruce Lee bit and its backlash in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: ‘He had no respect for…’|Scene Stealer

While there are many sequences from Quentin Tarantino directorial Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) that have had a lasting impact, the one which has remained in my memory, and also generated a fair amount of controversy, is the part where Mike Moh confronts Brad Pitt’s stuntman character Cliff Booth, as essays the late Bruce Lee.
The almost five-minute sequence has a hilarious, bordering-on-spoof take on the icon that was Bruce Lee. Upon its release, the scene (understandably) outraged Bruce Lee’s family as well as his die-hard fans. But taken in its full context, it makes sense that Brad’s Cliff was able to ultimately overpower Bruce, as later in the movie he had to single-handedly tackle three psychopaths.

The sequence portrays Bruce as a self-centered narciss who keeps bragging about his ‘lethal weapons’ (read his hands). While Mike’s mannerisms as Lee was spot-on, it was the sounds that he made as he readied himself to battle Cliff that had the audience in splits, and even as an admirer of Lee for the arte that he was, one couldn’t help but admit that the whole part played out like comedy gold.

Speaking about the backlash the movie faced for the sequence, Tarantino had said on the Joe Rogan Podcast, “I can understand his daughter having a problem with it. It’s her f***ing father, alright, I get that. Everybody else: Go suck a d**k.”
He then went on to elaborate why and how the whole thing played out the way it did, and why was Bruce shown in a negative light: “Cliff gives Bruce no resance whatsoever and Bruce knocks Cliff on his ass. There are four different ways Bruce could’ve come at him the second time, and Cliff would’ve had little defense. But most of the time if a guy has a particular move and it looks like the other dude is a big mouth who can’t defend himself, they do the first move again a second time. But now Cliff knows what it is. He prepares for it and throws [Bruce] into the car. He just tricked him. Bruce realises he got tricked.”

Referencing to Matthew Polly’s book, Bruce Lee: A Life, the filmmaker said that Bruce showed little to no respect for American stuntmen.
“Bruce had nothing but disrespect for stuntmen. He was always hitting them with his feet, he was always tagging — it’s called tagging when you hit a stuntman for real. And he was always tagging them with his feet, he was always tagging them with his f, and it got to the point where (people began saying) ‘I refuse to work with him,’” the director had said at the time.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood minted big bucks at the box office, earning a whopping 375 million dollars of its 96 million-dollar budget.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.